BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

See previous page for earlier posts today.

LITURGICAL CELEBRATIONS IN FEBRUARY TO APRIL 2010

TO BE LED BY HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

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FEBRUARY

- Tuesday, Feb. 2
Feast of the Presentation of the Lord and
the World Day of Consecrated Life
5.30 p.m. St. Peter's Basilica
Vespers with members of institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life.

- Wednesday, Feb. 17
Ash Wednesday
4.30 p.m. Basilica of Sant'Anselmo
"Statio" and penitential procession
5 p.m. Basilica of Santa Sabina
Blessing and imposition of ashes

- Friday, Feb. 19
11 a.m. Consistory Hall
Concistory for certain causes of canonization

- Sunday, Feb. 21
First Sunday of Lent
6 p.m. Redemptoris Mater Chapel
Start of the spiritual exercises of the Roman Curia.

- Saturday, Feb. 27
9 a.m. Redemptoris Mater Chapel
Conclusion of the spiritual exercises of the Roman Curia.


MARCH

- Sunday, March 7
Third Sunday of Lent.
Pastoral visit to the Roman parish of St. John of the Cross.
9 a.m. Mass

- Thursday, March 25
8.30 p.m. St. Peter's Square
Meeting with young people of Rome and Lazio
in preparation for World Youth Day.

- Sunday, March 28
Palm Sunday and the Passion of the Lord
9.30 a.m. St. Peter's Square
Blessing of palms, procession and Mass.

- Monday, March 29
6 p.m. St. Peter's Basilica
Mass for the anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II.
[Advanced because the actual anniversary, April 2, falls on Good Friday,
when the Church does not celebrate Mass.]


APRIL

- Thursday, April 1
Holy Thursday
9.30 a.m. St. Peter's Basilica
Mass of the Chrism
5.30 p.m. Basilica of St. John Lateran
Start of the Easter Triduum with the
Mass of the Last Supper

- Friday, April 2
Good Friday
5 p.m. St. Peter's Basilica
Celebration of the Lord's Passion
9.15 p.m. Colosseum
Way of the Cross

- Saturday, April 3
Holy Saturday
9 p.m. St. Peter's Basilica
Easter Vigil

- Sunday, April 4
Easter Sunday
10:15 a.m. St. Peter's Square
Mass.
12:00 noon St Peter's Central Loggia
"Urbi et Orbi" blessing.

- Saturday-Sunday, April 17-18
Apostolic trip to Malta

---

Pope stresses Christian unity
and the dignity of human life
to CDF plenary participants



Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's address to participants of the plenary assembly of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in a meeting at noon today at the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace:

---

Eminent Cardinals,
Venerated brothers in the episcopate and priesthood,
Dearest lay collaborators:

It is with great joy that I meet with you on the occasion of your Plenary Assembly and to manifest my sentiments of profound recognition and sincere appreciation for the work that you carry out in service to the Successor of Peter, in his ministry to confirm his brothers in the faith (cfr Lk 22,32).

I thank Cardinal William Joseph Levada for his opening remarks, in which he summarized the topics that currently engage the Congregation, along with the new responsibilities laid on him by the Motu Proprio Ecclesiae Unitatem which unites the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei to the dicastery.

I would like to dwell briefly, Your Eminence, on some aspects that you cited.

First of all, I wish to underscore how much your Congregation is part of the ministry of unity which is entrusted in a special way to the Roman Pontiff through his commitment to doctrinal fidelity.

Unity is, in fact, primarily unity of faith, sustained by the sacred deposit of which the Successor of Peter is the first guardian and defender.

To confirm our brothers in the faith, keeping them united in their confession to Christ who was crucified and resurrected, constitutes for him who sits on Peter's Chair the first and fundamental task conferred by Jesus.

It is an indispensable service on which the efficacy of the evangelizing action of the Church depends until the end of time.

The Bishop of Rome, in whose potestas docendi [teaching authority] your congregation participates, must constantly proclaim, 'Dominus Iesus' - Jesus is the Lord.

Indeed, the potestas docendi carries with it obedience to the faith, so that the Truth that Christ is, may continue to shine forth in all its greatness and to resonate in all men in its integrity adn purity so that there may be one flock gathered together around the one Shepherd.

Arriving at a common testimonial to faith by all Christians thus constitutes the priority of the Church in every age, in order to lead all men to an encounter with God.

In this spirit, I have particular confidence in the dicastery's commitment to overcome the doctrinal problems that remain before the Fraternity of St. Pius X can return to full communion with the Church.

I also wish to express my joy for the efforts towards a full integration of groups of faithful or individuals, once belonging to Anglicanism, into the life of the Catholic Church according to the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus.

The faithful adherence of these groups to the truths received from Christ and proposed by the Church Magisterium is not in an way opposed to the ecumenical movement, but rather, it shows her ultimate aim to achieve full and visible communion among the disciples of the Lord.

In the valuable service that you render to the Vicar of Christ, I must also recall that in September 2006, the Congregation published the Instruction Dignitas Personae on some bioethical questions.

After the encyclical Evangelium Vitae by the Venerable Servant of God John Paul II in March 1995, this doctrinal document, centered on the theme of the dignity of the person created in Christ and for Christ, represents a new milestone in the announcement of the Gospel, in full continuity with the Instruction Donum Vitaepublished by the dicastery in February 1987.

In sensitive current issues such as those that have to do with procreation and new therapeutic options that involve manipulation of the embryo and of the human genetic patrimony, the Instruction is a reminder that "the ethical value of biomedical science can be measured with respect to its unconditional respect that is due to every human being during his entire existence, as well as with the protection of the specificity of personal acts that transmit life"
(Istr. Dignitas personae, n. 10).

In this way, the Magisterium of the Church intends to offer its own contribution to the formation of consciences not only of believers, but also of all who seek the truth and are willing to listen to arguments that come from the faith as well as from reason itself.

Indeed, the Church, in proposing a moral evaluation of biomedical research on human life, draws from the light of reason as well as of faith (cfr Ibid., n. 3), in its conviction that "anything human is not only welcomed and respected by the faith but is also purified, uplifted and perfected by it" (Ibid., No. 7).

In this context, this is also a response to the widespread mentality that faith is an obstacle to freedom and scientific research because it is said to be made up of an ensemble of prejudices that would undermine an objective understanding of reality.

In the face of such an attitude, which tends to replace truth with consensus - fragile and easily manipulated - the Christian faith offers a veritable contribution even in the ethical-philosophical field, not by furnishing pre-constituted solutions to concrete problems, such as biomedical research and experimentation, but by proposing reliable moral perspectives within which human reason can seek and find valid solutions.

Indeed, there are specific contents of the Christian revelation that cast light on bioethical problems: the value of human life, the relational and social dimension of the individual, the connection between the unitive and procreative aspects of sexuality, the centrality of the family based on matrimony between a man and a woman.

These contents, written in the heart of man, are rationally understandable as elements of the natural moral law which can find acceptance even by those who do not share the Christian faith.

Natural moral law is not exclusively or predominantly confessional, even if Christian Revelation and the fulfillment of man in the mystery of Christ illuminates and develops the doctrine fully.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, natural law shows "the first and essential precepts which govern the moral life" (No. 1955). Based on human nature itself and accessible to every rational creature, the natural moral law constitutes the basis for entering into dialog with all men who are searching for the truth, and more generally, with civilian and secular society.

This law, written in the heart of every man, touches one of the essential points of any reflection on the law and equally interpellates both the conscience and the responsibility of legislators.

In encouraging you to proceed in your demanding and important service, I wish to express once more my spiritual nearness, imparting to all of you, in affection and gratitude, the Apostolic Blessing.

---

Major speech! In a way, the Holy Father has defined what he did, as Prefect of the CDF, in support of the Pontifical Magisterium, while reiterating, in remarkably forceful yet concise fashion, the basic elements of the Christian 'deposit of faith'.

