Posted on 09/23/2011 1:07:22 PM PDT by marshmallow
In this place, remembrance must also be made of the Kristallnacht that took place from 9 to 10 November 1938. Only a few could see the full extent of this act of contempt for humanity, like the Berlin Cathedral Provost, Bernhard Lichtenberg, who cried out from the pulpit of Saint Hedwig’s Cathedral: “Outside, the Temple is burning – that too is the house of God”. The Nazi reign of terror was based on a racist myth, part of which was the rejection of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ and of all who believe in him. The supposedly “almighty” Adolf Hitler was a pagan idol, who wanted to take the place of the biblical God, the Creator and Father of all men. Refusal to heed this one God always makes people heedless of human dignity as well. What man is capable of when he rejects God, and what the face of a people can look like when it denies this God, the terrible images from the concentration camps at the end of the war showed.
In the light of this remembrance, it is to be acknowledged with thankfulness that a new development has been seen in recent decades, which makes it possible to speak of a real blossoming of Jewish life in Germany. It should be stressed that the Jewish community during this time has made particularly laudable efforts to integrate the Eastern European immigrants.
I would also like to express my gratitude for the deepening dialogue between the Catholic Church and Judaism. The Church feels a great closeness to the Jewish people. With the Declaration Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council, an “irrevocable commitment to pursue the path of dialogue, fraternity and friendship” was made (cf. Address in the Synagogue in Rome, 17 January 2010). This is true of the Catholic Church as a whole, in which Blessed John Paul II committed himself to this new path with particular zeal. Naturally it is also true of the Catholic Church in Germany, which is conscious of its particular responsibility in this regard. In the public domain, special mention should be made of the “Week of Fraternity”, organized each year during the first week of March by local Societies for Christian-Jewish Partnership.
On the Catholic side there are also annual meetings between bishops and rabbis as well as structured conversations with the Central Council of Jews. Back in the 1970s, the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) took the initiative of establishing a “Jews and Christians” forum, which over the years has issued many well-written and helpful documents. Nor should I omit to mention the historic meeting for Jewish-Christian dialogue that took place in March 2006 with the participation of Cardinal Walter Kasper. That cooperation is proving fruitful.
Alongside these important initiatives, it seems to me that we Christians must also become increasingly aware of our own inner affinity with Judaism, to which you made reference. For Christians, there can be no rupture in salvation history. Salvation comes from the Jews (cf. Jn 4:22). When Jesus’ conflict with the Judaism of his time is superficially interpreted as a breach with the Old Covenant, it tends to be reduced to the idea of a liberation that mistakenly views the Torah merely as a slavish enactment of rituals and outward observances. Yet in actual fact, the Sermon on the Mount does not abolish the Mosaic Law, but reveals its hidden possibilities and allows more radical demands to emerge. It points us towards the deepest source of human action, the heart, where choices are made between what is pure and what is impure, where faith, hope and love blossom forth.
The message of hope contained in the books of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament has been appropriated and continued in different ways by Jews and Christians. “After centuries of antagonism, we now see it as our task to bring these two ways of rereading the biblical texts – the Christian way and the Jewish way – into dialogue with one another, if we are to understand God’s will and his word aright” (Jesus of Nazareth. Part Two: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, pp. 33f.). This dialogue should serve to strengthen our common hope in God in the midst of an increasingly secularized society. Without this hope, society loses its humanity.
Benedict XVI
Address to Representatives of the Jewish Community
Reichstag Building, Berlin
September 22, 2011
What a mensch. Gotta love this Pope.
Dr Dieter Graumann
President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany
Speech on the occasion of the meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in the Reichstag Building on 22 September 2011
Your Holiness,
It is a great honour and a pleasure for us that we have this opportunity to meet with you here today during your journey to Germany, an event following on from your remarkable, historic visit to Cologne Synagogue in2005, which as far as I know was the first visit ever made by a Pope to a synagogue outside Italy. You certainly have a more than demanding,ambitious, and almost sporting, intensive and tightly-scheduled visiting programme today. The fact that you have nonetheless found time for this meeting, that you have taken time for us, shows us that dialogue with Judaism is a real matter of the heart for you. We would therefore like to offer you our most heartfelt welcome with the traditional Jewish greeting and the Jewish welcome blessing: “Baruch Haba!
It is nice to be able to see clearly that the relationship between the Catholic Church and Judaism has really improved in recent decades in a highly dramatic manner. There are so many people on all sides who have made amajor contribution towards this achievement. And we are highly aware that you in particular have personally always considered reconciliation with Judaism to be important, in fact an absolute matter of the heart. It was therefore with joy and considerable relief that we Jews in Germany also very recently heard your clear words: Your rejection of any mission work among the Jews and your more than unambiguous rejection of the centuries-old accusation of deicide. This did us all good. Jews have been persecuted,expelled and killed for centuries on the pretext of deicide. You have now put a final end to this. It is therefore good that you have found such clear words here.
