Moving the Ball Forward on Jewish-Catholic Relations

The Catholic Church is a communion of 24 sui iuris churches, all in full communion with the Pope: Armenian, Coptic, Maronite, Melkite Greek, Ukrainian Greek, and others. These ancient traditions preserve their own liturgical, spiritual, and cultural patrimonies while remaining fully Catholic.

But there is no Hebrew Catholic Church. There is no Jewish Catholic “rite.” When a Jewish person becomes Catholic, particularly in the West, he or she ordinarily enters the Latin Church. There is no equivalent of the Armenian or Coptic Catholic Church in which a specifically Jewish Catholic patrimony has been preserved and developed.

This is one reason I find Hebrew Catholics so fascinating. “Hebrew Catholic” isn’t the name of another Catholic Church. It’s how some Catholics of Jewish background describe themselves—a way of saying: I have entered the Catholic Church, but I have not ceased to have a Jewish story.

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