Even in the face of the all-too-obvious fact that most news is 'bad news' - or perhaps, better said, that media today consider controversy and negative news as deserving of news priority - the reporting connected with the Pope's coming visit to the Rome Synagogue has been a relentless emphasis on the negative.

In which, for instance, the objection of a single rabbi is given the same importance as the visit itself, even though not only leaders of the Rome and Italian Jewish communities are taking part, but also rabbis from Israel and other representatives of world Jewry.

---

The Pope will be welcomed on Sunday by
- the host for the visit, Riccardo Di Segni, Chief Rabbi of Rome
- Riccardo Pacifici, president of the Jewish Community of Rome
- Renzo Gattegna, president of the Italian Jewish Communities
- Shear Yashuv Cohen, Chief Rabbi of Haifa
- Ratson Arussi, Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Ono
- David Brodman, Chief Rabbi of Savyon
- David Rosen, director of the American Jewish Commitee
- David Sperber, president of the Institute of Advanced Torah Studies at the University of Bar-Ilan (Israel)
- Oded Wiener, secretary-general of the Grand Rabbinate of Israel; and
- Josef Levi, Chief Rabbi of Florence.

---

I hate to sound uncharitable but not all of these people may feel sincerely welcoming to the Pope. Some of them have made offensive statements about him with regard to Pius XII and to the Holocaust. So why do they want to be there? Why are they going out of their way to come from Israel and other places to be in Rome for the visit?

Because, it seems to me, being with the Pope at any event - particularly something considered historic such as this one - and/or attacking the Pope is one sure way for them to be in the world spotlight, or at least, the subject of worldwide news reporting.

This story by the reliably contrary (often perverse) Richard Owen illustrates all of the above:


Rabbi to boycott Pope's
visit to Rome synagogue
by Richard Owen in Rome

Jan. 15, 2009


The Chief Rabbi of Rome yesterday sought to defuse a row over threats by leading Italian Jewsg to boycott an historic visit by Pope Benedict XVI to the city’s synagogue.

[In this article, Owen only mentions two boycotters - one rabbi and one Holocaust survivor - so using the phrase 'threats by leading Italian Jews' is an obvious attempt to make it worse than it really is.]

Giuseppe Laras, head of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly, said he would not attend Sunday’s papal visit because it “will bring nothing good and will only benefit the more reactionary sectors of the Church”. [In what way does any Catholic benefit from a visit that has obviously been 'allowed' to proceed only because how would it look if the Jews cancelled an invitation they had previously given under no duress?

BTW, this is the same rabbi who, last year, led the Italian Jews to boycott the observance of the annual Day for Catholic-Jewish Dialog by writing a poisonous article against Benedict XVI and Pius XII for a Jesuit magazine in Venice - which had no business publishing such an article to begin with. Whose side are they on anyway?]

He said Pope Benedict had offended Holocaust survivors by putting Pius XII, the controversial wartime pontiff, on the path to sainthood last month, despite allegations that he failed to raise his voice against the Holocaust.

In an interview with The Times Riccardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi, said: “We discussed extensively whether to cancel the visit and decided that it must go ahead despite what happened”. He said he and Rabbi Laras had “different views, and time will tell which of us has made the right choice”.

He agreed that Pius XII’s record “remains a controversial historical problem for us”. However the issue should be “studied in a calm way, in other forums”, with the Vatican opening its archives on the wartime Pope to scholars, Rabbi Di Segni suggested.

[Suggested! How disingenuous! Neither Di Segni nor Owen bother to say that yes, those Archives will be open, in 2014! interested parties will simply have to wait, nothing they can say or do will hasten that date, because it is all a matter of material time, and besides, why don't they look into what is already available?

They will never be satisfied about Pius XII - even after all available archives have been made public - if they do not find one shred of documentary evidence to support their ironcast conviction about Pius XII's guilt. What do they expect to find? A letter or a diary by Pius XII or someone close to him attesting that he really agreed with Hitler that the Jews should be exterminated. Even as they ignore the 12 volumes of Fr. Blet's report on the relevant documents that exist, just because the documents show a Pope who helped the Jews as much as he could!

The Vatican, which has said the archives cannot be made available until 2014, insists Pius used behind-the-scenes diplomacy to try to save Jews, and that Benedict’s recent decree recognising his “heroic virtues” was not an historical assessment of his pontificate but confirmation that he had led a Christian life.

Piero Terracina, an 82-year-old Italian Jewish Holocaust survivor, also plans to boycott the visit because Pius XII had “not said one word” when over a thousand Jews were rounded up in the Rome ghetto in October 1943 and sent to death camps.

However Shlomo Venezia, 86, who like Mr Terracina was deported to Auschwitz, said he would go because “the Pope is the Pope, a great spiritual head. We have to find a way to go foward together, as brothers.” [God bless Shlomo and enlighten the Larases and Terracinas of the world!]

Benedict’s visit will be his third to a synagogue but his first to the one in Rome.

In his interview with The Times, Rabbi Di Segni said some Italians had not faced up to the country’s role in persecuting the Jews under Fascism, or acknowledged the “considerable number” of Italian Jews sent to concentration camps.

Asked if there had been complicity between the Nazis and the Catholic Church, he said: “Let’s say, acquiescence.”

Now why would Di Segni say anything as outrageous as that? Acquiescence? When catholics themselves were among those persecuted by the Nazis?

Also, since he is the host for the visit, Di Segni should have had the courtesy and consistency to say, "I am not going to say anything at ths time that will just fan any controversy. After the visit, ask me again."

In behalf of all of us, some things that need to be said:


'Holy Father, thank you
for your teaching'
Letter to the Editor
by LUCIO COCO
Translated from



Dear Editor,

At year's end it is usual to draw up a balance sheet. And so i wish to dwell on some numbers which I think are significant to illustrate the activity of the Holy Father.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI gave 202 addresses, pronounced 55 homilies, recited 59 Angelus and offered 44 catecheses. He also published an encyclical, wrote 32 letters and 39 messages, for a total of 429 interventions.

It is truly tireless and immense work, especially if we add to this the apostolic trips that he made (5 in Italy and 3 abroad) - all this by a man who is about to turn 83.

To me, these figures suffice to give an idea not only of the amount but also the quality of work in a life that is dedicated every day to reminding men in our time to make room for God in their existence; to help them confess more strongly their faith in Christ, recognizing in him the center of one's existence; to sustain the Church in its never too easy task of guiding souls and sustaining persons; to support priests in their mission [think of the Year for Priests decreed by the Pope]; to intervene in the pressing issues of our time - family, bioethics, the environment, work, the economy.

With all this, I wish to express the hope that his capacity to give himself may be an example for all of us all the days of this new year.

NB: Prof Coco (born 1961) a scholar on ancient Greek and Latin literature, and edits the series PENSIERI DI BENEDETTO XVI (Thoughts of Benedict XVI) for the Vatican Publishing House, small volumes that pput together the Holy Father's reflections on various topics for popular use. The series is impressive by now:




A reply from the editor
by Marco Tarquinio
Editor



Your beautiful letter leads me to give voice to a sentiment I wish to share with you and our readers.

It is the profound gratitude for the gift of this Pope who is giving all he can tirelessly for the Gospel, the Church, the least among people, the reasons for our faith, hope for all mankind, frank dialog with other religions and with non-believers....

The numbers you have so efficiently mustered are an eloquent documentation of a tireless commitment.

To follow the Magisterium of Benedict XVI is an unparalleled intellectual and spiritual adventure. This is the reason that we offer so often the full texts of his homilies, discourses and Angelus teachings - first-hand documentation that allows the reader to directly confront his Scriptural exegeses and philosophical reflections, his lessons on the history of the Church and his great meditations on Christian life. Gold for our lives, that helps us refine our capacity of judgment.

