Finally, the Vatican speaks up on the most recent outbreak of ill will from some Jewish circles in Italy.
This is a Page 1 article from the Saturday issue of the Vatican newspaper.
Benedict XVI's dedication
to Jewish-Catholic dialog:
An action of the heart
by Norbert J. Hofman
Secretary, Pontifical Commission
for Religious Relations with Judaism
Translated from
the 1/17/09 issue of
On January 17, the Church in Italy, Poland, Austria and the Netherlands will celebrate a Day of Judaism, an expression of the great appreciation of Judaism by the Catholic Church. It also has to do with being aware, at the same time, of the robustness of the Christian roots of our faith.
And so the dialog with Judaism today should be promoted through specific manifestations. Wherever Jews and Catholics live side by side, there have been common activities at both the academic level as well as the pastoral community level.
It is good to know that now even the Swiss bishops' conference has committed itself to introducing a
Dies Iudaicus, and it is to be hoped that other bishops conferences will reflect on such an activity as a possibility for promoting the Jewish-Christian dialog.
It is too bad that this year, because of the polemics that arose from the reformulation of the Good Friday prayer for the Jews in the 1962 Missal, the Italian rabbinical assembly decided not to participate in this year's celebration.
Nonetheless, the assembly underscored that it basically does not intend to abandon dialog with the Catholic Church, but that the decision is to be considered as a pause for reflection on the dialog itself.
For its part, the Italian bishops conference considers the Day of Judaism as an occasion for the Church itself to celebrate, as it has since 1990, and to bear witness to Judaism today as well as its past.
It cannot be denied that the new prayer for the Jews in the Good Friday liturgy of the 1962 Missal [the traditional Roman rite] published on February 4, 2008, aroused irritation and even insupportability in world Jewry. But the reactions and the duration of the controversy were different depending on the organization, the country and prevailing mentality.
In many cases, the prayer was misinterpreted as a missionary appeal to the Jews, an act of new proselytism.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism, in an article published on April 10, 2008, in
L'Osservatore Romano, entitled "The Good Friday prayer for the Jews: The discussion on recent changes", offered a theological interpretation towards a correct understanding of such changes.
He explained that the prayer has a totally eschatological character which cannot be linked in any way to an appeal for a concrete mission to evangelize the Jews. Rather, it places the eschatological destiny of the Jews in the hands of God.
The article thus decisively confirmed the significance of the conciliar declaration
Nostra aetate (No.4)
[the paragraph referring to relations with the Jews] and the Church's disposition to continue and deepen the Jewish-Catholic dialog.
In a letter dated May 14, 2008 from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to the Grand Rabbinate of Israel, that position was reiterated and further elaborated.
Even if the polemics over the prayer has dominated public discussion of it, it must be made clear that behind the scenes, no one ever thought this meant an end to dialog. On the contrary, collaboration to overcome this issue was intensified, and in subsequent bilateral meetings, Catholic and Jewish participants alike demonstrated with clarity that 43 years after institutionalized dialog began, they could continue to meet even if, and above all, when the subject was controversial.
In this regard, one cannot overlook the debate over the question of the eventual canonization of Pius XII, which was revived with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of his death on October 9, 2008.
During these months of controversy, it has been shown possible to deal with controversial subjects with calm and reciprocal respect in an atmosphere of friendly collaboration. This shows a remarkable maturation in the dialog between Jews and Catholics.
Moreover, we can point out that after
Nostra aetate(No. 4), there has been a decisively positive development: from an initial hermeneutic of confrontation, through a hermeneutic of reciprocal differences, it has now reached a time of trust and collaboration notwithstanding some difficulties that there have always been and always will be part of the dialog between Jews and Catholics.
Precisely on the basis of the above-mentioned controversies in the dialog, it must be clearly stated that Pope Benedict XVI, in the year 2008, dedicated himself particularly to the dialog with Judaism, especially since for him it is motivated from the heart.
He considers this dialog, theologically based on Chapters 9-11 of Paul's Letter to the Romans, as a reconciliation after a long, difficult and complex history between Jews and Christians.
On April 17, 2008, during his visit to the United States of America, Benedict XVI met with a delegation of Jewish representatives - apart from an interfaith encounter with representatives of other religions, and gave them a written expression of good wishes for the upcoming Passover.
