Extend Catholic-Jewish amity to Islam, Jewish official tells dialogue meeting
The historic reconciliation between Jews and Roman Catholics over the past 40 years should be extended to Muslims to deal with the challenges of the 21st century, a senior Jewish official has said. The regular dialogue the two faiths have maintained since the Catholic Church renounced anti-Semitism at the Second Vatican Council should be “a model for transformed relations with Islam,” Rabbi Richard Marker told the opening session of a meeting reviewing four decades of efforts to forge closer ties after 1,900 years of Christian anti-Semitism and to ask how the dialogue can progress in the future.
“Forty years in the histories of two great world religions is but a blink of an eye,” Marker, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultation, said on Sunday evening. “But 40 years of a relationship is a sign of its maturity.”
“The focus of the world is no longer specifically on Jewish- Christian amity. We must, for so many reasons, involve the third of our Abrahamic siblings… Islam,” he added.
Major faiths have held countless bilateral meetings to foster better ties since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) launched the world’s largest church on the path of dialogue. Christian and Jewish leaders increasingly meet their Muslim counterparts to seek common ground and better understanding, but none of these discussions have the history or depth of the Catholic-Jewish dialogue officially begun in 1971.
In those 40 years, the Catholic Church has apologized for its sins against the Jewish people and recognized Judaism as its spiritual “elder brother,” a step that Jewish leaders praise as a historic change in perspective. The dialogue has not always been easy. There is still much mutual misunderstanding at the grass-roots level and Jewish leaders are quick to criticize the Vatican over divisive topics, especially related to the Holocaust.
Read the full story here. See also our timeline “Ups and Downs in Catholic-Jewish relations.”
Timeline – Ups and downs in recent Catholic-Jewish relations
Senior officials from the Roman Catholic Church and international Jewish groups met on Monday in Paris to review relations after 40 years of sometimes difficult dialogue.
Following is a timeline of the ups and downs in Catholic-Jewish relations since the first papal visit to Israel.
1964 – Pope Paul VI is the first modern pope to visit the Holy Land. During the visit he avoids using the word Israel, which the Vatican did not recognise at the time.
1965 – The Second Vatican Council issues a document, “Nostra Aetate” (“In Our Times“), renouncing anti-Semitism and rejecting the idea of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus.
1971 – The International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee holds the first of its biannual meetings in Paris.
1986 – Pope John Paul II visits Rome’s synagogue, becoming the first pope in nearly 2,000 years to visit a Jewish place of worship and saying Jews are “our beloved elder brothers”.
1994 – Vatican and Israel forge full diplomatic ties after almost 2,000 years of Christian-Jewish hostility.
I hope that I’m mistaken, but I believe that I posted a serious comment here a day or so ago, and it appears to have been blocked. If someone who has studied the issues covered in this post for many years can’t have their views aired because they don’t agree with the moderator’s views, why publish any views at all, if they must be views that everybody already SHARES?
The point that I would like to make is that it is very difficult to persuade Chritians that there is no way for them to escape responisibility for the Holocaust which took place in a country where 98% of the population professed to be Christians. 6 million Jews perished at the hands of millions of CHRISTIANS. After trying in vain to persuade Christians and especially Roman Catholics to face up to that responsibility, I have created a web page designed to ask Catholics to see why they should care about the tremendous harm done TO THEM (and not just to the Jewish OTHERS) by their church leaders. See http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/RC_victim s.html .
Muslims honor Jewish Holocaust victims at Auschwitz
Prominent Muslims joined Jews and Christians at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz on Tuesday in a gesture of interfaith solidarity designed to refute deniers of the Holocaust such as Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. About 200 dignitaries from across the Islamic world, from Israel, European countries and international organizations such as UNESCO took part in the visit, which included a tour of the site and prayers in Arabic, Yiddish, English and French.
“We must teach our young people in mosques, churches and synagogues about what happened here,” Bosnia’s Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric told Reuters. “This awful place should stand as a reminder to all people that intolerance and lack of understanding between people can result in… such places as Auschwitz.”
Organizers said Tuesday’s visit was mainly aimed at rejecting the view, most forcefully championed by Ahmadinejad but not uncommon in other parts of the Muslim world, that the Holocaust never really happened.
