It’s not that anyone suspects Francis of repudiating the theological advances in Catholic understanding since 1965’s Nostra Aetate, the document of the Second Vatican Council on relations with Judaism. It’s rather that appropriating those insights, and translating them into both his rhetoric and his pastoral agenda, sometimes just don’t seem that much of a priority.

Moreover, there’s a perception that Francis’s campaign to build bridges with Islam sometimes comes at the expense of solidarity with Jews.

That point recently was voiced by Lucetta Scaraffia, former editor of a women’s insert to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, who complained about the pope’s budding relationship with the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo despite what she described as his tendency to make anti-Semitic remarks “every two minutes.”

These three sources of tension – the politics of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the theological approach to Judaism, and the inter-faith balancing act vis-à-vis Islam — are all coming to a head amid the current conflagration.

[It’s notable that this comes from Allen, who is not a conservative in either the political or theological context, but far more of an analyst with an inherently skeptical bent. He’s one of the best Vaticanistas and is very adept at sussing out the currents at the Holy See. — Ed]