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Abstract
The pontificate of Benedict XVI is undoubtedly shaped by his personality as a profound thinker and one who is much more a philosopher than a politician. Management seems not to be his trade. With his intellectual mind he shuns anything that smells of populism. The mass media has an inherent difficulty in placing him within their traditional parameters. The paradigm of Pope Benedict can serve as a microcosm that reflects the complexity imprinted on relations between Israel and the Holy See. Any effort to simplify those relations according to the vocabulary of conventional bilateral relations may do injustice to their essence.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank Mr. Ofer Bar Sade for his assistance in preparing this article
Notes
1. ‘The teaching of the Second Vatican Council has represented for Catholics a clear landmark to which constant reference is made in our attitude and our relations with the Jewish people, marking a new and significant stage. The Council gave a strong impetus to our irrevocable commitment to pursue the path of dialogue, fraternity and friendship, a journey which has been deepened and developed in the last forty years.’ Pope Benedict VI, Visit to the Synagogue of Rome, Address of his Holiness Benedict XVI, January 17, 2010, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2010/january/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20100117_sinagoga_en.html.
2. This is the first ever effort to understand relations between Jews and the Catholic Church after the Shoa in the conceptual framework of competing victimizations. The victimization research of post-World War II dealt until now mostly with Germans and Japanese. See Robert G. Moeller, WarStories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Thomas W. Neumann, ‘Der Bombenkrieg: Zur ungeschriebenen Geschichte einer kollektiven Verletzung’, Nachkrieg in Deutschland, ed. Klaus Naumann (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2001); Ian Buruma, Wages of Guilt – Memories of War in Germany and Japan (London: Plume, 2005).
3. Speech of Pope Pius XII to the Cardinals on the feast of St. Eugene (his name day), June 2, 1945, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/speeches/1945/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19450602_accogliere_it.html.
4. This motto is the headline of a recent thesis by Dr. Amnon Ramon, ‘Israel Policy towards the Christian Churches and the Question of Jerusalem, 1948–1973’ (PhD diss., Haifa University, October 2007).
5. Redemptoris Nostri Cruciatus – Encyclical of Pope Pius XII on the Holy Places in Palestine to the Venerable Brethren The Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and Other Ordinaries in Peace and Communion with The Apostolic See, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_15041949_redemptoris-nostri-cruciatus_en.html.
6. The French Catholic daily La Croix published in its ‘La Documentation Catholique’ from May 22, 1949, an unsigned report from Jerusalem which amounts to a wild invective against Jews and Zionism: ‘Nous ne pouvons que souscrire a la pensee deja mainted fois exprimee: Le sionisme est un nouveau nazisme.’
7. According to the Israeli State Archives, about one week before the outbreak of the Independent War (May 15, 1948), the Vatican asked the Italian government to investigate in Athens how many Jewish refugees from Palestine Greece would accept. See Uri Bialer, Cross on the Star of David (Jerusalem, 2006), 14.
8. The main texts in the patristic literature are Tertullianus, Adversos Judeaos, Chapter III, Patrologia Latina 2, cols. 602–5; Augustinus, ‘Civitas Dei’, Book 18, Chapter 46, Patrologia Latina 4, cols. 608–60. For its contemporary expression Bialer, Cross on the Star of David, 11 quoting l'Osservatore Romano from May 13, 1948: ‘Modern Zionism is not the true successor of Biblical Israel … therefore the Holy Land and the Holy Sites belong to Christianity which is the true Israel.’
9. Editorial, Osservatore Romano, Vatican, June 12, 1948.
10. Bialer, Cross on the Star of David, 77.
11. David Rosen, ‘Pope Benedict XVI and Catholic–Jewish relations’, Jerusalem Post, April 20, 2010.
12. Speech upon the presentation of letters of credentials for Israel's new Ambassador to the Holy See, Mordechay Lewy, at the Vatican, May 12, 2008, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080512_ambassador-israel_en.html.
