A turning point with the Jews?
Translated from
January 24, 2009
"Benedict XVI's visit to the Synagogue of Rome was memorable, not only because it was a further step in that 'irrevocable' journey of dialog, brotherhood and friendship between Jews and the Church begun by the Second Vatican Council, but also for the points made by
the Pope looking towards the future rather than back to the past", said the Vatican press director, Fr. Federico Lombardi, last week on Vatican Radio.
"To those who are not familiar with Benedict XVI's theological premises, let it be said that it was natural that he evoked them at the Synagogue by returning to the fundamentals - that is, the essential elements of the common heritage of Jews and Christians in terms of a vision of God, the world and man.
"The world created by God and entrusted to man's care; the Ten Commandments as a light for distinguishing good from evil, true from false, just from unjust, consistent with the dictates of right conscience in every person.
"These are ancient words but always very actual. Man, created by God, should be responsible to God for all Creation. And a man who is helped to know good from evil can find the right path even in the confusion of a pluralism that tends to lose every point of reference.
"Wise men among the Jews know this very well and must have been happy to hear the Holy Father's clear references to the most solid of our common foundations.
"Of course, we will continue to talk about the past in order to face our differences on the way to increasing our mutual comprehension. But that which we have in common at the very beginning is immense and stable as the heavens, and our common responsibility of service to Creation and the human family requires that we are in accord".
Meanwhile, the Jewish community is also assessing the outcome of the Pope's visit to the Rome Synagogue.
"We have said it clearly and we hope we have been understood," said Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni. "
Before beatifying Pius XII, the Vatican must wait until the Vatican Archives [on the Pius XII Pontificate] are fully open - in order to verify all the possible data, and then decide. A delay will lead to clarity and cool passions down."
[Once again, Di Segni - who is obviously not a stupid man nor, I think, malicious, though he sometimes sounds it - is willfully and stubbornly ignoring the nature and the process of canonization.
And as much as the Jewish protesters disclaim that they are interfering in any way with internal Church matters, they are! If the situation were reversed, and the Church tried to intervene in any way with some internal Jewish affair, their first reaction would be "How dare you get mixed up in our business?" How can they not give the Church the same elementary consideration?
So yes, how dare they say :"Before beatifying Pius XII, the Vatican must wait until the Vatican Archives [on the Pius XII Pontificate] are fully open". Or, it may well be that Rabbi Di Segni is 'grandstanding' to mollify orthodox Jews and his militant followers to show them he is standing their ground.
Regardless, the Jewish objections are known to the Vatican and duly noted, but they have nothing to do with Catholic standards of who can be a saint. And the Vatican cannot hold up its own legitimate processes out of mere political correctness - for that's what PC is all about, walking on eggs to avoid offending anyone.]
No sooner had the Pope left the synagogue, then Di Segni was back on the subject of Pius XII.
"On a subject as controversial as this
[controversial to the Jews and some liberal ideological Catholics, not to the Church in general!], "haste does not help".
[So who is hurrying? The usual charge against the Vatican is that it moves at snail's pace on anything. Even so, the length of time it has taken so far for Pius XII's cause to move one step forward has been almost unconscionable, considering that as someone who was Pope for almost 20 years, there is little that was not known about him! Haste? If the medical and theological commissions verify the reported miracle in Castellamare, he will be beatified without unwarranted delay. It is reasonable to believe that can take at most two years.]
"There are those who say that Pius XII is a saint and that the archives can only confirm that. And there are those who say that he is a controversial figure and perhaps the archives will show something in his favor. In any case, a delay is useful because it can cool down passions", Di Segni pointed out.
[Their passions, which they will not allow to cool off, and for which they are on perpetual alert for any pretext they can seize on to stoke it redhot instantly!]
However, he also says that "The Jewish-Catholic relationship cannot be reduced to the question of Pius XII".
[That's very sensible, but his behavior - and that of other militant Jews - in the past two years has seemed to reduce it to Pius XII and the Holocaust itself.
I've said it often before, but it almost seems as though nothing will satisfy them unless Benedict XVI wears a sandwich board saying [or has his robes emblazoned with] 'NEVER FORGET THE SHOAH, AND MAY GOD FORGIVE THE GERMAN PEOPLE FOR THEIR PART IN THE KILLING OF SIX MILLION JEWS! AND PIUS XII FOR NOT RISKING HIS LIFE TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST HITLER' - because, in effect, that is what they want, with their reflex whining that 'The Pope did not say enough..." any time Benedict XVI says anything about the Shoah!]
Referring to the fact that the Pope did not mention the state of Israel during his visit to the Synagogue, Di Segni said: "Perhaps it's because the Pope came for a religious encounter, in a place of religious worship, among religious leaders, thus avoiding any political aspect".
{One of the most bizarre criticisms of the visit - by a Jewish-born Italian journalist who otherwise had no other criticism to make - was that the Pope had never once said 'Israel' (the state, not the Biblical Israel) in his address. Perhaps not so bizarre after all, since it is yet another indication of their nitpicking anything that Benedict XVi has to say about the Jews and the Holocaust! Why was it even necessary for him to mention Israel at the Synagogue?]
