Finally! Vatican begins the Christian education on the Judeo-Christian fundamentals of Western Civilization
The Pope Francis (in a book co-authored in 2010 with the Jewish Talmudic rabbi Abraham Skorka):
There is a phrase from the Second Vatican Council that is essential: it says that God showed Himself to all men and rescues, first of all, the Chosen People. Since God is faithful to His promises, He did not reject them. The Church officially recognizes that the People of Israel continue to be the Chosen People. Nowhere does it say: “You lost the game, now it is our turn.” It is a recognition of the People of Israel.
(Jorge M. Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka, On Heaven and Earth [New York: Image, 2013], p. 188)
That is a giant spiritual step ahead of what the Vatican proclaimed about a half-century ago – not the chosen but nevertheless the God’s people worthwhile to pray for:
…the Catholic Church has always been accustomed to pray for the Jewish people, who were the depository of divine promises up until the arrival of Jesus Christ, notwithstanding their subsequent blindness, or rather, because of this very blindness. Moved by that charity, the Apostolic See has protected the same people from unjust ill-treatment, and just as it censures all hatred and enmity among people, so it altogether condemns in the highest degree possible hatred against the people once chosen by God, viz., the hatred that now is what is usually meant in common parlance by the term known generally as “anti-Semitism.”
(Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, Decree Cum Supremae)
