The Rev. David Neuhaus, S.J., oversees one of the more unusual flocks in Israel, Hebrew-speaking Catholics:
With just 500 active members, including children, Israel’s Hebrew-speaking Catholic community is so small that many Catholics around the world, and most Israelis, do not know of its existence. It endures as a vibrant contradistinction: Catholics celebrating their faith in a country that is overwhelmingly Jewish, worshiping in Hebrew, marking Jewish feasts and traditions, and honoring many local customs. Yet they are undeniably, proudly Catholic.
Father Neuhaus is the Latin patriarchal vicar for this group. He was born in South Africa to German Jewish parents and converted to Catholicism at the age of 26. Now he works to continue passing on the faith:
One of the challenges is to continue making the faith resonate, especially among the young. In most Catholic communities around the world, “even the children who stop coming to church return to get married and to baptize their children,” Father Neuhaus notes.
“With us, it’s completely different. Once our children stop coming to church, we never see them again.
“The church,” he adds, “becomes invisible in their lives.”
And that’s not all. He is also working to make the church visible in the lives of the immigrant population. In the Summer 2016 edition of ONE, Diane Handel looks at how Father Neuhaus ministers to migrants in Israel. Together with CNEWA and a number of mostly European Catholic donors, he has founded child care centers to serve Israel’s marginalized communities, especially asylum seekers and migrant workers.
The challenges in his corner of the world are significant. As we noted three years ago:
The Arab Christian community “is a traumatized community” because of the displacement of so many Palestinians, Father Neuhaus notes. “We live in a country full of friction, we on the Israeli Jewish side and many of our Catholic brothers and sisters on the Palestinian side, so this friction is present in the church as well. “The challenge,” he concludes, “is to live the unity of the Body of Christ despite the divisions of politics, violence and war.”
That heroic spirit helps carry on part of CNEWA’s mission: to affirm human dignity, encourage dialogue and inspire hope.