One of the Righteous

Time for a good news post: Seton Hall University honored a nun today who spent her life improving Jewish-Catholic relationships, and fighting against anti-Semitism. Sister Rose Thering is one of the Righteous:

Seton Hall University, where Sister Rose was a teacher for decades, is holding a tribute for her today at 3 p.m. in the Jubilee Auditorium on its South Orange campus. It is being billed as both a farewell and a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of a document that church officials issued during the Vatican II Conference — the Nostra Aetate, which declared that Jews no longer could be blamed for the death of Jesus Christ.

Thering wrote a doctoral thesis credited with influencing the passage of the document.

She has been an outspoken champion of Israel and a spokeswoman for interfaith dialogue. She once went to Austria to protest Kurt Waldheim, who was elected president of Austria even though he was accused of being part of Nazi military units that committed war crimes during World War II.

And she did this in spite of an anti-Semitic upbringing, which makes me like her even more:

She said she is going back to St. Catherine of Siena in Racine, Wis., because that is where she came from so many years ago, and she no longer is comfortable living alone. She recalled details of her childhood in Plain, Wis., her parents telling her that Jews killed Jesus, teachers in catechism class saying the same thing and telling her that’s why Jews wandered the world without a home.

She said she never believed God would harm people he created. She said she asked a lot of questions and was told to be quiet. She said she knew from childhood that such teachings were the product of bigotry.

54 visits to Israel

She said her parents came to understand that also, many years later. after she gained some notoriety. After the death of her father, she said her mother accompanied her on one of her 54 visits to Israel. She said her mother became a supporter of Israel and came to understand much of what she had been talking and writing about for so many years. She said her mother came to support her work.

Thering was in her 30s and studying for a doctorate at St. Louis University when she said her mentor, the Rev. Maher Trafford, asked her to be part of a project examining Catholic textbooks for prejudice. She told him it had to be done. She remembered what she had been taught in childhood. She remembered being a principal of a Catholic elementary school and a first-grader coming up to her.

“Sister Rose, look what those bad Jews did to Jesus,” he said.

“I told him it was our sins that put Jesus on the cross,” Thering said.

She wrote a report at St. Louis University that examined anti-Semitism in Catholic textbooks. She presented her findings to a group of Catholic educators who criticized her work. One of them called a local bishop to complain that a nun was attacking the Church. She said she thought she was going to be thrown out of school.

Then Trafford called and told her he wanted her work to be published. She turned it into her doctoral thesis.

It became part of the debate that led to Nostra Aetate, which passed on Oct. 28, 1965, 40 years ago this Friday.

God bless you, Sister Rose.