On August 12, 2002, leaders of the Jewish and Roman Catholic communities in the United States, who have been meeting to discuss topics affecting Catholic-Jewish relations twice a year for more that two decades, made public a document entitled Reflections on Covenant and Mission.

This 17-page document can be found at http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2002/02-154.htm The document issued by the National Council of Synagogues and Delegates of the Bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs states that targeting Jews for conversion is not acceptable to the Catholic Church. According to the document, "Jews already dwell in a saving covenant with God."

Responding to the document, Jews for Jesus executive director David Brickner said: "Jews need to hear the gospel. Period. Excluding my Jewish people from Christian witness is theologically and biblically untenable, yet this is exactly what American Catholic bishops in concert with Jewish religious leaders are proposing in their document. . . I would like to believe that there are many Catholics world-wide, including Jewish Catholics, who believe in the uniqueness of Christ." Brickner continued, " Either Jesus is the Savior of all or He isn't the Savior at all. There is not one covenant of salvation for the Jewish people and another one for the rest of humanity. To say otherwise is to declare Christianity an opinion and faith in Christ merely a personal preference. . .The Catholic bishops have crossed the line."

Jim Sibley, the Southern Baptists' coordinator of Jewish ministries, is quoted in an article in Baptist Press, "There can be no more extreme form of anti-Semitism" than a pronouncement that has "targeted the Jews for exclusion from gospel proclamation." The Catholics' August 12 statement, Sibley said, is a restatement of a growing Catholic consensus expressed since the Second Vatican Council and in a 1965 declaration Nostra Aetate in which "the Roman Catholic Church presumes to be able to decide who does, and who does not, need to hear the gospel." Citing Christian history, Sibley noted, "Originally, the only form of evangelism was Jewish evangelism. The audience on the day of Pentecost, Shavu'ot, was entirely Jewish, and the church was birthed in the courts of the temple in Jerusalem. To the religious leadership of the Jewish people, Peter declared in Acts 4:12, 'There is salvation in no one else' - that is, Jesus - 'for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.'" The complete article in Baptist Press can be found here.

An Anglican pastor, a Jewish believer himself, called this document "a shocking thing." He wrote: "To state that the Jewish people are already in a saving relationship with God is untrue: I am a Jewish believer, saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ (Yeshua ha Mashiach). I am not saved by my Jewishness. . . I am not saved by my racial background, nor by my Jewish cultural background . . .It is theologically, Christologically and ecclesiologically incorrect to leave the Jewish people out of the evangelistic thrust of the church." He concluded, " This statement is anti-Semitic and should be resisted by all Christians, not in the name of political correctness, in which it is possibly birthed, nor in the name of syncretism, which appears to have nurtured it, but in the name of the Savior of the world, who came to the Jew first (Matthew 15:24)."