At a Jewish time of reflection, thoughts on a pope and Catholicism

JTA ^ | May 5, 2011 | Ruth Ellen Gruber

[presidio9]

Passover is over and Shavuot is weeks away. It's a season when Jews traditionally take time for contemplation and reflection.

This year, I've been reflecting on Catholicism. Rather on the complicated interfaith nexuses between Catholics and Jews.

In large part, of course, this is because of the beatification May 1 of Pope John Paul II.

Critics have questioned the decision by Pope Benedict XVI to waive the usual five-year waiting period and fast-track John Paul's road to sainthood.

And JP2 had his faults -- his handling of the priest sex abuse scandals has come under particular recent scrutiny.

But the Polish-born pontiff was the best pope the Jewish world ever had.

"There have been few times in the 2,000 years of Christian Jewish relations when Jews have shed genuine tears at the death of a Pope," the eminent Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum wrote in a recent column. "When Pope John Paul II died, I -- and many other Jews -- cried."

I don't recall actually shedding tears when John Paul died on April 2, 2005 at the age of 84. In fact, I was in the midst of celebrating my nephew's bar mitzvah.

But I did feel deeply touched by his passing -- I had reported on John Paul during most of his nearly 27-year papacy.

In a deliberate and demonstrative way, he had made bettering Catholic-Jewish relations and confronting the Holocaust and its legacy a hallmark of his reign, and I had chronicled milestone after milestone in this process.

There had been frictions and setbacks, to be sure. Key among them was the pope's support for the canonization of his controversial World War II predecessor, Pius XII, and his refusal to open secret Vatican archives to clarify Pius' role during the Holocaust.

He also hurt Jews by welcoming Austrian President Kurt Waldheim to the Vatican after Waldheim's World War II links to the Nazis had come to light. And he upset Jews with his meetings at the Vatican with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

These episodes, however, were far outweighed by positive steps. Some of them were truly groundbreaking measures that jettisoned -- or at least shook up -- centuries of ingrained Catholic teaching and changed Catholic dogma to reflect respect for Jews and the Jewish religion and apologize for the persecution of Jews by Catholics.

They ranged from his visit to Rome's main synagogue in 1986, to his frequent meetings with rabbis, Holocaust survivors and Jewish lay leaders, to his repeated condemnation of anti-Semitism, to the establishment of relations between the Vatican and Israel, to John Paul's own pilgrimage to the Jewish state in 2000, when he prayed at the Western Wall.

It was evident throughout that he was deeply influenced by his own personal history of having grown up with Jewish friends in pre-World War II Poland and then witnessing the destruction during the Shoah.

As Berenbaum put it, John Paul II was "directly touched by the Holocaust" and "assumed responsibility for its memory."

The program director of a Catholic-run interfaith and dialogue center near the Auschwitz death camp agreed.

"Auschwitz was not an abstract tragedy but it formed part of his life," the Rev. Manfred Deselaers told the Catholic news agency Zenit.org. "Auschwitz was the school of holiness of John Paul II."

Given this background, it seemed fitting that the Vatican chose to beatify John Paul on May 1 -- the eve of this year's Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoah.

The coincidence, though, was not intentional.

In the Catholic calendar, May 1 this year marked the Sunday after Easter, a feast called Divine Mercy Sunday. And John Paul II had died on the very eve of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005.

Still, the timing sent out a powerful message. And it made me reflect on how very, very radically relations between Catholics and Jews have changed, even in just the past few decades.

Relations between Catholics and Jews are not perfect, of course, and they never will be. There are still anti-Semitic elements in the Church, and John Paul II's teachings have not trickled down to all the world's more than 1 billion Catholics. But we do live in a different world.

For centuries, the popes and the Vatican "worked hard to keep Jews in their subservient place -- barring them from owning property, from practicing professions, from attending university, from traveling freely," Brown University historian David Kertzer wrote in his 2001 book "The Popes Against the Jews." "And they did all this according to canon law and the centuries-old belief that in doing so they were upholding the most basic tenets of Christianity."

Here in Rome, the papal rulers kept Jews confined to a crowded ghetto until 1870. In many places Jews would stay indoors at Easter for fear of being caught up in a blood libel accusation or be accused of desecrating the Host.

Less dramatically, I still remember from childhood how Catholic kids in my suburban Philadelphia neighborhood were forbidden to enter synagogue to attend their friends' bar mitzvah services.

Formal dialogue began only in 1965, with the Vatican's Nostra Aetate declaration that repudiated the charge that Jews were collectively responsible for killing Jesus, stressed the religious bond between Jews and Catholics, and called for interfaith contacts.

