Berlin, Germany, Sep 22, 2011 / 15:37 pm
Pope Benedict met with over a dozen representatives of Germany’s Jewish community in Berlin on Sept. 22. He urged the growth of mutual understanding and condemned the Nazis’ “reign of terror,” “racist myth” and rejection of God.
“The Church feels a great closeness to the Jewish people,” he said at the meeting, which was held in the Reichstag Building.
He encouraged Christians to become “increasingly aware of our own inner affinity with Judaism,” since for Christians, there “can be no rupture in salvation history. Salvation comes from the Jews.”
Jesus’ conflict with the Judaism of his time cannot be “superficially interpreted” as a breach with the Old Covenant, the Pope explained. The Sermon on the Mount does not abolish the Mosaic Law, but “reveals its hidden possibilities and allows more radical demands to emerge. It points us towards the deepest source of human action, the heart, where choices are made between what is pure and what is impure, where faith, hope and love blossom forth.”
Jewish-Christian dialogue should “strengthen our common hope in God in the midst of an increasingly secularized society,” he added.