[Oh, how much I echo all that! It is the very reason that, in my own small way, I try to post full translations of what he says as promptly as I can, instead of simply relying on the piecemeal, often selective, and always unsatisfactory reports on what he says!]

At the start of 2010, within which Benedict XVI will complete five years of his Pontificate, to thank the Pope for what he has been teaching us by word and example is a necessary and dutiful act. And you have done well to remind us.

I would like to add to your considerations another aspect which is close to my heart.

To 'weigh' by numbers the dedication of Pope Benedict certainly offers an impressive dimension to his apostolic initiatives, but there is more to say about what we are learning in 'the school of Peter' from this Pope.

In his interventions during the Christmas season, the Pope left us with some expressions that are like pearls to be treasured and meditated upon throughout the year.

Think of the 'court of the Gentiles' that he spoke about to the Roman Curia, to indicate a 'place' where the Church should keep alive the question of God which emerges tenaciously even among non-believers.

Think of the 'vigilant shepherds' on Christmas Eve and the great difference between them and 'those who are still dreaming".

Or "the 'us' of the Church" that he spoke of in the Christmas Urbi et Orbi message.

And the "respectful look that recognizes a person in the face of the other" from his Message for the World Day for Peace.

On a Sunday Angelus, he preached the hope "that does not rely on improbable prognostications nor on economic forecasts" because everything rests "with God".

And on the Feast of the Epiphany, a splendid meditation about those who claim "to have formulated a conclusive judgment about everything" which makes them "closed and insensitive" to "the news of God".

Which is to say that Benedict XVI imposes not so much by the numbers but by the pertinence of his ideas and words to the great questions of our day, of men, of each of us.

To follow the Pope every step of the way for yet another year is a guarantee that our way will be strewn with discoveries and unforeseen conquests.

To live up to the measure of this extraordinary guide is the task and responsibility that we in Avvenire profoundly feel anD which we seek to share with readers like you.

Well, Rabbi Di Segni obviously has NO idea! The question is: is his ignorance caused by a lack of knowledge? Can it be possible that he has never picked up a neutral book about the role of the Church during the Nazi regime?
Or is he simply being vicious? Or is he dying for media attention? Or is it a combination of all above mentioned?!

In Germany during the darkest times of our history, the Church was doing the same as the Pope did. They helped behind the scenes. Hidden. Quietly.

Still, many Priests were shipped off to labor camps/KZ's.

Even stronger was the resistance in Bavaria, where, due to the very strong identification of the people with Bavarian culture, the Nazi doctrine was accepted as the current status quo, but many people resisted assimilation (sadly, many others didn't, of course). Card. Faulhaber was relentlessly demanding his flock to resist. He was a very authoritarian figure.

I understand that the Rabbi is looking at the circumstances in Italy, where the protestant church was/is not very big. But still, he should look into their attitude during those times.

Who ever criticizes their silence?



Errrmmm.... have the smileys been de-activated??!! I wanted to use my blow up smiley!!




The Jews who have developed an obsessive hostility to Pius XII wilfully see only what they want to see. I have never read about any Jew who criticized Rossevelt or Churchill for not doing anything about the Jews, because they concentrated, rightly so, on defeating Hitler as soon as possible! In the grand overview, what the Nazis were doing to the Jews - assuming anyone was aware at the time of the extent of the genocide - was no worse than what they were doing to all the other Europeans who necessarily became 'collateral damage'.

So yes, it is a combination of all those motivations you cited - plus lingering hostility to Christians - that feed this unnatural blood lust against one man whom even they acknowledge did help save hundreds if not thousands of Jews.

As I have said before, their madness is such as to make it seem that Pius XII, not Hitler, was single-handedlty responsible for the Holocaust! When was the last time any of the media-savvy Jewish chattering class said anything about Hitler?

But the media will keep playing up their opposition to Pius XII because they can use the militant Jews as the club cowards can use to hit the Church and the Pope with. YECHHH!

As for the x'd-out smileys, something has been ailing the site the past few hours. Not just the smileys, but even the normal commands, are deactivated, including Preview mode. I had to type in all the text enhancement codes in my last two posts - and every time I catch an error that needs to be corrected, it takes an eternity for the text box to come on; equally as long to wait for it to post after I click Reply or Modify.

Common witness
to the one God
by Fr. Norbert Hofmann
[Secretary of the Commission for
Religious Relations with Judaism
Translated from
the 1/15/10 issue of



On Sunday afternoon, January 17, Pope Benedict XVI will visit the Jewish community of Rome, and in this context, the Great Synagogue along the Tiber River, not far from the Vatican.

For the Holy Father, it will be a brief trip from the center of the universal Catholic Church to the place that is sacred to the Jews of Rome.

Christianity and Judaism have always lived side by side in this city. They have a long common history, made up of diverse monents: times of peaceful brotherhood as well as times of tension.

From the time of the Macabbees in the second century before the Christian era, there is proof of a Jewish community in Rome that is directly traceable to the Judaism of the Second Temple of Jerusalem.

The present Jewish community is therefore rightly proud of its venerable history and its religious tradition that has been kept through the centuries.

Benedict XVI is not the first Pope to visit Rome's Great Synagogue - the first was his predecessor. Venerable Pope John Paul II, on April 13, 1986.

With Nostra aetate (No. 4) of the Second Vatican Council, which, in 1865, laid down the basis for a systematic dialog between Jews and Catholics from a theological and practical point of view, relations between the two communities have gradually intensified.

Although these have had high and low points, they are much more resistant today than in the past. This was shown, for instance by the 'Williamson case', which, starting January 24, 2009, put this relationship to a test.

But in the course of a few weeks, thanks to efforts by both the Jewish and Catholic sides, it was possible to smoothen out the situation.

On February 12, 2009, the Pope received a delegation composed of the presidents of the principal American Jewish organizations. On this occasion, he reiterated forcefully that negationism and anti-Semitism do not have a place in the Catholic Church. He expressed his solidarity with the Jewish people and said he would continue to do everything possible to promote relations with Judaism.

At the same time, the Pope officially anounced his trip to the Holy Land from May 8-15, 2009. One of the aims of the pilgrimage was clearly to provide a new impulse to inter-religious dialog among the three monotheistic faiths.

It was significant that during his trip to Israel, the Pope visited the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem to pray for the six million Jews who were the innocent victims of the Shoah, and to remember their names "incised indelibly in the memory of Almighty God'.

The Holy Father also went to the Wailing Wall, where he paused in silent meditation and left a prayer in a fissure on the wall, just as Pope John Paul II had done in March 2000.

And at the Hechel Schlomo Center, he met with the two Chief Rabbis of Jerusalem's Grand Rabbinate, Jonah Metzger and Shlomo Amar, along with other important representatives of Israeli and international Judaism.

The numerous meetings with our Jewish dialog partners in the Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism, and the words explicitly said by the Holy Father on the irreversibility of efforts that have been done so far to promote dialog, have surely contributed to reinforce the relations between our two communities.

Let us not forget that Pope Benedict XVI has already visited two other synagogues: on August 19, 2005, in Cologne, during World Youth Day, and on April 18, 2008, in New York, during his apostolic trip to the Untied States. He will be remembered as the Pope who visited the most number of synagogues.

He has repeatedly demonstrated that he has Jewish-Christian relations very much at heart, and above all, as a German, the aspect of reconciliation, as he clearly underscored in his address on May 28, 2006, to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The fact that the Pope chose January 17, 2010, as the date for meeting the Jewish community of Rome is particularly symbolic. The Italian bishops' conference has celebrated since 1990 a Day for Judaism, which points to the uniqueness of relations between Christians and Jews, highlights the Jewish roots of Christianity, and is meant to reinforce current relations between Jews and the Catholic Church including activities in common.