In that document, he specifically referred to
Nostra aetate (No.4) and underscored it:
"In addressing myself to you I wish to re-affirm the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on Catholic-Jewish relations and reiterate the Church’s commitment to the dialogue that in the past forty years has fundamentally changed our relationship for the better. Because of that growth in trust and friendship, Christians and Jews can rejoice together in the deep spiritual ethos of the Passover, a memorial (zikkarôn) of freedom and redemption."
The following day, shortly before the start of the liturgical service for the Hebrew Sabbath and the Feast of Passover, Benedict XVI visited Park East Synagogue in New York City, to express his respects and his appreciation for the Jewish community of that city.
He recognized that the Jewish community of New York brings a valuable contribution to the life of the city and encouraged everyone to build bridges of friendship between all religious and ethnic groups.
For Benedict XVI, it was his second visit to a synagogue as Pope, after his visit to the synagogue in Cologne in August 2005.
An interfaith encounter was also arranged for the Pope in Sydney when he was there for World Youth Day. The meeting, which included Jewish representatives, took place on July 19, 2008, at the bishop's residence in Sydney.
The Pope had a separate meeting with Jewish representatives during his visit to Paris. With almost 600,000 members, the Jewish community of France is among the largest in the world. Benedict XVI met with Jewish leaders at the Nunciature in Paris.
In his brief address to them, the Pope underscored the reciprocal and fraternal orientation between Jews and Christians: "Dear friends, because of that which unites us and that which separates us, we share a relationship that should be strengthened and lived. And we know that these fraternal bonds constitute a continual invitation to know and to respect one another better".
He also expressed himself firmly against every form of anti-Semitism: "The Church ... is opposed to every form of anti-Semitism, which can never be theologically justified. The theologian Henri de Lubac ... added that to be anti-Semitic also signifies being anti-Christian".
After coming back from France, the Pope received a delegation from the Jewish Pave the Way Foundation on Sept. 18, 2008, in Castel Gandolfo. The Foundation had organized a three-day symposium on Pius XII, on a subject that has been important to the Jews, regarding historical sources of what Pius XII actually did to help the Jews during the difficult days of the Second World War. The symposium was to be held in connection with Pius XII's 50th death anniversary.
It is evident that there are different opinions in the Jewish world on how to judge Pius XII and there will continue to be in the future, even when in 6-7 years, the Vatican archives on his Pontificate are expected to be made public.
Finally, one must mention a historic event in the Jewish-Catholic dialog. For the first time in the history of the episcopal Synods decreed by Vatican II, a rabbi had an opportunity to address Catholic bishops from around the world, in the presence of the Pope.
The chief rabbi of Haifa (Israel), Shear Yashuv Cohen, was invited by Benedict XVI to speak on the significance of Sacred Scriptures for Jewish religious life, on the first working day after the formal opening of the Synod.
In general, this gesture was looked upon favorably. In his speech to the Roman Curia at the annual exchange of Christmas greetings on December 22, 2008, Benedict XVI did not fail to refer to that historic event.
On October 30, 2008, Benedict XVI had another meeting with a Jewish delegation at the Vatican. This time, the delegation was the International Jewish Committee on Inter-Religious Consultations, which has been the official dialog partner of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism since 1970, and with whom it has so far organized 20 important conferences in different countries.
The last one was held on November 9-12 in Budapest on the subject of "Religion and civilian society today: Jewish and Catholic Perspectives". Both Catholic and Jewish participants were very positive about the meeting. The climate was one of deep reciprocal confidence and a further growth in friendship and goodwill.
November 9 2as a special occasion during that meeting. It was the day that Kristallnacht [the Night of Broken Glass] happened in Nazi Germany in 1938, with the destruction of synagogues, along with Jewish homes and businesses, in both Germany and Austria.
The Jewish participants in Budapest were grateful for the fact that in his Angelus message that day, Pope Benedict XVI had referred to the event, saying: "Even today I feel pain for what happened in that tragic circumstance, the memory of which should serve to prevent similar horrors from ever happening again, and which commits us, on all levels, against every form of anti-Semitism and discrimination, educating the young generations above all in respect and reciprocal acceptance".
This climate allowed Cardinal Walter Kasper, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, to take a tone of criticism in his speech that was certainly perceptible but delicate. The Jewish reaction was significant: "A friend can say those things".