13. For data comparing the socio-economic status of Christian Arabs relative to Moslem, Druze and Bedouin Arabs, and indeed relative to Jews, see the Israel Government's Central Bureau of Statistics Statistical Abstract of Israel, 2009, ‘Housing Density’, Ch. 5.22, p. 286; ‘Education’, Ch. 8.23, p. 298.
14. For data comparing the socio-economic status of Christian Arabs relative to Moslem, Druze and Bedouin Arabs, and indeed relative to Jews, see the Israel Government's Central Bureau of Statistics Statistical Abstract of Israel, 2009, ‘Housing Density’, Ch. 5.22, p. 286; ‘Education’ ‘Population’, Ch. 2.3, p. 90.
15. The Instrumentum Laboris can be read as a pdf file: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20100606_instrumentum-mo_en.pdf. The Lineamenta draft can be read under: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20091208_lineamenta-mo_en.html.
16. Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem, Maya Goshen ed., No. 22 (2005–2006), The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, Jerusalem 2007, p.85 (table III/9). In absolute figures there is an increase from 1988 to 2005 from 14,400 to 14,900. In percentage a decrease from 2.9% to 2.1%.
17. The preamble calls for a special statute for Jerusalem, internationally guaranteed, which should safeguard the following: a) Freedom of religion and conscience for all; b) The equality before the law of the three monotheistic religions and their institutions and followers in the City; c) The proper identity and sacred character of the city and its universally significant, religious and cultural heritage; d) The holy places, the freedom of access to them and of worship in them; e) The regime of ‘status quo’ in those holy places where it applies. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/2000/documents/rc_seg-st_20000215_santa-sede-olp_en.html
18. Cardinal Walter Kasper, ‘Recent Developments in Jewish–Christian Relations’, Liverpool, May 24, 2010, http://www.hope.ac.uk/docman/hope-times/cardinal-kasper-lecture-24th-may-2010/download.html.
19. ‘An unforeseen mishap for me was the fact that the Williamson case came on top of the remission of the excommunication. The discreet gesture of mercy towards four Bishops ordained validly but not legitimately suddenly appeared as something completely different: as the repudiation of reconciliation between Christians and Jews, and thus as the reversal of what the Council had laid down in this regard to guide the Church's path. A gesture of reconciliation with an ecclesial group engaged in a process of separation thus turned into its very antithesis: an apparent step backwards with regard to all the steps of reconciliation between Christians and Jews taken since the Council – steps which my own work as a theologian had sought from the beginning to take part in and support. That this overlapping of two opposed processes took place and momentarily upset peace between Christians and Jews, as well as peace within the Church, is something which I can only deeply deplore. I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news. I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility. Precisely for this reason I thank all the more our Jewish friends, who quickly helped to clear up the misunderstanding and to restore the atmosphere of friendship and trust which – as in the days of Pope John Paul II – has also existed throughout my pontificate and, thank God, continues to exist.’ Pope Benedict XVI, Letter to all Bishops, March 10, 2009, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/letters/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20090310_remissione-scomunica_en.html.
20. ‘One of the most solemn moments of my stay in Israel [was] my visit to the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem, where I paid my respects to the victims of the Shoah. There also I met some of the survivors. Those deeply moving encounters brought back memories of my visit three years ago to the death camp at Auschwitz, where so many Jews – mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends – were brutally exterminated under a godless regime that propagated an ideology of anti-Semitism and hatred. That appalling chapter of history must never be forgotten or denied.’ This and the following two quotes in the text from Pope Benedict XVI, Farewell speech at Ben Gurion Airport, May 15, 2009, http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/b16HLdeparture.htm.
21. ‘The ancient tradition of pilgrimage to the holy places also reminds us of the inseparable bond between the Church and the Jewish people. From the beginning, the Church in these lands has commemorated in her liturgy the great figures of the Patriarchs and Prophets, as a sign of her profound appreciation of the unity of the two Testaments. May our encounter today inspire in us a renewed love for the canon of Sacred Scripture and a desire to overcome all obstacles to the reconciliation of Christians and Jews in mutual respect and cooperation in the service of that peace to which the word of God calls us!’ http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2009/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20090509_memoriale-mose_en.