This special day is observed on January 17, one day before the start of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (Jan. 25-18). In this connection, let us remember that 2010 also marks a small anniversary: 20 years of the Day of Judaism in the Italian Church.

Other European countries have intrdouced a similar initiative - Austria, Poland and the Netherlands.

The Holy Father's decision to visit the Roman Synagogue this year. on the 20th anniversary of the Day for Judaism, clearly demonstrates the Pontiff's desire for reconciliation and the courage given him by God to go on beyond every possible tension.

The Pope will meet the Jews to express once more his solidarity with the people God chose to be a light to all peoples.

All these encounters take place in the context of dialogs with international Jewry as well as with the Grand Rabbinate of Israel, dialogues that have already borne much fruit.

Despite remaining differences, we have rediscovered more profoundly our common heritage and we are firmly determined to bear witness together to the one God and his commandments, whichare fundamental for today's society and civilization.


Theological implications
for Pope's synagogue visit?
Two Jewish journalists think so
Translated from



ROME, January 15 -The visit that Benedict XVI will make Sunday to the Synagogue in Rome could have theological implications within the Catholic Church, according to two Italian Jewish journalists writing in the special issue of the monthly magazine Shalom which will be distributed during the visit.

For Levi, the return of a Pontiff to the capital's Great Synagogue is a demonstration that 'the great turning point' introduced by John Paul II 'was a turning-point and remains so".

"A turning point that was not only political but also theological, because the emphasis on the jewish roots of Christianity concerns the present adn teh future of Christian thinking and identity" and demonstrates that "the fecundity of Jesus's exquisitely Jewish teaching" like the univeral preaching of Saul of Tarsus, "continues to reveal immense potential for innovation".

But a 'confrontation' with the novelty represented by the recognition of Jesus's Jewishness does not concern only the Catholic Church, Levi says, but also interpellates Judaism which "could modify its identity and attitude towards Jesus" - a double challenge according to Levi, who writes for La Stampa.

On the same plane, but more focused on the figure of Benedict XVI is Gad lerner's article entitled "An encounter in the interests of clarity and friendship".

"For his well-known personal inclinations and the consequent nature of his ministry, Benedict XVI, theologian Pope and intelelctual, raises greater expectations", according to the former editor of RAI state TV's TG-1 [its premier newscast].

"The studies he has dedicated to Jesus as a Jew are destined to address a new ievitable step forward in the [Catholic-Jewish] dialog".

And that is why, he points out, "more than just conveying emotion to him, there must be reasoning, a theoretical ordering of open questions that are inevitable".

Among these, Lerner cites the continuity of the presence of the Jewish people in the world and of the Jewish faith, in Christianity itself, in a way that implies "different interpretations than those made till now of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles". [Whatever 'different' interpretations Lerner has in mind, nothing will change the belief that distinguishes Christianity from Judaism - that Christ is the Son of God, the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament (the Jewish Bible), and in Christian doctrine, consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Triune God.]

Lerner says that even the term 'conversion' may have to be redefined. He thinks that a 'grave responsibility' rests on Benedict XVI for theological updating "that friendship and dialog in themselves do not suffice to bring about".


I hope the articles come online in full, because I am curious exactly what 'theological updating' Lerner means. Even the post-'Nostra aetate' Catholic emphasis on Jesus as a Jew - and an obediently observant one - was not theological updating but an acknowledgment of historical fact which had been obscured or glossed over for centuries of Christian teaching, for being 'inconvenient'.

P.S. The program of the Pope's visit to the Rome Synagogue in a ZENIT English service article today is a rehash of Salvatore Izzo's detailed report for AGI on 1/14/09 translated and posted in the preceding page of this thread.

Saturday, January 16
ST. BERARD AND 5 COMPANIONS (d Morocco, 1220)
First Franciscan Martyrs
Berard was personally received into the Franciscan Order by St. Francis in 1213.
By 1219, Francis decided the time had come to spread the Gospel to the Muslim
countries of North Africa. He chose Berard, who spoke Arabic and was an eloquent
preacher, with two other priests and three brothers to go to Morocco. They first
spent some time preaching in Spain and Portugal before crossing to Morocco.
Their preaching and denunciation of Islam immediately drew the ire of local rulers
who cast them into prison. When they steadfastly refused to renounce the faith,
the king himself beheaded them. When their remains were brought to Portugal,
their story inspired a young Augustinian canon to join the Franciscan order, going
on to gain enormous fame as Anthony of Padua, the greatest preacher of his day.
Berard and his companions were canonized in 1481.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/011610.shtml



OR today.

The OR continues its extended coverage of the Haiti earthquake catastrophe, with stories on the challenges of bringing prompt aid
to the victims despite the vast outpouring of international assistance, the various Church efforts to provide immediate assistance
and the invaluable role of the undamaged Apostolic Nunciature in Port au Prince as a coordination center, and the role of social
networking sites on the Internet in communicating the tragedy to the rest of the world. The main papal story is the Holy Father's
address to the plenary assembly of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, with an article on his visit to the Rome
Synagogue tomorrow [both items translated and posted earlier on this page].



THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting)

- Archbishop Antonio Maria Vegliò, President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants
and Itinerant Workers

- Mons. Eliseo Ariotti, Apostolic Nuncio in Paraguay

- Mons. Patrick Coveney, Apostolic Nuncio (unassigned)

- Delegation from the city of Freising to confer honorary citizenship on the Holy Father, former Archbishop
of Munich and Freising. [The city council of Munich has still failed to pass a resolution to make him an honorary citizen
of Munich.]

The headline given to this article is another example of editorial mindlessness. The very fact that the visit is taking place despite all the difficulties the article describes is the news - not whether 'it will help', because it certainly is not an act that does not 'help' anything - there is no downside to it, and the 'one God' professed by both Jews and Christians will determine what graces will come forth from the visit.



On the eve of Pope’s visit
to the Rome synagogue,
some ask if it will help
By RACHEL DONADIO

January 15, 2010



Outside the Rome Synagogue on Friday; right, workers in the Jewish Museum.

ROME — When Pope John Paul II visited Rome’s main synagogue in 1986, the first time a Pope had ever entered a Jewish house of worship, it was a historic step forward in Catholic-Jewish relations.

When Pope Benedict XVI visits the same synagogue on Sunday, the question is whether it will begin to repair the tensions that have developed between the two religions under his papacy.

Since becoming Pope in 2005, Benedict has set off several contretemps with Jews. He has advocated a rite that includes a prayer calling for their conversion. [Oh the ignorance, and the laziness to do basic research, on the issue of the Good Friday prayer! To reduce it so erroneously in this way is a true disservice to the Pope and to the readers.]

He revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops, one of whom had denied the scope of the Holocaust [A conscientious reporter would add that this is an issue that has nothing to do with why he was excommunicated and the revocation of such excommunication.]


Last month, he advanced Pius XII, the World War II-era Pope, one step closer to sainthood, a move that almost derailed the synagogue visit and has prompted at least one leading Italian rabbi to boycott it. [Big deal!] Many Jews say Pius could have done more to stop the deportation of Jews; his defenders say his silence toward the Nazis was sound diplomacy, aimed at saving more lives.

Amplifying sensitivities is the fact that Benedict, 82, is also a German of a certain generation, an unwilling member of the Hitler Youth, whose every action is scrutinized closely in that light.

“The cloud over the relationship still relates to the Holocaust,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

And yet a visit by a Pope to the Jewish community here, the oldest one in Europe, has particular resonance. The city’s Jews have lived in the heart of the Roman Empire and the shadow of the Vatican theocracy for millennia.

Consigned by the popes to a ghetto in the mid-16th century, they gained full citizenship only with the unification of Italy in the 1870s, before Mussolini’s 1938 racial laws stripped away many of their rights again.