“We chose to give priority to representatives of the Arab and Muslim world and the reason for this is clear,” said Anne-Marie Revcolevschi of the Aladdin Project which works to build ties between Jews and Muslims. “It is mainly from some of these countries that the speeches and documents come that serve as a vehicle for denial (of the Holocaust), hatred and anti-Semitism,” she said, in comments delivered ahead of the visit to Auschwitz.
In sub-zero temperatures the visitors observed a minute of silence at a monument to the victims, laid wreaths and lit candles before being given a guided tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau site, now a museum, by camp survivors.
Other visitors included former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Muslim and other scholars and the mayors of Paris and of many cities in the Islamic world.
Iran Nazi website reopens, raising issue of anti-Semitism
An Iranian Internet site for devotees of Nazi Germany has been allowed to reopen after being blocked briefly by government censors, a news website reported, raising questions about the official attitude to anti-Semitism.
The site, irannazi.ir, says it is the home of the “Historical Research Society for World War Two and the Third Reich.” According to conservative news website TABNAK it was blocked temporarily but then reopened, saying the suspension had been due to complaints by Iranian Jews.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has many times denied the Nazis’ extermination of millions of Jews during World War II. Ahmadinejad angered Israel and its allies by calling the Holocaust a “myth” and a “lie” and has predicted the end of Israel as a state.
The Nazi website does not appear in any way linked to the Iranian state, but with strict controls on the Internet blocking many sites deemed undesirable, TABNAK criticized the government for granting permission to the Nazi website. “Why has the Culture Ministry given permission to the so-called Iran’s Nazism society … we hope the authorities have a proper reason for that,” TABNAK said.
The Culture Ministry was not available to comment.
Muslim religious demands on French state schools rising: report
The sometimes difficult integration of Muslims is climbing the ladder of public concerns in Europe. It’s been hotly debated in Germany and figured in recent elections in the Netherlands and Austria. Now, a French government body called the High Council for Integration (HCI) has drawn up a critical report about the problems faced by — and posed by — school pupils with immigrant backgrounds. It’s not only about Muslim pupils, but they are mentioned so frequently that it’s clear who’s mostly involved here.
Among its findings, the report says Muslim pupils and parents in France are increasingly making religious demands on the state school system and that teachers should rebuff these demands by explaining the country’s principle of laïcité, the official separation of church and state. Among the problems it listed were pupils who upset classes by objecting to courses about the Holocaust, the Crusades or evolution, who demand halal meals and generally “reject French culture and its values.”
For more of its findings, read our news report on the study here.
“It is becoming difficult for teachers to resist religious pressures,” said the report, posted in draft form (here in French) on the website of the newspaper Journal du Dimanche (JDD), which published an article in its paper edition entitled “School threatened by communalism.” “We should now reaffirm secularism and train teachers how to deal with specific problems linked to the respect for this principle,” it said. The final report will be presented to the government next month.
France has been here before. There was a long and lively debate about religion in schools before the parliament banned Muslim headscarves and other religious garb in state schools in 2004. There were two large official reports — the so-called Stasi report and a parliamentary report — on laïcité in the schools that focused on an increase in religious demands in state schools.
There was also a critical book called “Les territoires perdus de la République” (The lost territories of the Republic) about rising anti-Semitism among Muslim pupils. After that, the issue was eclipsed by debates about full face veils and halal meat.
This study comes during the six-month period between France’s ban on full face veils and the imposition of that ban after a planned campaign to inform veiled women what awaits them once the prohibition is in full force. Patrick Gaubert, president of the HCI, told the JDD that his group would also soon put out “an assessment of our integration policy that will show our relative failure in this domain.”
Rome’s chief rabbi says only God can judge Pius XII on Holocaust
Only God can judge whether war-time Pope Pius XII did enough to save Jews and whether he should have spoken out more forcefully against the Holocaust, according to Rome’s Chief Rabbi Riccardo di Segni, who will host Pope Benedict for his first visit to the Italian capital’s synagogue on Sunday.
Speaking to Reuters at his synagogue along the Tiber River, Di Segni criticised a comment by Cardinal Walter Kasper that Pius “followed the will of God as he understood it” and had saved thousands of Jews in Rome and elsewhere. Some Jews have accused Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of not doing enough to help Jews facing persecution.
“I think that it can be morally dangerous and, religiously speaking, dangerous to say that the will of God is to be silent and not to say a word in front of the suffering of the people,” Di Segni said, speaking in English. “So let us be careful and let us not (look for) a way of absolving people. I think only God may understand if people have done His will righteously, not us.”
