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Abstract
During his address on the occasion of his visit to the Synagogue in Rome in January 2010, Pope Benedict spoke of three areas in which Jews and Christians – on the basis of the Ten Commandments – can join forces to transform society: the commitment to make people recognize God and to fight idolatry; the commitment to respect and protect life; and the commitment to preserve and promote the sanctity of the family. Jews and Christians can make use of spiritual and moral resources to involve themselves in these causes – and these areas of concern can be seen as important elements of the spiritual infrastructure that a well ordered society needs. The article describes Pope Benedict's relationship to the State of Israel, Judaism and the Jewish tradition using as key terms the concept of ‘moral resources’ and the concept of ‘spiritual infrastructure’. The main claims are that: Pope Benedict sees a permanent solution to the challenges to peace in Israel in the establishment of a spiritual infrastructure; he considers memory, remembering and remembrance as key moral resources; and, in his view, Christianity cannot develop its moral and spiritual resources without an ethics of memory honouring its Jewish roots.
Notes
1. J. Ratzinger, Werte in Zeiten des Umbruchs (Freiburg/Br: Herder, 2005), ch. 1.
2. C. Sedmak, Europa in sieben Tagen: Moralische Vermessungen (Salzburg: Pustet, 2007), 14–20.
3. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
4. J. Ratzinger, Aus meinem Leben (Stuttgart: DVA, 1998).
5. ‘Es ist wichtig, daß der Holocaust nicht von Christen und im Namen Christi begangen worden ist, sondern von Anti-Christen und auch als Vorstufe der Austilgung des Christentums gedacht gewesen ist. Ich habe diese Zeiten ja als Kind selber miterlebt. Hier war immer auch vom verjudeten Christentum und der Verjudung dr Germanen durch das Christentum die Rede, insbesonders im Zusammenhang mit der katholischen Kirche.’ J. Ratzinger, Salz der Erde: Ein Gespräch mit Peter Seewald (München: Heyne, 1996), 267.
8. J. Ross, ‘Das leichenblasse Glück’, Die Zeit 45/1998 (October 29, 1998).
11. This was one the key messages of Benedict's address during the courtesy visit to the President of the State of Israel in Jerusalem on May 11, 2009.
12. St. Natella et al., Intangible Infrastructure: Building on the Foundation (Credit Suisse Research Institute, 2008).
13. St. Natella et al., Intangible Infrastructure: Building on the Foundation (Credit Suisse Research Institute, 2008), 7.
14. W.M. Martin and A. E. Lomperis, ‘Determining the Cost Benefit, the Return on Investment, and the Intangible Impacts of Language Programs for Development’, TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) Quarterly 36, no. 3 (2002): 399–429.
15. See E.T. Malecki, ‘The Economic Geography of the Internet's Infrastructure’, Economic Geography 78, no. 4 (2002): 399–424.
16. K. Warfield et al., ‘Framing Infrastructure in a Cultural Context’, Working Paper 3, Centre of Expertise on Culture and Communities (Burnaby, BC: Simon Fraser University UP, 2007).
17. K. Warfield et al., ‘Framing Infrastructure in a Cultural Context’, Working Paper 3, Centre of Expertise on Culture and Communities (Burnaby, BC: Simon Fraser University UP, 2007), 4.
18. M.A. Ortiz et al., ‘Intellectual Capital (Intangible Assets) Valuation Considering the Context’, Journal of Business and Economic Research 4, no. 8 (September 2006): 35–42.
19. Michael Hechter as cited in H. Joas, Die Entstehung der Werte (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1999), 30.
20. ‘Conceptions of the desirable’: J.W. Van Deth and E. Scarbrough, The Impact of Values (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998), 21.
21. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), 18.
22. W.S. Green and J. Neusner, ‘Introduction’, in The Religion Factor, ed. W.S. Green and J. Neusner (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), xv.
