The Vatican began talks on Monday with an ultra-traditionalist Catholic splinter group, one of whose bishops has denied the full extent of the Holocaust, with the aim of re-integrating it fully into the Church. Vatican officials and leaders of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) discussed what a statement called “doctrinal differences still outstanding” between the group and Rome.

(Photo: Swiss guards at St. Peter’s Basilica, 25 Oct 2009/Tony Gentile)

The traditionalists reject many of the reforms of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, which modernised many aspects of the 1.1 billion member Church, including its liturgy, its relations with other Christians and its view of Jews.

The group, numbering several hundred thousand members, insists that it represents the true faith, and opposes the way the Church has evolved over the past 40 years. The SSPX says the Vatican and the vast majority of the Church went off the rails at the Council.

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The Vatican warning to the ultra-traditionalist SSPX not to ordain new priests this month without Roman approval had no discernible effect on the rebel Catholic group. Soon after the Vatican declared the ordinations would be illegitimate, Father Yves Le Roux, rector of the SSPX’s St Thomas Aquinas seminary in Winona, Minnesota, said the ordination of 13 new priests there would go ahead on Friday.

“Absolutely. We are doing it,” he told our Vatican correspondent Philip Pullella by telephone. “This is something the Vatican feels it has to say. It’s a political statement but the reality is totally different.”

(Photo: SSPX ordains deacons in Écône, Switzerland, 3 April 2009/Valentin Flauraud)

The SSPX seminary at Zaitzkofen, in the German state of Bavaria, declared its intention to go ahead with its June 27 ordinations in a statement posted on its website on Monday (here in German original and in English). It argued that Pope Benedict’s decision in January to lift the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops was a “confidence-building measure for the coming theological discussions with representatives of the Holy See” meant to thrash out an official position in the Church for the SSPX.” Further ordinations are due at the SSPX headquarters in Écône, Switzerland on June 29.

Defying a papal warning against ordaining new priests before its official status was clarified seems to be the opposite of a confidence-building measure on the SSPX’s part. As the BBC’s David Willey put it in his report from Rome tonight, Pope Benedict “gave them an inch and they took a mile.”

So the SSPX has thrown the ball back into the Vatican’s court. The Vatican statement said “the ordinations should still be considered illegitimate” and “doctrinal and, consequently, also disciplinary questions still remain open.” That leaves open the option of a further reaction from Rome, or possibly from Regensburg Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller. Or there might be no reaction, just that curious Vatican silence that caused it such trouble after the Regensburg speech and the readmission of the Holocaust-denying SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson. That would leave the narrow issue unresolved and pose wider questions about Pope Benedict’s leadership.

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(Photo: Pope Benedict with Muslim leaders in Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, 12 May 2009/Osservatore Romano)

“Branded an implacable foe of Islam after his landmark Regensburg speech in 2006, Pope Benedict has shown during his current Holy Land tour that he is slowly learning how to dialogue with Muslims.

“While media attention has focussed on Jewish criticism of his speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Benedict’s speeches to Muslims have used classic Islamic terms and new arguments that resonate with Muslims and ease the quest for common ground.

“This new tone may not erase the memory of the Regensburg speech many Muslims took as an insult, because it implied Islam was violent and irrational. But Islamic, Jewish and Catholic clerics told Reuters it marked a shift in his thinking that could help the world’s two largest faiths get along better…”

My analysis for the Reuters wire (read the whole article here) will sound familiar to readers of the blog because I already flagged the ideas here in the posts At Dome of Rock, Benedict uses Muslims’ argument to Muslims and Benedict’s “anti-Regensburg” speech in Amman mosque. But turning these reporters’ observations into an analysis for Reuters requires more than just my observations. So I spent a few hours yesterday calling interfaith dialogue experts to hear their reactions to Benedict’s speeches.

There were a few interesting observations I couldn’t squeeze into the wire story because of the strict length limitations we have there. For example, Fr. Roucou felt that Benedict’s speech at the Dome of the Rock was “a bit too philosophical” because it didn’t have anything specifically Christian in it. “It’s too bad in the speeches to the Muslims that there were no references to Jesus and the Gospels,” he said. “It’s all about the Creator God. That’s fine — I don’t want to get the Gospels in there at any price. But in his speeches to Jews, Benedict quoted the Psalms.”

