Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews (108 page)

1962
The Second Vatican Council convenes, an implicit Church response to the Holocaust.

1965
Vatican II issues
Nostra Aetate,
deploring antisemitism, rejecting the idea that the Jews can be charged with the death of Jesus.

1978
Karol Wojtyla becomes Pope John Paul II and immediately sets out to heal the breach between Catholics and Jews. He also begins a program of rolling back the reforming spirit of Vatican II.

1979
John Paul II, at Auschwitz, calls the death camp the "Golgotha of the modern world."

1993
The Vatican recognizes the state of Israel.

1998
The Vatican issues "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah." Edith Stein is canonized, despite Jewish objections. Reports surface that, inside the Vatican, the "cause" of Pius XII is advancing toward sainthood.

2000
John Paul II issues an apology for the historic sins of members of the Church. He visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Five months later Pius IX is beatified.

NOTES

Epigraph

Rahner,
Theological Investigations,
vol. l, 151–53.

1. Sign of Folly

1. John Paul II, "Homily at Auschwitz, June 7, 1979," in
Spiritual Pilgrimage,
7.

2. For a discussion of this convent, see Bartoszewski,
Convent at Auschwitz.

3. Ibid., 87.

4. Ibid., 91.

5. Ibid., 92.

6. For a discussion of the varied Jewish responses to the Holocaust, see Katz,
Post-Holocaust Dialogues.

7. See, for example, Levinas,
Totality and Infinity.

8. Quoted by Helmut Peukert, "Unconditional Responsibility for the Other: The Holocaust and the Thinking of Emmanuel Levinas," in Milchman and Rosenberg,
Postmodernism and the Holocaust,
155.

9. Adorno, "Education after Auschwitz."

10. Elie Wiesel, "Art and Culture after the Holocaust," in Fleischner,
Auschwitz,
405.

11. Quoted by Küng,
Judaism,
585.

12. For an example of a work of Christian theology that does this, see Moltmann,
Crucified God.

13. Elie Wiesel, "Talking and Writing and Keeping Silent," in Littell and Locke,
German Church Struggle,
274.

14. Melito of Sardis,
On Parcha,
cited in Küng,
Judaism,
152.

15. See
Nostra Aetate,
in Abbott,
Documents of Vatican II,
660–68.

16. Rubenstein,
After Auschwitz,
20. The "depth and persistence" of this charge against Jews is indicated by its having been repeated by a senior Vatican official, Father Peter Gumpel, S.J., the "relator" of the cause of the canonization of Pius XII. He said that "it is a fact that the Jews have killed Christ. This is an undeniable historical fact." Father Gumpel repeated this officially discredited charge in a CBC interview in March 2000, just days after Pope John Paul !I presided at the historic liturgy of Catholic repentance in St. Peter's Basilica. See
The Globe and Mail
(Toronto), March 18, 2000.

17. I prefer to use "antisemitism" over the traditional "anti-Semitism." The latter, as Padraic O'Hare, citing Professor Yehuda Bauer of Hebrew University, explains, "subtly grants the existence of something called 'Semitism,' in response to which one might well assume a posture of opposition." The hyphenated word thus reflects the bipolarity that is at the heart of the problem of antisemitism. See O'Hare,
Enduring Covenant, 5f.

18. For an example of the complicated Jewish attitudes toward crucifixion language, see Maybaum,
Face of God,
77–80. Maybaum strikes a note different from John Paul II: "Owing to the weakness of Christianity in our time, the Golgotha of Auschwitz was nothing other than the slaughtering bench where pagans threw off their Christian teaching. Owing to Christian failure, Auschwitz as a modern Golgotha was a place of cruel paganism" (80). For a Jewish response to Maybaum, see Katz,
Post-Holocaust Dialogues,
248–67.

19. Michael Lerner wrote, "To think that God willed the brutal and senseless murder of more than a million children is to think that God is either a sadist or mad."
Jewish Renewal
177.

20. Genesis 1:2. See also the discussion of "Holocaust" in Novick,
Holocaust in American Life,
133–34.

21. The Jewish philosopher Jean-François Lyotard distinguishes between Western civilization's figment "the jews," with a lowercase j, and what he calls "real Jews." This entity "the jews" exists only in the consciousness of Europe as a principle of negativity, denial, hatred, and guilt, which is why Europe wants to be rid of it. See, for example, Lyotard,
Heidegger and "the jews,
" 3.

