Subject: The Vatican and the Holocaust
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 22:41:08 +0000
To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
From: Eddie Chumney
Subject: The Vatican and the Holocaust
To: <HEB_ROOTS_CHR@geocities.com>
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THE JERUSALEM POST DAILY INTERNET EDITION
(March 17, 1998)
VATICAN: WE REGRET ERRORS OF HOLOCAUST
By LISA PALMIERI-BILLIG and news agencies
VATICAN CITY (March 17) -- The Vatican yesterday expressed deep regret for the
"errors and failures" of Roman Catholics during the Holocaust. However, it
strongly defended wartime Pope Pius XII in a statement promised a decade ago
to Jewish groups.
The document disappointed many Jewish leaders, however, because it stopped
short of apologizing for any failures by church leaders, as bishops in several
European countries have done in recent years.
"We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah" is the title of the 14-page document
issued by the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with Jews. The
long-awaited document had taken over 10 years to produce.
Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, president of the commission, said the document was
"addressed to the Catholic faithful throughout the world" and hoped that all
Christians will meditate "on the catastrophe which befell the Jewish people,
on its causes, and on the moral imperative to ensure that never again such a
tragedy will happen. At the same time it asks our Jewish friends to hear us
with an open heart."
He said it was "more than a request for pardon." It was "an act of repentance,
of teshuva - a word used in the text."
He said the document was not "a conclusion" but rather "another step" for
further development.
In a preface to the document, Pope John Paul II expresses his hopes that it
will "enable memory to play its part in the process of shaping a future in
which the unspeakable iniquity of the Shoah will never again be possible."
The text concludes: "We pray that our sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish
people has suffered in our century will lead to a new relationship with the
Jewish people...
"The victims from their graves, and the survivors through the vivid testimony
of what they have suffered, have become a loud voice calling the attention of
all humanity... the spoiled seeds of anti-Judaism and antisemitism must never
again be allowed to take root in any human heart."
The document includes a statement on Pius XII.
"During and after the war, Jewish communities and Jewish leaders expressed
their thanks for all that had been done for them, including what Pope Pius XII
did personally or through his representatives to save hundreds of thousands of
Jewish lives."
A footnote lists statements made in his favor by prominent Jews of the time.
The document did not move the pope's position beyond what he expressed last
fall to a seminar on anti-Jewish relations:
"In the Christian world - I do not say on the part of the Church as such -
erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish
people"engendered "feelings of hostility toward this people...
"We cannot know how many Christians in countries occupied or ruled by the Nazi
powers or their allies were horrified at the disappearance of their Jewish
neighbors and yet were not strong enough to raise their voices in protest,"
the document said.
"We deeply regret the errors and failures of those sons and daughters of the
Church."
The document did take to task "governments of some Western countries of
Christian tradition, including some in North and South America" for being
"more than hesitant to open their borders to the persecuted Jews."
Many Jewish leaders were not impressed.
Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor, demanded an "explicit
apology for the shameful attitude of the pope [Pius XII! at the time."
Instead, the document defended Pius XII for using his first encyclical, in 1939,
at the start of his papacy, to warn "against theories which denied the unity
of the human race and against the deification of the state," and which could
all lead to a real "hour of darkness."
"The document rings hollow," said Abraham Foxman, US national director of the
Anti-Defamation League. "It is an apologia full of rationalization for Pope
Pius XII and the Church. It takes very little moral and historical
responsibility for the Church's historic teaching for the contempt of Jews. It
talks about the past in question marks rather than providing answers.
"We are perplexed how the Vatican, under the leadership of Pope John Paul II,
could have finalized a document that lags behind the unequivocal statements of
the German and French bishops."
Last fall, French bishops apologized for their silence during the deportation
of Jews, and German bishops have said that the Church did not do enough to
fight Nazism and condemn the Holocaust.
Rabbi David Rosen, director of the ADL's Israel office welcomed the Vatican's
reflection on the Shoah as "part of a historic process of self-criticism on
the part of the Church of its past teaching and conduct."
But he expressed "regret that the document has not gone as far as the pope
himself," noting that the document was a step backwards from the pope's
apostolic letter, "Tertio Millennio Adveniente"
Paragraph 36 of the letter speaks of the "acquiescence shown by many Christians
concerning the violation of fundamental human rights by totalitarian regimes."
The Shoah document asks only, "Did anti-Jewish sentiment among Christians make
them less sensitive, or even indifferent, to the persecutions launched against
the Jews by National Socialism when it reached power?"
Rabbi Mark Wiener, chief rabbi of the West London Synagogue, said, "There are
positive aspects, but the Shoah document is weak in a number of areas. It
obviously had to be filtered through the more conservative elements of the
Curia, which are far behind the pope himself."
"Now there must be a massive thrust for opening the archives on World War II,"
Weiner said.
But Tullia Zevi, president of the Federation of Italian Jewish Communities,
called the document "an important step forward in the right direction."