Noting the way Benedict seemed to be connecting with Muslims but having a harder time with Jews, especially Israeli public opinion, Imam Hendi said: “The fact that the Holy See can talk to Muslims doesn’t mean it can’t talk to Jews. I want Jews and Muslims and Christians around the table for dialogue. It can never be complete if Jews aren’t part of the dialogue.” The way that Benedict built upon the Common Word appeal for dialogue “creates a wonderful momentum. I believe he’s doing the right thing and I believe we can move forward”.

Given the seven-hour time difference between Jerusalem and New York, I first emailed Rabbi Visotzky to ask when was the best time to call. In addition to setting a time for our talk, he also sent along an interesting observation about how important it is in interfaith dialogue to use terms the others know or define terms so they can understand them: “One must learn the language of “the Other” in order to enter dialogue. It helps in a variety of ways, not the least of which is to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings. To wit, when I was meeting with a group of Saudi Imams, the U.S. State Dept. translator gently explained to me that although I knew what I meant when I used the term Zionist (and it was a positive thing), they heard it as a very negative term. Once I defined it to them, we were able to move on…”

(Photo: Catholics attend pope’s Mass in Nazareth, 14 May 2009/Gil Cohen Magen)

After several days when the location of a speech sometimes clashed with the message he wanted to send, Pope Benedict must have been relieved to visit Nazareth today. The town where Jesus grew up lies in Israel proper, in the north of the country, and not in the political minefield of the West Bank that Benedict visited yesterday to see Bethlehem. In the town of the Holy Family, he was able to defend traditional Catholic family values without having to consider issues such as Palestinian statehood or apologies for the Holocaust. As he put it:

“All of us need… to return to Nazareth, to contemplate ever anew the silence and love of the Holy Family, the model of all Christian family life. Here, in the example of Mary, Joseph and Jesus, we come to appreciate even more fully the sacredness of the family, which in God’s plan is based on the lifelong fidelity of a man and a woman consecrated by the marriage covenant and accepting of God’s gift of new life. How much the men and women of our time need to reappropriate this fundamental truth, which stands at the foundation of society, and how important is the witness of married couples for the formation of sound consciences and the building of a civilization of love!”

Of course, this is just as political as the other questions he’s dealt with on this visit, as the growing acceptance of gay marriage at the state level in the United States shows, but it’s on a different level. The issue isn’t the same in Israel, because the the Chief Rabbinate oversees marriages here and rules out gay marriage. The same goes for civil unions. But colleagues in our Jerusalem bureau tell me that times are changing here as well. Israeli social services now often recognise a long-standing gay relationship as similar to common law marriage and extend benefits to same-sex partners.

Who wrote Pope Benedict’s speeches for this trip? Why do his speeches to Muslims hit the spot and those to Jews seem to fall short? Does he have two teams of speechwriters, one more attuned to the audience than the other?

We don’t know the answers (yet) but a pattern suggesting that has certainly emerged. Look at what he had to say today in Bethlehem to Palestinians, Christian and Muslim:

• To Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas: “Mr President, the Holy See supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers…”
• To Palestinian Catholics at Mass: “In a special way my heart goes out to the pilgrims from war-torn Gaza: I ask you to bring back to your families and your communities my warm embrace, and my sorrow for the loss, the hardship and the suffering you have had to endure.”
• At Aida refugee camp: “I know that many of your families are divided – through imprisonment of family members, or restrictions on freedom of movement – and many of you have experienced bereavement in the course of the hostilities. My heart goes out to all who suffer in this way.”
• On the Israeli-built wall: “In a world where more and more borders are being opened up – to trade, to travel, to movement of peoples, to cultural exchanges – it is tragic to see walls still being erected… How earnestly we pray for an end to the hostilities that have caused this wall to be built!”

(Photo: Pope Benedict speaks at Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, 13 May 2009/Tony Gentile)

These comments stand in strong contrast to his speech at Yad Vashem, which was so abstract that his Jewish audience — and commentators in the media — were openly disappointed by it. They called it lukewarm, said he avoided speaking clearly about the Holocaust and said nothing about the fact he himself is German. He skirted the contentious issues that strain Catholic-Jewish relations, such as the possible beatification of the late Pope Pius XII or the recent lifting of the excommunication of an arch-conservative bishop who denies the Holocaust.

The latest gaffe came yesterday when his spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, flatly denied to journalists that the German-born pope had ever been a member of the Hitler Youth (see our story). He was reacting to repeated mentions of this in the media and possibly a comment to that effect by the speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin. But the pope, while he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said in a book over a decade ago that he had been enrolled in the Hitler Youth by force. Reporters who had the book back in their office bookcases quickly found the quotes on the internet. Within hours, Lombardi had to eat humble pie and admit the book was right after all.