2. Stumbling Block to Jews

1.
Boston Globe,
February 24, 1998.

2. Ibid.

3. See Blackman,
Seasons of Her Life.

4. Quoted by Michael |. Horowitz, correspondence,
New Republic,
March 2, 1998, 4.

5. Leon Wieseltier, correspondence,
New Republic,
March 2, 1998, 5.

6. Wiesel, Sea
Is Never Full,
193.

7. The theologian Bernard J. Lee, S.M., titles his multivolume work on the Jewish origins of Christianity
Conversations on the Road Not Taken.
See
Jesus and the Metaphors of God.

8. Arendt, Origins
of Totalitarianism,
8.

3. The Journey

1. This phrase originates with the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, who used it to describe all people of good will, attributing to them a kind of membership in the Church whether they knew of it or not, wanted it or not. See, for example, Rahner,
Theological Investigations,
vol. 5, 115–34.

2. Cited in Burroway,
Writing Fiction,
14.

3. Aristotle,
The Poetics,
11.2.

4. 1 Corinthians 1:23.

5. The Vatican document "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah," issued in 1998, deflects responsibility away from "the Church as such" in this way, saying, for example, that "the Church should become more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children" (
http://jcrelations.com/stmnts/vatican3-98.htm
; the Web site
jcrelations.com
is a good source for documents concerning Jewish-Christian relations). In explaining this, the document's chief author, Cardinal Edward Cassidy, later stated in various discussions, including one of which I was a part, that the Church, as the Bride of Christ, is incapable of sin, but the fathers of Vatican II can be understood as having taken another view. Article 8 of its "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church" reads, in part, "The Church, however, clasping sinners to its bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and renewal." The Catholic theologian Richard McBrien, an expert on Vatican II, noted that "there is no theological or doctrinal impediment to attributing sin to the Church as such in this whole terrible matter of the Shoah and of the Church's complicity in it." Quoted by Rudin, "Reflections," 523. We will see more of this question later.

6. See, for example. Fisher,
Seminary Education.
In a career spanning three decades, Eugene Fisher, of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, has done more to root out antisemitism from Church educational materials than any other Catholic, and this volume shows that. See also Cunningham,
Education for Shalom.

4. My Mother's Clock

1. In the winter of 2000, as I was revising this, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem announced that its
Montmartre in Spring,
by Camille Pissarro, which had been looted by the Nazis, properly belonged to the heirs of a Jew who died at Theresienstadt in 1942. The painting had come into the collection of John and Frances Loeb in New York in 1961, and in 1985 the Loebs had donated it to the Israel Museum in honor of its founder, Teddy Kollek. After the rightful owner retook title to the painting, her attorneys permitted it to remain at the museum on extended loan, saying that "all members of the family that perished in the Holocaust would find comfort in the knowledge that the citizens of the State of Israel can experience this magnificent work of art."
Ha'aretz,
English edition, February 18, 2000.

2. See, for example, "Victims No More: Auschwitz Survivor's Suit Aims to Expand Human Rights Law by Hitting Companies Where It Hurts,"
National Catholic Reporter,
May 7, 1999.

3. The word "genocide" appears in Lemkin, Axis
Rule.
See Fein,
Accounting for Genocide,
3.

4. George Will, "Fifty Years of Existential Anxiety,"
Boston Globe,
May 8, 1998.

5. James Carroll, "Shoah in the News: Patterns and Meanings of News Coverage of the Holocaust," Discussion Paper D-27, October 1997, Joan Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

6. See, for example, Dershowitz,
Vanishing American Jew.

7.
Tertio Millenio Adveniente,
cited in Szulc,
Pope John Paul II,
443.

8. "Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past" (
http://jcrelations.com/stmnts/vatican12-99.htm
).

9. I heard Eva Fleischner make this point at the meting with Cardinal Cassidy.

10. For my criticism of "We Remember," see "Vatican Response to the Holocaust: A Bell Has Been Struck, with No Sound,"
Boston Globe,
March 31, 1998. For my analysis of "Memory and Reconciliation," see "The Pope's Call for Forgiveness: Plaudits and Some Questions,"
Boston Globe,
March 14, 2000.

