Papal Visit Gets Mixed Reviews

Good yontiff, pontiff: Pope Benedict XVI, left, with Rabbi Arthur Schneier during the pontiff’s historic visit last Friday to Park East Synagogue. Diane Bondareff

Good yontiff, pontiff: Pope Benedict XVI, left, with Rabbi Arthur Schneier during the pontiff’s historic visit last Friday to Park East Synagogue. Diane Bondareff

by Walter Ruby
Special To The JewishWeek

While most of the Jewish leaders who took part in meetings with Pope Benedict XVI during his just-completed visit to Washington, D.C., and New York responded glowingly to their encounters with the pontiff, at least one veteran interfaith leader responded less favorably.
“I think the pope came up a little short,” Rabbi James Rudin, senior interreligious adviser to the American Jewish Committee, told The Jewish Week. The rabbi was the only Jewish leader selected by The New York Times to contribute accounts to a special blog documenting reactions to the pope’s visit by religious leaders and observers.
Rabbi Rudin noted that during Benedict’s appearances in Washington (on April 17) before 150 religious leaders (including Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Jains) and at a special session

he held with the 40 Jews attending the interfaith event and again the following day during his visit to Park East Synagogue in New York, the pope “failed to mention the need to fight anti-Semitism and to teach about the Shoah.
“Instead,” the rabbi continued, “his remarks in both places were of a more general nature — congratulating the Jewish community on the advent of Passover and stating that he looked forward to strengthening Jewish-Catholic relations. But frankly, I was looking for a bit more in his speeches, especially in such never-to-be-repeated situations.”
Rabbi Rudin said that if Benedict had wanted to condemn anti-Semitism and stress the importance of keeping memory of the Holocaust alive, “He need only have cited strong statements by his predecessor, John Paul II, who said that anti-Semitism is against God and spoke of the importance of reverently teaching the Shoah. But, it is also true that we really shouldn’t compare him with John Paul, who focused on outreach to the Jews and the rest of humanity, while Benedict’s basic mission is to solidify the Church from within by overcoming problems like the sexual abuse scandal within the Church.
“Without a doubt,” he continued, “Benedict made clear he cares about Catholic-Jewish relations by holding a special meeting with the Jewish delegation to the interfaith event, which he did not do with any of the other faith groups in attendance, and by making his visit to Park East Synagogue.
“Still, I wish he had done a bit more with those occasions than he did.”
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, however, argued that the rather bland nature of the pope’s encounter with the Jewish leaders in Washington and New York — warm words but little substantive interchange — masked important steps taken by the Vatican in the weeks preceding the pope’s visit.
In particular, Foxman expressed satisfaction that Benedict amended the language in a Latin prayer recited for centuries until dropped in 1962, but recently reintroduced into the Catholic liturgy, that calls for the conversion of the Jews to believe in Jesus Christ. Foxman noted that Benedict’s new language deletes phrases referring to the Jews’ “blindness” and “darkness” and places the hoped for conversion of the Jews at the end of time, when, according to Catholic dogma, all human beings will embrace Christ.
Foxman also said that Benedict recently placed on the back burner an effort within the Vatican to accord sainthood to Pope Pius XII, the wartime pope who has been widely condemned in the Jewish community for allegedly having stood by silently while Hitler carried out the massacre of European Jewry.
(A high-ranking U.S. Catholic source confirmed that Benedict, who last May received a report from a select group of cardinals and bishops urging that he take the first step toward according sainthood to Pius, instead appoined another committee to look into the matter; the source said that there is no timetable for that committee to issue a report.)
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said that the decision by the pope to hold the special meeting with the Jewish delegation to the interfaith event, as well as his decision to visit the Park East Synagogue at the invitation of its spiritual leader, Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a Holocaust survivor, outweighs the relative lack of substance at those events.
“Benedict was sending a clear message to the Jewish community by holding the special meeting with the Jewish delegation at the interfaith event; none of the other religious groups got one,” said Rabbi Yoffie, who was in attendance.
