He
came to the Holy Land as a pilgrim, a man of prayer, to bring a message
of peace. Earlier in the
Jubilee Year 2000, he had identified with Abraham’s journey from Ur of
the Chaldeans to the land, then called Canaan.
Afterwards he traveled to Mount Sinai to identify with Moses’s
journey through the wilderness with the Israelites.
At the spot where the Torah was revealed, he affirmed the Ten
Commandments as essential for reconsecrating private and public morality
in our time. And then, on
the first leg of his Holy Land pilgrimage, he stood atop Mount Nebo to
view the Promised Land from Moses’s final resting place.
As
he flew into Ben Gurion Airport on March 21, 2000, John Paul II was
making his 91st international trip as pope.
For many, this was the journey, par excellence, of his
long and remarkable pontificate. For
Jews, especially Israeli Jews, the papal visit was a watershed in the
history of our relations with Christianity, and with Catholicism in
particular. For all of
humanity, it was, I believe, a meta-historical event in which the
combination of person, place, and time produced a kairos moment
transcending political divisions and offering a glimpse of true
holiness. For Jews and
Muslims locked in mortal combat over Israel/Palestine, the humble
witness of this frail pilgrim pope demonstrated the potential of
Christians to be peacemakers, which is to be, in the spirit of the
Beatitudes, true “children of God.” In his words and deeds along his
route, this pope sought, on behalf of Christians everywhere, to make
amends for two millennia of persecution towards both Jews and Muslims,
the elder and younger siblings in the Abrahamic family of faith.
For
Christian-Jewish relations, the pontiff’s Holy Land pilgrimage broke
new ground, both theologically and politically.
To fully understand its impact on both levels, some historical
context is needed. But
first I offer a vignette from my own life journey.
The context for this episode, my only direct encounter with the
pope, is my peacebuilding work in the Holy Land over the past 26 years.
In 1991, shortly after the Gulf War--when I was a reserve soldier
serving with my Israeli army unit at Sha’arei Tzedek Hospital in
Jerusalem, simulating with the medical staff the intake of hundreds of
chemical warfare victims--I attended an interfaith conference in Italy
convened by the World Conference on Religion and Peace.
The gathering focused on peacebuilding in the Middle East.
On July 4, the conference participants were bussed from Castel
Gandolfo, outside Rome, to the Vatican for an audience with John Paul
II. In his prepared remarks
before our group, the pontiff expressed his support for our religiously
motivated peacemaking efforts.
After
his speech, the pope greeted each member of our group.
When I was introduced to him by name, with the geographic
coordinate “from Jerusalem,” I shook his hand and said to him,
“Shalom! I hope you grace
us with your presence soon.” He
simply nodded and said nothing in response.
Almost nine years later, I was privileged to be in Jerusalem as
the pope traversed the land, as Abraham had done, spreading his message
of justice, love, and reconciliation and touching the hearts of all who
watched and listened in amazement.
I recall standing on a rooftop in East Jerusalem, watching the
pope’s motorcade wind its way through the streets of the city,
eventually passing the spot where I was in order to get to the Apostolic
Delegate’s home on the Mount of Olives, where the pontiff was staying.
Later in the week I was in the audience at an interfaith event at
the Notre Dame Center. This
was the one event during the papal visit that deteriorated into
political rancor and disarray. (More
on that unfortunate incident below).
Given the risks and potential landmines that beset the pope’s
journey, the fact that only one event turned sour underscored the
generally positive, indeed inspirational, nature of his extraordinary
pilgrimage.
In the Middle East, memory is both a blessing and a curse.
For the Arab Muslims, the Crusades happened yesterday.
Israeli Jews, not only Holocaust survivors, can not forget two
millennia of disdain, hatred, and murderous assaults by ostensibly
faithful Christians, including popes. For any Jew, a visit to Rome evokes haunting memories:
the Jewish ghetto and the Arch of Titus depicting the menorah
from the Second Temple carried away as a spoil of war.
For centuries newly elected popes would stop at the Arch of Titus
on their way to St. Peter’s Basilica for their coronation.
At that spot symbolizing the defeat and humiliation of the Jewish
people, the new pope would receive a Torah scroll from a Jewish
representative. He would
then hand it back, saying “I receive this book from you, but not your
interpretation of it.” This
custom reflected the supercessionist theology and the “teaching of
contempt” which characterized Catholicism until the Second Vatican
Council.