Di Segni concludes that overall, the Pope's visit was "positive, because it has a fundamental significance: it showed his intention to continue the journey begun by John Paul II.
[He showed it in many ways long before the visit!] The dialog continues. It's the most important signal".
On the Pius XII issue: Some points cannot be repeated enough. The issue is so vast that many important elements are often left out when it is reported and commented on as news. This is how I see it.
Let the objectors stick to their guns, since that is clearly what they want. But the Church is not and cannot be bound by their objections, which are primarily ideological - and, I maintain, basically anti-Catholic, with Pius XII as the convenient symbol representing the Church.
They are free to object all they want, but they have absolutely no basis to expect that their objections could or would derail or further delay the beatification process of Pius XII. Just as the Church does not expect them to 'accept' Pius XII or anybody else as a saint! They can and probably will go ahead with their vilification campaign even after Pius XII is made Blessed or Saint. but they are entitled to free speech, and it is unlikely anyone in the Church will sue them for defamation and slander.
Has the Church interfered or intervened when ultra-orthodox rabbis and their followers take a defiant stand against Israeli forces themselves and invite Palestinian reprisal for occupying settlements in Palestinian territory? The ultimate result is unncessary deaths on both sides.
[For the same reason, however, the Arab Christian prelates of the Middle East are out of line to be so openly partisan in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And for their political views to define the shape of the coming Synod on the Middle East is simply wrong.]
The initial presentation of Pius XII's cause gained the unanimous approval of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood in 2007, who confirmed and proclaimed the heroic Christian virtues of the late Pope - even if, inexplicably, it took the Congregation [and its changing membership over the decades] 42 years since Paul VI first introduced the cause in 1965, to go beyond this first step in the process. And it would take another two and a half years before Benedict XVI would sign the decree.
Because of the Jewish objections, Benedict XVI, unpublicized, ordered a review of available documentation on Pius XII in the Vatican archives by a German historian priest, who completed his review last summer. Thus it was that Pius XII's cause for beatification finally advanced one step in December 2009 at the same time as that of John Paul II, whose cause had opened in May 2005.
'Heroic Christian virtues' are not necessarily 'heroic' in the literal, vulgar sense, because in the right circumstances, prudence itself is heroic, as it was in the case of Pius XII's wartime actions.
Pius XII, a most holy man by all accounts, could easily have chosen to invite martyrdom . After all, the Nazis had made it no secret they were ready to kidnap him, occupy the Vatican, and make a mockery of the Church in general. As Pope, he would have known it was the certain path to instant beatification (bypassing the need for proving 'heroic virtues') - if his choice had been selfish in any way.
But for someone in his position, martyrdom would have been futile - it would not have mobilized anything significant in the midst of an unprecedented global war, to which it would have been nothing more than a momentary diversion.
He chose the more difficult but also more responsible way: having to weigh day to day his direct responsibility towards the Church in general and endangered Catholics in particular, against what he could safely, effectively and prudently do for endangered Jews.
Setting aside the many and amply documented concrete acts that Pius XII did for persecuted Jews - any single one of which would have earned him Jewish honor as a 'righteous Gentile - what moral law did he break by choosing discretion, 'the better part of valor'? Because that is the substance of the entire Communist-Rolf Hochhuth-militant Jew concatenation of blame heaped on Pius XII.
Martyrdom, like crime, is very much a matter of means, motive and opportunity. In the eyes of God and man, is Eugenio Pacelli less holy than, say, Maximilian Kolbe, who offered his life so that a fellow inmate in Auschwitz would not be executed?
Was Pius XII guilty of sinning by omission (not speaking out)? We cannot know. It would be sheer hypothesis. If he had 'spoken out' directly and publicly, would that have made any difference to the Nazi program of exterminating evryone they considered undesirable? The experience in Holland, after the Catholic bishops protested the Nazi persecution of Jews, showed their response was more of the same, only worse. If he had spoken out, and the Nazi response was similar, then perhaps the Jews would be blaming him now for provoking worse Nazi reprisal.
The way to sainthood is as individual and unique as each person is individual and unique. And yet since saints and candidate saints are human, each one has his share of human imperfections, and perfection is not expected nor required of them.
In the rivers of words that have been expended on Pius XII and the Holocaust, somewhere someone must have drawn up a timeline of the Jewish anti-Pius offensive that clearly dates and links it to the Western liberal embrace of the Soviet-Hochhuth black propaganda strategy against him.
I do not fault Pius XII's detractors for their passion - misguided and misdirected as it is - but for their dishonesty in blatantly ignoring 1) every bit of documented evidence that belies the Soviet-Hochhuth-militant Jewish image of Pius XII and 2) the unsolicited testimonials of prominent Jewish leaders in praise of Pius XII during the war and in the years following the war but before The Deputy.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/01/2010 09:31]