Paris Rabbi Says Catholic-Jewish Dialogue Will Continue

GlobeTracker| Traditionalist Catholics in Paris rejected the idea that Rabbi Rivon Krygier be permitted to deliver a lecture in Notre Dame Cathedral last Sunday. Several dozen fundamentalist Catholic began loudly praying a rosary, after Rabbi Krygier was introduced by Andre Vingt-Trois. Their prayers were meant as “amends for the outrage” of letting a Jewish cleric speak at Notre Dame.

The unusual cathedral protest came at a time of growing tension between the mainstream French Church and a small minority of traditionalists who reject the Second Vatican Council’s reforms.

According to Reuters, Pope Benedict boosted the traditionalists’ hopes last year when he readmitted to the Church four ultra-traditionalist bishops excommunicated since 1988, one of them a Holocaust denier.

The Society of Saint Piux X applauded the protest, saying “The Paris cathedral is neither a synagogue nor a Masonic temple.”

Speaking to a group of 1000 from the sacristy, Rabbi Krygier said that interreligious dialogue helped “expose the vanity of always wanting to trump the other” and display “each tradition’s irreplaceable treasure.”