Major steps have however already been taken by the Catholic Church in its relations with Judaism. These are steps which we greatly appreciate! However: There is still a lot to do. For all of us. And openness and friendship which are growing and are to grow further also include saying to one another and confessing frankly what hurts and burdens us. Good friendship must therefore be resilient to tension and indeed be able to sustain the headwind of occasional differences; on the understanding, naturally, that these winds are neither too strong nor too frequent. The bridges which we wish to build in order to create connections must have sound foundations. These must be foundations of trust, of reliability, of friendship, so sound that they can also stand up to open words.
Please therefore permit me to tackle those points which really hurt us in the openness that is required of friendship: The topic of the “Pius Brotherhood” *, which in our view still stands for fanaticism, fundamentalism, racism, anti-Semitism, in fact simply for the darkest Middle Ages and for irreconcilability pure and simple, is one which we still find painful. The same goes for the topic of the Good Friday prayers. And the envisioned beatification of Pope Pius XII, which would further hurt our feelings and cause us disappointment. Having said all that, one thing is absolutely certain: The course of reconciliation being steered together by Judaism and the Vatican, and which we have experienced in recent decades, is so important and so valuable to all of us. The late Pope John Paul II, whom you yourself so recently beatified, pushed forward this course with such energy and warmth. His words and deeds warm our hearts to the present day. And we know full well that you yourself always supported, encouraged and contributed to his initiative with decisiveness. And we see and feel that you will continue the course of community and friendship in your own responsibility and even accelerate it.
* Translator’s note: Society Of Saint Pius X
Contacts between the Jewish community in Germany and the Catholic Church here in the country have now become highly varied, trustful, reliable and close. We feel this particularly clearly, again and again, especially in difficult situations. This is particularly when friendship needs to prove itself – and this is indeed what we experience, again and again in a really moving way. I would like to express my explicit thanks for this living solidarity and established loyalty. Our dialogue remains so important for us, but it is not to be understood in isolation. We must all be measured by its results, and by our good relationship becoming even better, closer, deeper – that is what we all hope and wish for together in our innermost hearts!
Your Holiness, I would therefore like to use today’s opportunity to affirm our desire for a lively, open, temperamental, trusting and life-affirming dialogue with one another. For a dialogue devoid of all formality, one of close friendship, of trusted partnership and deep friendship; for a dialogue in which open words are appreciated and expected and in which the deeply-established trust is to continue to grow further. I would like to see a dialogue between Jews and Christians emphasising what we have in common, which confirms and strengthens our two communities. And in a world in which, at least in Europe, the power of faith unfortunately sometimes seems to be becoming weaker and less popular, we have so many more common goals and interests, and so much more which unites us now and which must unite us forever.
I would like to see a Church which holds its “older brothers” in its heart; I would like to see us treating one another with respect, in a dialogue and in friendship, on an equal footing. I would therefore like to see fraternal relations between Judaism and Christianity becoming a matter of course, every day, everywhere and for all times. We should know in the spirit and always feel in our hearts: We have so much that joins us. We are united by much more than can ever separate us. We have such strong joint roots – perhaps we should occasionally communicate this to others together, more frequently and more strongly. We really have such strong common roots – how should they not be able to bear fruits together? And another thing we would like to see: That the fullness and the fruits of what we have in common grow and blossom. To be sure: Even then, because the world is the way it is, the trees we plant together will not yet always grow to the sky. Perhaps however we will nonetheless all come a little bit closer to Heaven. And we ourselves will perhaps grow together by what binds us – how wonderful that would be!
We are here together; we believe together – and we quite simply belong together! Let us therefore jointly bear the responsibility for this common foundation of heartfelt friendship,enhanced trust and new closeness being strengthened and established again and again.This is certainly our most heartfelt wish.
http://www.papst-in-deutschland.de/fileadmin/redaktion/microsites/Papstbesuch/Tagebuch/Reden_Papst/ENG_22092011_Graumann-Zentralrat-Juden-Reichstag_B.pdf.
The reading of the Torah is good in itself. For where did Jesus begin but with the Torah? He was prophet ,teacher and then priest. And posted over his head on the cross was king of the Jews. On his head a crown, of thorns not gold.
Fr. Lichtenberg died en route to Dachau.
Too bad there was no commitment to bring them the gospel for their eternal good.
This begs the question; are you simply ignorant, wilfully ignorant or being maliciously deceitful? The Nostra Aetate Declaration is very specific with respect to Gospel and its teachings:
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