Benedict’s visit to the synagogue has been overshadowed by his decision last month to move Pius closer towards sainthood. Jewish groups reacted angrily when he approved a decree recognising Pius’s “heroic virtues.” The two remaining steps to sainthood are beatification and canonisation, which could take many years. Jewish groups had wanted a freeze on the process until more Vatican archives were made available to scholars.
Here is the transcript of my interview with Di Segni:
Q. The pope coming on Sunday to your synagogue has taken on many levels of significance. One is the continuation of the process begun by John Paul. But are you afraid that the visit might be overshadowed by issues surrounding Pius XII?
A. “Each step of dialogue with Christians is very complicated so every day we have to face discussions and polemics and so on. The sensitivity of survivors all around the world is the same the sensitivity that is felt where so we are very conscious of the difficulties of this moment. We have to try to find the right way to go ahead with the process of friendship with Christians and this is the challenge for today. We are absolutely aware that there are difficulties, that the problem absolutely aware that there are difficulties, that the problem of the past, the interpretation of the past, is one of the main difficulties, but we also have the problem of the the main difficulties, but we also have the problem of the future so we all have to understand what is possible to do in this narrow street.”
Papal Infallibility means never having to say “I was wrong”.
After all, if it wasn’t God’s will, you wouldn’t have done it.
And as the only person to know God’s will is God (and you, of course), nobody has the right to say you loused it up.
Because if the Pope could be judged in the same manner he would judge you, the whole system falls apart. Without the acceptance of hypocrisy, no religion could survive.
So as the good Lord once said: “Render unto the chumps their idol”.
Mosque-synagogue twinning drive crosses the Atlantic
An innovative campaign to build grass-roots dialogue between Jews and Muslims in North America has crossed the Atlantic and taken off in Europe. The “Weekend of Twinning of Mosques and Synagogues,” which began last year with about 100 houses of worship in North America, expanded this year to include events in eight European countries. The weekend meetings, which have been taking place in November and December, bring together mosque and synagogue congregations to discuss ways of overcoming anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in their own communities.
To get an idea of how these meetings go, here are reports on twinning events in … New York … New Orleans … Buffalo … Toronto … Minneapolis … Paris …
Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the New York-based Foundation for Ethnic Understanding who initiated this outreach to Muslims, met with his European partners at a dinner in Paris on Tuesday evening. The twinning drive took off most successfully in France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish minorities. The Jewish-Muslim Friendship Society of France (AJMF), whose leader Rabbi Michel Serfaty had already created a Muslim-Jewish network with a “Friendship Bus” that tours France promoting dialogue, brought together 30 synagogues and 30 mosques. There isn’t any comparable network elsewhere in Europe, but several congregations organised similar twinnings this year in Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland.
“At a time when the conventional wisdom says that our two peoples must live in perpetual conflict, Rabbi Serfaty and the AJMF are showing that there is another, much better way,” Schneier said at the dinner hosted by the AMJF. “We are gratified that this is happening not only in France, where conflict between Muslims and Jews has been especially intense, but across North America and Europe as well. In the spirit of Chanukah, let us keep aglow the light of caring and understanding and allow that light to guide the reconciliation and cooperation of Muslims and Jews worldwide, including the Middle East.”
One way that Schneier spread the word about twinning was by inviting 28 European imams and rabbis to visit New York and Washington last summer to see U.S. dialogues in action. That led to their participation in the twinning weekends this year.
Not one to think small, Schneier told me he now wants to expand the program to Australia, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil. “Fourteen million Jews and 1.4 billion Muslims can’t remain in a continuous state of conflict,” he said. Among the grass-roots breakthroughs the twinning drive has brought was the first visit by an imam to a synagogue in Moscow, to attend an event marking the 20th anniversary of Pinchas Goldschmidt as the city’s chief rabbi.
The twinning campaign doesn’t have a set program or style of meeting, Schneier said. “It’s not a cookie-cutter. Each community has its own traditions. But the objective always remains the same — to establish communication.”
PAPA DIXIT — Pope’s last day and departure for Rome
On the last day of his Holy Land pilgrimage, Pope Benedict visited the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic partriarchates, prayed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and delivered a farewell address that touched on the main political points of his trip.
