Letter to Jewish community
seeking forgiveness

December 10, 1999


Dear friends,

This is a sacred time of every year .... but never more so than this year.

The Feast of Lights draws to a close for the Jewish people; the joy of Jesus’ birth approaches for Christians. In these days between our two celebrations, we live beneath the same sky, share the same world, and know the love of the same G-d who created and sustains each of us. It is a moment to reflect and pray.

For Catholics, these last weeks before Christmas are a time of preparation and self-examination; a time to recover who we are as believers. Too often in the past we have lived like a branch which denies its root. The Christian faith is rooted in the Jewish people. In turning away from them, in persecuting G-d’s chosen people down through the centuries, in ignoring or cooperating in violence against Jews especially during this century, too many Christians --including Catholics, and most shamefully, even some ordained to do G-d’s ministry within the Church – have betrayed the Gospel and been a countersign to its message of redemption and love.

An old year, an old century, an old millennium of our common era are closing. For Christians, the light of the Great Jubilee, so rooted in Jewish experience and so beautifully preached by Pope John Paul II, gives us the courage to face our own sinfulness, acknowledge it, repent, and begin again. Therefore, on this last evening of Chanukah, I greet the Jewish community of northern Colorado in humility and with the love of a younger brother in faith. On behalf of Catholics throughout the Archdiocese of Denver, and for myself alone, I ask your forgiveness for the wrongs committed by Catholics against the Jewish people in the past, and the ignorance and prejudice which still exist. And I ask your help in beginning again as brothers and sisters.

Fraternally,
Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Denver