Denver, Colo., Feb 9, 2004 / 22:00 pm
Members of the Jewish and Catholic faith have the right to differ over “The Passion of the Christ” but that should not have a negative impact on Jewish-Christian relations in the long term, said Archbishop Charles Chaput. The archbishop of Denver delivered this message yesterday as part of his opening remarks to those gathered for the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue on the New Anti-Semitism.
The meeting was co-sponsored by the Archdiocese of Denver and the American Jewish Committee.
Rabbi James Rudin, senior inter-religious adviser to the AJC, and Bill Beckman, former theological adviser to Cardinal James Francis Stafford and former interfaith officer of the Archdiocese of Denver, also gave presentations at the teaching seminar on anti-Semitism.
The archbishop, who serves on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said one of the most troubling trends he has seen in “the rise of a new kind of anti-Jewish violence in Europe and the Third World.”