Two decades later, in 1986, when John Paul became the first pope to visit a synagogue, he embraced Rome's chief rabbi, Elio Toaff, and declared that Jews were Christianity's "dearly beloved" and "elder brothers."

Toaff met frequently with John Paul, and the two established a warm rapport. In fact, Toaff and the pope's longtime secretary were the only two individuals named in John Paul's will. The rabbi called that inclusion "a significant and profound gesture for Jews" as well as "an indication to the Catholic world."

Long retired now, Toaff celebrated his 96th birthday on April 30 -- the day before John Paul's beatification.

The memory of John Paul "remains indelibly impressed in the collective memory of the Jewish people," Toaff said in a statement published after the beatification in the Vatican's official newspaper. "In the afflicted history of relations between the popes of Rome and the Jewish people, in the shadow of the ghetto in which they were closed for over three centuries in humiliating and depressing conditions, the figure of John Paul II emerges luminous in all of its exceptionality."

[presidio9]

Thoughtful and well-meaning opinion piece, but Ruth clearly relys on the liberal media for most of her information on this subject. In fact, Jewish rabbis are just as likely as Catholic priests to engage in pedophila sexual abuse and other perversions, and only the uninformed and conspiracy theorist point any fingers at Pius XII's "role during the Holocaust."

[juliej]

To be fair, when the Jews in the Roman neighborhood near the Vatican were rounded up by the Nazis, the Pope did not speak up - and this happened under his nose.

[presidio9]

To be fair, when the Jews in the Roman neighborhood near the Vatican were rounded up by the Nazis, the Pope did not speak up - and this happened under his nose.

To be fair, the Vatican was surrounded by those same Nazis, who had little tolerance for organized religion, and less for Catholicism. Pius and the Vatican were responsible for saving tens of thousands of Jews. Maybe hundreds. But don't take my word for it. Ask Golda Mier or Albert Einstein.

[dangus]

To be fair, your sources are full of crap.

In 1999, The Boston Globe had a practice of publishing on the back page the front pages of 60 years earlier. The real front page was some nonsense about how the pope never spoke up against Nazism. On the back page, from 60 years earlier, was a full-page, giant-letter, screaming headline: “Pope Condemns Twin Terrors of Communism, Nazism.”

But you see, that didn’t count to the American Left because he didn’t side with the Communists.

The reality is that the pope personally helped smuggle Jews out of the Roman ghetto. There was a great movie about it called “the Red and the Black.” (It was very unnerving to see Cpt. Von Trapp in a Nazi uniform!) The world didn’t hear much from him, because he was under practical house arrest by the Nazis... yet he still helped the smuggling.

[wideawake]

To be fair, when the Jews in the Roman neighborhood near the Vatican were rounded up by the Nazis, the Pope did not speak up - and this happened under his nose.

To be accurate, this is simply false.

Hundreds of Roman Jews spent the war living in the Vatican to escape the Nazis, and the rabbi of the Roman Jewish community, Israele Zolli, converted to Catholicism after the war.

According to British soldier and founding father of the Israeli foreign service Pinchas Lapide, the Pope personally saved thousands of Italian Jews from the Nazis.

This despite the fact that he was surrounded by a hostile Fascist government and had only a handful of armed men to defend the Vatican.

And, while he was saving all those lives, he also hosted secret meetings between foreign ambassadors and representatives of the officers who conspired to kill Hitler.

the Pope did not speak up

He certainly did speak up, but his actions spoke even louder than his words.

[Alex Murphy]

To be fair, when the Jews in the Roman neighborhood near the Vatican were rounded up by the Nazis, the Pope did not speak up - and this happened under his nose.

The dispute over whether Pius "spoke up" centers around the cultural differences between how Catholics and Protestants address sin. If there's one thing that Reformed Protestants are known for, it's their belief in creeds and confessions. And in general, Protestants believe that each person has a responsibility to "make a good confession" and speak their faith publicly, no matter how difficult the circumstances or bad the anticipated response (e.g. Luther's "Here I stand, I can do no other", etc.). I suspect that many see the choices as martyrdom versus cowardice, the measuring stick used being words spoken, and very little middle ground is granted to the silent.

Now consider that Pope Pius XII made few, if any public statements, condemnations, or anathemas against National Socialism, the Nazi Party, or Hitler specifically by name (to be sure, public statements, pronouncements and sermons were made, but no names were given). It's this failure to take a public, verbal stand that is IMO at the heart of many accusations against Pope Pius XII. Some people (Protestants as well as Jews) don't think Pius XII spoke out loudly and pointedly enough against Hitler. They believe that, if the Catholic Church really were as powerful and influential as it's adherents claim, that such actions by the Vicar of Christ would have changed the course of the war.

