Catholics & Jews.

Vatican Holocaust statement will help

The ambivalence of Jewish reactions to the Vatican's recent statement "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah" rings a distinct bell. Jewish interfaith leaders, except for very few who welcomed it unreservedly, expressed disappointment, annoyance - in the words of the Jewish Week, "everything from anguish to anger." It was "too little, too late"; it "dashed the hopes of Jewish leaders." Sound familiar?

When Nostra aetate, the declaration on the church's relationship to the Jewish community, was finally adopted at Vatican II and promulgated by Pope Paul VI after almost four years of equivocation and internal struggle - during which key passages were cut, restored, emasculated, and reworded - it was similarly greeted. Jewish reactions ranged from cautious enthusiasm to bitter denunciation. Negative reactions focused on the absence from the document of any sense of contrition, any expression of regret, indeed, even an acknowledgment of the church's role in creating the anti-Semitism it was now decrying.

Twenty years after Nostra aerate, in 1985, the Vatican issued one of several follow-up documents designed to translate the declaration's broad principles into specific guidelines for teaching about Jews and Judaism in Catholic education. The "Notes," as they were called, were also roundly attacked. Critics noted the schizoid nature of the document: positive affirmations about Judaism in one section were undercut by regressive, triumphalist formulations in others. Inherently contradictory theological views of Judaism were papered over by expressions of noble intention. The "Notes" appeared to reflect a tug-of-war between two incompatible mindsets toward Jews.

From a Jewish perspective, both documents were seriously flawed. Yet, they had powerful and positive consequences. Nostra aetate, despite its weaknesses and compromises, launched a new Catholic-Jewish relationship - one of growing candor, mutual understanding and cooperation toward shared goals, though with many ups and downs along the way. The "Notes," despite their inherent contradictions, provided the basis for more accurate, more appreciative teaching about Jews and Judaism in Catholic education. The documents were not perfect; their defects rankled those who expected more - more self-criticism, more contrition, a more scrupulous accounting of the church's role in specific historical circumstances. But they nevertheless initiated a systematic dialogue, studies and scholarship, informal networks, a fragile but genuine mutual trust, some real friendships. Committed Christians and Jews used the opportunities opened by these documents to build a new relationship.

Critics of the Vatican's "Reflections on the Shoah" should bear this history in mind, even as they express their disappointments. Yes, it has weaknesses. It falls short of a full reckoning of the role of the church in fomenting antipathy to Jews across the centuries. It attributes to individual Catholics - "sons and daughters of the church" - errors of commission and omission and failures of courage without relating these to the church's policies and practices. It calls for an individual, not institutional, examination of conscience. Its distinction between anti-Judaism - rooted in religious misconceptions - and anti-Semitism - the product of racism and exacerbated nationalism, which it sees as a pagan ideology totally opposed to Catholic values - is correct.

But, if Lutheran scholar and theologian Krister Stendahl's definition is correct ("Anti-Judaism is hostility to the tenets of Judaism; anti-Semitism is hostility to the bearers of Judaism"), the line was frequently crossed. Nazism was indeed neo-pagan in concept and ideology, but many of the regime's repressive measures against the Jews - book-burnings, quotas in universities, the mandated wearing of distinctive clothing, confinement to ghettos - had their precedents in church legislation and practice. The document does not explore these parallels, nor does it address the question of the willing perpetrators of genocide - the murderers and torturers - who considered themselves faithful Christians.

But focusing on what the document says, rather than on what it does not say, it says a good deal.

First, it affirms as "a major fact of the history of this century" the murder of millions of Jews for the sole reason that they were Jews. It stands as a forthright rebuttal to what has become an entire industry of Holocaust denial and revision. To some 800 million Catholic faithful and to the world at large, the church says: "It happened!"

It affirms the religious roots of hostility to Jews in "erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament," and spells out the consequences when Jews refused to abandon their faith and customs: discrimination, expulsions, attempts at forced conversions, scapegoating, occasional violence, looting, and even massacres. Jews, who are familiar with this history of persecution rooted in religious antagonism, should realize that it may come as a surprise to most Catholics, and that the church has done an important service to truth and justice by calling attention to these painful realities in very concrete terms.

It adds the church's moral authority to the need to understand what gave rise to the greatest crime of the twentieth century, and to remember it, "for there is no future without memory."

The Vatican's "Reflections" open a rich field for further common study, and its expression of human solidarity should guide the footsteps of those who seek to develop its teaching and preaching implications, to the end - in John Paul II's moving words - of "shaping a future in which the unspeakable iniquity of the Shoah will never again be possible."

Judith H. Banki, both an official of and a participant in organized Jewish-Christian dialogue, is program director of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding.