c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy’s task Friday (May 15) was a tough one: Explain the Vatican’s recent statement on the Holocaust, widely criticized by Jews, to a skeptical Jewish audience.

As might be expected, Cassidy, who heads the Vatican agency that wrote the document, defended the controversial statement as promoting”a new spirit in Jewish-Catholic relations.”But he changed few minds.

Instead, his Jewish respondents remained critical of what they view as the Catholic Church’s ongoing avoidance of any responsibility for the centuries of Christian anti-Semitism that preceded the Nazis’ slaughter of some 6 million Jews before and during World War II.”It may be inconvenient for Christians to acknowledge the Christian roots of anti-Semitism, but the suffering of too many generations of European Jews at the hands of Christians requires us to deny this new myth that the anti-Semitism of the Shoah (Hebrew for Holocaust) had no Christian roots,”said Martin S. Kaplan, chairman of the American Jewish Committee’s interreligious affairs commission.

The exchange between Cassidy and Kaplan occurred during the Australian-born cardinal’s first public appearance before a Jewish group since the March release of the Vatican document”We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah.” The document, which took more than a decade to produce, was widely criticized by Jews, who dismissed it as too little, too late.

Jews were particularly upset with the document’s defense of Pope Pius XII, accused by Jews of not doing enough to stop the Holocaust, and by its insistence that Nazi anti-Semitism was a”neo-pagan”expression unrelated to the church’s admitted”anti-Jewish”history.

Speaking to some 600 American Jewish Committee members gathered in a hotel ballroom for breakfast, Cassidy said the document was primarily intended for Catholics. It”is not to be seen as the (church’s) final word”on the subject, he said, and”stands as a clear rebuttal”to those who deny the Holocaust’s full scope.

He also said the Vatican”was amazed, almost distraught”by the amount of negative Jewish reaction stirred by the document.

Cassidy responded to Jewish claims the document sidesteps church responsibility in the Holocaust by distinguishing between the”mystical”church, which Catholic teaching says is forever”holy and sinless,”and”members of the church,”who, he said, may, indeed, be”sinful.” Then, without elaboration, Cassidy added:”Let me state firstly that when we make this distinction, the term `members of the church’ does not refer to a particular category of church members, but can include, according to the circumstances, popes, cardinals, bishops, priests and laity.” The cardinal also acknowledged the church’s historical mistreatment of Jews, noting”there were expulsions and forced conversions”and the papal order issued in 1555 establishing in Rome the first officially ordered Jewish ghetto in Europe.

But he insisted, as did the document, that”to make a jump from the anti-Judaism of the church to the anti-Semitism of the Nazis is, I believe, to misread the nature of the Nazi persecution. To quote from the Vatican document: The Shoah was the work of a thoroughly modern neo-pagan regime”with”its roots outside of Christianity …” The AJC’s Kaplan termed Cassidy’s distinction”meaningless.””To contend that Christianity had no impact on the development of anti-Semitism in Europe is to contend that Christianity had no impact on the social, cultural and political history of Europe,”said Kaplan.”Nothing could be further from the truth. Christianity has been an all-pervasive aspect of European life for the past 1,000 years. … Perhaps this document has revealed more than intended, and we have learned more than we expected. For now we know how serious is the need for Christian study of the roots of anti-Semitism, which has been largely a European phenomenon.” Rabbi A. James Rudin, the AJC’s interreligious affairs staff director and an RNS columnist, echoed Kaplan’s remarks, saying the Vatican document”inadequately and incompletely”addressed the question of church teachings that helped make possible the Holocaust.”I find it interesting that the word `responsibility’ is found only once in the entire statement, and that is, not surprisingly, in the letter of contrition from the pope that is addressed to Cardinal Cassidy as the introduction to the entire document,”said Rudin.

Rudin’s reference was to the brief introduction to the Vatican document written by Pope John Paul II, in which the pontiff encouraged Catholics”to place themselves humbly before the Lord and examine themselves on the responsibility which they too have for the evils of our time.”

DEA END RIFKIN