During the pontificate of John Paul II, so much has happened to
transform that tragic history of persecution and suffering.
Indeed, it is safe to say that this pope has done more than
anyone else in history to advance the cause of Christian-Jewish
reconciliation. His
historic visits to the Rome synagogue and the Auschwitz death camp were
but two of the landmark events of his tenure as pontiff.
The establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the Holy
See and the State of Israel, a revolutionary development awaited by Jews
for years, would not have come about without the pope’s blessing and
encouragement. In his
meetings with Jewish leaders, in Rome and elsewhere, he reiterated his
condemnation of anti-Semitism and his fraternal solidarity with Jews as
“elder brothers.” And
Jews knew that his words carried the authenticity of his life
experience. His childhood
friendships with Jews in Wadowice, Poland, helped him to later identify
with the indescribable suffering of the Jewish people during the Shoah
and with their yearning for freedom, dignity, and national renewal in a
sovereign Jewish state.
By the time John Paul II came to Israel in March of 2000, much of
the foundation for Catholic-Jewish rapprochement had already been laid. And yet Jews, especially in Israel, were still suspicious,
wondering what his motives for visiting were.
Partly this was because few Jews are aware of the spiritual and
theological sea change which many church leaders have undergone in their
relationships towards Jews and Judaism in the last half century. This
widespread ignorance made the pope’s symbolic pilgrimage all the more
astounding to most Jews. To
appreciate just how remarkable the papal visit was for Israelis,
consider this: In
arithmetic classes, Israeli Jewish schoolchildren are taught to make a
small inverted T rather than a cross when adding numbers.
(One of Christianity’s most sacred symbols evokes aversion in
many Jews, given the long history of pogroms on Good Friday and
following the enactment of passion plays).
Despite this common practice in Israeli schools, when the
pope’s Jubilee journey was covered on Israeli television, the Hebrew
words for “pilgrimage” (aliyah leregel) included a small
cross instead of the letter “yod.”
Most observers would agree that the historic turning point in
Catholic-Jewish relations was the Nostra Aetate statement issued
on October 28, 1965, by the Second Vatican Council.
The council, convened originally by the beloved Pope John XXIII,
extended over four years after its inaugural session on October 11,
1962. The document
referring to the Jewish people was one of sixteen conciliar
texts, and it bears the official title: “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian
Religions.” After
centuries of triumphalism, praying for the conversion of the
“perfidious Jews” on Good Friday, the Roman Catholic Church changed
its official stance. It
still affirmed that it is “in duty bound to proclaim without fail
Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life (Jn. 1:6),” that in
Christ “God reconciled all things to himself [and so] people find the
fullness of their religious life” in Christianity, and that the church
“believes that Christ who is our peace has through his cross
reconciled Jews and Gentiles and made them one in himself.”
Yet, together with this classical formulation of Christian faith,
the council was able to detoxify the most poisonous element in
Jewish-Christian relations over the centures:
the accusation that
the Jews were guilty of crucifying Christ and were rejected and punished
by God for this cosmic crime of deicide.
Nostra Aetate (the first two words in the Latin version)
repudiated this heinous libel once and for all.
While it does refer generally to “other religions” in a
positive light and states that “the Church looks with esteem” upon
Muslims in particular, the declaration is best remembered for its
revolutionary statements about the Jews:
As holy Scripture testifies, Jerusalem did not recognize the time
of her visitation (cf. Lk 19:44), nor did Jews in large number accept
the Gospel; indeed, not a few opposed the spreading of it (cf. Rom
11:28). Nevertheless, according to the Apostle, the Jews still remain
most dear to God because of their fathers, for He does not repent of the
gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues (cf. Rom. 11:28-29)…
True,
authorities of the Jews and those who followed their lead pressed for
the death of Christ (cf. Jn 19:6); still, what happened in His passion
cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor
upon the Jews of today. Although
the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as
repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views followed from the holy
Scriptures. All should take pains, then, lest in catechetical instruction
and in the preaching of God’s Word they teach anything out of harmony
with the truth of the gospel and the spirit of Christ.
The
Church repudiates all persecutions against any man.
Moreover, mindful of her common patrimony with the Jews, and motivated
by the gospel’s spiritual love and by no political considerations, she
deplores the hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism
directed against the Jews at any time and from any source. (emphasis
added)
These statements merit some analysis, especially in light of
subsequent events. (The
recent controversy over Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ,
for example, serves to underscore how sensitive these issues are,
and how Jewish-Christian relations are still adversely affected by the
demonization of Jews by Christians over many centuries).
