Editorial

By Paul Schratz

To understand the negative reaction by many Jews to Pope Benedict XVI's recent change to the Good Friday prayer for the Jews, it's necessary to understand the impact that the previous Pontiff, Pope John Paul II, had on Catholic-Jewish relations.

There's no better way to appreciate that impact than to recall the Pope's March 2000 visit to Israel, an event that was historic by any definition.

This was the first major visit by a Pontiff to Israel. He visited the major holy sites of all three major religions and spoke on the need for a Palestinian homeland, but it was his outreach to the Jewish state and religion that will be most remembered.

The Pope met with Israel's political leaders, including the president. He met with the chief rabbis and he blessed Israel.

He visited the Western Wall and inserted a letter of prayer between the cracks, apologizing for sins committed against the Jews.

However, in a trip almost universally admired by Jews as a turning point in Catholic-Jewish relations, there was a highlight that is remembered and recounted to this day: his visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum outside Jerusalem.

It was there that the Pope assured the Jewish people that "the Catholic Church, motivated by the Gospel law of truth and love, and by no political considerations, is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution, and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place."

It was there that he laid a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance where the cremated remains of unidentified Jews killed in death camps are buried. It was there that he lit the eternal flame. And it was there that he embraced Holocaust survivors, some from Wadowice, his home town in Poland, who remembered him from childhood.

The trip capped a papal career of bridge-building with the Jewish community that included milestones like visiting Auschwitz, attending services at a Rome synagogue, writing about the Holocaust, and establishing diplomatic ties with Israel.

On a recent visit to the Holy Land, I was privileged to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, and was moved by its powerful compilation of artifacts, media, and stories recounting the history and events leading up to the Holocaust and the horrors it entailed.

(The Catholic Church unfortunately doesn't come off too well in this display. A brief mention of Pope Pius XII portrays him as ineffectual in trying to prevent the Shoah.)

In Israel, I asked one of our Jewish hosts, an observer of Catholic-Jewish relations, what he thought of the controversy over the Pope's prayer for the Jews.

I expected my Jewish friend to dismiss the matter as so much sensationalism and cheap headlines turning a liturgical molehill into a media mountain.

Instead, he thought for a moment, then carefully responded that he didn't understand what Pope Benedict was doing.

Why, he asked, after the great strides made by John Paul, would Pope Benedict risk undoing the progress made in Catholic and Jewish relations.

I was taken aback, and suggested the prayer was meant to improve on the earlier, less fitting language, which is no longer in keeping with Church teaching that God will never break His covenant with His chosen people. I offered that the prayer was an appeal that we might all be united in paradise one day.

While my friend seemed to accept that that might have been the intent, he thought the way the revision was made was markedly different from the way John Paul II did things.

We left it at that, and Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews, has since explained that the prayer, included only in the older form of the Mass, is not intended to be a prayer for conversion of the Jews. It comes from Romans 11, which speaks of God's unbroken covenant with the chosen people.

I don't think Pope Benedict has anything to regret. It was a useful lesson, however, that the best intentions can be received in unintended ways. Also, that actions often speak louder than words, and when it comes to putting words into action, it's so hard to outdo Pope John Paul II.

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Share Lent is a second collection held every year on the Fifth Sunday of Lent for the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace. Share Lent refers to the practice of sharing our wealth as a form of Lenten penance. This year's collection will be March 9. Please be generous. For more information and resources, visit www.devp.org.