“Olga, the new Christian, died that very night. After being christened she fell asleep and died in her sleep. They phoned me in the morning and I thought, that’s a worker who came to the vineyard in the last hour.”
Daniel was thinking of the parable of the workers in the vineyard, where those who were hired first and worked from early morning till evening were paid exactly the same as the latecomers who had worked for only one hour.
Mama! Please stay well, look after your health. I want you and me to walk this land and not just look at it out of a car window. Please come to Israel! Life here is so buoyant.
Love to everybody,
Hilda
44. 1984
R
EPORT TO THE
L
ATIN
J
ERUSALEM
P
ATRIARCHATE
To Monsignor Rafail Ashkuri, Secretary to the Patriarch
From Eldar Halil (Brother Elijah)
I bring to your attention the fact that on the 16th ult. Brother D., in the course of a sightseeing excursion to Sinai with a group of theology students from Germany, on the way, by the spring in Tabgha, celebrated Mass in the open air in which he was guilty of distortions, instead of the “Symbol of Faith” reciting unauthorized prayers in Hebrew. What these were I could not discover, but in subsequent conversation at dinner, which Brother Daniel himself cooked for the group, he conducted a discussion which I did not understand since they were speaking in German. However, the assistant of Brother Daniel told me that he indicated that he did not accept the dogma of the Holy Trinity and justified his position by saying that Christ himself never spoke of the Trinity and it had been thought up by the Greeks. I asked Hilda, his assistant, for the text of the service he had conducted, calling it a Mass, and she has promised to give me that text. I will send it to you as soon as I receive it from her.
I enclose also a recording of a discussion which Father Daniel conducted in the parish house shortly before the service where the Trinity was also spoken of.
As my father’s house in Haifa is being repaired, I request a grant to carry out the repairs.
Brother Elijah
45. 1984
T
O THE
A
BBOT OF THE
S
TELLA
M
ARIS
M
ONASTERY FROM THE
S
ECRETARY OF THE
P
ATRIARCH OF
J
ERUSALEM
Reverend Father,
I request that you invite Brother Daniel Stein, a monk at your monastery, to visit me for a talk.
Monsignor Rafail Ashkuri, Secretary of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem
TO THE PROVINCIAL OF THE CARMELITE ORDER FROM THE PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM
Your Grace,
I request that you review the case of a member of your Order, Brother Daniel Stein. According to information in my possession, he is guilty of gross violations in the order of conducting the Mass. He turned down my request to appear for a talk, which I consider a breach of ecclesiastical discipline. However, bearing in mind the fact that Brother Daniel Stein belongs to your Order, I request that you conduct an investigation and appropriate conversation.
Patriarch of Jerusalem
46. 1984
T
O THE
H
OLY
C
ONGREGATION ON OUESTIONS OF THE
D
OCTRINE OF THE
F
AITH
TO PREFECT CARDINAL ROCKHAUS FROM THE GENERAL OF THE ORDER OF BAREFOOT CARMELITES, FATHER LAURENIS
Your Holiness,
I am regretfully obliged to inform you that within the Order entrusted to me, a certain doctrinal disagreement has occurred associated with the activities of one of our monks, Father Daniel Stein, and I have received intelligence from the Provincial of the Order in respect of sermons of the above priest which in certain matters deviate from the Church’s dogma and traditions. Among the members of our Order there are few priests working with a congregation, and Brother Daniel Stein has a parish in the city of Haifa. Thanks to his active participation a church was restored through the efforts of his parishioners where he has performed his pastoral service for 15 years.
Under the State Law of Israel, missionary activity among Jews is forbidden; nevertheless we have on more than one occasion received warnings from the Ministry of Religions that, according to information in their possession, D. Stein performs the baptism of Jews.
Back in 1980 I had a talk with him on this matter and he asserted that he had performed individual baptisms of children whose Jewish parents profess the Catholic faith and did not have the right to refuse baptism to such people. Two other cases he told me about concerned people on their deathbeds and he could not refuse to carry out his pastoral and Christian duty. In one of these cases concerning the christening of a woman from Russia, who had been asking him for this for many years, he said that he had promised to carry out her request only if she was close to death. He did so on the eve of her death. You will agree that in such a situation I cannot hold infringement of the law against him. However, a hortatory talk was conducted.
At the end of last year I received from the Provincial of the Order a new message in respect of the preaching of Father Daniel Stein. At the same time I received an official letter from the Patriarch of Jerusalem in respect of the activity of Father Daniel Stein. This time the issue was more complex since it concerned non-acknowledgement by Stein of the primacy of the See of Rome in the Catholic world and his expression of the absurd idea that primacy should be with the Church in Jerusalem. Moreover, he had in mind not the Patriarchate of Jerusalem but the Church of St. James, the brother of the Lord, which ceased to exist early in the second century.
Affirming this idea, Father Daniel Stein celebrates Masses in Hebrew. Since the Second Vatican Council official permission has been given for services in local churches to be conducted in local languages, this can evince neither condemnation nor prohibition on my part. His thoughts on polycultural Christianity also seem to me questionable, but I would prefer that you discuss these issues with Father Stein yourself.
In the course of our conversation, basing myself on confidential information received, I asked whether he omitted the Symbol of Faith when celebrating the Mass. He admitted that in recent years he had not considered it possible to recite a text some of whose postulates he does not accept. On this occasion the matter in question was one of the fundamental dogmas of the Holy Church, the Trinity. His views appear to me so heretical that I will not venture even to paraphrase them, and this is one further argument in favor of your meeting him.
Instances of divergence of the views of Father Daniel Stein from the traditions generally accepted within the Holy Church are so numerous that I have temporarily banned him from celebrating Mass and leave a final decision to your Eminence.
Those charged with administration of the Order are prepared to send Father Daniel Stein to Rome for discussions at any time deemed acceptable by your Eminence.
Wholly devoted to you in Christ,
Father Laurenis
General of the Order of Barefoot Carmelites,
47. 1984, Haifa
F
ROM A CONVERSATION BETWEEN
D
ANIEL AND
H
ILDA
“Listen carefully and try not to interrupt! You know I was not expecting anything good to come of my trip to Rome and was ready for anything. Actually, the worst had already happened. My superiors had forbidden me to conduct services, although only temporarily, but I had had little hope of having the ban lifted. The more so since the Prefect of the Congregation on Matters of the Doctrine of the Faith, to which I was summoned, is extremely conservative. This prefect and the present Pope are a kind of balancing act who hold each other back from extremes, if I can put it that way. But the Pope is capable of emotional impulses, and I greatly admire that in him, while the Prefect is dry, emotionless, rational, and highly educated. He has a dozen degrees, speaks a dozen languages, and is very strict—at least that is how he seemed to me, and how he looked, too. He was slightly too rosy for an official, but that is in passing.