Why the explicit denial of any “political considerations” as
a factor in condemning anti-Semitism, and the affirmation, instead, of a
single justification for this theological transformation: “the
gospel’s spiritual love”? To
understand this argument, we need to examine the speech delivered to the
participants in Vatican II by Cardinal Augustin Bea, S.J.
Cardinal Bea, then president of the Secretariat for Promoting
Christian Unity, was the person most responsible for getting the Nostra
Aetate text adopted. He
was commissioned personally for this assignment by Pope John XXIII.
In order to overcome opposition to the document as it was being
considered, Bea delivered a speech in defense of the new theological
stance being promulgated. Here are excerpts from of his remarks, part of the “oral
tradition” accompanying the Nostra Aetate text:
The decree [on the Jews] is very brief, but the material treated
in it is not easy. Let us
enter immediately into the heart of it and tell what we are talking
about. Or rather, since it
is so easy to understand it wrongly, before all else let us say what we
are not talking about. There
is no national or political question here.
Especially is there no question of acknowledging the State of
Israel on the part of the Holy See…There is only treatment of a purely
religious question…
There are
those who object: Did not
the princes of this people, with the people in agreement, condemn and
crucify the innocent Christ, the Lord?
Did they not “clamor”: “Let his blood be upon us and upon
our children” (Matt. 27:25)? Did
not Christ himself speak most severely about Jews and their punishment?
I reply
simply and briefly: It is
true that Christ spoke severely, but only with the intention that the
people might be converted and might “recognize the time of its
visitation” (cf. Luke 19:42-49).
But even as he is dying on the cross he prays: “Father forgive
them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
Wherefore,
since the Lord emphasized, before the burial of Lazarus, speaking to the
Father: “I know that thou always hearest me” (John 11:42), it is
wrong to say that his prayer
to the Father was not heard and that God has not only not forgiven the
fault of his chosen people but that he has rejected them…
The
point, therefore, is not in any way to call into doubt—as is sometimes
falsely asserted—the events which are narrated in the Gospels about
Christ’s consciousness of his dignity and divine nature, or about the
manner in which the innocent Lord was unjustly condemned.
Rather that, with these things kept fully in mind, it is still
possible and necessary to imitate the gentle charity of Christ the Lord
and his Apostles with which they excused their persecutors.
Bea asked his colleagues: “But
why is it so necessary precisely today to recall these things?”
(Italics in the original text). He
explains that the “propaganda” against the Jews that was spread by
the Nazis needed to be rooted out from the minds of Catholics and
replaced by the truth of Christianity.
He condemned National Socialism’s “particularly violent and
criminal form” of anti-Semitism, “which through hatred for the Jews
committed frightful crimes, extirpating several millions of Jewish
people…” And he argued
for the application of Christian love and forgiveness:
“If Christ the Lord and the Apostles who personally experienced
the sorrows of the crucifixion embraced their very persecutors with an
ardent charity, how much more must we be motivated by the same
charity?” We see here how
Bea’s thinking informed the text of Nostra Aetate.
In his speech, Bea declared that “the Jews of our times can
hardly be accused of the crimes committed against Christ, so far removed
are they from those deeds. Actually,
even in the time of Christ, the majority of the chosen people did not
cooperate with the leaders of the people in condemning Christ.”
Bea combined two arguments:
the Jews as a whole, then and now, are not culpable for the
crucifixion, and those who were guilty, at that time, have been
forgiven by God, both the Father and the Son.
Consequently, he concludes his remarks by stressing that, for the
council, what should be “simply decisive” is “the example of
burning charity of the Lord himself on the cross praying ‘Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.’ This is the example to be imitated by the Church, the bride
of Christ. This is the road
to be followed by her. This
is what the schema proposed by us intends to foster and promote.”
From this speech of Bea’s we get a clearer idea of the
theological rationale behind Nostra Aetate’s declaration
exculpating the Jews from the deicide accusation.
And what of the “political considerations” that might
otherwise be imputed to the drafters of this historic conciliar
document? We saw above that
Bea disavowed any recognition of the State of Israel by the Holy See.
(That watershed in 1993 was due largely to John Paul II’s
leadership). Toward the end
of his speech, Bea returned to this thorny subject and said:
“Lastly: since we are here treating a merely religious
question, there is obviously no danger that the Council will get
entangled in those difficult questions regarding the relations between
the Arab nations and the State of Israel, or regarding so-called
Zionism.”
