Yesterday we mentioned Pope Benedict's visit to a New York synagogue. In an interview published in Salon on April 18, Roman Catholic scholar and author, James Carroll, said that he is troubled by Benedict's attitude toward the Jews. When asked what he expected Benedict to say in his address at the Park East synagogue, Carroll responded thusly:"He'll have to address the history of Christian anti-Semitism in some way, and he'll probably have to address the Holocaust."
Carroll was wrong. As we reported, Pope Benedict said nothing relative to Christian anti-Semitism, nor did he so much as mention the Holocaust. That is profoundly disturbing.
Carroll also noted that previously, when the Pope spoke at a synagogue in Cologne, he "laid the responsibility for Nazi anti-Semitism on what he called neo-paganism [the official Nazi religion]. That's just gravely inadequate," said Carroll, especially for a German pope. "Catholics and Jews who've been part of the Jewish-Christian dialogue recognized that as a troubling signal."
Carroll then refers to an even worse scenario: "When he [Benedict] went to Auschwitz, a few months after speaking in Cologne, he also manifested a very incomplete notion of Christian history in relationship to Auschwitz. Both in what he said and in the incredibly troubling symbolism of the people he greeted there.
"There were 30 Auschwitz death-camp survivors present when the pope went there, and he greeted them. It was very moving; it was beautiful. But, astoundingly, 29 of the 30 were Polish Catholics. One of them was a Jew. Actually, a couple of hundred thousand Polish Catholics died at Auschwitz, and they should be remembered, absolutely. But a million Jews died there, and to treat Auschwitz as if it's some kind of ecumenical grave site and not the center of the anti-Jewish genocide is a big problem. A big problem."
The question was raised as to Benedict's past relationship with the Third Reich; he "was a member of the Hitler Youth and then a German soldier."
Carroll said he "wouldn't hold Benedict responsible for the situation he found himself in as a teenage boy. There wasn't a lot of freedom of choice in Nazi Germany." The crux of the problem for Carroll is that "that youthful experience does not seem to have left him prepared, compared to John Paul II, to accomplish the kind of reckoning that he needs to accomplish."
Another crucial point made be Carroll is that Benedict's "approach to tolerance is limited." This unwillingness to address Christian anti-Semitism is part of what Carroll regards "as [Benedict's] outmoded claims to the triumphal superiority of pope-centered Roman Catholicism. All other Christian denominations, not to mention other religions, are inadequate and inauthentic ways to God. That's also an astounding signal, coming from a pope after the Second Vatican Council.
It is also a disturbing signal, not only for progressives within the Roman church, but also for the rest of us who are not Catholic but live in a world which is deeply influenced by the theologies and practices of the that institution.
(James Carroll is the author of the book, Constantine's Sword.)
1 comment:
Unfortunately, pious statements about the Holocaust never made much of an impression upon me. The six million Jews that were murdered, represented a huge percentage of the entire worldwide Jewish population. It was an attempt to kill any person with “Jewish blood”! It received cooperation from large numbers of people THAT DID HAVE THE CHOICE OF SAYING AND DOING NOTHING IN ORDER TO NOT SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES. I UNDERSTAND THAT. MY PROBLEM IS WITH THOSE THAT COOPERATED WILLINGLY.
THAT IS WHERE CHRISTIANITY FAILED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD AND IS STILL FAILING!
The Pope’s failure to speak out more strongly about anti Semitism continues the failure. Auschwitz was a symbol of Nazism that all people suffered but the Jews were a very special target. He should have known that as his youthful experiences taught him that Jews had to be eliminated regardless of their politics or beliefs. The rest of the victims were victims because of actions or beliefs. Only Jews were victims solely because they were Jews. No other victims had that distinction, so it included new the born, babies, the elderly, the infirm, the insane, etc. The only governing factor was some “Jewish blood” and the world accepted that criteria and refused to save those that could have been saved. There is no Christian response to such behavior.
Bob Poris
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