Asked about Rabbi Rudin’s criticism of Benedict, Rabbi Yoffie said, “It is always welcome when the pope sends reminders about anti-Semitism and honors the Holocaust, but it would be a mistake to say that his not doing so at this time signals a lack of concern on these issues.”
Rabbi Yoffie remarked, “I believe that the state of Catholic-Jewish relations is strong. The Latin Mass issue is a bump on the road that has to be dealt with, but it won’t derail the postive momentum.”
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Meanwhile, Catholics who have been in the forefront of efforts to have Pius XII declared a saint disputed the accounts that the bid to beatify him has been put on hold.
“It is absolutely untrue that beatification [the key step on the road to sainthood] has been put on the back burner in the sense that it is stalled for five years or more,” said William Doino, a Connecticut-based Catholic writer, who is the lead contributor to “The Pius War: Responses to Critics of Pius XII,” a book published in 2004.
“All of my sources in the Vatican tell me it is on the front burner, but will be decided according to the pope’s own timetable,” Dunno said. “I believe it will happen quite soon, but that the pope would like first to visit Israel and share documentation in the Vatican Archives that will prove once and for all that Pius has been unfairly accused.”
One of Pius’ staunchest defenders is Sister Margherita Marchione, a Morristown, N.J.-based nun, whose latest book on the World War II pope, “The Truth Will Set You Free,” is due to appear in September, just weeks before the 50th anniversary of Pius’ death. She noted that Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has written a foreword for her new book, stating: “How profoundly unjust it is to draw a veil of prejudice over the work of Pius XII during the war, forgetting not only the historical context but also the immense charitable action that the pope promoted, opening the doors of seminaries and religious institutes, welcoming refugees and persecuted people, helping all who were in need.”
According to Marchione, who says she expects an announcement of Pius’ beatification to be announced on the 50th anniversary of his death, “I don’t think Cardinal Bertone would have written what he did for my book if the pope does not intend to beatify Pius.”
Yet Gary Krupp, president of the New York-based Pave the Way Foundation, which promotes improved Jewish-Catholic relations, said of the beatification process, “It certainly won’t happen by Oct. 9 [the 50th anniversary] or for the forseeable future. The pope has appointed a special committee to investigate, and it is unclear how long it will take.”
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If Jewish leaders were not unanimously pleased with the pope’s visit to the U.S., they are certainly much happier about the results than are American Muslims.
In the run-up to the interfaith meeting in Washington, a number of American Muslim leaders strongly criticized Benedict for a speech he gave in Germany in 2006 in which he cited a 13th-century Byzantine emperor who said the Prophet Mohammed brought “things only evil and inhuman”; and for baptizing Magdi Allam, an Egyptian Muslim writer on Easter eve. Allam used the occasion of his baptism to castigate Islam as inherently violent.
At least one major American Muslim leader, Salam Al-Maryati of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, chose to boycott the interfaith meeting with the pope because “the substance of dialogue was missing from the agenda.”
But other leaders like Sayyid Syeed, national director of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), chose to take part in the event despite being angry at the pope because of “an abiding belief that interfaith dialogue is critically needed in the 21st century,” Syeed said. “Popes come and go, but we have been dialoguing with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for more than two decades.”
Syeed said that the recent “high-profile” baptism of Allam was “very harmful to Catholic-Muslim relations. While people convert to different religions all the time, we were troubled that the Vatican made a big deal about this one.”
Syeed said he had used the occasion of a brief encounter with the pope at the interfaith event to tell the pontiff pointedly, “We are proud of what we have achieved in Catholic-Muslim relations and neither side should do anything to risk it.”
Syeed, whose organization has recently been engaged in ecumenical work with American Jewish leaders like Rabbi Yoffie and Rabbi Marc Schneier of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, noted, “It is interesting that while we have been having difficult issues with the Catholic Church, we have recently had a breakthrough in relations with the Jewish community. Our outreach to the Jews has begun only recently, but it appears to have great potential.”

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