23. F.X. Nguyen Van Thuan, Testimony of Hope (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2000).
24. H. Weinrich, ‘Typen der Gedächtnismetaphorik’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte (1964): 23–6.
25. Joseph Bernlef, Hirngespinste (Munich: Piper, 1994).
26. C. Meier, ‘Athen und Rom: Der Beginn des europäischen Sonderweges’, in Von Athen bis Auschwitz (München: dtv, 2006), 64–131.
27. M. Borgolte, ‘Wie Europa seine Vielfalt fand’, in Die kulturellen Werte Europas, ed. H. Joas and K. Wiegandt (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 2005), 117–63.
28. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 242.
29. A. Assmann, Erinnerungsräume (München: Beck, 1999), 62.
30. H. Weinrich, ‘Gedächtniskultur – Kulturgedächtnis’, Merkur 508 (1991): 567–82.
31. A. Margalit, Ethik der Erinnerung (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 2000).
32. N. Malcolm, ‘A Definition of Factual Memory. In: Idem, Knowledge and Certainty (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963), 222–240; C.B. Martin and M. Deutscher, ‘Remembering’, Philosophical Review 75 (1966): 161–96.
33. Acedia is the experience of the conviction that one's own doing is in vain and meaningless; a form of mental weariness or lethargy. A good account of ‘acedia’ is given by S. Wenzel, The Sin of Sloth: Acedia in Medieval Thought and Literature (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1960); S. Wenzel, ‘Aχηδια’, Vigiliae Christianae 17, no. 3 (1963): 173–6.
34. A. Fuchs, ‘Towards an Ethics of Remembering: The Walser-Bubis Debate and the Other of Discourse’, The German Quarterly 75, no. 3 (2002): 235–46.
35. For the role of social and cultural memory, see A. Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit (München: Beck, 2006), chs. 1 and 2.
36. The twentieth century left marks of devastation that pose specific moral challenges for the historical science. J. Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (London: Yale UP, 1999).
37. D. Di Cesare, ‘Auschwitz verstehen: Eine philosophische Überlegung’, Information Philosophie 4 (2007): 22–9.
38. Against this background, Rolf Zimmermann enunciates his plea for moral contemporariness in the light of Auschwitz. R. Zimmermann, Philosophie nach Auschwitz (Reinbeck: Rowohlt, 2005), 92ff.
39. R. Nozick, ‘The Holocaust’, in Examined Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 236–42.
40. R. Nozick, ‘The Holocaust’, in Examined Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 238.
41. A difficult point: ‘Perhaps it is only by suffering ourselves when any suffering is inflicted, or even when any is felt, that we can redeem the human species. Before, perhaps, we could be more isolated; now that no longer suffices’ (R. Nozick, ‘The Holocaust’, in Examined Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 241).
42. Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 264ff.
43. This is an idea to use Robert Brandom's concept of ‘discursive commitments’ within the framework of negative theology – Robert Brandom, Making It Explicit (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
48. www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html
50. See Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, We Remember (1998), V, 22; IV, 20f.
51. Benedict XVI, Jesus von Nazareth (Freiburg/Br: Herder, 2007), 31.
52. Benedict sees Jesus of Nazareth as the one to transform Old Testament political theology: ‘War sie [political theology] in Israel und beim dadvidischen Königtum mit der Erwählungstheologie des Alten Bundes verschmolzen worden und im Gang der Entwicklung des davidischen Königtums immer mehr zum Ausdruck der Hoffnung auf den künftigen König geworden, so wird nun die Auferstehung Jesus als das erwartete Heute des Psalms geglaubt. Jetzt hat Gott seinen König bestellt, dem er in der Tat die Völker als Erbe übereignet’ (Benedict XVI, Jesus von Nazareth (Freiburg/Br: Herder, 2007), 388).
54. www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html
55. Spe Salvi, 9 – see also this way of ‘transformation-based remembering’ in Benedict's encyclical Deus Caritas Est, sections 1, 9, 10, 13, 15, 41.