In 1986, John Paul was warmly received at the Rome synagogue, where he called the Jews “our dearly beloved brothers.” He also quoted from Nostra Aetate, a landmark document on interfaith relations from the Second Vatican Council, saying that the Church “deplores the hatred, persecutions and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone.”

If John Paul’s visit “brought down a wall, then Benedict’s visit builds a bridge across two sides of the Tiber that sometimes seem very far,” said Andrea Riccardi, a church historian and founder of the lay Community of Sant’Egidio, which helped orchestrate Sunday’s event. (The Vatican is on the other side of the Tiber from the synagogue in the former Jewish ghetto.)

Both the Vatican and Jews in Rome see Benedict’s visit, his third trip to a synagogue since becoming Pope, as the continuation of an interfaith friendship and an effort to calm recent controversies. [That sort of demeans the Pope's gesture, because he accepted the invitation before the so-called controversies came to cloud up in the public eye the fundamental fact of a common Christian and Jewish pre-Christian heritage. He would have made the visit even if there were no such controversies.]

“It’s true that there have been moments of tension and misunderstanding,” said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. “But a specific meaning of this visit is to affirm from the Catholic side the essentiality and richness and importance of the common elements in the relationship.”

The visit evolved from a longstanding invitation by Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, for Benedict to call at the synagogue.

“We have a very, very complicated history and a lot of problems to resolve,” Rabbi Di Segni said. “But it’s one thing to resolve them at a distance marked by chill and total hostility, and it’s another thing to have a willingness to listen respectfully.”

Both sides were waiting for the right time. Tensions flared last January after Benedict revoked the excommunications of four bishops from the Society of St. Pius X, a group founded in opposition to the liberalizing changes of the Second Vatican Council. The Vatican has said that Benedict, who has denounced anti-Semitism, was not aware that one of the bishops had publicly denied the scope of the Holocaust.

Relations between the Vatican and Jews improved somewhat after the Pope went to Israel and the Palestinian territories last May, although some Israelis complained that he did not mention the word “Nazi” or “German” while at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. [Ah yes! How could the Pope have failed to inform the Jews exactly who were responsible for the Holocaust!]

Benedict’s decision just before Christmas to confirm the “heroic virtues” of Pius XII, moving him closer to sainthood, stung many Jews, especially those in Rome, where 1,000 Jews were deported to their deaths in 1943 during the Nazi occupation. [And thousands more were saved - at least 8,000 in Rome alone - thanks to the efforts of Pius XII and Catholic institutions. So why not add that fact, as well?]

“These acts happened under the windows of the Pope,” Rabbi Di Segni said. [What was the Pope supposed to do? Rush to the train station and put himself bodily in the way of the train? This was 1943! He would have died in vain and the train would still have gone to Auschwitz. And yet, Vatican diplomats apparently did enough behind the scenes so that no other mass deportation took place from Rome.]

But he added that it was “undeniable” that the Church helped save thousands of Italian Jews by hiding them in church buildings. [Thank you, Rabbi Di Segni! I do believe this is the first such admission I have read from a habitual critic of Pius XII.]

The Vatican has explained that the beatification track of Pius is not a “hostile act” toward Jews and is based on his Christian life, not his historical record.

Scholars and Jewish groups have called on the Vatican to open the archives from Pius XII’s papacy to full historical scrutiny. The Vatican has said it will take at least five more years to catalog all the material.

Yet Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, the president of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly and a former chief rabbi of Milan, said he would not attend the visit on Sunday, as a protest of the Pope’s move on Pius XII.

“To do this so close to the visit was in bad taste,” Rabbi Laras said. He said the visit would not help dialogue. “Who gains more?” he asked. “It’s not us, it’s some reactionary elements in the church.” [The bad taste is entirely on the part of Laras, who has been obstreperously hostile to Benedict XVI. And yet, for all his bluster, none of the other rabbis in his assembly have so far announced they are joining his boycott.

And once again, what does anyone in the Church have to 'gain' by this visit, least of all, the 'reactionary elements' who protest any fraternization with the Jews! It is so uncivil to look on gestures of friendship as a question of 'who gains, who loses'. That is not the point at all!]

At the start of what is expected to be a two-hour stop on Sunday afternoon, Benedict is to place a wreath by a plaque in the Jewish ghetto commemorating the deportation to Auschwitz of 1,000 Roman Jews.

Shopkeepers in the former Jewish ghetto surrounding the synagogue seemed generally enthusiastic about the visit. Tending her family’s clothing shop, Fatina Calò displayed the kind of realpolitik and resignation that have helped Rome’s Jews survive for millennia. “Peace is better than war,” she said with a shrug.




What to expect tomorrow



ROME, Jan. 16 (Translated from SIR) - Pope Benedict XVI has described his coming visit to the Rome Synagogue as "a further stage in the irrevocable journey of concord and friendship" between Jews and Catholics - the second to the Great Synagogue by a Roman Pontiff.

The Pope expressed his wish in a telegram sent in his name by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, responding to his Christmas wishes.

The monthly newspaper Pagine ebraiche of the Unione delle Comunità ebraiche italiane (UCEI) dedicated a whole page in its January issue to the Pope's visit.

The visit will start at the Piazza named for October 16, 1943, the date on which a trainload of Roman Jews was shipped by the Nazis to Auschwitz.

Waiting to welcome him at the square along the Tiber River, which is one of the entrances to the Jewish neighborhood of Rome - still called the Ghetto - will be the president of the Jewish Community of Rome, Riccardo Pacifici, and the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Renzo Gattegna, along with the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Ciccardo Di Segni, and Jewish religious leaders from other parts of Italy, Israel and the international Jewry.

[In the original story, Di Segni and the other rabbis were to welcome the Pope at the steps of the Synagogue.]

The Pope will lay flowers at the marker honoring the 1,022 Jews (including more than 200 children) who were deported to Auschwitz in 1943, of which only 14 survived the Holocaust.

The Pope will then walk toward the Synagogue with his hosts, and will pause a second time in front of a marker commemorating a Paletinian attack in October 1982 on some Jews as they were leaving the Synagogue - a two-year-old boy, Stephano Gaj Tache, was killed in the attack.

The Jewish newspaper said that the two markers are "of greatest significance to Roman Jews as events that attest to the horrors of intolerance and anti-Semitism, but also to the determination of the Roman Jews to defend their freedom, identity and dignity at any cost".

The Pope will then enter the Synagogue, with Rabbi Di Segni, who at the threshold, will don an old ritual cape (the Talled) that has been kept at the Jewish Museum of Rome as a 'symbol of Jewish history in Rome". A choir will sing a welcome hymn, "Baruch Habah".



After the official visit in the Synagogue, the Pope will visit the adjoining Jewish Museum, accompanied by its curator, Daniele Di Castro, to inaugurate an exhibit called 'Et ecce gaudium' showing designs prepared by Jewish artists to commemorate papal coronations in the 18th century.

At 6 p.m., the Pope will go to the Spanish Synagogue part of the building to meet with other representatives of the Italian Jewish communities before returning to the Vatican.


[An AGI story earlier by Vaticanista Salvatore Izzo gave the following other details of the program.

---

In the prayer hall itself, the Pope will walk through the central aisle towards the front dais, and along the way, will greet other personages present including the Mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno.

The Pope and the Rabbi will take their seats in the center of the dais. On their left will be the Catholic and Jewish members of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism, and on the right, the members of the Pope's entourage.

Speaking first for the hosts will be Pacifici, Gattegna and Di Segni.

The Pope's address will be followed by an exchange of gifts, as the choir sings the hymn 'Ani' Maamin'.

The official encounter in the Synagogue ends at 5:35, after which the Pope and the Chief Rabbi will proceed to the Synagogue garden, where an olive tree has been planted to commemorate the visit, then to the nearby Jewish Museum of Rome to inaugurate the exhibit "Et ecce gaudium".

