BACK in 1975, Jewish Press columnist Esther Jungreis wrote a piece in which she criticized the Catholic Church’s attitude towards Jews. An official of the New York archdiocese, whose functions included reading Jewish community newspapers, fired off an angry letter to the editor demanding that Jungreis apologize.
Not only did she not apologize, she wrote a lengthy article in which she rehashed the lengthy history of Catholic anti-Semitism, including the Crusades, the Inquisition, numerous blood libels and the Holocaust. The piece was printed up in pamphlet form; demand was so heavy that over 25,000 were distributed.
A quarter-century later, the relationship between Catholics and Jews and the issue of apologies are once again news. This time, however, instead of demanding an apology, the pope has offered one — in one of the most remarkable and inspiring gestures ever by so prominent a religious leader.
Times certainly have changed since 1904, when Pope Pius X — in granting a meeting to Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism — declared that he could not recognize the Jewish nationalist movement because “the Jews have not recognized our Lord,” adding that the church stood ready “to baptize all of you.”
Indeed, Catholic-Jewish relations have even made tremendous strides since the Nostre Aetate declaration initiated by John Paul XXIII nearly 40 years ago, when the church absolved the Jewish community from complicity in the death of Jesus — a document that seems almost paternalistic now, but was groundbreaking when first released.
Unfortunately, many Jewish leaders have turned thumbs down on John Paul’s historic gesture last Sunday, rejecting it as disappointing at best or even worthless because it doesn’t specifically mention the silence of Pius XII during the Holocaust.
Yitzhak Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor and Israel’s chief Ashkenazic rabbi, said he was “deeply frustrated” at the pope’s failure to mention the Holocaust, adding that John Paul demonstrated “a severely warped view of history.” In New York, the Anti-Defamation League said it was “saddened and disappointed,” lamenting that the pope had “missed an historic opportunity to bring closure to Christian responsibility for specific sins against the Jewish people.”
This attitude misses the importance of what John Paul said and did. And it displays a misunderstanding — on both sides — of the differing theologies about the nature of confession and repentance.
One of the most important points to remember is that John Paul did not ask forgiveness from the Jews — or, for that matter, from any of the others against whom he said the Catholic Church had sinned. His words were addressed solely to “God our Father, who is merciful and compassionate” and called on Him to “forgive our sins and grant that we may bear true witness to You.”
What is also remarkable about the pope’s confession is its public nature. Confession in the Catholic Church is traditionally private, between penitent and confessor. Catholics do not publicly enumerate their sins, in the way that Jews do in the liturgy of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when every Jew recites a lengthy list of personal and communal transgressions.
Which may explain why many Jews were disappointed that the pope did not specify the church’s individual “sins against the people of Israel” — even though he confessed “the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of Yours to suffer” and pledged “genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”
And yet the church has reflected, in amazingly clear-cut language, on complicity in the Holocaust. In the 1998 Vatican document “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” the church declared that “it may be asked whether the Nazi persecution of the Jews was not made possible by the anti-Jewish prejudices imbedded in some Christian minds and hearts” and questioned whether “Christians [gave] every possible assistance to those being persecuted — and in particular to the persecuted Jews?”
“The spiritual resistance and concrete action of other Christians was not that which might have been expected from Christ’s followers,” the church declared — adding that “this fact constitutes a call to the consciences of all Christians today, so as to require an act of repentance,” which it defined by its Hebrew term, teshuva.
By including his apology in the context of the liturgy, John Paul — who has made Catholic-Jewish reconciliation a top priority of his papacy– has made this statement an essential part of Catholic prayer. Which is a pretty far cry from a few short decades ago, when Catholics regularly prayed for the spiritual rescue of the “perfidious Jews.”
Next week, John Paul arrives in Israel, where he will visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust documentation center. There he will doubtless have more to say about the 20th century’s greatest man-made calamity — although it’s unrealistic to expect him to denounce the wartime silence of Pius XII.
That issue, and other related ones, will remain a bone of contention and historical debate between Catholics and Jews. Still, one doesn’t have to forget the past in order to accept John Paul’s ennobling public gesture in the same spirit in which it was offered.E-mail:
Efettmann@nypost.com