Coming after the uproar over the case of the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson, where Vatican communications were chaotic, one has to wonder why some speeches work and others don’t. Just imagine if Pope Benedict had added a line to his Yad Vashem speech saying there was no place in the Church’s ministry for Holocaust deniers. Or cut and pasted that line from his speech in Auschwitz in 2006: ” I come here today as a son of the German people.” It would have been so easy. It would have been so effective.

(Photo: Rev. Federico Lombardi, 12 March 2009/Alessia Pierdomenico)

Fr. Lombardi told us yesterday that Benedict had said all these things before and couldn’t be expected to repeat them all in every speech. To criticism that he didn’t mention the total number of Holocaust dead or the issue of anti-Semitism at Yad Vashem, he said the pope had spoken about them on his arrival at Tel Aviv airport — hardly comparable to the Holocaust memorial as a place for a solemn statement. And his reaffirmation of the Vatican’s support for a Palestinian homeland was also just a repetition of what had been said before. By these arguments, he could have skated over that issue today, but he didn’t. Today’s speeches had far more sense of the occasion and the location.

So we’re left with the question we started with. Who writes these speeches? It’s something we’ll have to follow up once the morning-to-evening coverage of this visit is over.

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.

(Photo: Pope Benedict at Yad Vashem, 11 May 2009/Yannis Behrakis)

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?”

Ynetnews, the English-language website of the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, had a news wrapup and a selection of views about the visit. One entitled “Shoah survivor: criticism of pope exaggerated” quoted the head of the Consortium of Holocaust Survivors’ Organizations in Israel, Noah Frug, as saying: “(The pope) is not the president of a Zionist organization, so why should we have any complaints towards him? He came here to bring the Church and Judaism closer together, and we should consider his visit positive and important.”

A contrasting view came from Zeev Factor of the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, who said, “As a native of the county that carried out (the Holocaust), I would expect the pope to declare that anti-Semitism is a sin; as a religious man he is supposed to condemn the phenomenon. In any case it is good that he arrived (in Israel); this way we know what people have learned and what they’ve forgotten.”

Nitzan Horowitz doesn’t mince words in his article Making things worse, with its second part entitled Disrespecting other faiths. His opening words give the flavour of his viewpoint: “Joseph Ratzinger, also known as Pope Benedict XVI, bears the responsibility for the suffering of numerous people. The influential guest … is among the most conservative Church figures. The message he brings with him, as a supreme religious leader who according to Catholic tradition cannot be wrong, is not one of compassion, understanding, or tolerance. In fact, this pope brings a wholly different message: One of indifference, strictness, and religious radicalism.”

What do you think of these reactions?

What should a German pope say at Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem?

The chairman of the Yad Vashem council, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, was underwhelmed by Pope Benedict’s effort at the memorial this afternoon. “There certainly was no apology expressed here,” he told Israeli television. “Something was missing. There was no mention of the Germans or the Nazis who participated in the butchery, nor a word of regret.” Nor was there an “expression of empathy with the sorrow.” Lau also criticised Benedict for not specifically saying six million Jews were killed — even though the pope did use this figure earlier in the day during another speech.

While I don’t agree completely with Rabbi Lau, I also thought the speech was not up to the occasion. It was vague and evasive. It approached the Holocaust in an abstract way. Click here to see the difference between his approach and the more direct and powerful style Pope John Paul chose when he made the first papal visit to Yad Vashem nine years ago.

It is a unique situation when, within living memory of the Holocaust, a German is head of the Roman Catholic Church. He is visiting Israel as the head of a universal church, sure, but nobody can forget that he comes from the country that carried out the Holocaust. This is not to imply that he bears any personal blame. But most German clergy, politicians and average citizens acknowledge their country’s responsibility to admit its failures and pledge to never fail that way again. To do so is simply honest and to their credit – unlike for example Japan, which still struggles with admitting its own history.

So why can’t Benedict do it? What do you think he should have said?

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.”

POPE BENEDICT: “The Catholic Church, committed to the teachings of Jesus and intent on imitating his love for all people, feels deep compassion for the victims remembered here. Similarly, she draws close to all those who today are subjected to persecution on account of race, color, condition of life or religion – their sufferings are hers, and hers is their hope for justice. As Bishop of Rome and Successor of the Apostle Peter, I reaffirm – like my predecessors – that the Church is committed to praying and working tirelessly to ensure that hatred will never reign in the hearts of men again. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the God of peace.”

