Catechism Edit 'Troubling,' Jewish Leaders Say

Deletion of Passage on Moses in Catholic Handbook Questioned

In catechisms, as in prisons, there are no insignificant sentences.

Every word of these handbooks is meant to clearly express the fundamentals of the faith. The Catholic Church, especially, places great emphasis on its catechism to help pass doctrine from one generation to the next.

So when 200 U.S. bishops voted this summer to delete a reference to the covenant between God and Moses in the "United States Catholic Catechism for Adults," some Jewish leaders were perplexed.

Pending Vatican approval, this sentence will be deleted from the text: "Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them."

Bishops said too many Catholics seemed to misunderstand the covenant sentence, believing it meant Jews do not need Jesus to be saved.

"There was a concern that we were trying to say too much in too few words," said Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl, who chairs the board that oversaw the new catechism. "When you get into an area of theological complexity, brevity doesn't always serve you well."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which published the catechism in 2006 with the Vatican's approval, says it is the first change to the new catechism, which took six years and three drafts to complete.

Jewish leaders, some of whom view the change in light of a recent flap over the Latin Mass and lingering resentments over "The Passion of the Christ," are perplexed by the excision.

In addition, a controversial Catholic apologist -- whose writings have been denounced by his bishop and whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a "rabid" anti-Semite -- is taking credit for the change.

The USCCB says the statement about the Moses covenant was not wrong, just ambiguous and misunderstood. The conference decided to replace it with a section from the older "Catechism of the Catholic Church" that quotes St. Paul's letter to the Romans:

"To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his word, 'belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ."

That passage puzzles Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "Why take a very simple sentence and replace it with a very complicated paragraph?" he asked. "When did the Catholic Church decide that our covenant was finished?"