John Paul II and the Jewish People: A Christian-Jewish Dialogue Book

This book "Ecumenism And Interreligious Dialogue: Unitatis Redintegration, Nostra Aetate" written by Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy and published in 2005. This book can be a textbook for seminarian, clergy and laity in order to equipped them with the work on ecumenism and interreligious dialogue.

Nevertheless, I found the book may not be adequate for year 2018 without updating the work and efforts made by Pope Benedict XVI (2005-2013) and Pope Francis (2013-present). Plus, the controversial gesture and remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI during the Regensburg meeting in 2006 that gave birth to "A Common Word Between Us and You."

This initiative mark more profound dialogue between Christianity and Islam. As "38 Islamic authorities and scholars from around the world, representing all denominations and schools of thought, joined together to deliver an answer to the Pope in the spirit of open intellectual exchange and mutual understanding."

Not to forget the initiative by Pope Francis in 2016 and 2017 to heal the wound and made a radical pave way to moving forward with Lutherans in commemoration of 500 years Luther "Reformation." A first Pope to made a pilgrim to World Council of Churches in Geneva in June 2018.

Second Vatican Council (VII) had promulgated 16 documents for all the Catholics in the world. Ever since, the documents has stirred a lot of controversy among the Catholic. For the conservative, it is a rupture from the previous teaching from Vatican I and Council of Trent and it is not binding to them. For the progressive, many felt, a lot reform were not done yet. As for many Catholic on earth, the Church hierarchy on local levels just follow from top to bottom whatever the Vatican says.

This book gave very glimpse insight what had happened in the VII during the promulgation of the 2 major documents of Unitatis Redintegration (UR) and Nostra Aetate (NA). The concern and also response from other churches representative and non-Christians representative were recorded. Despite the infallible teaching of "Outside Catholic, there is no salvation," these 2 documents together with Lumen Gentium and Gaudet Et Spes soften the interpretation of the dogma to be more positive and optimistic towards the non-Catholic/Christians.

It is then followed by highlighting the points from each document. The major points were quoted, summarised and discussed in order for Catholic to move forward the implementation. Moving to the implementation, the Catholic Church started with the set up of the pontifical council, commission and joint-committee. It then followed by the actions taken and declaration of joint documents that mark up the continuity of the work of the council.

On the section of on the state of the question, Cardinal Cassidy highlight the up and down of those meetings and events ever since the set up. They were also growing effort by the regional council to replicate and communicate the work that been done from pontifical council. And finally, the small effort by local churches and parishes added into the systematic implementation of the work on Christian unity and interreligious dialogue.

Cardinal Cassidy caution that "there is a danger in an endless series of conferences, symposiums, commissions, meetings, sessions, projects, and spectacular events,with the continual repetition of the same arguments, concerns, problems, and lamentations. Some soon grow weary of such initiatives, which seem to lead nowhere."

The book also stressed out a lot of work with Jewish committee. Lot of concerns has been addressed and the Catholic Church responded by working so hard to propagate the message of Sheoh, antisemitism and anti-Zionism. In my humble opinion, this would suffer the effort of dialogue with the Muslim community and jeopardize the relationship and also safety with Orthodox Christian in the disputable region named Palestine.

I agreed with Archbishop Fitzgerald that diologue with Muslim is very difficult and tedious. Muslim community in the world were not united like Christianity and does not have hierarchical structure like the "Vatican" for the interpretation of their religious sources. Whatever the representative from Muslim came for dialogue, it will be always "in the Muslim world people represent themselves, not a Church or a group."

As mentioned by St John Paul II, "Care will always have to be taken not to cause harmful misunderstandings, avoiding the risk of syncretism and of a facile and deceptive irenicism." The Catholic Church together with the clergy and it faithful are encourage to involved in the ecumenism and inter-religious effort as long that their faith are strongly grounded, right attitude towards non-Catholic/non-Christian and most importantly not watering down the faith under the pretense of tolerance.

Overall, I gave 4 stars for this book upon it systematic explanation to rediscover Vatican II document on UR and NA together with the work done from 1964 till 2004.