This past May 11-14, I was privileged to attend the ICJS Conference, Faith for the Future. I found it to be an infor-mative, challenging, and rewarding experience.

The learning process itself was diverse and effective, including lectures by renowned experts with questions and discussion, panel presentations, handouts and worksheets, books on dis-play and available for purchase, film viewing, art analysis, bridge assignments (something to think about and prepare from one day to the next), prayer, and a field trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The conference above all provided an opportunity for Catholics and Jews to meet and begin to get to know each other. This enriching interaction took place through the educational pro-cess, during break and meal time conversations, and especially through the faith-alike groups and mixed-faith groups of 8-10 participants which -- for me-- formed the heart of the whole experience.

The mixed-faith groups created face-to-face encounters that opened the way for some heart-to-heart sharing of personal stories and perspectives. The faith-alike groups provided space to compare perceptions, ponder implications, and con-sider new possibilities.

Throughout the conference one could sense an underlying question of how to speak with each other. Participants strug-gled to discover how to be honest and probing in our mutual questioning while remaining respectful of differences. More than once someone voiced the sentiment: there are things I do not know and would like to ask and learn, but I hesitate to speak lest I be unintentionally insulting or offensive. By con-ference end some good first steps had been taken to overcome such hesitation and open the way to deeper com-munication; nevertheless, much potential to explore still remains.

Perhaps I can best convey what the experience meant for me through some of the memories, learnings, and resolutions that have remained with me.

Some memories...

* How hard it was, perhaps more for the Catholics than the Jews, to understand why we all could not join in shared prayer. Through much discussion we explored why, at least for some, it would be inappropriate or impossible to do so, despite all good will and a spirit of openness. We faced the challenge of adequately honoring the sacred realities of our respective faiths while attempting to address ourselves in prayer to God in assembly with those who do, in some respects, think and believe differently about God. I hope that the way conference leaders and participants wrestled with this issue helped reinforce for all of us the significance of our theological beliefs, as well as the deep intimacy and awesome transcendence of prayer.

* In a mixed faith group, one of the Jewish women told us the moving story of how her family survived the Shoah. She said that, but for the goodwill of one Orthodox family in Greece who said "yes" when asked for help, she would not be alive today. What, I wondered, would I have done? Under those circumstances, would I have had the courage to risk my own and my family's safety to love my neighbor -- to offer shelter in the hour of desperate need?

* I remember how different it felt to read a familiar biblical text, Acts 15, together with the Jewish participants. If you have the opportunity to do this, you may well discover -- as I did -- that new levels of meaning and significance emerge from certain verses through the presence and interest of contem-porary Jewish people of faith. This experience piqued my interest in pursuing further joint study of the scriptures.

Some learnings:

* I heard a clear presentation of the theological significance of the Vatican II document on interfaith relations, Nostra Aetate, and of the development of Catholic theology on the Jews since then (the 1974 Guidelines, the 1985 Notes, and numerous addresses of Pope John Paul II during the 1980s and 1990s). These insights prompted new thoughts on how to balance and respect the enduring reality of God's covenant with the Jews, a covenant "which has never been revoked by God" (Notes, 1,3, citing John Paul II), with the Catholic Church's essential mission to evangelize, to "Go . . . and make disciples of all nations." (Matthew 28:19)

* I learned and felt more than before the powerful significance for Jews of the State of Israel as an affirmation of the right of Jews to exist -- an affirmation of particular psychological and theological force, coming as it did immediately following the Shoah, that intentional and systematic effort to eliminate the Jews as a people.

Some resolutions...

* I recall a moment of candlelit remembrance of the Shoah, and my intention never to participate, by action or failure to act, in public or private life, in any form of prejudice or dis-respect that could become a first step leading again toward that dark road.

* I embrace one speaker's simple suggestion: in your cate-chetical ministry, refer to Jews often and positively as people who are in an enduringly valid and fruitful covenant with God. This, said the speaker, is the key to our reformed theological understanding of the Jewish people, their relationship with God, and our relationship with them.

* I look forward to acting on the long-held wish, now become a renewed intention, to learn biblical Hebrew.

Many thanks to the ICJS for organizing and offering this most revealing, thought-provoking experience of encounter and dia-logue. May it be a foretaste and model of good things yet to come.