At 6 p.m., the Pope will meet other representatives of the Jewish community in the Spanish Synaogogue, returning to the Vatican at 6:15.

The Vatican Press Office has listed the members of both 'official delegations' on Sunday:

For the Jews - Shear Yashuv Cohen, Chief Rabbi of Haifa; Ratson Arussi, Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Ono; David Brodman, Chief Rabbi of Savyon; David Rosen, director of the American Jewish Commitee; David Sperber, president of the Institute of Advanced Torah Studies at the University of Bar-Ilan (Israel); Oded Wiener, secretary-general of the Grand Rabbinate of Israel; and Josef Levi, Chief Rabbi of Florence.

The Vatican delegation includes Cardinal Jorge Mejia, who organized the visit of John Paul II in 1986; Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism, along with the Commission Secretary, Fr. Norbert Hoffman; Mons. Fouad Twal, Patriarch of Jerusalem; Mons. Antonio Franco, Apostolic Nuncio in Israel; Mons. Elias Chacour, Bishop of Akka (historic Acre in north Israel); Mon, Bruno Forte, Bishop of Chieti (a noted Biblicist and theologian); the Auxiliary Bishop of Galilee, Mons. Giacinto Boulos Marcuzzo; the Custodian of the Holy Lnad, Franciscan Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa; and the Prefect of the Ambrosian Library, Mons. Pierfrancesco Fumagalli.

The Pope will be accompanied, as usual, by the Prefect of the Pontifical Household, Archbishop James Harvey, and his deputies, Mons. Paolo De Nicolo and Fr. Leonardo Sapienza, and the Pope's private secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein.

---

In a statement made earlier this week, Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism, said:

---

I hope this visit will help improve relations between Jews and Catholics in italy, because there have been problems arising out of some particular sensitivities.

I hope this will be a sign that dialog must progress. There will be little said about differences during the visit - everyone knows what the fundamental differences are between the two religions and what the concrete problems are at the moment - but the primary intention of this visit is to speak about what we have in common, and there is a lot.

We share a common faith in one God, and, in a secularized world, this is very important: that we bear witness to the one God; that we sanctify the name of God, as we are told in the Ten Commandments; that we respect the Sabbath, a day that must be reserved for God...
These are things that are no longer habitual or usual in a society that is more or less secularized.

But we can also bear common witness to the other Commandments of God: in defense of life, the family, social justice and peace.

This is the new orientation for our relations. In the first 10 years, we spoke about the past - and there was a lot to discuss, including the Shoah. From there, we passed on to the actual problems of modern society, and on what we can do together on this common basis, for which much collaboration has already been achieved.

---

In an interview with Vatican Radio, Rabbi Di Segni described the Pope's visit as 'a gesture of continuity'.

He said the visit had come under question following Pope Benedict's decree proclaiming the heroic virtues of Pope Pius XII, but that the 'important' clarification made by the Vatican spokesman "changed the atmosphere because it was a sign the Vatican was sensitive to the Jewish reaction to the decree".

[Not that Fr. Lombardi said anything new in stressing that in the process of evaluating candidates for sainthood, the Church examines and certifies the candidate's 'heroic virtues' in terms of a Christian life, without closing the door to historical questions still considered 'open' outside the Church.

But, as we have seen from Jewish insistence on spelling out the full whys and wherefores of the Shoah every time the subject is raised, in the same way they demand that on every occasion, the Church spell out the reasons for what it does on anything that concerns the Jews.

Normally, I would think it is preposterous that the Church should have to do this, but since the problem exists, and it is clear what the Jews expect, then a simple, direct and timely explanation for their benefit would be wisely preemptive. Not that it will completely muzzle Pavlov-dog reactions, but is would be pro-active rather than reactive.]

He continued: "If we dwell on the things that divide us profoundly, then we will not go anywhere We must think of what unites us, and leave the controversies to be discussed further. Such discussions are necessary but they should be left for the right time and with the necessary calm".

"Beyond all this, it is important to launch a message of brotherhood and commitment on both sides. The world is looking to see if we can do this together. And that," he said, "is the challenge that we face with this visit".


BRIEF OVERVIEW OF
ROME'S JEWISH COMMUNITY


Rome has Europe's oldest Jewish community. The Jews in Italy have strong bi-cultural roots which go back even before the birth of Christ, when the Jews already had an alliance with the Roman Empire.

Under the leadership of Judah Maccabeus, many Israelites left the land of Israel to go to the "Eternal City" (Rome) in the second century BCE. It was not until the Romans destroyed the second temple in Jerusalem [70 CE] that the Jewish/Roman alliance was broken and the Jews were forced into slavery.

About ten thousand Jews were transported to Rome to be used as work hands to help build the Coliseum. This image of history was frozen in time and will be remembered forever thanks to the Arch of Titus, where the Roman victory over the Jews was etched in stone.



Although enslaved, the Jewish population in Rome flourished. Thirteen synagogues were built as well as numerous cemeteries. However, many Romans despised the Jews and found their rituals to be barbaric. The tolerance for religious freedom started to take a turn for the worse in 380 CE when Christianity was recognized as the official religion of the Roman Empire, with very little tolerance for Jews and other religious cults.

After 1000 CE, conditions became more uncertain for the Jews because the feudal system and artisan guilds began to be put into place. Jews were barred from all guilds and were only allowed two positions, that of money lending and the selling of used clothing. It is notable that they were allowed to be moneylenders.

At the time, the church had forbidden all Christians from money lending and this would not be repealed until the 15th century. However, the position of money lending helped Jews to survive and eventually even to own property. Many feudal lords were kind to their moneylenders and kept them from harm's way.

In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council decided that Jews had to live in separate quarters and wear special insignia for the first time in the Italian states. Men were forced to wear red or yellow hats and a cloth badge on their coats. Jewish women had to wear a yellow veil over their hats. These rules were not carried out for very long but they would not be forgotten and they set building blocks for the future.

By the second half of the 16th century the Church instituted a Papal Bull which provided that: All Jews were to be enclosed in ghettos, each community could have only one synagogue, all commercial and civil rights were taken away, and all Jews had to wear a contrassegno (identification). Although similar rules had been instituted in 1215, this was the first time that the laws were regulated.


Rome's Jewish Ghetto in the 17th century.

Many Jews decided to flee the Papal State and go to other states where these rules did not exist. In 1516 the first Jewish ghetto was established in Venice and in 1555 a ghetto was established in Rome. Both were overcrowded and dirty, but the study of Torah and Talmud flourished between their closed walls so ironically, rather than destroy Jewish culture, they actually helped it to blossom and grow.

It was not until the arrival of Napoleon that the doors of the ghettos were torn down. But when Napoleon was defeated, they were thrown back into the ghettos and once again their rights were taken away.

In 1870, Italy was united as a nation under King Victor Emanuel, who decreed that the ghettos be dismantled and gave the Jews full citizenship. Following the end of the papal states, Jews fully integrated into Italian society. They comprised a significant percentage of the university teachers, generals and admirals. A number of Jews were involved in government and were close advisors of Mussolini. Both Mussolini’s biographers, Margharita Sarfatti, and his Minister of Finance, Guido Jung, were Jews.

In 1931, approximately 48,000 Jews lived in Italy. By 1939, up to 4,000 had been baptized, and several thousand other Jews chose to emigrate, leaving 35,000 Jews in the country. During the war, the Nazi pressure to implement discriminatory measures against Jews was, for the most part, ignored or enacted half-heartedly.

Most Jews did not obey orders to be transferred to internment camps and many of their non-Jewish neighbors and government officials shielded them from the Nazis. Some Jews were interned in labor camps in Italy.

