
How a 98-year-old theologian wants to shape a new image of Jesus
Jerusalem - Maureena Fritz came to Jerusalem for a "sabbatical" in the early 1970s. Today she is 98 and a Catholic nun, Israeli citizen and synagogue member – and is looking for new theological paths to Jesus.
Published on 23.09.2024 at 00:01 – by Andrea Krogmann (KNA)For Maureena Fritz, the elephant in the room has a name: Christology. The theological teaching on the person and significance of Jesus of Nazareth - or rather her difficulties with it - brought the Canadian Catholic nun and theologian to Israel. That was in the 1970s, when Fritz was a professor in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Saint Michael's College in Toronto.
Today, the 98-year-old nun of the "Notre Dame de Sion" (NDS) community is an Israeli citizen and, as a Catholic, a member of the Jerusalem reform Jewish community "Kol HaNeschama". Her latest book, "Redeeming Jesus' name", which will soon be published in German translation, is dedicated to the elephant from back then.
During her sabbatical year, she mainly wanted to explore herself and her problems with Christology, says Fritz with a mischievous smile: "Where better to do this than "in Israel, where Jesus was born". And because, in good academic tradition, a research semester includes a key question, she wanted to dedicate her time in Israel to a question that Jesus asks his disciples in the tradition of the synoptic gospels: "Who do you say that I am?"
Shocked by the church's treatment of Jews
Then things turned out a little differently, recalls Maureena Fritz. In Israel, she met many Holocaust survivors "and also Jews who were not friendly towards Christians". Suddenly, the cross pendant on her neck became a nuisance in the public sphere, and the nun became the recipient of stories from her Jewish environment about "the Christians and the church", from crusades to ghettos to the labelling requirements imposed on Jews by the church. Fritz is shocked and decides to "study the history of the church and its relationship to the Jews" - which only intensifies the shock. With its demonisation of the Jews in many facets, the Church has made itself guilty, "also with regard to the Shoah, because we prepared the background for it", says the nun. Her realisation: Christians must repent. In her book, she explains what this requires: recognising evil. Repent of sin. Make amends.

During her sabbatical year, she mainly wanted to explore herself and her problems with Christology, says Sister Fritz.
The sabbatical turned into two years - and precise ideas about how Fritz wanted to incorporate her experiences in Israel into her theological training when she returned to the Canadian university. "I told the dean that we shouldn't ordain any of these men unless we brought them to Israel to study Judaism." Fritz is tasked with developing a corresponding study programme. She then took over the management of the English-language department of the "Christian Centre for Jewish Studies" at the Ratisbonne Monastery in Jerusalem; moved back to the Holy City; founded the alumni institution "Bat Kol" to network students after their return home and encourage them to continue their studies of Jewish texts and Jewish-Christian dialogue.
And she asks herself another question: Why did the Church persecute the Jews? Part one of the answer - the supposed Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus - was banished from the teachings of the Church with the Second Vatican Council. The second part is more problematic: the accusation of not having received the Messiah. The Canadian ended up with so-called supersessionism, also known as substitution theology: Because Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies, the church replaced the Jews as God's chosen people.
Weekly day of rest changes everything
This, says the 98-year-old, is what she wants to reverse with her book. She is convinced that if Christians recognise that Jesus was a devout Jew and that the early Christians did not worship him as God, a new, revised and pluralistic Christology will be possible. "Jesus is not the only way to the Father. He is a path that is open to other paths." A renewed Christology, which places the focus of Jesus on the reign of God and not the reign of the Church, paves the way for an "authentic dialogue" with Judaism and other religions.
It is a dialogue that the 98-year-old carries within herself. "I have a Jewish soul, but I have remained Catholic," she says, and that she feels at home in synagogues. She describes the Jewish day of rest, Shabbat, as "the most important gift" in her life. It is a gift whose life-changing power she wants to convince other people of, "because God gave Shabbat to the whole world at creation". One day a week, kept differently from every other day, is like "a weekly wedding feast with God".
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