"The Church is slow moving," she said. "One must know its language, and if it
speaks of teshuva this means it recognizes its past errors."
Regarding the Jewish testimonies in support of Pius XII, she said, "These were
given in 1945, before people could get a view of the general picture. But I
don't know why people expect the Church to speak against Pius XII. If the
Church is calling for teshuva, this itself means that not everything was right
under Pius XII's papacy."
The Australian Cardinal Cassidy defended his commission's work.
"It's more than an apology. We feel we need to repent... for those members of
our church who failed" to do enough, he said at a news conference.
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THE JERUSALEM POST DAILY INTERNET EDITION
(Mar 17, 1998)
NEW CATHOLIC LINE ON THE HOLOCAUST
BACKGROUND by HAIM SHAPIRO
(March 17) -- In the Catholic dialogue with the Jewish people, the Vatican has
dealt with theology in Nostra Aetate; it has dealt with the the State of Israel
by reaching an agreement and establishing diplomatic relations; and it hopes
to resolve the issue of the Holocaust with yesterday's document, "We Remember:
A Reflection on the Shoah."
This is the view of Dr. Geoffrey Wigodor, one of the two Israeli representatives
on the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations with
Christians (IJCIC). Although Wigoder was quick to note that the document said
many important things, he said it also has some obvious shortcomings.
He noted that he was present as the Israeli representative when Paul John Paul
II received a Jewish delegation in 1987. It was just after the pope had
received Kurt Waldheim, he recalled, and there was a tremendous Jewish
reaction, especially in the US. Since the pope was about to visit America,
there were fears in the Vatican that the issue would overshadow the visit.
It was a private meeting at the pope's summer residence at Castel Gondolfo and
it was the first such meeting, Wigoder recalled, at which there was an actual
conversation and not set speeches. It was the Jewish representatives who
suggested that the Vatican issue a statement on the Holocaust and a
condemnation of antisemitism.
Although the pope endorsed the idea, there followed a three- or four-year delay
because of the dispute over the convent at Auschwitz, during which IJCIC cut
off its dialogue with the Vatican. Then, Wigoder added, there were six or
seven years during which the Vatican dragged its feet. In the meantime, there
was at least one major leak of a draft of what Jewish groups hoped might be
the final statement.
That draft eventually emerged as a statement by German Catholic bishops, which
acknowledged the guilt of German Catholics whose acquiescence allowed Hitler
to perpetrate the Holocaust. The statement said that anti-Jewish attitudes in
their church prompted "Christians in the years of the Third Reich not to put
up the necessary resistance to racist antisemitism. Catholics have much denial
and guilt."
A similar statement was issued by the Polish Council of Bishops. In the
following years there came statements, albeit not as far-reaching, by the
American bishops, the Hungarians, and the Dutch. The most recent such
statement came from the French Council of Bishops, expressing repentance for
its silence during the Holocaust.
Wigoder said he is convinced that the statement released yesterday had been
drafted a year or two ago, but had no doubt been circulated throughout the
curia and modified as a result of what he called "internal considerations."
He recalled that when the pope had issued a statement last year on the Hebrew
Scriptures, there had immediately been reactions. In addition, he said, what
could be described as "conservative Catholic theological attitudes" probably
led to sensitivity to every word and line.
As for the text, Wigoder noted that some Jewish observers had expected a
condemnation of Pius XII, something which he said will never happen. Others,
he said, had expected an apology to the Jewish people, which might have been
expected, considering the statement of the French bishops and the fact that
the pope himself in 1990 said that the Church has to do teshuva. In yesterday's
document, he said, Christians are called to repentance for the deeds of their
"brothers and sisters," but not the Church.
What has appeared from the document, he said, is a new Catholic line which first
came to light at the conference on antisemitism organized by the Vatican. The
pope said that in the Christian world, but not on the part of the Church itself,
there were erroneous interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish
people. In the document, Wigoder said, the line is that it is not the Church
that was to blame, but individuals who fell short of the Christian ideal.
"This flies in the face of history," Wigoder said, noting it was the Church
fathers themselves who interpreted the New Testament in an anti-Jewish manner;
it was the Church councils which ruled against the Jews; and it was
the popes themselves who drove the Jews out of civilized life, locking them up
in ghettos.
In contrast, Wigoder noted the French bishops, who said that "the Church which
we proclaim as holy and we honor as a mystery is also a sinful Church and in
need of conversion." Such a view seems to be rejected by the document, he said.
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THE JERUSALEM POST DAILY INTERNET EDITION
(Mar 17, 1998)
LAU CALLS VATICAN APOLOGY 'TOO LITTLE TOO LATE'
By HAIM SHAPIRO
JERUSALEM (March 17) -- Israeli leaders yesterday reacted with disappointment
to the Vatican statement on the Holocaust, with Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael
Lau, an Auschwitz survivor, saying it was "too little and too late."