After the north was occupied by the Germans in 1943, the Nazis wanted to deport Italian Jewry to death camps, but resistance from the Italian public and officials stymied their efforts. Nearly 8,000 Italian Jews perished in the Holocaust, but this number was significantly less than in most countries in Europe. Roughly 80 percent of Italian Jews survived the war.

Today, a diverse community of 15,000 Jews lives in Rome. The Italian Jewish community’s organization, based in Rome, the Unione delle Comunita Ebraiche Italiane (UCEI), is directly involved in providing religious, cultural, and educational services and also represents the community politically. The monthly publication Shalom is the Roman community's key publication, and Rome also has Jewish cultural clubs and several schools.

In 1987, the Jewish community obtained special rights from the Italian state allowing them to abstain from work on the Sabbath and to observe Jewish holidays. At least 13 synagogues can be found in Rome, including a special synagogue for the Libyan Jews who immigrated to Rome after the Six-Day War in 1967.

The Jewish Ghetto in Rome, now centered around the impressive great Synagogue (Tempio Maggiore) completed in 1906, is directly across Isola Tiberina, the island on the Tiber where the Church of St. Bartholomew and the Fatebenefratelli Hospital are located.

Here's the AGI story about the Pope's extemporaneous remarks today. Compare it with the AP story I posted earlier, and which I have moved down... The AP story was fixated on the Pope's visit to the synagogue tomorrow and what the Jews think about him, completely missing the unusual nature of the Pope's remarks today.


The Pope reminisces about Freising
where he was trained as a priest
and began his academic career
by SALVATORE IZZO




With the mayor of Freising today.

VATICAN CITY, January 16 (Translated from AGI) - On the Eve of his visit to the Synagogue of Rome, Benedict XVI recalled the years of is formation in the seminary after the end of Nazism, and spoke of the emotions he felt in 1945 - that "Christ is stronger than any tyranny" and was capable of turning survivors of the Second World War into 'new men' in a world rebuilt from material, historical and spiritual ruin.

In words dense with emotion, the Pope recalled how his youth culminated in his ordination as a priest in Freising, as he spoke to a delegation from that city who came to the Vatican confer him with honorary citizenship.

Together with Munich, Freising (35 kms. north) is part of the Bavarian Archdiocese that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed from 1977 to early 1982, when he came to Rome as John Paul II's Prefect in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Setting aside a prepared text, the German Pope allowed himself to indulge in memories of the places that he called 'the geography of my heart".

He said that in that interior panorama, "Freising has a very special place. It was where I received the formation that has determined the course of my life, and so this city is always in my heart, as I hope I am in hers".

His ties to Freising are visible in his coat of arms as archbishop and now as Pope, which carries two Freising motifs - the Moor of Freising, and St. Corbinian's bear.

Among the many images he recalled was of the early days of postwar Germany. "On February 3, 1946, the seminary of Freising was able to reopen its doors to survivors. It continued to be a hospital for prisoners of war, but we could resume our studies, and it was a significant moment for us: finally to begin preparing for the life to which we felt called".

"From today's outlook, we lived in very spartan conditions and no comforts: we slept in dormitories, we studied in the lecture halls, but we were happy, not only because we had left behind the misery and dangers of war and Nazi domination, but because we were now free. And above all, that we were preparing for our vocation".

"We knew," he said, "that Christ is stronger than any tyranny, than the force of [the Nazi] ideology and its mechanisms of oppression. We knew that time and the future belong to Christ, we knew he had called us and that there was a need for us. And we also knew that in this new time, men needed priests who could bring a new impetus to the faith in order to construct the living house of God".

Recalling his teachers in his seminary - whom he first knew as teachers and then as colleagues, he said, "They were not just 'professors' but above all, 'teachers' who did not limit themselves to offering us the fruits of their specialization... (but) whose primary aim was to anchor the faith of their students such that they would be able to pass it on in a new era with new challenges".



About his ordination as a priest on June 29, 1951, Benedict XVI remembered himself lying supine on the floor before the altar, as the litany of saints was chanted: "Lying there, you become conscious once more of your own personal poverty and you ask yourself: Am I really going to be capable of all that this means?"

As for the laying of hands that followed, "We felt as if it was the Lord himself who was laying his hands - on me, as if to say: Now you belong to me, you no longer belong to yourself. I want you to be in my service".


Joseph and George Ratzinger and their parents (right photo) on Ordination Day, June 29, 1951. Below, the two new priests; at right, Joseph Ratzinger, when he was a lecturer in Freising Seminary.


Then a fast forward to recall the 'three unforgettable years' that he spent with his parents in Lerchenfeldhof [Larch Court] in Freising, at the 'house by the larches', surrounded by luxuriant nature, which, he said, made him feel that "Yes, Freising was really my home".

[And how can we forget, reading his memoir Milestones, that his greatest anguish over the possibility that he would fail to get his Habilitation was that he would have to leave that house and find comparable living arrangements that would be just as comfortable for his parents?]

He recalled with pleasure the spires of the Cathedral dominating the city from Domberg, Cathedral Hill - spires not far from Munich airport, but which, he said, "indicated an altitude different from that we could reach in an airplane. Those cathedral spires indicate the true altitude, that of God, from whom comes the love that makes us men, that gives us the true essence of our humanity".

He added that the Cathedral itself shows 'the way' and 'the breadth' of divine life, because besides conserving 'centuries of faith and prayer', it also represents "the entire communion of saints, all those who came before us and believed, prayed, knew suffering as well as joy".

This is a breadth, he said, "that goes far beyond globalization, for the very diversity and contrapositions of cultures and origins [in that communion] confers a power of internal unity, giving us that which can unite: the unifying power of being loved by God himself".

[As the Pope delivered the text extemporaneously and in German, it has not yet been posted online by the Vatican.]

A brief item in tomrrow's issue of L'Osservatore Romano provides the following information:

On Saturday morning, Benedict XVI received a delegation from Freising, Germany, at the Sala Clementina. They had come to confer him with honorary citizenship.

Besides the Mayor, Dieter Thalhammer, also present were Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, emeritus Archbishop of Munich-Freising, who had succeeded Cardinal Ratzinger in that office, as well as the present Archbishop, Reinhold Marx.

At the end of the audience, the Holy Father signed the city's Golden Book and received a gift from the delegation - a statuette of St. Corbinian, patron saint of Freising and co-patron of the Freising Archdiocesan Co-Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Corbinian.

The Bavarian delegation included a 30-man musical band.


Pope, on eve of synagogue visit,
reminisces about seminary days
right after WWII ended
by FRANCES D'EMILIO



VATICAN CITY, Jan. 16 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI, on the eve of his controversy-generating visit [What controversy? One protesting rabbi does not a controversy make!] to a Rome synagogue, said Saturday that the end of Nazi tyranny in his German homeland made him happy and allowed him to resume studies for the priesthood.

His visit to Rome's main synagogue scheduled for Sunday has divided Jewish groups because of Benedict's praise of wartime pontiff Pius XII.

Some Jewish leaders were angered by Benedict's recent move to advance Pius down the path toward possible sainthood. Critics contend that Pius didn't speak out enough to save Jews during the Holocaust, but the Vatican insists that he used quiet diplomacy to save lives.

On Saturday, Benedict reminisced about his youth in Germany with a group of Germans from Freising, the city where he was ordained in 1951 and where he had studied in a seminary a few years earlier after the institution reopened in February 1946, a few months after the war ended.

"We were able to resume (studies) and it was a significant moment in our lives," Benedict said, recalling how he and fellow seminarians felt about returning to the seminary.

In those immediate postwar days, seminary furnishings were "spartan," he recalled in off-the-cuff remarks to a delegation of Freising citizens who conferred honorary citizenship. "But we were happy, not only because we had escaped the war's misery and dangers and Nazi dominion, but because were free" and preparing once more for the priesthood, Benedict said.

