Who are the Sisters Of Sion?

A Seismic Change
The Sisters of Sion are the only Congregation in the Roman Catholic Church which has the specific task of reconciliation between Christians and Jews. The history, aims and objectives of the Congregation reflect the history and changing theology of the Church's relationship with Jews. It is a seismic change in theology. When the Congregation was founded in 1842 no one was talking about dialogue. The Congregation was founded by two converted Jews in the late 19th century, the brothers Ratisbonne (Theodore and Alphonse). When the Sisters came into existence as a Congregation they had the avowed aim of the conversion of the Jews. In the course of time, under the impact of many movements within the Church, the world, and of history, especially the Shoah (Holocaust), and very deep theological reasons, what the Sisters are now about as a Congregation has completely changed. They have moved away from the original goal of conversion to a very fresh understanding of the permanent election, choice/choosing of the Jewish people and the total validity of Judaism.

Vatican II
This development/theological change was to gather impetus in the late 1950s and 1960s, and especially under the influence of Vatican II. Vatican II said that Religious Sisters had to go back to their origins and re-evaluate their present roles - the aims of each founder should be clearly recognised. This caused the Sisters a bit of a dilemma as conversion was no longer their aim. The key to resolving the problem was to make a distinction between inspiration and aims. Theodore's inspiration was that no group existed in the Church to assume the task of establishing a relationship between the Church and the Synagogue. The inspiration is fine: what is different are the present day aims.

Founding a Community
Theodore's younger brother, Alphonse, found his way to Christianity through a very different route in 1842. Theodore then felt very certain of his call to work for the conversion of the Jews, but he didn't go out to proselytise. He started out by forming a small community to look after Jewish girls who had been entrusted to him by their parents to be prepared for baptism. The group of women who assisted him in this work adopted a Rule to live by, and this is how the Sisters of Sion, with the aim of converting the Jews, came into existence as a Congregation.

A Siege Mentality
To understand the Ratisbonne brothers' conversions you need to take into account the melieu of their day, i.e. the mid-19th Century. Their own Jewish education had been very deficient: Judaism as such really meant nothing to them. Alongside that was the very wretched state of the Jewish community in Alsace. Also relevant is the Church's theology at that time. It was very anti-Jewish, going back to the anti-Jewish teaching of the early days of the Church Fathers. In 1848 the Roman Catholic Church had adopted a siege mentality. In the Catholic Press of those decades the Jews were blamed as leaders of all revolutionary movements. They were blamed for being heads of anti-clerical Freemasonry, and accused of being perverters of Christian values. In those circumstances the Ratisbonne brothers thought the best thing, the only hope for their fellow brothers and sisters among the Jews, was for them to be baptised. We obviously wouldn't agree with this logic today, but that is how they thought then. Baptism was the best thing they could offer.

As time went on and convents were founded in Europe and beyond, the Sisters were strictly instructed to abstain from proselytism. The original goal of conversion was not forgotten, but it came to be exercised through prayer. The Christian children and nuns in the Sisters' schools prayed daily for the conversion of the Jews. However, in 1852 Alphonse joined his brother. He was a bit of a mystic and he decided to go off to Palestine (it wasn't called Israel in those days). There he purchased a property and built a convent over ruins thought to be the Judgement Hall of Pilate (since disproved). However in view of the association of the rejection of Jesus with the call for him to be crucified, and the Sisters finding themselves with this property on which they believed this part of the Gospel was enacted, there was an emphasis on the accusation of deicide. Thus the prayers of the Sisters became very focused on the concept of reparation: even more important than conversion was to pray for reparation for what people did to Jesus. Going up to Communion the nuns said three times (in Latin), "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do". That prayer indicates how deeply rooted the concept of reparation had become in the theology and spirituality of the Sisters.

Years of Change
The years of change were to happen in the beginning of the 1950s through to 1966. In 1966 Sr Margaret entered the Congregation, and she has seen the whole theological revolution take place, from the time when she was a child in one of the Sisters'schools and prayed for the conversion of the Jews, to entering the Congregation at the time of radical change. It took Christianity sometime before the whole impact of the war and the Shoah (Holocaust) made itself felt. In 1952 their Superior General wrote "Our special apostolate has to be rethought and readapted". There were (and are) Fathers and Brothers of Sion in many places around the world. Many were scholars and it was they who did the scholarship. (Sisters in those days were hardly educated). The men did all the thinking, pushing and researching and they started a journal, working on this new theology of the relationship between Christians and Jews. These days it is the Sisters of Sion who are way ahead of the Church in this field through a new generation of Sisters who are more educated generally, theologically, and many specifically in Judaism.

The Covenant God Made With The Jewish People Has Never Been Revoked
In 1965, when the Vatican document "Nostra Aetate" was published to outline a new relationship between the Church and the Jewish people, Cardinal Bea commended it to the Sisters of Sion saying that it is what they must live. A year before (1964) he had said to the Sisters "A whole past of misunderstanding, injustice, bloody persecution obliges Christians of today to treat Jews with the humility that makes reparation, asks pardon and seeks reconciliation" Today there are Sisters and lay Associates of the Sisters of Sion who undertake to further this work. The Pope's statement that "the Covenant God made with the Jewish people has never been revoked" has the most profound theological implications.

Sr Margaret ended her talk with an overview of the Constitution of their Order, and quoted extracts from their "Rule", i.e. the parameters within which they try to lead their lives. The following is one of the paragraphs she quoted: "They (the Sisters) are called to witness by their life to God's faithful love for the Jewish people and to his fidelity to the promise he revealed to the Patriarchs and Prophets of Israel for all humanity".

So the history of the Sisters of Sion from 1842 to the present day, with the development of theological outlook from the objectives of conversion and reparation to reconciliation and post-Vatican II acknowledgement of the everlasting validity of Judaism, serves to illustrate the seismic theological change which has taken place in the Roman Catholic Church at large.

- Bernard Tiley