11. Paul Elie, "John Paul's Jewish Dilemma,"
New York Times Magazine,
April 26, 1998, 37. The article's title reveals the ancient bias, as if the "dilemma" here has ever been Jewish, and not Christian. ("How does it feel to be a problem?" W.E.B. Du Bois sarcastically asked his fellow blacks.) When the problem is defined as belonging to the victim group, the "solution" becomes that group's removal. "There will be the Jewish problem," Cardinal Augustin Hlond, the primate of Poland, declared in 1936, "as long as the Jews remain." Quoted by Modras,
Catholic Church and Antisemitism,
346–47.

12. Introductory letter, "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah."

13. Allen, "Objective and Subjective Inhibitants," 122.

14. "Statistics on the Membership and Finances of the Churches, 3 July 1944," in Matheson,
Third Reich and Christian Churches,
99.

15. Allen, "Objective and Subjective Inhibitants," 122.

16. Quoted by Helmreich,
German Churches under Hitler,
360.

17. Quoted by Allen, "Objective and Subjective Inhibitants," 122.

18. Helmreich,
German Churches under Hitler,
360.

19. Lipstadt, "Aryan Nation."

20. Cynthia Ozick, "Of Christian Heroism," 47.

5. Passion Play

1. Friedman,
Oberammergau,
51.

2. John 1:11.

3. Pelikan,
Jesus Through the Centuries,
30. Pelikan says that "crucial" was apparently coined by Sir Francis Bacon.

4. Augustine,
The Confessions,
bk. 8, ch. 12, 178–79.

6. My Rabbi

1. For a fuller description of my encounter with Pope John XXIII and what it meant to me, see Carroll,
American Requiem,
76–79.

2. Hedwig Wahle, "Pioneers," 4. Later in this book, we will see the negative impact on Jewish-Christian relations of the Dreyfus affair, at the end of the nineteenth century. Wahle notes, significantly, that Isaac, as a young man, was a passionate defender of Dreyfus. It is not too much to assume that Isaac's important work, with its positive outcome, is a result of the Dreyfus affair.

3. For a discussion of the importance of Jules Isaac's work and its influence on Pope John XXIII, see Gregory Baum's introduction to Ruether,
Faith and Fratricide,
2–4.

4.
Nostra Aetate,
in Abbot,
Documents of Vatican II,
666.

5. Ibid., 665–66.

6. Eight prayers were said for various groups on Good Friday, each one accompanied by a ritual genuflection, except for the prayer
Pro perfidis Judaeis.
The prayer for Jews was not to be dignified by kneeling. Another Good Friday tradition that can spawn contempt for Jews remains a part of Catholic liturgy, the Reproaches, which are a litany of charges made by Jesus against a group he calls "my people." ("My people, what have I done to you? How have I offended you? Answer me! I led you out of Egypt, from slavery to freedom, but you led your Savior to the cross," and so on.) Many liturgists regard the Reproaches as inherently anti-Jewish, or at least likely to be taken that way. About 40 percent of Catholic parishes in the United States use them as part of Good Friday services, but they remain in the official Catholic prayer books in all parishes. See John L. Allen, "Good Friday's Can of Worms,"
National Catholic Reporter,
March
17,
2000.

7. John 19:6–7, 15.

8. John 1:11.

9. Romans 11:28.

10. In the nineteenth century, Jesus was commonly believed to be free of the taint of Jewish blood first because the Virgin Birth protected him from Joseph's Jewishness. Then the doctrine of Immaculate Conception (1854), which declared that Mary was conceived without sin, inoculated him against the Jewish blood of his maternal grandparents.

11. Quoted by Neudecker, "Catholic Church and the Jewish People," 284.

12. Shapley,
Promise and Power,
354.

13. Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center would reflect this point of view in 1999, calling Pius XII "the Pope of the Holocaust" and declaring that the pope prayed in 1941 for a German victory over the Soviet Union. See "Rabbi's Condemnation of Pope Pius XII Criticized,"
Catholic News Service,
May 18, 1999.