We Will Go Forward Together

Over 900 people came to the ornate Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City to support a Roman Catholic archbishop and a Jewish spiritual leader honored for their lifelong commitments to religious dialogue and understanding. The fifth annual Nostra Aetate Awards Ceremony and Lecture drew additional attention from the national media this year because the featured speaker was Connecticut's Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, whose quest to be the nation's next Vice President-and first Jew to hold that office-was still in question on the night of the ceremony, Tuesday, December 5, 2000. The free public lecture and subsequent fundraising benefit dinner was sponsored by the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding of Sacred Heart University.

The award, named for the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), was presented to the Most Reverend Theodore E. McCarrick, the Archbishop of Newark and newly appointed Archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Rabbi David H. Lincoln, the spiritual leader of the host Park Avenue Synagogue. Rabbi Ronald B. Sobel of Temple Emanu-El in New York City presented the award to Archbishop McCarrick. Archbishop Edward M. Egan of New York was scheduled to make the presentation to Rabbi Lincoln. However, Atonement Father James F. Loughran, ecumenical and interreligious officer of the archdiocese, took his place, and said the archbishop was recovering from dental surgery he had undergone earlier that day.

Sacred Heart University President Anthony J. Cernera set the tone for the evening by recalling the pioneers of the movement for interreligious dialogue, especially between the Christian and Jewish traditions. “Forty to 50 years ago, these men and women envisioned a future radically different from what they knew. There is evidence everywhere that their dreams were successfully realized.” A co-founder of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, Dr. Cernera noted the pivotal role the Center has played in promoting justice and peace and continuing dialogue, even when no immediate “agreement” was at hand.

Father Loughran praised Rabbi Lincoln as a man of courage and a risk-taker. He noted that in more than three decades of ecumenical and interfaith dialogue, the rabbi had moved “from tolerance to respect to admiration to affection for his Catholic brothers and sisters.” A recent example of his leadership came when Rabbi Lincoln signed a full-page statement of principles that appeared in the September 10, 2000, Sunday New York Times, entitled, “Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity.” The short document highlighted what binds these two, great monotheistic traditions together, rather than what has traditionally separated them.

In his acceptance remarks, Rabbi Lincoln recalled his friendship with the priests of a Catholic boys' school across from his synagogue decades ago in his native England. On hearing that the rabbi was leaving for a new assignment in Kansas City, one of the priests, a native of the Bronx, joked that “Catholics and Jews don't live in Kansas City; they live in New York City!” The rabbi noted that while it had taken some years to do it, he did indeed end up in New York City.

Rabbi Lincoln asserted that “we live in a blessed age because so many of the misunderstandings and negative impressions of the past have been put aside. It is a source of gratification to us that the Roman Catholic Church, especially, has shown such openness to the Jews.”

Rabbi Sobel began his introduction of Archbishop McCarrick by recalling  the story of a first century rabbi who asked his students to determine the “highest good.” Their answers included a loyal friend and the gift of insight, but the teacher's response was telling. The highest accomplishment, he affirmed, was a good heart. It is no wonder, Rabbi Sobel explained, that the Catholic Church has for so long held such esteem for the image of theSacred Heart of Jesus-for which the University is named-since it represents this ultimate ideal of a “good heart.” It was this “good heart” that Archbishop McCarrick has exhibited through his personal and priestly life, he said, and “hopefully soon as a Prince of the Church.” This was in reference to the Archbishop's expected elevation to the College of Cardinals following his installation early in 2001 as Archbishop of Washington, D.C.

The Archbishop said that he had spoken three years ago at a small gathering of the Jewish community living in Shanghai. And he encouraged them to be faithful to their tradition and to their prayers and be proud of who they are. “I truly believe,” he added, addressing Jewish members of the audience at the Park Avenue Synagogue directly, “that you are the Chosen People, and the Lord never makes a choice by mistake. Our work is to the faithful to what each of us is so that we can be faithful to what all of us are.”

The featured speaker of the evening was Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, lifelong friend of Rabbi Joseph H. Ehrenkranz, executive director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding. Rabbi Ehrenkranz was Joseph Lieberman's childhood rabbi and remains a principal inspiration. The Senator joked that it was “a pleasure to have a good reason to leave” the difficulties he was dealing with in Washington, referring to Democratic challenges to the Florida election results, and continued, “We have spent too much time on the Book of Numbers. Now it's time to move on to the Books of the Prophets!”

In a warm endorsement of the Center's work, Senator Lieberman, a previous recipient of the Nostra Aetate award, said, “Faith has been used - misused, truly - as an excuse for hatred and violence. Nostra Aetate literally changed history, a change that we have too little acknowledged.  And His Holiness, John Paul II, has brought further historic changes. In 1986, for example, the Holy Father prayed at the synagogue in Rome, probably the first pope since the Apostolic Age to do so. He acknowledged the special relationship that exists between Christianity and Judaism, calling the Jews ‘our brothers, in a certain sense, our elder brothers.'”

Senator Lieberman, the first Jew to be nominated for national office by a major party, said that he had found acceptance across religious lines during the recent political campaign.

He said people sensed that the breaking down of barriers for him also meant creating opportunities for them. Similarly, he said, as an 18-year-old he knew when John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic elected president, the breakthrough “opened doors for me.” 

The Senator concluded with the thought that this is a time of great opportunity “in what I would describe as a 2000-year familial relationship. And as for our nation in these uncertain political times, I am confident our people will go forward together strengthened by our shared faith in democracy and our shared faith in God.” The Senator received standing ovations before and after his address.

Rabbi Ehrenkranz closed the evening with brief remarks, noting that “the most important thing to us is world peace. You can not have it without religious peace, And you can not have religious peace without religious dialogue.”

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