Here are some excerpts from his speeches:
AT THE GREEK ORTHODOX PARTRIARCHATE OF JERUSALEM:
ECUMENISM: “I pray that our gathering today will give new impetus to the work of theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches, adding to the recent fruits of study documents and other joint initiatives. Of particular joy for our Churches has been the participation of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His Holiness Bartholomew I, at the recent Synod of Bishops in Rome dedicated to the theme: The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church. The warm welcome he received and his moving intervention were sincere expressions of the deep spiritual joy that arises from the extent to which communion is already present between our Churches. Such ecumenical experience bears clear witness to the link between the unity of the Church and her mission.”
AT THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE:
HOPE FOR CHRISTIAN MINORITY: “The empty tomb speaks to us of hope, the hope that does not disappoint because it is the gift of the Spirit of life (cf. Rom 5:5). This is the message that I wish to leave with you today, at the conclusion of my pilgrimage to the Holy Land. May hope rise up ever anew, by God’s grace, in the hearts of all the people dwelling in these lands! May it take root in your hearts, abide in your families and communities, and inspire in each of you an ever more faithful witness to the Prince of Peace! The Church in the Holy Land, which has so often experienced the dark mystery of Golgotha, must never cease to be an intrepid herald of the luminous message of hope which this empty tomb proclaims. The Gospel reassures us that God can make all things new, that history need not be repeated, that memories can be healed, that the bitter fruits of recrimination and hostility can be overcome, and that a future of justice, peace, prosperity and cooperation can arise for every man and woman, for the whole human family, and in a special way for the people who dwell in this land so dear to the heart of the Saviour.”
“This ancient Memorial of the Anástasis bears mute witness both to the burden of our past, with its failings, misunderstandings and conflicts, and to the glorious promise which continues to radiate from Christ’s empty tomb.”
Mixed Israeli press reaction to Benedict’s Yad Vashem speech
Pope Benedict was never going to please his critics in Israel, so it’s not surprising that today’s headlines were almost all negative about his speech at Yad Vashem yesterday. Reading the English-language press this morning, I was interested in seeing the nuances in the different reactions. Here are a few examples of what I found:
In Haaretz, the main headline read “Survivors angered by Benedict’s ‘lukewarm’ speech.’” That story focused on the reaction from Yad Vashem officials as we reported yesterday. You can see a PDF of its front page here. The two commentaries were more nuanced than the main story.
Tom Segev’s front-page analysis “Someone in Rome chose ‘killed’” focused on the way Benedict described the Holocaust victims’ fate: “He inexplicably said Jews “were killed,” as if it had been an unfortunate accident. On the surface, this may seem unimportant: Israelis often use the same term, and they do not need the pope to tell them about the Holocaust, which today is a universal code for absolute evil. But the word the pope used is significant because someone in the Holy See decided to write “were killed” instead of “murdered” or “destroyed.” The impression is that the cardinals argued among themselves over whether Israelis “deserve” for the pope to say “were murdered” and decided they only deserve “were killed.” It sounded petty.
Even the recurring use of the term “tragedy” seemed like an attempt to avoid saying the real thing. The verbal stinginess Benedict displayed last night also diminishes the impact of anything he might say about Palestinian suffering. Had he said what he needed to on the Holocaust, he could have said more to condemn Israel’s systematic violation of the human rights of residents of the West Bank and Gaza..
In “Speaking to his own flock,” Lily Galili said Benedict wasn’t actually speaking to Jews in his address, but to Catholics. “It isn’t his fault that we were disappointed. We don’t understand the Catholic Church and its dogma. At Yad Vashem yesterday, he was not addressing the Jews. Like any leader he used words that would be understood by his support base, the Church’s one billion adherents around the world.” She said Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, opposed the sweeping Millennium apology that Pope John Paul made for all the sins committed by the Church. But Benedict had become more flexible since becoming pope, she argued. “Considering his reputation as a conservative, his visit to Israel in itself is a big compromise.”
Here’s a video of some reactions yesterday, followed by more press comment from today below the screen. The video starts with a fiery speech by a Muslim cleric in the pope’s presence, which led to criticism from both the Vatican and Israeli rabbis.
The headline on the Jerusalem Post‘s front-page news story read: “Pope stops short of Holocaust apology in Yad Vashem speech. The updated online version is here. Its “Pope in Israel” section online has links to several articles, including one asking “Was there a Jewish Pope?”
