As I was coming home on the subway recently a self-anointed preacher stood up in our car and proclaimed: “The world is ending in seven days. Jesus will send thousands and thousands of people to Hell if they don’t accept him as Lord. Read the King James Bible. Every word is true. Turn to Jesus now!” Fortunately, he left the subway at the next stop.

I confess that a Jesus who consigns people to the fires of Hell for unbelief is not the Jesus whom I seek to follow. Nor did it seem that my companions in the subway were persuaded by his dire message. But he did get me thinking about what it means to seek to convert others to one’s religion, a topic that has surfaced this week in the Pope’s visit to the Middle East.

When Pope Benedict XVI met Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, Rabbi Yona Metzer thanked him for the “historic agreement and the commitment given by the Vatican that the Church will henceforth desist from all missionary and conversion activities amongst our people. This is for us an immensely important message.”

As far as I know, during his pontificate Pope Benedict has made no such statement renouncing Christian efforts to convert Jews.

In fact, evidence points to the contrary. In February 2008 Pope Benedict personally wrote a prayer for Good Friday services in a traditionalist rite, asking God that Jews might “recognise Jesus Christ as the saviour of all men . . . \ as the fullness of peoples enter into your church, all of Israel may be saved.”

By way of background: in July 2007, the Pope restored a rite championed by ultra-conservative Roman Catholics. The question then arose about the wording of Good Friday prayers, which had been thoroughly revised in 1970 according to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Since then, the vast majority of the world’s Catholics pray quite differently on Good Friday, asking God that the “Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God . . . \ arrive at the fullness of redemption.”

A considerable controversy ensued when Pope Benedict’s new prayer was released, with high-ranking Vatican officials offering divergent interpretations. Does his prayer suggest or implicitly mandate Catholics to seek the conversion of Jews? Or does it express hope for what will come at the End of Days when God will bring about salvation in ways known only to God? This latter reading has been the interpretation of Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Commission of Religious Relations with the Jews. According to Kasper, the “Catholic Church has no organised or institutionalised mission to the Jews”.

I believe that both history and theology offer warrants for respecting the belief and practice of Jews rather than seeking their conversion to Christianity. Yes, I know in John’s Gospel Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (xiv, 6). I know that in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus mandates, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit . . .” (xxviii, 19). But we should not read these texts without attentiveness to how we have used them against Jews (and others as well). In the nearly 2,000 years since the evangelists wrote these texts, Christians have vilified Judaism and persecuted Jews as “Christ killers”. Ours is a shameful history: denigration of a people, compulsory baptisms, the crusades and Inquisition, confining Jews in ghettos and attacking them in pogroms. Particularly after the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered in the most barbaric ways, we must not use our sacred texts in ways that would mean the end of Judaism. Yet to seek conversion of Jews to Christianity is ultimately to seek Judaism’s demise.

It is fundamental to Christianity that God entered into covenant with the Jewish people — a covenant that, as Pope John Paul II said many times, was “never revoked”. God is faithful to covenants, and, therefore, the way of Judaism is salvific for Jews. Torah is a path to holiness.

So, Rabbi Metzger, from your lips to Pope Benedict’s ears. And heart.

Sister Mary C. Boys is Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at the Union Theological Seminary, New York