Never again! The pope's visit to the Cologne Synagogue was both a milestone and a missed opportunity.

DURING MY GROWING-UP YEARS IN GERMANY OUR family frequently visited our favorite aunt in the city of Cologne. Tante Marianne worked as a Catholic religion teacher and was active in the Cologne Society for Christian Jewish Cooperation. One of the highlights of her school year was her annual field trip with her students to the Cologne Synagogue.

I remember her telling us once about the 1938 Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) pogrom, during which Nazi mobs attacked Jews, burned synagogues, and smashed Jewish businesses and institutions. That night, she told us, Msgr. Meinertz, a priest at the Cologne cathedral, entered one of the city's burning synagogues and rescued its Torah scroll from the tire. To this day that Torah--and a description of its rescue--remain on display at the Cologne Synagogue.

It's that very synagogue that Pope Benedict XVI visited in August during his trip to World Youth Day in Germany. By all accounts, the pope's visit there was a moving encounter and confirmed his sincere desire, as he put it, "to continue with great vigor on the path of improving the relationships and friendships with the Jewish people, on which Pope John Paul II has undertaken decisive steps."

Sixty years after the end of the horrific events of the Shoah, in which millions of Jews perished, the ceremony at the synagogue was a historic milestone for the local and global Jewish community, for the Catholic Church, and for Jewish-Catholic relations. Appropriately, it began with a kaddish--the Jewish prayer for the dead--intoned by the synagogue's rabbi before the memorial for the victims of the Shoah.

The leaders of both the synagogue and the larger German Jewish community were touched by the pope's visit and generously praised its significance for the progress of Jewish-Christian relations. The synagogue president, Abraham Lehrer, said his congregation was particularly pleased that the pope had bowed his head before the victims, before adding, "Of course he could have said more, but we accept this for his first visit."

The "more" that Lehrer alluded to was a somewhat troubling omission. What was missing from the German pope's otherwise good speech was an explicit acknowledgment of and plea for forgiveness for the failings by the majority of German Catholics--including their leaders--to more vigorously oppose the Nazi persecution and genocide of European Jews.

Yes, there were Catholic heroes like Msgr. Meinertz; like Father Bernhard Lichtenberg, a Berlin priest who preached against the persecution of Jews; like Gertrud Luckner, who organized shelter, relief, and escape routes for German Jews; and others--some known, some unsung heroes. But there is also no denying that these were the exceptions to the rule.

In the debate over the actions and omissions of the German Catholic Church in regard to the suffering of the Jews during the Nazi era, some have issued blanket indictments that twist the historical record. But others have similarly selectively distorted that history to paint the whole church as a heroic force of resistance.

The truth is more complicated and includes light as well as shadow. The 1975 Synod of the German Catholic Church said it clearly: "We were, on the whole, during this Nazi era a church community that lived too much with our backs turned against the fate of the persecuted Jewish people, with our attention fixed too much on the threat to our own institutions, and that was silent about the crimes committed against the Jews and Judaism." In 2000 the German bishops again acknowledged German Catholics' complicity and guilt, noting that "too few resisted."

That historical truth was one of the reasons why Pope John Paul II, in 2000, publicly asked for God's forgiveness for "the sins committed by not a few [Christians] against the people of the Covenant."

PUBLICLY ACKNOWLEDGING AND LEARNING FROM PAST SINS is not an academic exercise--nor does it provide ammunition for "anti-Catholic propaganda." Rather, it helps us today to define our church's mission and identity more clearly. As individual Christians and as a church we must always look beyond our own pastoral and institutional needs and our survival to embrace and respond to the joys and the hopes and the griefs and the anxieties, not just of our fellow Catholics, but of all of our brothers and sisters in the world.

A martyr of the Nazi era, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, recognized that when he said: "Only if we cry out for the Jews may we also sing Gregorian chant."

MEINRAD SCHERER-EMUNDS, executive editor of U.S. CATHOLIC.