Earlier reply (Holocaust and the Roman Catholic Church).

In a meeting in Washington, D.C., in May, Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, had already responded to criticisms within the Jewish community of his commission's March statement on the Shoah. He noted that Jewish leaders were critical of the document's discussion of the relationship between "Nazi persecution of the Jews and attitudes down through the centuries of Christians toward Jews."

In response, Cardinal Cassidy said: "There can be no denial of the fact that from the time of Emperor Constantine on, Jews were isolated and discriminated against in the Christian world. There were expulsions and forced conversions. Literature propagated stereotypes, preaching accused the Jews of every age of deicide; the ghetto which came into being in 1555 with a papal bull became in Nazi Germany the antechamber of the extermination.

"It is also true that the Nazis made use of this sad history in their attacks on the Jewish people, adopting symbols and recalling events of the past to justify their deadly campaign. It is also true, I believe, that a part of the indifference shown toward the mass deportations and brutality which accompanied these forced movements of helpless and innocent people was a result of the age-old attitudes of Christian society and preaching toward those considered responsible for the death of Jesus.

"But to make a jump from the anti-Judaism of the Church to the anti-Semitism of the Nazis is to misread the nature of the Nazi persecution. To quote from the Vatican document: `The Shoah was the work of a thoroughly modern neopagan regime. Its anti-Semitism had its roots outside of Christianity and, in pursuing its aims, it did not hesitate to oppose the Church and persecute her members also' " (Catholic Trends, May 30, 1998).