For most Jews, Judaism and Zionism are so intertwined in their
self-understanding that it is impossible to separate the two.
The tendency of many Christians, including Catholics, to make
that distinction (based on their own tradition of separating God and
Caesar), has caused much misunderstanding and ill will in
Jewish-Christian relations in recent decades—at least until the Holy
See recognized the State of Israel.
The political and theological considerations are interrelated,
and always were, despite Bea’s rhetorical dichotomy.
To fully appreciate the importance of Pope John Paul II’s
Jubilee pilgrimage to Israel/Palestine in 2000, we need, first of all,
to recall the two millennia of Christian persecution of Jews and
contempt for Judaism. In
this light, Cardinal Bea’s plea to his colleagues to forgive the Jews
as Christ and the Apostles did—for a crime they did not even commit
(since it was the Romans who crucified Jesus)—sounds absurd and
outrageous to Jewish ears. But
this is as far as the Church was ready to go in 1965.
The years following were characterized by further movement away
from the notion that the Jews needed to be forgiven, as a gesture of
“Christian charity,” for anything they might have done.
One can cite, as one of many benchmarks, the 1985 speech
delivered by Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, who worked under Cardinal
Bea at Vatican II and then succeeded him as head of the Secretariat for
Promoting Christian Unity. Cardinal
Willebrands’s presentation at Westminster Cathedral in London was, in
fact, the Cardinal Bea Memorial Lecture for that year.
In his speech,
Willebrands reviewed the progress made in Christian-Jewish relations in
the twenty years since Nostra
Aetate. He noted that “a certain amount of trust has been
generated” on the Jewish side, and that “some, if not all, barriers
have been torn down.” Regarding
the Christian side, he said that “we in the Church have become, or are
becoming, aware of our historical and our theological responsibilities
towards our elder brother, grounded in the link the Council spoke
about.”
The cardinal stressed the common challenge of combating
famine, oppression, and the plight of refugees worldwide.
He said that “Jews and Christians, right across the board, are
called in the name of their common biblical heritage to stand up and do
something together…” He
understood that such joint action would bring to the surface some
underlying tensions in the Christian-Jewish relationship:
I am not blind to the issues such a decision will raise, or has
already raised. The main
issue also becomes, once the twenty years of first encounters have
elapsed, one of the main challenges we have to face—perhaps the
greatest. It thus becomes
also a significant part of our task for the future.
I refer to the asymmetry between our Catholic and Jewish
communities or, better still, between Church and Judaism.
The Church is a Church, a worldwide religious community
orientated mainly to the glory of God and the ministry of salvation of
those called to her bosom. It
has, as such, no particular ethnic or cultural identity; every man and
woman from any background should feel at home with her.
Judaism is a very different matter.
While defined by some as an instrument of redemption, it is at
the same time, and almost in the same breath, a people with a definite
ethnicity, a culture, with an intrinsic reference to a land and a State.
These differences should by now be obvious, but is an open
question whether we are on each side well enough aware of all the
implications thereof. It
means, as the very least, that agendas do not always coincide,
priorities are not necessarily the same and concerns can go very
different ways.
These are sound
observations. They were
confirmed later when Jews and Catholics found themselves on different
sides of painful controversies, such as the one that arose over the
Carmelite convent at Auschwitz or the mutual misunderstandings around
the elevation to sainthood of the Jewish Carmelite nun Edith
Stein/Teresa Benedicta. At
another point in Willebrands’s speech, he asserted:
Jewish-Christian relations are an unending affair, as are love
and brotherhood, but also (regrettably) hatred and enmity.
The main point is to change the fundamental orientation, from
hatred to love, from enmity to brotherhood.
It is not a question only of deploying documents, or of
particular actions, however highly placed those who act happen to be.
It is a question of people, men and women of flesh and blood. Still
more, it is a question of hearts.
This statement surely pertains to the pope’s Jubilee pilgrimage
to the Holy Land: it was
obviously a media event with the pope as the central celebrity, and as
such it was a public witness on a global stage.
But it was, above all, a witness that touched and moved hearts,
millions if not billions of human hearts.
Love and brotherhood were not just proclaimed; they were embodied
in a man of flesh and blood whose flesh was old and weak, but whose
spirit was strong and vibrant and radiated compassion for all.
