A full page statement published as a High Holy Day Message of the distinguished Jewish Theological Seminary of America appeared in the September 23, 1982 issue of the New York Times. It read, in part as follows:
Two men are crossing a desert. They are three days from the nearest water hole. One of the men is carrying a canteen. The canteen holds three days’ supply of water — for one man. Should they divide it? Then both will die. Then what is the obligation of the owner of the canteen? One opinion says — a man must not stand by and watch his fellow man die. He should share the water with his companion. Another says — Preservation of one’s own life takes precedence. The owner of the water must drink it and live. Not so simple, is it? If you don’t see a simple, obvious solution, you’re in good company, because the discussion is nearly 1900 years old.
It is recorded in the Talmud, and here is the interesting thing: Both opinions are presented in the Talmud, the prevailing and the dissent.
Why both? Because Judaism recognizes life’s dilemmas and the difficulty of knowing how to handle them. The truth is, for most significant issues there is NO simple solution. Euthanasia? Abortion? Freedom of expression/Pornography/Skokie? In most cases, it just isn’t clear what God wants us to do.
After reading this statement, I began to ask myself if a message offering similar advice about life’s problems might conceivably be addressed a hundred years from now or even sooner by one of the leading Catholic academic institutions in this country during the Christmas or Easter season.
My reason for raising such a possibility? The Consultation (September 10-12), which was sponsored by the National Institute for the Family (NIF) on the subject of the Apostolic Exhortation of the Holy Father On the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World (the result of the Worldwide Synod of Bishops of 1980).
A number of the written papers included in the packet of each participant were replete with positions clearly at odds with the teaching of the Holy Father and the bishops attending the 1980 Synod on such issues as the indissolubility of marriage, abortion, the method of birth regulation and the morality of pre and extra-marital relations. There was even a caricaturing, by one presenter, of the Church’s position on sexuality over the centuries. Obviously intended to elicit gales of laughter, the caricaturing only managed to produce muffled nervous giggles from a few participants who probably pitied the contrived antics of a presenter attempting to be a stand-up comic.
It also appeared that a number of the other presenters objected to and dismissed what they alleged to be John Paul II’s personal understanding of the Church. They seemed to be saying that the Church is composed of laity and hierarchy who have equal responsibility for discerning the sense of the faithful and interpreting the signs of the times. Misinterpretations regarding inculturation and the Law of Gradualness as carefully discussed and properly distinguished during the Synod and finally proposed in the Apostolic Exhortation also abounded.
When the Exhortation was finally quoted by a participant to a presenter on what is actually understood by the Law of Gradualness (i.e., the law of gradualness is not to be identified with ‘gradualness of the law’ as if there were different degrees or forms of precept of God’s law for different individuals and situations), the presenter’s face registered the type of amazement that indicated that either he had never read this section of the Exhortation or, if he had, he never really understood it.
Even the excellent homiletic reflection and charge by Archbishop Hickey of Washington to interpret the document as the Pope and Synod Fathers intended did not seem to make much difference to some of the concluding presenters.
Participants who were able to stay for the remainder of the Consultation have told me that had it not been for the unscheduled and moving intervention of Dick and Barbara McBride who had been auditors at the Synod, the outcome of the Consultation, up until then, might have been a foregone conclusion. The caption, in bold print, introducing the High Holy Day Message reads: FOR EVERY PROBLEM THERE IS A SIMPLE SOLUTION … WHICH IS USUALLY WRONG — a quote attributed to H.L Mencken. No one should question the sincere concerns and sentiments which inspired this Message.
But as I read its substance and the concluding best wishes to Jews and non-Jews alike, it was clear that as Catholic Christians, we, also, do not consider ourselves helpless before life’s problems. We believe that Jesus is Our Way, Our Truth, and Our Life and that we possess God’s revelation in Scripture and Tradition as mediated to us through the teaching authority of the Church. We are a people founded upon the Apostles, martyrs, pastors, confessors, virgins, in short the saints of every age. Moreover, we have, at the present time, each other, as fellow pilgrims, nurtured by sacramental grace and signed with the Cross of Christ which without Faith will ever remain a source of scandal and a real stumbling block. We can never have one without the other. For a member of the Jewish tradition or for a Catholic Christian, it all comes down, I guess, to how one does understand the last nineteen hundred years of human history. There would seem to have to be a basic difference in how both traditions view the human situation.
The September 23 High Holy Day Message of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America is deserving of our notice and respectful regard but certainly not of our imitation.
It is, no doubt, an accurate and representative statement about how one segment of one of the world’s major religious traditions seeks to deal with life’s problems and dilemmas, namely by tolerating within the tradition contradictory positions.
The tenor and thrust of several presentations at the Consultation on the Role of the Christian Family held at Theological College in Washington seem in hindsight, to resemble the advice contained in the High Holy Day Message of Jewish Theological.
The Bishops of the 1980 Roman Synod and Catholic theological tradition consistently reject the subterfuge of the double truth.