Okay, I’ve pretty much had it! This is beyond ridiculous! So now the Holy Father is nice enough to show up to a Holocaust memorial (which he didn’t have to do by the way), and renounce the hatred that caused the Holocaust, vowing to never let it be repeated, and all he gets for it is this? THIS!?! This is the thanks he gets?! They attack him for not attacking the Catholic Church?! They attack him for not apologizing for something neither he nor the Church is responsible for?! They attack him for his unfortunate heritage of having been a teenage boy who lived under the reign of Nazi Germany?! Unbelievable!!! I’ve had it with this politically correct LIBERAL FASCISM! So you’ll have to excuse me while I cut loose a bit.
My God is Jewish. His name is Yeshua HaMashiach (or “Jesus Christ” in English). I am a member of a religion (The Roman Catholic Church) which came down to us through the Mosaic Law, the Kingdom of Israel, then the promised Messiah and his apostles – all of them Jewish. I believe that anyone who hates Jews, for no other reason than being Jews, is a racist monster and ultimately a God hater.
The reason why the pope did not apologize for the Church at the Holocaust memorial, is because the Church is not responsible for the Holocaust. If the Catholic Church were responsible, then it would have reason to apologize, but an apology means nothing if the one doing the apology had nothing to do with the thing that needed to be apologized for. It has been well proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Pope Pius XII saved nearly a million Jews from the hands of the Nazis, that Hitler himself wanted the pope kidnapped, and that the Soviet KGB was responsible for spreading lies about Pius XII after his death, implicating him as complicit in the Holocaust, for the purpose of undermining the moral authority of the Catholic Church in Western Europe during the Cold War. If you say Pius XII, or the Catholic Church, had any role in promoting the Holocaust, then you are repeating the propaganda lies of Communists from a failed Communist state. That’s what these Israeli Jews are doing with the pope right now. They’re repeating Communist propaganda, and promoting the agenda of the KGB. But is it really the KGB’s agenda anymore? Not likely, since former operatives within that organization now freely admit the whole thing was propaganda.
This Masonic monument marks the entry into Israel from Egypt. It’s designed to send a clear message of who controls the fate and future of Israel.
Now this should not surprise us when we consider just who is in control of the modern Israeli state. Freemasons have a long history of animosity toward the Catholic Church, and you could say the Catholic Church stands squarely against everything the Freemasons work toward. I would not be the least bit surprised if Freemasons were behind the continued KGB propaganda blitz against Pius XII long after the fall of the Soviet Union. I dare say that they are the ones keeping it alive, for their own purposes, which are designed to further undermine Catholicism.
The ultimate goal of Freemasonry is to rebuild Solomon’s Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Why? Because the Masonic religion (if you can call it that), is chalk full of imagery and symbolism hearkening back to the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Masons trace their lineage to the Knight’s Templar, and while this may or may not be their actual lineage, the Freemasons believe it is. Rebuilding the ancient Temple means a lot to Freemasons, and now that they control both the United States and the European Union, it is within their reach. Let us not forget the Masonic imagery on American money, and the bleak mason-like temple that lies beneath with United Nations building….
So now let’s look at the pawns of this Masonic agenda. First you have the United States and the European Union, controlled entirely by the Masonic brotherhood. Is it a secret conspiracy? Of course not! This is out in the open, and hid from no one. All you need to do is pick up an American dollar bill and look at the back side. Then of course you have the modern nation-state of Israel, also under control of the brotherhood. Is this a secret? Of course not! It’s openly advertised at Israel’s border with Egypt for everyone to see upon entering the country.
So now that we know who the pawns are, I guess the next question is who are the suckers? Essentially there are three suckers in this whole scheme. The first suckers are the Israeli Jews, and any Jew for that matter, who buys into the KGB nonsense that the wartime pope and the Catholic Church are somehow responsible for the Holocaust. I must say, the Communists (and now the Freemasons) are playing them quite well. The second suckers are American Evangelicals, who are told to blindly support Israel no matter what because it is “God’s chosen nation.” This in spite of the fact that modern Zionism was practically invented by Freemasons in 1896 and the modern nation-state of Israel was created by Masonic cooperation in 1948. The third suckers are liberal to moderate Catholics, so watered down in their faith by Modernism, that they’re willing to believe the anti-Catholic propaganda about the wartime Pope Pius XII, and go along with Evangelicals in their blind support of the Israeli nation.