At the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum, this frail and
elderly pontiff stood next to a youthful and vigorous Israeli prime
minister, Ehud Barak, a military commando and commander turned
statesman. What a
role reversal that iconographic image was, in contrast to the familiar
juxtaposition of two female characters representing a feeble,
blindfolded Synagogue alongside the Church triumphant.
But that visual anomaly at Yad Vashem, which was not lost on
Israeli Jews,
was reinforced by the genuineness of the pope’s solidarity with Jewish
suffering. That heartfelt
solidarity was evidenced in his words and even more by the affection he
displayed toward his survivor friends from Wadowice, who were present
for this ceremonial event. One
of them was Edith Tzirer, who was liberated from a concentration camp in
January, 1945, almost paralyzed by tuberculosis and other afflictions.
Karol Wojtyla, the present pope, was then a seminarian when he
met young Edith and gave her food and drink.
He then carried her for almost two miles, from the camp to the
local railroad station. After
regaining her health, Edith later moved to Israel.
Aside from this very moving personal dimension, the event at Yad
Vashem was laden with deep symbolic meaning, both political and
religious—and these two dimensions could not be separated.
The two men were the recognized leaders of two communities of
faith represented by two sovereign entities, the State of Israel and the
Holy See. The agreement
establishing diplomatic relations between them, fostered by John Paul
II, had put their relations on an unprecedented footing.
Ehud Barak, whose grandparents perished at Dachau, represented a
Jewish people that had survived genocide, had established its own
flourishing state, and was now able to host the Bishop of Rome from a
position of strength and pride. It was the ceremony at Yad Vashem, more
than any other event during the papal pilgrimage, that symbolized this
new, healthier relationship between Jews and Catholics.
And it was that historic transformation of power relations,
identities, and shared memories that allowed Prime Minister Barak to
declare that the Jewish people has a friend in the Vatican.
Despite appeals from other Jews, Barak did not berate his guest
for failing to issue an outright apology for the Church’s actions
during the Shoah, including the reticence of Pope Pius XII.
Nor did Barak lament the limited access granted to the Vatican
archives from that period. Barak
understood that magnanimity and fraternal solidarity were the qualities
to exhibit on that extraordinary occasion.
He praised the Righteous Gentiles who had risked their lives to
save Jews, and among them he counted John Paul II.
“You have done more than anyone to apply the Church’s
historic change toward the Jewish people, a change begun by the good
Pope John XXIII.” Barak called the pope’s visit to Yad Vashem “the climax
of this historic journey of healing.”
The spiritual message of the moment was deepened by John Paul
II’s expression of deep sadness for the suffering Jews have
experienced at the hands of Christians throughout history.
In his address he acknowledged that silence spoke more powerfully
than words in the face of such horrors and traumatic memories.
And those memories, he declared, serve a purpose looking towards
the future: “to ensure
that never again will evil prevail, as it did for the millions of
innocent victims of Nazism…Jews and Christians share an immense
spiritual patrimony, flowing from God’s self-revelation.
Our religious teachings and our spiritual experience demand that
we overcome evil with good.” The psalmist, in describing the person
who savors life, exhorts: “Depart
from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.”
(Ps. 34:15) The
good that John Paul II did on his Holy Land trip, with his fervent
appeals for peace and justice, served to combat the evils of prejudice,
hatred, and war.
The culmination of his six-day sojourn among us, at least in the
eyes of Jews, came with his visit to the Western Wall, in Hebrew the Kotel
Ha-Ma’aravi. Rabbi
Michael Melchior, representing the Israeli Government as Minister for
Diaspora Affairs, welcomed the pope to that sacred site and presented to
him an ornate Bible as a personal gift.
When the pontiff shuffled slowly toward those immense stones,
placed his prayer of contrition inside a crack in the wall, and remained
there to offer his solitary confession before God at the spot that is
most holy to our people, Jews everywhere were stunned by this simple yet
profound gesture. Ironically,
the prayer that he left in the Kotel was the same one uttered
just days before as part of a litany of penitential confession in St.
Peter’s Basilica:
God
of our fathers,
You
chose Abraham and his descendants
to
bring your names to the nations;
we
are deeply saddened
by
the behavior of those
who
in the course of history
have
caused these children of Yours to suffer
and
asking Your forgiveness
we
wish to commit ourselves
to
genuine brotherhood
with
the people of the Covenant
Some Jews had complained, when this prayer was read out at St.
Peter’s, that it was not explicit enough in specifying the crimes
committed by Christians against Jews or in offering an explicit apology.
