NEWS STORY: Jews question sincerity of Vatican in assessment of anti-Semitism

c. 1997 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ The irony is not lost on Tullia Zevi. As the Roman Catholic Church probes its collective conscience to confess its sins against Jews, it refuses to give them a seat at the table.”It would be quite useful even if we were to be silent observers in the […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ The irony is not lost on Tullia Zevi.

As the Roman Catholic Church probes its collective conscience to confess its sins against Jews, it refuses to give them a seat at the table.”It would be quite useful even if we were to be silent observers in the process,”said Italy’s prominent Jewish leader.”But Remi Hoeckman always says, `This is an internal church affair.’ Of course, that is a half truth.” The Rev. Hoeckman heads the Vatican Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews, which for 10 years has been at work producing a document on the church’s already confessed shabby treatment of its”elder brothers in the faith,”as Pope John Paul II refers to the Jewish community.


The commission, which reports to the Pontifical Commission for the Promotion of Christian Unity, has sporadically sought the theological and historical advice of Jewish scholars.

But as the Vatican kicks off perhaps its most important meeting on the subject _ beginning Thursday (Oct. 30) and running through Saturday _ only Christian scholars will be present. The dozen or so papers given at the meeting will not be released, and only at the end will a possible communique be forthcoming.

Jewish leaders have also complained that the Vatican’s refusal to open its secret archives to independent scholars makes the Roman Catholic Church’s examination of anti-Semitism within Christianity suspect.

Scholars say the archives could shed light on the unsettled questions relating to Pope Pius XII during World War II, including the incendiary allegation that the Vatican helped Nazis escape justice after the war.”The Vatican, by not opening its archives, is in fact torpedoing, sabotaging, the quest for justice,”said Shimon Samuels, the European representative of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

Samuels has urged the pope in a letter to open the archives and called Pius XII a”man who sold the soul of the church to the Nazi devil, (who) was by omission a passive accomplice to supreme evil.” Pius XII supporters, rarely as outspoken as the critics, say the pope considered speaking out publicly against the Nazi persecution as a danger not only to the church but to Jews. They contend he acted on behalf of Jews by hiding them in convents, schools and private homes.

Thomas Reese, a Jesuit scholar and author of”Inside the Vatican,”said of the three-day conference,”If what they’re doing is getting imput on anti-Semitism then this has to be seen as part of a process. But at some point they have to get imput from others.” Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University added,”Ultimately, I think it’s one of those things you’ll judge by the fruits of the meeting.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM)

It remains unclear when the document the Vatican has promised will be delivered. Several sources say it is already completed and will be issued by the pontiff shortly after the meeting’s conclusion. Others say the timing of the release is uncertain.”No one’s told me when. The way the Vatican works it could be soon or years from now,”said Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of interfaith affairs at the Anti-Defamation League in New York, who has been consulted by Hoeckman’s commission and regularly comes to Rome.”You’re asking me to be a prophet,”Zevi said when asked if she had been informed.

If Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Christian unity commission, knows, he’s not talking. Hoeckman refuses to say.”All this speculation is wrong,”said the one man who could likely end it. The press office is characteristically unaware.”When we have something we will tell you,”said the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, deputy press spokesman.


More important is what the Vatican will say when it chooses to do so. Of particular interest to the Jewish community is how closely the church will equate its teachings against the Jews with the peril of the Holocaust.

Klenicki said he is encouraged.”I think that this meeting they’re having, regardless of who has been invited, can be a good step forward because they are looking at the whole history of anti-Semitism and its social repercussions,”he said.

Participants at the meeting, sponsored by a commission of the Jubilee 2000 committee, were selected by conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Pontifical Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cassidy. About a dozen scholars, including two Americans, will deliver lectures on the theological history, or roots, of anti-Semitism, beginning with a critique of the New Testament letters attributed to the Apostle Paul and ending with an assessment of Christian anti-Semitism in modern times.

German theologian Hans Herman Henrix, who wrote perhaps the most damning condemnation of Catholics for their treatment of Germany’s Jews during World War II, is among scholars invited to the meeting but was not asked to deliver a paper.”I can only guess why I was not asked”to speak, Henrix said with a chuckle.”My views are well known to the Vatican.”He has written that Christians failed to”put up the necessary resistance to racist anti-Semitism.” Hoeckman’s views, however, may be more in line with the Vatican.

In what could well be a harbinger of the church’s verdict of the period, Hoeckman wrote in a Vatican journal published earlier this month that the Holocaust was a”triumph of evil in a society without God.”He argues there is a fundamental”discontinuity between Christian anti-Judaism and Nazi racism that made the Holocaust possible.” And what of Henrix’s claim Christians failed to fight anti-Semitism and thereby made it more appealing?

The pope has never addressed this question head on. Jewish leaders say they hope he does.


MJP END HEILBRONNER

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!