Critics have read all manner of cowardice, antisemitism and other evils into the (in)actions of Pius XII, based upon his perceived silence as the Vicar of Christ towards Hitler. Did Pius XII save a lot of Jewish lives? I believe so. But IMO the better question is, what could the Catholic Church have accomplished, had the Vicar of Christ openly denounced Hitler?

[Cincinnatus]

With regard to attend the Bar Mitzvahs, no particular offense should be taken as we Catholic kids were not allowed to attend ANY non-Catholic religious service. I once lingered momentarily outside a protestant church when the windows were open and felt a little guilty.

[AnAmericanMother]

To be fair, that is a lie.

Not only did Pius XII hide hundreds and hundreds of Roman Jews in the Vatican, issue them false papers, and smuggle them out of town, listen to this:

Joseph Lichten records that on September 27, 1943, one of the Nazi commanders demanded of the Jewish community in Rome payment of one hundred pounds of gold within thirty-six hours or three hundred Jews would be taken prisoner. When the Jewish Community Council was only able to gather only seventy pounds of gold, they turned to the Vatican.

In his memoirs, the then Chief Rabbi Zolli of Rome writes that he was sent to the Vatican, where arrangements had already been made to receive him as an ‘engineer’ called to survey a construction problem so that the Gestapo on watch at the Vatican would not bar his entry. He was met by the Vatican treasurer and secretary of state, who told him that the Holy Father himself had given orders for the deficit to be filled with gold vessels taken from the Treasury.

- Joseph Lichten, "A Question of Moral Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews," in Robert Graham, S.J., ed., Pius XII and the Holocaust (New Rochelle, New York: Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 1988), 107.

[AnAmericanMother]

what could the Catholic Church have accomplished, had the Vicar of Christ openly denounced Hitler?

The same thing that the Dutch bishops accomplished by openly denouncing Hitler . . . an immediate roundup and execution of the local Jewish population.

But Time magazine, Golda Meier, and Albert Einstein seem to think that he spoke out . . . even if in somewhat veiled words. And Mit brennender Sorge (authored by Cardinal Pacelli as he then was, but issued by Pius XI) is not veiled at all. It names names. And it made the Nazis extremely angry at Pacelli . . . they didn't think he was silent. He was condemned roundly and nasty cartoons were published about him in der Sturmer.

And the Nazis further responded (once they had control of Italy) by attempting to round up Roman Jews, and by attempting to kidnap and assassinate Pius XII. The local German Army commander talked Hitler out of it, but it was a very real risk.

[presidio9]

But IMO the better question is, what could the Catholic Church have accomplished, had the Vicar of Christ openly denounced Hitler?

For your answer to that you need to look no further than the People's Republic of China's "official" Catholic Church today. In case you hadn't heard, the Nazis were all about propaganda, and good things seldom happened when their feelings got hurt. The major religions in Germany today are Lutheran and Anglican, I believe. The correct question may be that if Protestant's "can do no other" than to speak out, why didn't millions of them end up in the camps? Because this lame argument, like all the others, has always been first and foremost a politically correct way for the left (and people who just hate Catholicism) to attack the Catholic Church.

[GOPJ]

Formal dialogue began only in 1965, with the Vatican's Nostra Aetate declaration that repudiated the charge that Jews were collectively responsible for killing Jesus, stressed the religious bond between Jews and Catholics, and called for interfaith contacts.

Two decades later, in 1986, when John Paul became the first pope to visit a synagogue, he embraced Rome's chief rabbi, Elio Toaff, and declared that Jews were Christianity's "dearly beloved" and "elder brothers."

Nice.

ping

[wideawake]

Germany today is roughly one-third Catholic, one-third Lutheran, one-third atheist.

[Romulus]

the Pope did not speak up

BS. You know the very first thing the Pope said when he heard about the roundup early on the first morning?

“Let’s go make a few phone calls”

Pius's quiet actions out of the spotlight saved thousands of Jewish lives from being destroyed at death camps. Or he could have done what you recommend, ensuring his historical reputation at the cost of the victims who'd have been murdered in retaliation, as happened in Holland. I appreciate your concern for the Pope's place in history, but he had more important things on his mind.

[presidio9]

But IMO the better question is, what could the Catholic Church have accomplished, had the Vicar of Christ openly denounced Hitler?

I actually meant in the 1930's and 40's. My bad. According to the CIA Factbook, Catholicism is now the largest single denomination in Germany at 34%. Protestant denominations are not broken out, but account for 34% in total. Wikipedia has it at 30% Catholic, and 33% protestant along with 5% Muslim, but 55% say they are "non-religious," especially in the east.

