Last Thursday, the The Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews released a document seeking to deal with theological questions at the heart of Christian-Jewish dialogue. One of those questions was “Can Jews go to heaven without accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior?” The answer apparently, is a resounding yes. Sort of. It seems that one need not accept Jesus as the Messiah, even though that’s been pretty much the defining characteristic of the Catholic Church’s idea of salvation for, like, ever. How does that work exactly? Apparently it’s a mystery. In fact that’s exactly the terminology used by the Church document:

That the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery.

Unfathomable? I’m not so sure about that. I mean, I can uh… fathom it. Know what I mean?

One really tantalizing question that the new document doesn’t address is “What is Catholic Heaven like anyway?” I always imagined food by the Italians served by naughty Catholic school girls. Now we get to go too! Yay!

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ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.