Lau praised the establishment of the commission which drew up the document,
entitled "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah," but he added that the Church
should have repeated the prayer traditionally recited by Jews on Yom Kippur:
"For the sins which we have committed before You, we are guilty."
Lau revealed that in a meeting in the Chief Rabbinate in Jerusalem with
Cardinal Edward Cassidy, head of the Vatican's Commission for Religious
Relations with the Jews, under whose direction the document had been
formulated, he had called for a clear statement on the silence of Christianity
on the eve of the Holocaust and during the war. Lau said that a large part of
the population which carried out the killing and mass destruction had been
believing Catholics.
"There is no doubt that a clear condemnation by the Vatican at that time would
have had the force to stop the terrible things done during the Holocaust," Lau
said.
He said he recalled from his childhood the anti-Jewish teachings of the Church.
Jews had been afraid to walk by churches on Sunday, for fear of encountering
those who emerged from anti-Jewish sermons, he said.
Lau also criticized the failure to mention the silence of Pope Pius XII. Lau
noted that the document had only praised him and made no mention of his
"papering over" the sins of the Church or of his refusal to meet with
the late chief rabbi of Palestine, Yitzhak Herzog.
"You can't speak of rectifying the past without identifying the actions of
individuals," Lau said.
Rabbi David Rosen, director of the Anti-Defamation League's Israel office and
the ADL's co-liaison to the Vatican, welcomed the document as "part of a
historic process of self-criticism on the part of the Church of its past
teaching and conduct."
However, he also expressed regret that the document failed to categorically
identify the direct link between the Church's historic "teaching of contempt"
toward the Jews and the cultural climate that facilitated the Holocaust.
"On the positive side, it is the first official Vatican document to
acknowledge Christian guilt, but on the other hand, the document certainly
could have gone further," Rosen said.
He added that the pope himself had gone further in his apostolic letter,
"Tertio Millennio Adveniente," when he spoke of Christian acquiescence, while
yesterday's document only asks whether anti-Jewish sentiment among
Christians made them less sensitive or even indifferent.
Of course, Rosen said, the Church cannot say that all Catholics were guilty,
but it has to say that the teachings of the Church had a significant role in
creating the climate in which the Holocaust took place.
Itzhak Minerbi, an expert on the Vatican, said that instead of examining the
role of the Church and especially of Pope Pius XII, the document chose to place
all the responsibility on the faithful sons and daughters of the Church.
Minerbi said that the document is far from the last word to be heard on the
subject, and it was only the exaggerated hopes of some Jewish organizations that
had led people to believe otherwise.
"This is not the document which will end all disputes about the Shoah,"
Minerbi said.
MK Shevah Weiss (Labor), a Holocaust survivor, said that the document is
important, but did not erase the papal silence in the dark period of Nazism
and Fascism.
He added that he is full of appreciation for the righteous gentiles, with whom,
he said, "we will build a different future." However, he also expressed the
Jewish disillusionment with all of European civilization and Christianity.
"Europe was a lake of frozen Jewish blood. On this continent of Beethoven,
Goethe, and the French Revolution, the ideas of humanism, Christianity, and
rationalism and the fruits of the French Revolution were terribly broken. Many
Christians turned their crosses into swastikas," Weiss said.
Liat Collins contributed to this report.
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THE JERUSALEM POST DAILY INTERNET EDITION
(Mar 17, 1998)
VATICAN DOCUMENT FALLS SHORT
ANALYSIS by SERGIO ITZHAK MINERBI
(March 17) -- "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah" is the title of the
document published yesterday by the Vatican's Commission for Religious
Relations with the Jews.
This is not a document which will close the debate between Jews and the
Catholic Church about the deeds or lack of deeds by the Church to save Jews
during World War II.
In his cover letter Pope John Paul II places this document in the frame of
preparations for the third millenium, hopes that it "will indeed help to heal
the wounds of past misunderstandings and healings" and that "the Shoah
will never again be possible."
But the document itself is rather disappointing because it does not deal at
all with the responsibility of the Church as an institution or of Pius XII,
the pope who kept silent about the persecutions of the Jews during World war II.
The document duly states that the Shoah took place in Europe "in countries of
long-standing Christian civilization" and deep sorrow is expressed "for the
failure of her [the Church's! sons and daughters in every age," but the Church
as such is above any criticism. So is Pius XII, who appears together with his
predecessor Pius XI, and who warned "against theories which denied the unity of
the human race and against the deification of the state." Pius XII is also
recalled for receiving the thanks of Jewish communities for what he "did
personally or through his representatives to save hundreds of thousands of
Jewish lives."
Nazism is depicted as a neo-pagan regime and its antisemitism "had its roots
outside of Christianity." The Church, it is stated, "condemns all forms of
genocide," like the massacre of the Armenians, the victims in Ukraine, the
genocide of the Gypsies. So in a document totally dedicated to the Shoah, its
uniqueness is questioned.
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