But it was not all mere commemoration. The discussions were held with an eye to the future. For the first time, young people were invited to all the events. After all, it is they who will have to carry on the dialog.
The following summer, the young people met again in Castel Gandolfo, in great numbers, at the Focolari Movement's Centro Mariopoli. An important topic of discussion was education and how to transmit to successive generations the reciprocal knowledge of each other and their shared values.
In short, if one considers everything that the Pope did in the past year alone in terms of relations with the Jews, one can reasonably say that for him, dialog with Judaism has been and will continue to be a matter of the heart.
Even if the differences over the Good Friday prayer and Pius XII are excessively provoked by some circles, we can still say that the Jewish-Christian dialog is based on a firm foundation that cannot be easily shaken.
In the meantime, both sides have learned to talk over these controversies in friendship and reciprocal trust, to which Pope Benedict XVI, with his personal commitment and dedication, has brought his indispensable contribution.
Apropos, therefore, here is that article by Prof. Israel, who does not need to be as tactful and calibrated in his public reactions as Fr. Hofman:
Ambrosian Catholicism and leftist Judaism
work hand-in-glove to strike at Ratzingerism
by Giorgio Israel
Translated from
January 16, 2009
It is significant that the violent attack with which the chief rabbi of Venice Elia Richetti accused Benedict XVI of having demolished 50 years of Jewish-Christian dialog appeared in the Jesuit monthly magazine
Popoli.
Moreover, one simply has to look to the facts, without need for any behind-the-scenes look, to realize that there are motives for this diatribe that have little to do with the merits of the issue.
One notes that none of the arguments that could be made against the hard accusations on the part of the Italian rabbinical assembly were ever considered.
Rather, after the statement of the chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, agreeing with Pope Benedict's statement that inter-religious dialog in the strict sense of the term is impossible - better to avoid theological disputes, Di Segni said - here is Richetti claiming the opposite, that the Pope's statement is proof that he does not want to dialog!
The fact is that while Di Segni, though cautious and restrained, is rational - "Dialog is a process that should go on despite the difficulties. Pope Benedict XVI continues to give an original and decisive contribution, even if we cannot always share his position" - there are those who have decided that they must at all costs quarrel with the Pope, and tirelessly look for Catholics who can do this with similar zeal, even at the risk of rekindling latent anti-Jewish sentiments which have never been extinguished.
We are seeing an internal confrontation within the Catholic world to which part of the world of Italian Jews is lending a hand as a sort of Seventh Cavalry
[reference to General Custer's forces at Little Big Horn].
I wish to cite a symptomatic episode one year and a half ago. I was struck by some passages in the book
Le tenebre e la luce (Shadows and light) by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, in which he referred to the trial of Jesus as evidence of "the collapse of an institution [the Sanhedrin] which had the primary task of recognizing the Messiah, verifying all that is necessary to prove him", but instead bore witness to "the decay of a religious institution".
Martini continued: "The Sacred texts are still read but they are no longer understood, they no longer have any power, they blind rather than enlighten."
And he concluded harshly by remarking on "the necessity to overcome religious traditions when they are no longer authentic", and suggesting the following idea of dialog: "Our common inter-religious path should consist above all in our radically converting ourselves according to the words of Jesus, and starting from that, help others to follow the same course" - words, he said, expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, "which are absolutely authentic and reliable because they also contain the correct criticism of degraded religious traditions".
Ask Benedict XVI's critics how they could possibly accept such a concept of dialog based on the idea of conversion - and yet they resent the Good Friday prayer!
Beyond the predictably irritated responses of some followers of the cardinal to my reaction, the most virulent attacks came my way from the columns of the Bulletin of the Jewish Community of Milan, where I was accused outright of vilely 'stabbing' in the back a friend of the Jews and thereby all dialog symbolically.
Then came the new polemic over the Good Friday prayer which led to the current suspension of the dialog, decreed even in terms of prohibiting the community from meeting with any Church men.
Guido Guastalla and myself disagreed with this suspension in a letter to
Corriere della Sera on November 26, 2008, which was calm in tone and without any shade of polemic.
In return we received a violent response signed by Rabbi Laras (president of the rabbinical assembly), the president of the Union of Jewish Youth, and, significantly, by an ex-President, and not the current President, of the Union of Jewish Communities, in the person of Amos Luzzatto.