But the same words took on their true resonance and power when
they were brought from Rome to Jerusalem, to be placed by the pope in
the Wall which abuts the Temple Mount and the Holy of Holies.
This was another iconographic moment, coming near the end of John
Paul II’s pilgrimage, when person, place, and time converged in
historic terms. Instead of
gloating triumphantly over the loss of the ancient Temple at the hands
of the Romans, instead of rubbing salt in the collective Jewish wound
symbolized by the Arch of Titus, this pontiff came from Rome to the
Western Wall to ask God’s forgiveness for the two millennia of harm
which Christians have caused Jews. And through this act of sincere repentance, the pope
embodied, in the most direct and powerful way possible, the new era of
transformed relations between Christians and Jews.
Instead of asking his fellow Catholics to forgive Jews for
killing Christ, as Cardinal Bea and Nostra Aetate had done, John
Paul II acknowledged that it is Christians who are in need of
forgiveness for what they have perpetrated against Jews.
Jews, in turn, should acknowledge with gratitude this metanoia,
(in Hebrew teshuvah, moral transformation or repentance)
on the part of the Church. Only
then can we Jews join our Catholic partners in building a more blessed
future for everyone, in the spirit of Cardinal Willebrands’s remarks
in 1985.
Against the backdrop of this appreciative assessment of the
pope’s pilgrimage, some words should be said about the
Jewish-Christian-Muslim trialogue at the Notre Dame Center which turned
into a fiasco. The pope was
joined for this symbolic occasion by Israeli Chief Rabbi Lau and Sheikh
Tamimi representing the Palestinian Authority.
Rabbi
Lau spoke first, delivering a positive message advocating peaceful
relations among the religions. But he concluded with a statement of gratitude to the pope
for recognizing that Jerusalem is the “eternal, undivided capital”
of Israel and the Jewish people. By
attributing this political stance to John Paul II, the rabbi sparked a
vehement reaction from the Palestinians present.
From my seat in the balcony I could hear my Palestinian Catholic
friend Afif Safieh, Ambassador to the United Kingdom and the Holy See
on
behalf of the Palestinian Authority, shouting that the pope never said
such a thing.
With
the atmosphere now politicized and contentious, Sheikh Tamimi rose to
speak. He seemed to speak
extemporaneously, without reference to a written text, as he delivered a
lengthy tirade in Arabic, scoring political points against Israel and
earning the applause of the Palestinians present.
The pope sat on the stage with his head in his hands while this
belligerent speech was delivered. The
moderator for this event, Rabbi Dr. Alon Goshen-Gottsein, tried to
restore a sense of decorum and mutual respect by imploring people not to
use that interreligious forum for partisan polemics.
When John Paul II had his turn to speak, he read his prepared
speech calling for harmony and cooperation among the three Abrahamic
faith communities. In
referring to the Holy City, he declared:
For all of us Jerusalem, as its name indicates, is the “City of
Peace.” Perhaps no other
place in the world communicates the sense of transcendence and divine
election that we perceive in her stones and monuments, and in the
witness of the three religions living side by side within her walls.
Not everything has been or will be easy in this co-existence.
But we must find in our respective religious traditions the
wisdom and the superior motivation to ensure the triumph of mutual
understanding and cordial respect.
The pope went on to invoke the Golden Rule as a common moral
standard. But he urged his listeners to go beyond that guideline to
embrace “true love of neighbor,” which is “based on the conviction
that when we love our neighbor we are showing love for God, and when we
hurt our neighbor we offend God.”
Looking back at history, he said:
We are all aware of past misunderstandings and conflicts, and
these still weigh heavily on relationships between Jews, Christians, and
Muslims. We must do all we can to turn awareness of past offenses and
sins into a firm resolve to build a new future in which there will be
nothing but respectful and fruitful cooperation between us. The Catholic Church wishes to pursue a sincere and fruitful
interreligious dialogue with the members of the Jewish faith and the
followers of Islam. Such a
dialogue is not an attempt to impose our views upon others.
What it demands of all of us is that, holding to what we believe,
we listen respectfully to one another, seek to discern all that is good
and holy in each other’s teachings, and cooperate in supporting
everything that favors mutual understanding and peace.
The Jewish, Christians, and Muslim children and young people
present here are a sign of hope and an incentive for us.
Each new generation is a divine gift to the world.
If we pass on to them all that is noble and good in our
traditions, they will make it blossom in more intense brotherhood and
cooperation.