[Alex Murphy]

The correct question may be that if Protestant's "can do no other" than to speak out, why didn't millions of them end up in the camps?

Certainly, words alone are often not enough. And many were cowards in both word and deed. But some were not.

The Ten Boom family were devoted Christians who dedicated their lives in service to their fellow man. Their home was always an "open house" for anyone in need. Through the decades the Ten Booms were very active in social work in Haarlem, and their faith inspired them to serve the religious community and society at large.

During the Second World War, the Ten Boom home became a refuge, a hiding place, for fugitives and those hunted by the Nazis. By protecting these people, Casper and his daughters, Corrie and Betsie, risked their lives. This non-violent resistance against the Nazi-oppressors was the Ten Booms' way of living out their Christian faith. This faith led them to hide Jews, students who refused to cooperate with the Nazis, and members of the Dutch underground resistance movement.

During 1943 and into 1944, there were usually 6-7 people illegally living in this home: 4 Jews and 2 or 3 members of the Dutch underground. Additional refugees would stay with the Ten Booms for a few hours or a few days until another "safe house" could be located for them. Corrie became a ringleader within the network of the Haarlem underground. Corrie and "the Beje group" would search for courageous Dutch families who would take in refugees, and much of Corrie's time was spent caring for these people once they were in hiding. Through these activities, the Ten Boom family and their many friends saved the lives of an estimated 800 Jews, and protected many Dutch underground workers.
-- Excerpted from the Corrie Ten Boom Museum website.

Have you ever read the book/watched the film version of The Hiding Place? Corrie Ten Boom and her family were members of the Dutch Reformed Church. Father Ten Boom's determination to wear the Star of David (identifying himself as a Jew, even though he wasn't one) was an symbolic, inspiring, and sobering testimonial to his faith and solidarity with the Jews in the face of the Nazi occupation of Holland. The Ten Boom household was betrayed, and sent to the Nazi concentration camps for their actions. Corrie's father and sister died in those camps.

Corrie Ten Boom was awarded the honorific "Righteous Among the Nations", by the State of Israel, for her actions on behalf of the Jews during WWII. Many Catholic priests and officials (incl. several Cardinals, Bishops, and the Superior General of the Jesuits) have also awarded with this honor; Pope Pius XII was nominated in 2009, but AFAIK has not received it to date.

[investigateworld]

The sad thing is the whole Dutch underground had less than 300 members.

No wonder God has sent the Muslim to live amongst (and the 'neutral' Swedes to boot.

One of the Popes, I can't remember which one, called Muslims "God's Whip" (for bad behavior.)

[RobbyS]

The Pope did condemn Nazi racism, and back in 1942, when the Nazis were the sdtrongest power in Europe, the NYT gave him create for doing this, in contrast to the silence from the Western Powers. And it is ironical that you should mention Luther who is famous for his anti-Jewish diatribes. But as for the effect, you see how the American Church “obeys” the pope’s teaching om birth control and abortion. There were many, many “good” German Catholics who were willing to follow “Der Fuehrer” wherever he led and felt that the Jews were gerting what was coming to them. Pope Pacellit knew the Germans. The famous Concordant concluded with Hitler was the best they he could, as secretary of state, get with the Nazis after the German bishops announced—against Pius’ XI’s wishes — that it was OK for Catholics to join the Nazi Party. That nation unity thing, you know. That Catholic thing was just a private matter, you know./sarc.

[RobbyS]

Prussia became East Germany after the War, and atheism prevailed.

[Alex Murphy]

The Pope did condemn Nazi racism, and back in 1942, when the Nazis were the sdtrongest power in Europe, the NYT gave him create for doing this, in contrast to the silence from the Western Powers....you see how the American Church “obeys” the pope’s teaching on birth control and abortion. There were many, many “good” German Catholics who were willing to follow “Der Fuehrer” wherever he led and felt that the Jews were getting what was coming to them. Pope Pacellit knew the Germans. The famous Concordant concluded with Hitler was the best that he could, as secretary of state, get with the Nazis after the German bishops announced —- against Pius’ XI’s wishes -- that it was OK for Catholics to join the Nazi Party. That nation unity thing, you know.

Not a bad summary of the whole political situation, IMO, but I think your post dishonors the nearly 20 million "Western Powers" combatants - incl. more than a quarter million Americans - who gave their lives fighting the Axis Powers.

[presidio9]

The sad thing is the whole Dutch underground had less than 300 members.

But among these were Victor Kulger and Miep Gies, Catholics who hid Anne Frank and her family. Kulger was sentenced to death for the crime, but survived to the end of the war in Amersfoort concentration camp.