This letter - which suggested that we should not concern ourselves with dialog since it is the exclusive competence of rabbis to do so (as the sole 'interlocutors' and 'officials responsible for religious representation') - also indicated that the 'capital' of the Jewish-Christian dialog was Milan, in the persons of Cardinals Martini and Tettamanzi on the one hand, and of Laras and company, on the other, and that people like Guastammo and myself did not figure at all.
Incidentally or not, the argument seems to always revolve around Milan, around a dissident Ambrosian Catholicism and a certain leftist Judaism.
Our critics also affirmed that "the relationships between Judaism and Islam have generally been more profitable and peaceful compared to those between Judaism and Christianity" - which immediately received an enthusiastic response from the Great Mosque of Rome attesting how much they appreciated such a statement.
Of course, in this idyll, the question of why those very representatives have never even wished to consider crossing the threshold of the synagogue in Rome does not come up at all.
These are attitudes that belong to a well-known category - namely, preferring to walk with those with whom they have politico-ideological consonance regardless of any other factor.
The ideological consonance here is between those of Milanese Catholicism - that which was indulgent to the Muslim prayer-demonstration in front of Milan Cathedral - and a leftist Judaism which does not care if it is called 'a degraded religious tradition' [by Cardinal Martini] since the important thing is to strike together at the common enemy - in this case, the hated theocon 'Ratzingerism'.
Besides, they feel it is always better to dialog with Islam than with the Pope, or better yet, among themselves, as Alberto Melloni has expressed so well in these pages, saying Judaism and Christianity are 'heavy', exaggerated and complicated religions, whereas Islam is simple, essential and demands little [one wonders why he does not then convert).
[Islam 'demands little'? Melloni must be kidding. He insults Islam by under-estimating it.]
At this point, even the blind can perceive that for such advocates, the issues of real merit in inter-religious dialog are really 'out of the question' -
they are only a pretext to put together a political alignment that reinforces their internal battle in the Catholic world while striking at the present leadership of the Union of Jewish Communities and of the Jewish Community of Rome which are considered 'too rightist'.
That in such a situation there are those who choose to make these maneuvers in order to provoke confrontations and divisions and even to rekindle old misunderstandings and resentments against those with whom dialog must be pursued with care, is a sign of
how ideology can lead to the most serious manifestations of irresponsibility.
[Indeed, that is the whole problem with ideological fanaticism which willingly and delierately sacrifices reason and any sense of responsibility to 'advance' its cause.]
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P.S. I wish to note that if Benedict XVI or Joseph Ratzinger had written the statements that Prof. Israel cites from Cardinal Martini's book, the Pope would have been subjected to such opprorbrium and more character assassination than his detractors now indulge in to their heart's content.
So why does Cardinal Martini get a pass from the Jews and the liberals?
Is it for the same reason - whatever it is - that no one, not even the Catholic hierarchy in Italy, has said anything negative about his latest book in which he says Paul VI lied outright to the faithful about the background to Humanae Vitae, calls himself the 'ante-Pope' [clearly leaving the double sense of it as 'before' the Pope, i.e., taking positions ahead of the Pope, whoever he may be), or before the Pope in precedence, i.e., more important than the Pope], and in general, defends his positions on a number of ethical issues in which he is clearly against the Church Magisterium?
I would think the first reason for sparing him would be that he is old and ailing, but Pope Benedict XVI is the same age and is not exactly in perfect health (although he seems to be doing very well, Deo gratias, Deo volente) - and yet everyone feels free to swing wildly at him as they would at a 'pinata' {Mexican clay jar meant to be broken to pieces by striking with a bat or something equally forceful).
I must keep pointing out that even those who disagree vehemently with the Pope on doctrinal and ideological grounds or even out of personal dislike, owe him respect because of his age, if not for the office he occupies. Respect for age is a universal value - though it has not seemed so for a long time now in the West, where TV and movies reinforce the image of children disrespecting their own parents and teachers to their faces.
I might speculate that the Pope himself, because he is Christian and is truly kind, has told his associates and the Curial prelates close to him to lay off criticizing Cardinal Martini. That is probably why neither OR nor Avvenire has even touched the cardinal's new book, not even with a 10-foot pole.
And that liberals and leftists are cheering him on elsewhere for this book (just that I do not get to see it) - as they cheered him on in his previous declarations against the Church teaching on abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and some aspects of assisted reproduction.