As the pope was uttering these inspiring words, the two youth
choirs that were scheduled to sing together at the end of the program
were locked in heated arguments in another room, stimulated by the
politically oriented remarks of Rabbi Lau and Sheikh Tamimi.
In fact, these teenagers only agreed to perform their choral
piece on condition that their conductor say, publicly, how distressed
they were by the conduct of the two religious leaders.
By this time, Sheikh Tamimi had left the stage altogether,
leaving the pope and the rabbi and an empty chair.
This event left a sour taste in the mouths of everyone present.
Dr. Goshen-Gottstein, who directs the Jerusalem-based Elijah
School for the Study of Wisdom in World Religions, drew this lesson from
the experience: “In
instances where religious personalities are involved in politically
sensitive situations, events need to be more tightly controlled and
orchestrated.” In
assessing the overall impact of the pope’s visit, he said that it
produced a positive change in many Israelis’ view of Christianity,
especially the nonobservant Jewish majority.
Most of the Orthodox Jewish community in Israel simply ignored
the visit and excluded themselves from it.
The Notre Dame event reminded us that the ongoing political
conflict between Israelis and Palestinians pollutes our spiritualities
as Jews, Christians, and Muslims. This
was true in 2000 and is even more the case today, as we all suffer the
consequences of the horrific violence, death, and destruction that
erupted just six months following the pope’s Jubilee pilgrimage.
During his Holy Land visit, the pope did his best to appear
politically even-handed as an apostle of peace and justice.
His appearances in Bethlehem and the nearby Dehaisheh refugee
camp signaled his solidarity with the suffering and the aspirations of
Palestinians. All along his route, both sides tried to enlist the pontiff
as a champion of their own cause, but he resisted the temptation to take
sides. He kept to his
self-defined mission, moving about the land and offering its wounded
inhabitants the balm of indiscriminate love.
There have been a few encouraging signs of interfaith cooperation
since his visit, including the Alexandria Declaration issued in January,
2002, by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim clerical leaders from Israel,
Palestine, and Egypt, as well as the behind-the-scenes negotiations to
resolve the 38-day siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in
April-May of 2002. But so
much more needs to be done by religious leaders and grass-roots
activists from the various faith communities, to help create a climate
more conducive to political discussions between the two peoples.
In this context, where the primary antagonists are Jews and
Muslims, Christians can and should act as mediating, reconciling agents
of peace with justice. John
Paul II demonstrated by his example in March 2000 that such a task is
possible and beneficial to all, even if there is deeply ingrained
hostility and resistance to change on all sides.
In assessing the impact of the pope’s visit, the editor of the
HA’ARETZ daily newspaper said: “Mercy has come to the State of Israel this week and has
left banal politics to one side.”
Avraham Burg, then Speaker of the Knesset (the Israeli
parliament), wrote an article for the newspaper MA’ARIV in which he
described how Israeli Jews were now developing a new understanding of
Christianity. What had been viewed as “a religion that spilt blood with
the Crusades and the Inquisition has become a religion in which its
priests are raised to the level of Righteous among the Nations. It is not possible to understand the fall of totalitarian
regimes in Latin America, in South Africa, and in Poland without
thinking, in recognition, of the man who yesterday kissed the Western
Wall.” The most widely read paper in Israel, YEDIOT AHRONOT, printed
a two-page photo of the pope in prayer before the Wall. Prime Minister Barak told the newspaper, “This historic
visit has brought respect for Israel and contributed to shalom
between Judaism and Christianity.”
Four years later, we are trapped in an ongoing political impasse,
with its attendant horrors and hardships for both Israelis and
Palestinians. The pope
still offers prayers for peace from Rome, and religious personalities
around the world issue pleas for safeguarding the sanctity of human life
and upholding the dignity of every human being.
The
political toxicity threatens to overwhelm the spiritual dimension of our
lives, in the Holy Land and, after September 11, 2001, everywhere else.
In the midst of political hostility and uncertainty, the
relations between the government of Israel and the Christian communities
of the land have turned sour during the course of 2003 and 2004.
On April 7, 2004, a letter was sent to Israel’s ambassador to
the United States, Daniel Ayalon, co-signed by the Most Reverend John H.
Ricard, SSJ, Bishop of Pensacola-Tallahasee, Florida, and Chairman of
the International Policy Committee of the Conference of Catholic
Bishops, and by Cardinal William Keeler, Archbishop of Baltimore and
Episcopal Moderator for Catholic-Jewish Relations.
