Fr Jaeger: continued reference to Fundamental Agreement between Church and Israel is necessary
Catholic and Hebrew experts will meet tomorrow for a conference on Jewish, Israeli and Church laws.
Tel Aviv (AsiaNews) A first-ever two-day scholarly conference will be inaugurated tomorrow, Tuesday, 17 October, in Jerusalem, which will have for its subject: "Jewish Law - Catholic Church Law - Israeli Law." It is a joint initiative of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Rome), the Pazmany Peter Catholic University of Budapest, the Free University of Maria Assunta (Rome), and the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with the Pontifical University "Antonianum" (Rome) contributing one of the three members of the organising committee of three members, who is also one of the speakers.
In preparation for long years (five or six altogether) the Conference is the concrete fruit of the vision of Prof. Mgr Joaquin Llobell, of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, assisted throughout by Fr David-Maria A. Jaeger OFM, of the Canon Law Faculty of the Roman "Antonianum." The original plan had been to hold it in cooperation with the Israeli private university "The Inter-Disciplinary Centre" of Hertzliyah, which, however, later preferred to withdraw and to ask the Hebrew University's Law Faculty to take its place.
Although it is a "private, academic" affair, the Conference programme indicates that it aims to give expression to Article 7 of the 1993 "Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel," which calls for "promoting and encouraging cultural exchanges between Catholic institutions worldwide, and educational, cultural and research institutions in Israel."
Fr. Jaeger explained to AsiaNews that, "now, more than ever," he sees particular importance in this reference to the 1993 bilateral treaty, which still has to be fully implemented. In fact, already a couple of years ago the office of Israel's State Attorney astonished jurists on both sides by informing Israel's Supreme Court that it does not consider the State of Israel to be bound by the Fundamental Agreement - even though Israel had ratified it already in 1994. "Any positive bilateral exchange between the Church and Israel, which can be shown to be rooted in the Fundamental Agreement, should help to keep the Agreement alive until the present difficulties of implementation sort themselves out," said Fr Jaeger, who also heads the US-based "The Church and Israel Public Education Initiative".
The Conference itself includes sessions on the Sources of Law, Family Law, and different perspectives on the relationship between the State and Religion. Among the speakers that have been announced are prominent canon law scholars from Europe, such as the English Dominican Robert Ombres, the Spaniard Javier Martinez-Torron, Count Giuseppe Dalla Torre and Gaetano Lo Castro from Rome, among others; while speakers on Israeli and Jewish Law include the internationally renowned human rights expert Natan Lerner, as well as Yuval Merin, Brachyahu Lifshitz, Yechiel Kaplan and others, coming from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Interdisciplinary Centre, the University of Haifa, Bar-Ilan University, and the "College of Management."
Some of their subjects include questions hotly debated in the West today, such as who are the "subjects capable of founding a family," or, more generally, the place of the "natural law" among the sources of law for civil society.
Interestingly, the Conference programme distinguishes clearly between the secular law of the State of Israel and Jewish religious law. The latter is sometimes reflected in the Israeli legal order, but is by no means identified with it, as one of the Conference participants has explained to AsiaNews. "There is a certain tension in the relationship between those two legal systems, which is, of course, of particular interest to Catholics," he says. "Catholics are, of course, in favour of clear lines of demarcation between the secular and the religious spheres, but are also very critical of the ideology of 'secularism,' which would deprive religion of any relevance whatsoever to the laws and policies of the State. How any State is trying to find a balance between the extremes of 'theocracy' and 'secularism' is, therefore, for us a fascinating question," this Catholic participant concludes.
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