"Repentance, Teshuvah, Forgiveness" Eugene Fisher's Summarized Transcription of Proceedings of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Council of Synagogues Conference on October 28, 1998.   Catholic Tradition — Bishop John Nienstedt, Auxiliary of Detroit. The origins of Catholic tradition are in the Bible: Ex 34:5-7, Psalm 103, Dan 19:18-19. Yet, while forgiveness originates in God, there are conditions: One must pray for forgiveness, acknowledge and confess ones sins, and convert (teshuvah -- cf. Ps. 32:5-6). God's abundant mercy becomes the ground for the covenant, which in turn becomes a catalyst for God's repeated act of forgiving the sins of his people (Jer 14:20-21). In the Gospels, the most radical change lies in the claim that Jesus possessed the divine authority to forgive sins (Mk 2:5-11). In John 8:1-12, the woman taken in adultery, Jesus makes unconditional forgiveness the ground for unconditional forgiving. Jesus replaces the expected norms of justice with an appeal to active, unconditional forgiveness (Mt 5:38-39). This "new logic of forgiveness" is enshrined in the Our Father (Mt 6:12) and explicated in various NT passages: Mt. 5:23-4, 18:21-2; Mk 11:25-6; Lk 6:37; Jn 20:21-23. The last reference is the NT grounding for the sacrament of reconciliation, which is described in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraphs 1142, 1446-8. A Catholic theology of forgiveness teaches that one can develop relationships despite transgressions, yet not forgetting the past. It teaches: 1. the mediating role of Jesus Christ as having authority to exercise God's forgiveness; 2. those who are followers of Christ are called to exercise forgiveness as the condition for experiencing forgiveness themselves; 3. The authority that Jesus has to offer God's forgiveness is given to the apostles to celebrate with penitents in the Sacrament of Reconciliation; 4. Forgiveness must be sought by the offender who bears the guilt. Without that, future reconciliation becomes complex, but not impossible. " To forgive is not to forget but to be liberated from the inner anger, resentment and quest for vengeance that consumes every fiber of my being. . . To forgive means to uncreate, but as only God can create out of nothing, only God can return to nothing what has already come into existence. So it is only God who can uncreate, it is only God who can truly forgive." (Virgil Elizondo) Repentance/Teshuvah — Rabbi Daniel Polish: It is important to note how distinctive Judaism and Christianity are in their assertion of the possibility of repentance and divine forgiveness. In Hinduism, for example, one's deeds become one's karma and adhere to the person throughout life, etched in their being until reincarnation. In Judaism sin is not aboriginal or a condition of human life but a choice, a missing of the mark but not an ineradicable mark on the soul. Humanity has two halves or spheres, angelic and animal, and two corresponding primal urges, the yetser tov (inclination to good) and the yetser hara (inclination to evil). In Judaism also there is a sense of corporate atonement. Prayers for forgiveness, e.g. on Yom Kippur, are always corporate not individual prayers. While Judaism does not overly stress forgiveness/atonement during the year, there is an intense dealing with sin and guilt and penitence during the High Holy Days. Kippur is the same Hebrew word used in the story of the building of Noah's ark: "cover it up with pitch." Atonement makes the sin inoperative, sealed shut, a thing of the past. We are assured that God can be made susceptible to our pleas for mercy (since we can merit only justice) through appeal to the merits of our ancestors. Avinu Malchenu. Our Father (mercy). Our King (justice). The former is primary. There may be no merit in my pleas for mercy but I can be forgiven by virtue of the faithfulness of my ancestors to God's demands. On Yom Kippur we read the Akedah (binding of Isaac) to remind God of their absolute faithfulness. Similarly the ram's horn reminds God of the ram that was a substitutionary sacrifice for Isaac. God is eager to forgive, as we read in Jonah. In the Temple, animals died in our place. Now we offer prayer and good deeds. Sin must be acknowledged with no evasion if we are going to become new persons. There must be restitution, restoring and healing the loss or hurt. We are taught imitatio dei. As we want God's forgiveness, so we must forgive. And we are taught metanoia, a turning away, a commitment that we will not do it again. I.e. we have become a new person. Rev. James Loughran, SA reported on the New York dialogue on forgiveness which has been written up as a dialogue with Rabbi Leon Klenicki and others in the journal, World of Forgiveness (vol. 2, no. 2, Sept. 1998) published by the International Forgiveness Institute (POB 6153, Madison, WI 53716). Here, the "primacy of the Shoah" became central in the discussion of forgiveness in our two traditions. There appeared a distinction that Christians are called to forgive even the unrepentant, not only those who ask. No one can forgive for the Shoah. Jews do not feel that anyone has the authority to do so in the name of the six million, who are no longer here. Rabbi Moses Birnbaum — We need to stand as partners with you. I, who lost grandparents and other close relatives to Nazi genocide, follow the laws of Jewish mourning which set limits to the time of mourning. It is urgent for many reasons to open the Vatican archives to help the healing process and the development of trust. Do not let the dialogue be held hostage, however, to those whose only agenda is driven solely by the Holocaust. Just as Catholics need to understand Judaism theologically, so Jews need to understand themselves today not as victims but as empowered, certainly in the U.S. and in Israel. We must educate our people to the revolution in Catholicism that has occurred since Vatican II. Eugene Fisher — It seems to me that our understandings of repentance and forgiveness are structured very similarly. Both traditions acknowledge that we simply cannot on our own ever "merit" divine forgiveness for our sins. We can only appeal to God's overriding mercy for hope. Judaism here draws on two sources to bridge the merit gap: the merits of the ancestors (particularly the Akedah) and prayer/good deeds as a replacement for the lost temple sacrifices. Christianity appeals to the merits of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross (a primal OT "type" of which is the Akedah). Christ's sacrifice is of the essence of the central Catholic worship ritual, the Mass, and is also a continuation (and even better) of the temple sacrifices. This is why the High Holy Days disappeared in Christianity relatively early while Pesach (Easter) and Shavuoth (Pentecost) continue to anchor the Christian liturgical cycle. An exception to the parallel structure of our understanding of repentance/forgiveness might be the call to forgive even the unrepentant who do not ask for forgiveness. Rabbi Polish — There is a rabbinic categorization of people into the totally sinful, the ordinary folks like us, and the totally righteous, the saint. One of the marks of the saint is going beyond the Law, for example in forgiving the unrepentant. Jesus here and elsewhere seems to have been calling Jews to make the exceptional the norm. Fisher — It remains the exception in actual Christian practice, e.g. the Pope and his assassin, Cardinal Bernardin and his accuser. (End of notes from Oct 28, 1998 meeting.) October 28, coincidentally, marked the 33rd anniversary of the promulgation of the Second Vatican Council's Declaration, Nostra Aetate ("In Our Age"). Nostra Aetate is the document that began the Church's act of repentance by condemning the theological underpinnings of the teaching of contempt: i.e. the false charge of collective guilt on the Jewish people for the death of Jesus and the consequent notion that G-d, therefore, cursed the Jews as a people. The teaching of the Church is that the Jews remain, as always, the people of God in full and integral covenant with God who called them into being as a people. Our dialogue at JTS had the advantage of drawing on an earlier exchange organized by the Archdiocese of New York and the NY Board of Rabbis. That exchange, and comments on it, were published in the Sept/Oct 1998 issue of the periodical, THE WORLD OF FORGIVENESS published by the International Forgiveness Institute (POB 6153, Madison, WI 53716-0153). The IFI's website can be found at: http://forgiveness-institute.org. [return to discussion]