Cardinal Cushing and the Jews: An American Context for Nostra Aetate

No aspect of Nostra Aetate generated more media coverage, especially in the United States, than the section on the Jews. By the summer of 1964, word had leaked to the press that an earlier draft explicitly exonerating the Jews of "deicide" in the death of Christ had been watered down, provoking outcry from Jewish groups. "Was it a concession to the Arabs?" asked the Jewish Advocate of Boston. Into the fray stepped Boston’s archbishop, Richard Cardinal Cushing, who on September 17 presided at a behind-the-scenes meeting in Rome of 170 of the 240 American bishops to rally support for a stronger statement.(1) Eleven days later, Cushing led off the American interventions, giving what Rabbi James Rudin has called "the speech of his life."(2) What Cushing lacked in Latin pronunciation—he repeatedly griped that he couldn't understand the council's deliberations—he made up for in emotion. Cushing declared to the assembly that it must "in clear and evident words . . . deny that the Jews are guilty of the death of our Savior." He challenged Christians to confess their own failure to defend their Jewish brethren. "How many have died because of the indifference of Christians, because of silence!" If past Christians failed to raise their voices, he concluded, "yet let our voices humbly cry out now."(3) The council erupted in forbidden applause.

How did Cushing become "the most prominent American Catholic foe of antisemitism," to quote the historian John Connelly? Drawing on untapped archival sources, this paper will examine the context and significance of his intervention. Historians have rightly attributed some of Cushing's interfaith zeal to his Cold War desire to unite Americans against communism, a crusade in which he made common cause with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.(4) But a more enduring theme, born of his encounter with religious pluralism in his 26 years as archbishop (1944-1970), was his conviction that charity toward others takes priority over doctrinal precision. As early as 1946, in a speech at Temple Ohabei Shalom, the oldest Jewish congregation in Massachusetts, Cushing called charity the "supreme perfection" and said that if Jews and Christians grounded their relations "on the obligations which it imposes, then brotherhood and good will among us will never disintegrate."(5)

Yet in the late 1940s, other voices were threatening to drown out Cushing's call for charity. Father Leonard Feeney, the Jesuit leader of a Catholic student study center at Harvard, was attracting attention for his anti-Semitic diatribes and for his absolutist insistence on the medieval formula extra ecclesiam nulla salus—that there is "no salvation outside the church." A concerned undergraduate, Robert F. Kennedy, contacted Cushing.(6) The controversy quickly mushroomed, eliciting a famous letter from the Vatican clarifying the church's doctrine. Even after Feeney was excommunicated for persistent disobedience, he and his followers continued their anti-Semitic rants in rallies on Boston Common. When the church announced in 1955 that Cushing would dedicate a Catholic chapel at the new Brandeis University, the Feeneyites distributed a flier declaring that "Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament must not be betrayed again into the hands of the people who cried out, 'Crucify Him!'" Outraged citizens wrote letters to Cushing. One Jewish woman asked, "How does this happen? . . . Can't you stop it?"(7)

Cushing recognized in the Feeneyite movement the anti-Semitic potential of right-wing Catholicism. The hate campaign also touched him personally: his sister Dolly was married to a Jewish man, Dick Pearlstein. By the time John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council, Cushing was convinced the church must renounce Christian anti-Judaism unequivocally. In a 1962 letter to Augustin Cardinal Bea, the Vatican official leading the effort to address non-Christian religions, Cushing spoke of Jewish-Christian reconciliation as God's will and urged Bea to accept an invitation to a symposium at Harvard. Bea's presence, Cushing wrote, would be "the greatest contribution that could be made to the unity among Christians and Jews in this generation."(8) Bea accepted the invitation. His visit cemented the bond between the two prelates and paved the way for Cushing's later maneuvering, including a reputed role in brokering a meeting between Paul VI and Zachariah Shuster of the American Jewish Committee when it appeared the new pope might not back a full-throated declaration. When the final form of Nostra Aetate absolved the Jewish people of collective responsibility for the death of Christ, it was a victory for Cushing. Alexander Brin, editor of the Jewish Advocate, spoke for many when he assessed Cushing's interfaith achievement: "No single American churchman had a greater impact on our generation."(9) But Cushing's legacy also includes his clash with the Feeneyite traditionalists, whose anti-liberalism (if not anti-Semitism) still finds analogues in today's church, sixty years after the council.

Notes

1. "Vatican Draft," Jewish Advocate (Boston), September 17, 1964; "Cushing May Talk on Draft on Jews," New York Times, September 19, 1964. On leaks to the press, see Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komonchak, eds., History of Vatican II, vol. 4 (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2003): 147-48, 153; and John Connelly, From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), 251-53.
2. James Rudin, Cushing, Spellman, O’Connor: The Surprising Story of How Three American Cardinals Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012), 106.
3. "Text of Cushing's Address," New York Times, September 29, 1964; and in Vincent A. Yzermans, American Participation in the Second Vatican Council (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 586-87.
4. James F. Garneau, "The Director and His Eminence: The Working Relationship and Questions of Church and State as Reflected in Cardinal Cushing's FBI Files," American Catholic Studies 114, no. 2 (2003): 37-53.
5. "Friendship Bond Shall Ever Be Strong, Says Archbishop," Jewish Advocate, January 31, 1946.
6. Edward M. Kennedy, True Compass: A Memoir (New York: Hachette, 2009), 84-85.
7. Lois M. Stern to Cushing, September 8, 1955, Cushing Papers, Archdiocese of Boston.
8. Augustin Cardinal Bea to Cushing, November 23, 1962, Cushing Papers, Archdiocese of Boston.
9. Alexander Brin, "Prelate Passes: A Tribute," Jewish Advocate, November 5, 1970.