The pope the jews and Hitler
OVER THE past four decades, the attitude of the Catholic Church toward Judaism and the Jews has undergone a sea change. On the theological level, the decisive event was the Second Vatican Council, which in 1965 finally lifted the collective charge of deicide against the Jewish people, reversing the longstanding Augustinian view that the Jews would eternally bear the mark of Cain. But of no less importance has been the current Pope's personal commitment to reconciliation. Since his election in 1978, John Paul II has repeatedly broken new ground in relations with the Jewish community, becoming the first bishop of Rome to visit a synagogue in the Eternal City, establishing diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the state of Israel, and emphatically denouncing anti-Semitism.Indeed, no other Pope has had so direct an experience of Jewish life and suffering. As a youth growing up in the small Polish town of Wadowice, Karol Wojtyla (as John Paul II was then named) counted Jews among his closest friends and came to know the rhythms of Jewish observance and family life. He would later witness firsthand the Nazi murder of Poland's Jews. Speaking of his hometown in 1994, John Paul II remarked that it was "from there that I have thi
Although this episode has attracted its share of attention in the general press, We Remember itself has so far received relatively little in the way of sustained analysis. Throughout, the long history of Christian persecution of the Jews is discussed with candor and in a spirit of contrition. " Appalled though these ordinary Catholics may have been by the assault on their Jewish neighbors, they "were not strong enough to raise their voices in protest. Refusing "to acknowledge any transcendent reality as the. Christian motifs abound in a typical anti-Semitic rag like Julius Streicher's Der Sturmer. criterion of moral good," the Nazis saw fit not only to attempt to destroy the Jews--witnesses "to the one God and the Law of the Covenant"--but also to reject Christianity and the Church. Similarly controversial was John Paul II's canonization of Father Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish Catholic priest who had opposed the Nazis but was also the founder of a viciously anti-Semitic newspaper in prewar Poland. "What Nazism added to this virulent mix, We Remember continues, was a totalitarian ideology that assigned an "absolute status" to the German state and people. " Nor was this hostility somehow accidental to Christianity. Nazism radicalized these popular stereotypes drawn from the Christian Middle Ages, but it did not invent them. The Shoah took place, it acknowledges, "in countries of longstanding Christian civilization," countries where anti-Jewish sentiment and practices were common. MAKING ITS sympathies clear from the start, We Remember refers to the murder of European Jewry as the Shoah--the Hebrew word meaning "catastrophe. Clearly to the dismay of Church authorities, however, it was greeted with only lukewarm appreciation by Jewish organizations, which, while hailing the Church's genuine desire for self-examination and repentance, faulted its unwillingness to confront unpleasant truths.
Common topics in this essay:
Paul II,
Christianity Vatican,
Nazi-occupied Europe,
Europe's Jews,
Reflection Shoah,
Shoah--the Hebrew,
WHATEVER ONE'S,
Jews Rome,
Der Sturmer,
Vatican Council,
john paul,
paul ii,
john paul ii,
jewish people,
vatican statement,
pius xii,
19th century,
third reich,
|
Acceptance Essays