The Jewish people, particularly Israeli Jews, are being used. They’re victims, and they’re pawns in a much bigger scheme. Their attacks against the pope are not Jewish in origin. Those attacks come straight from the Masonic Lodge.
The pope goes to Israel as an emissary of peace, supporting the only thing that might possibly prevent World War III – that being the “two-state solution.” Now that Israel exists as a nation-state, it has just as much a right to survive as Canada, America, France, Germany or Britain. However, at the same time the sovereignty of non-Israeli Arabs (both Christians and Muslims) must be recognized. There is no other way outside of all out war.
Popes at Yad Vashem: comparing John Paul and Benedict
Pope Benedict’s speech at the Yad Vashem today took a different approach from the speech his predecessor Pope John Paul delivered at the Holocaust memorial on 23 March 2000. Polish-born John Paul mentioned the Nazis twice while Benedict, a German, did not. John Paul recalled the fate of his Jewish neighbours; Benedict offered no personal wartime memories. John Paul spoke in a broader perspective, mentioning godless ideology, anti-Semitism, the “just” Gentiles who saved Jews and the shared spiritual heritage of Christians and Jews. Benedict took a narrower approach, meditating on the significance of names and speaking only of the Catholic Church rather than Christians in general.
Here are a few quotations comparing and contrasting the two speeches:
INTRODUCTION:
POPE JOHN PAUL: “In this place of memories, the mind and heart and soul feel an extreme need for silence. Silence in which to remember. Silence in which to try to make some sense of the memories which come flooding back. Silence because there are no words strong enough to deplore the terrible tragedy of the Shoah. My own personal memories are of all that happened when the Nazis occupied Poland during the War. I remember my Jewish friends and neighbours, some of whom perished, while others survived. I have come to Yad Vashem to pay homage to the millions of Jewish people who, stripped of everything, especially of their human dignity, were murdered in the Holocaust. More than half a century has passed, but the memories remain. Here, as at Auschwitz and many other places in Europe, we are overcome by the echo of the heart-rending laments of so many. Men, women and children cry out to us from the depths of the horror that they knew. How can we fail to heed their cry? No one can forget or ignore what happened. No one can diminish its scale. We wish to remember. But we wish to remember for a purpose, namely to ensure that never again will evil prevail, as it did for the millions of innocent victims of Nazism.”
POPE BENEDICT:“I will give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name … I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off” (Is 56:5). This passage from the Book of the prophet Isaiah furnishes the two simple words which solemnly express the profound significance of this revered place: yad – “memorial”; shem – “name”. I have come to stand in silence before this monument, erected to honor the memory of the millions of Jews killed in the horrific tragedy of the Shoah. They lost their lives, but they will never lose their names: these are indelibly etched in the hearts of their loved ones, their surviving fellow prisoners, and all those determined never to allow such an atrocity to disgrace mankind again. Most of all, their names are forever fixed in the memory of Almighty God. One can rob a neighbor of possessions, opportunity or freedom. One can weave an insidious web of lies to convince others that certain groups are undeserving of respect. Yet, try as one might, one can never take away the name of a fellow human being.”
INTERFAITH RELATIONS:
POPE JOHN PAUL: “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. We remember, but not with any desire for vengeance or as an incentive to hatred. For us, to remember is to pray for peace and justice, and to commit ourselves to their cause. Only a world at peace, with justice for all, can avoid repeating the mistakes and terrible crimes of the past. As Bishop of Rome and Successor of the Apostle Peter, I assure the Jewish people that the Catholic Church, motivated by the Gospel law of truth and love and by no political considerations, is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place. The Church rejects racism in any form as a denial of the image of the Creator inherent in every human being.”
When Pope Benedict XVI took a different approach, it’s because he believed that he doesn’t have to repeat what his predecessors had said. As a head of the Catholic Church, the Church founded by Christ, Pope Benedict XVI took the approach of a theologian on how God loves his people that the God of Abraham is a God of justice and equity and just as God heard the cry of Abel, he will also hear the cry of the holocaust victims.
On the other hand, we must remember that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the genius behind Pope John Paul II that even the Rabbis had acknowledged that fact. In fact, this is the reason why the Rabbis especially the conservative ones did not join in mocking Pope Benedict XVI with regard to Bishop Williamson remarks. They in fact called for the immediate restoration of the dialogue between Jews and the Catholic Church. I hope this will continue that we may be united as God wants us to be.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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