CONCLUSION:

POPE JOHN PAUL:“I fervently pray that our sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish people suffered in the twentieth century will lead to a new relationship between Christians and Jews. Let us build a new future in which there will be no more anti-Jewish feeling among Christians or anti-Christian feeling among Jews, but rather the mutual respect required of those who adore the one Creator and Lord, and look to Abraham as our common father in faith. The world must heed the warning that comes to us from the victims of the Holocaust and from the testimony of the survivors.”

POPE BENEDICT: “As we stand here in silence, their cry still echoes in our hearts. It is a cry raised against every act of injustice and violence. It is a perpetual reproach against the spilling of innocent blood. It is the cry of Abel rising from the earth to the Almighty… My dear friends, I am deeply grateful to God and to you for the opportunity to stand here in silence: a silence to remember, a silence to pray, a silence to hope.”

(Photo credits Jim Hollander, Ronen Zvulun

As a long-time visitor and resident of the Middle East, I often feel a twinge of sympathy for visitors who might not be as inured as I have become to the rough-and-tumble of a region where religious, political and cultural sensitivites permeate every aspect of daily life, where arguments can blow up from the seemingly trivial and where, confusingly, remarkable levels of co-habitation and co-existence still show up against this explosive backdrop.

Pope Benedict, with his army of advisers and counsellors, is better prepared than many visitors for what the region might hold in store during his week here. But he must be acutely aware of the delicate nature of his trip - and that any gesture, word or act could become a major international issue

After the gentle warm-up of his visit to Jordan the main event started today when he landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport.

The atmosphere in the region in the build-up to the visit has been typical of this part of the world - intense security preparations, high expectations, huge media coverage of a VIP visitor who puts the region back at the centre of world attention where everyone here thinks it belongs, some folk rolling out the welcome mat, other folk saying 'Go back to Rome', and, of course, spin doctors from all sides filling up my e-mail inbox with explanations of how the Pope's visit categorically backs up what they've been saying all along.

Stepping in to this cauldron for anyone can be daunting - when you're the leader of the world's largest religious denomination it's a tightrope act of, dare I say it, biblical proportions.

Muslim anger over the Pope's controversial Regensburg lecture has already tinged his visit to Jordan - but he handled it with no major incidents and his speeches in Amman hit many of the right notes.

That anger, though, is still felt by many in the large Muslim population in Israel and the Palestinian territories, so there will be a lot of focus on the pope's visit to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's Old City - a site revered by Muslims as the place from which Mohammed ascended to heaven to visit the prophets and meet Allah - and on his visit to the West Bank town of Bethlehem, and to the Arab majority town of Nazareth in northern Israel.

Jewish anger , over the Pope's reinstatement in to the clergy of a Holocaust-denying priest and plans to make Pope Pius XII a saint despite the controversy swirling over what Pius did or did not do during the Second World War to save Jews from extermination, will ensure intense interest and analysis of his visits to Yad Vashem and the Western Wall, and his meetings with Israeli religious and political leaders.

Even within the Christian community the Pope will surely come to learn that things are not all peace and love in the Holy Land.

If you need proof - look at the video below of different Christian sects sparring over their rights to use different parts of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which the pope will visit at the end of his tour.

The pope does, indeed, speak softly - lets hope that will be enough to make his trip a success.

Photo Credit: Pope Benedict during a welcoming ceremony at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv  May 11 2009 REUTERS/Tony Gentile

The third annual list of “America’s Most Influential Rabbis” is out, with the top spot going to David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reformed Judaism and co-chair of the Coalition to Preserve Religious liberty.

Saperstein, described in the announcement as a ”Washington insider and political powerbroker,” took the No. 1 ranking away from Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who held that position on last year’s list.

The rankings were made by Jay Sanderson, chief executive officer of JTN Productions (the Jewish Television Network), Michael Lynton, chairman and head of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Gary Ginsberg, executive vice president of News Corp.

There are 50 rabbis on the list, which the executive say they drew up to provoke discussion about the role of religious leaders among Jews and non-Jews. Rounding out the top five were Mark Charendoff, president of the Jewish Funders Network, an international grouping of foundations and philanthropies; Yehuda Krinsky, global leader of the Chabad Lubavich movement; and David Ellenson, president of Hebrew Union College.

Anyone know if there’s a comparable global ”most influential” rabbi list? Who would be your top choice?

(Photo: Undated handout photo of America’s oldest continuously used synagogue west of the Mississippi/REUTERS STRINGER)