After referring to the holy festivals of Passover and Easter
which overlapped again this year, and to the joy of the U.S. Catholic
community in its experience of dialogue with the Jewish people, the two
Catholic officials appealed to Ambassador Ayalon to help rectify some
festering problems:
Against the background of this mutual affection, and in the light
of the progress made in Catholic-Jewish relations and honest dialogue
these past forty years, we are dismayed at the deterioration of
relations between your government and the Catholic Church in Israel and
the territories under Israel’s control.
The growing problem of the denial of visas [for church workers
and clerics] or indefinite delay in their issuance, the recent cases of
mistreatment of clergy and religious awaiting visa renewal, difficulties
over taxation, including those of our own Catholic Relief Services, and
the suspension of negotiations on treaties regarding fiscal matters and
other issues have created the most difficult situation in living memory
for the Church in the Holy Land.
In
December, 1993, we celebrated, with your predecessor, the signing of the
Fundamental Agreement [between the Holy See and the government of
Israel], which is so important, not just for the Church and the
government of Israel, but for freedom and pluralism within Israeli
society as a whole. Regrettably,
as the agreement’s tenth anniversary passed, provisions respecting the
Church’s right to deploy its own personnel in Israel and for both
parties to avoid “actions incompatible” with negotiating an
agreement on fiscal matters, including taxation, were being routinely
ignored. Despite repeated
promises of remedies, the visa problem has grown still more serious,
and, the requests of the Holy See notwithstanding, negotiations on a
fiscal agreement have been suspended.
With all
our affection for the Jewish people and without wavering in our
commitment to the state of Israel, the many disappointments and the
multiplication of problems are a cause of grave concern…
Another letter was sent on April 13, 2004, this time to President
George Bush from the Most Reverend Wilton D. Gregory, President of the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Bishop Gregory called on the president to be more active in
mediating a two-state political accommodation between Israelis and
Palestinans. He cited Pope
John Paul II’s appeal to all parties in the Middle East conflict to
“renew dialogue without delay,” with the help of “the
international community [which] cannot flee from its
responsibilities…but must assume them courageously.”
Also in his letter, Bishop Gregory shared his “grave concern
about the deteriorating relations between the Israeli government and the
Catholic Church in the Holy Land,” identifying the same problems
specified in the letter to Ambassador Ayalon.
It is clear from these two letters that the inspiration and
promise in the pope’s Jubilee pilgrimage are being challenged by new
obstacles to improved relations. Jews
and Catholics must join together to guarantee that our bonds of
fraternal affection, nurtured by gestures of repentance and forgiveness,
are not undermined by reactionary attitudes.
Good will must be continually fostered, and honest dialogue on
difficult issues must be facilitated by people who are sensitive to the
apprehensions and concerns of all parties.
I hope and pray that the present difficulties can be overcome.
Against the backdrop of history, they should be seen as temporary
setbacks on a long and uphill path towards a blessed future.
Just 100 years ago, in 1904, an historic encounter took place
between Theodore Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism,
and Pope Pius X. Herzl went
to the Vatican shortly before his death to secure the pope’s
endorsement of his movement’s aim to re-establish Jewish sovereignty
in the Holy Land. In his
diary, Herzl recorded Pope Pius’s response:
The Jews have not recognized our Lord; therefore we cannot
recognize the Jewish people…We cannot prevent the Jews from going to
Jerusalem, but we could never sanction it.
If you come to Palestine and settle your people there, our
churches and priests will be ready to baptize all of you.
It took another sixty years, and the genocide of European Jewry,
for this normative Catholic understanding to be replaced by “Christian
charity” towards Jews on the theological level, divorced from
international politics. It
took yet another twenty-nine years until the Holy See, under Pope John
Paul II’s direction, established diplomatic relations with the State
of Israel, thereby repudiating Pius X’s anti-Zionist theology.
And it was not until the media spectacular of John Paul II’s
Jubilee pilgrimage that the Church’s conditioned resistance to Jewish
statehood was finally and unequivocally relegated to the history books.
It is now up to us, all Jews and Catholics who care about
redeeming the past and ensuring a blessed future for the coming
generations, to add our contributions to the betterment of relations
between us. As an
unforgettable milestone along this sacred path, Pope John Paul II’s
Jubilee pilgrimage to the Holy Land will stand out as a beacon of light
to illumine our way.