The seminarians knew that Christ was "stronger than tyranny, than the strength of its ideology and of its mechanisms of oppression," the pope said.

As a young man in Germany in the final years of the war, Benedict was forced to serve in the Hitler Youth corps and deserted the Nazi army.

[The reporter might have added - by way of explaining why Freising was making the Pope an honorary citizen - that Joseph Ratzinger was ordained in the Cathedral of Freising, taught at the Freising seminary as his first academic assignment, was once Archbishop of Munich-Freising, and took the bear in his coat-of-arms from the legend of Freising's patron saint Corbinian and the bear!]

The Vatican has said it hopes the Pope's appearance at Rome's main synagogue — 24 years after Pope John Paul II's history-making visit to the synagogue helped improve Vatican-Jewish ties — would foster respect for Jews. [Did anyone at the Vatican say that? Such an inappropriate statement to attribute to anyone - as though no Jews were not respected in general!]

Italy's rabbis are split [What split???? Exactly one rabbi has announced he is boycotting the ceremony, and several more are coming from Israel and other parts of Italy to be there when the Pope visits!] over whether the synagogue should receive Benedict since he signed a decree last month praising Pius' "heroic virtues," an important step in the Vatican process for beatification and possible sainthood.

How is it that these news agency reporters cannot produce a story om such a simple event that does not include gratuitous and perhaps willfully reported lies or half-truths in an attempt to twist/tweak the news in a way that would bear out their own personal biases or the prevailing mentality?

A good rule for these reporters to remember is "Just the facts, Ma'am", as Jack Webb would admonish police witnesses in that classic TV show Dragnet.



Benedict XVI returns to Freising Cathedral, Sept. 13, 2006, during his apostolic voyage to Bavaria.


Tourist handout on Benedict XVI and the city of Freising:

Now one reporter is finding out the inappropriateness and typically mindless alacrity with which the media started calling Benedict XVI 'the green Pope'! But instead of getting rid of that tired and unimaginative metaphor once and for all, he persists in playing with it.

What does 'a different shade of green' mean? For all we know, it could be any of thozse disgusting shades associated with unpleasant bodily discharges! So stop already with the gangrenous metaphor!


For Pope Benedict,
a different shade of green
By John Thavis



VATICAN CITY, Jan. 15 (CNS) -- Over the last few months, Pope Benedict XVI has opened a wider dialogue on the subject of environmental protection, and in the process put a sharper focus on an issue that's become central to his pontificate.

It's increasingly clear that the "green" label slapped onto Pope Benedict after he installed solar panels at the Vatican and joined a reforestation project in Europe was not the whole story. Now the Pope is defining which shade of green -- in moral arguments that are not always popular.

The Pope began weighing in on environmental themes in 2006. His strong defense of the Amazon's fragile ecology, his appeals for safe water and his warnings on pollution's burden on the poor all received general acclamation.

When he approved the installation of solar panels on several Vatican buildings and funded tree-planting in Hungary, the Vatican drew praise for trying to become the world's first carbon-neutral state.

But lately, the Pope's words on ecology have raised eyebrows and even some objections.

In a speech Jan. 11 to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican, the Pope extended the discussion of "human ecology" to same-sex marriage.

"Creatures differ from one another and can be protected, or endangered, in different ways, as we know from daily experience. One such attack comes from laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination, strike at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes," he said.

That prompted protests from homosexual activists, including the head of an Italian gay organization, who said the Pope's linkage of gay marriage and ecological irresponsibility was "almost comical."

Pope Benedict, however, was not trying to score a cheap political point. His argument touched on what might be called the leitmotif of his pontificate: that man is not God, and that man's actions should correspond to God's plan -- or, as he phrased it to the diplomats, to "the structure willed by the Creator."

This is a long-held opinion of the German pontiff. In 2004, in a major Vatican doctrinal document on the relationship of men and women, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said the "obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes" was part of a misguided effort to free the human being from biological conditioning.

Addressing the diplomats, the Pope said he was thinking of legislative initiatives in countries in Europe, North America and South America. Three days earlier, the Parliament in heavily Catholic Portugal was the latest to pass a law that would legalize same-sex marriage.

In the same speech, the Pope underlined that protecting the environment makes no sense unless it begins with protecting human life, including the life of the unborn.

Here, too, the Pope was emphasizing that the Church's "green" philosophy [Why must it be described as 'green'? It is simply the Church's philosophy - which is neutral, not 'colored' one way or the other] always puts the human being at the center, precisely because humans are made in God's image.

Critics might argue that the Pope was hijacking environmental issues to push the Church's agenda on the usual topics of abortion and homosexuality. But in fact, the Pope's analysis of morality and ecology went in several other directions, too, challenging conventional policies.

One of his strongest points to the audience of diplomats -- and one that received relatively little coverage in mainstream media -- was that the protection of creation demands a re-allocation of resources away from military spending and the development of nuclear weapons.

It echoed an appeal he made for disarmament in his World Peace Day message Jan. 1, which was dedicated to the environment. In that text, the Pope said the continued existence of nuclear weapons "threatens the life of the planet and the ongoing integral development of the present generation and of generations yet to come."

Likewise, the Pope probed the link between war and ecological damage. He noted that many current conflicts around the world arose from a struggle for natural resources, and in turn inflict immense harm on the environment.

He looked at the connection between environmental destruction and migration, and pointed to the drug trade in places like Afghanistan, where agriculture is largely dedicated to the production of narcotics. "If we want peace, we need to preserve creation by rechanneling these activities," he said.

In short, the Pope's analysis is not a simple one, nor is it easily categorized. His environmental "position" touches on climate change (he urged an international agreement, warning that the future of some island nations is at stake) and the global economic crisis (which he blames in part on the selfish activities of the investment industry).

He sees the ecological crisis as part of a wider moral crisis, and the common denominator is what he calls a "self-centered and materialistic way of thinking which fails to acknowledge the limitations inherent in every creature."

With that as a starting point, the Pope's continuing catechesis of ecology is likely to keep grabbing attention and ruffling feathers in coming months.


What seems to escape most media commentaries about the Pope is the Church's approach to the whole man - as body and soul - and his 'integral development'.

How can ultra-liberals facilely bandy about and advocate the 'holistic' [the 'in' word for integral] approaches of New Age drumbeaters and trendsetters, while focusing almost exclusively on narrowly specialized, far from 'holistic' concerns that in some cases, are anti-human because "man is the problem.. so the less men there are on earth, the better off it will be" (the neo-Malthusians), or the hug-a-tree-save-the-whales types who have diverted water from one of California's prime vegetable-producing areas turning it to desert and bankrupting all the farmers, for the sake of saving a 1-centimeter-long fish from extinction!

So when someone like the Pope, who is sensible and intelligent and genuinely holistic, but unmindful of labels and current trends of 'correctness', comes along with a truly 'holistic' world view, they fail to see it for what it is. Rather, like the blind men groping at different parts of the elephant, they end up seeing only what their tunnel-vision perception will allow!

What the Pope means by ecology comprises both the human and natural components of Creation - it is human and humane, holistic and holy, a total ecology, if you will - none of which is connoted by the politically-charged but ultimately meaningless word 'green'.

Benedict XVI's visit
to the Rome Synagogue:
Historic, but also normal
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from the
1/17/10 issue of



This is a preview of an article that our editor wrote for the current issue of the bimonthly magazine Vita e Pensiero of the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. A summary of the text was published in the January issue of Pagina ebraiche, the monthly magazine of the Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane.


The visit of Benedict XVI to the Jews of Rome is an important gesture because it confirms once more the openness and friendship of the Catholic Church for the Jewish people.

Whom Papa Ratzinger returns to embrace ideally by visiting the places most important - the ancient ghetto and the Great Synagogue - to the oldest community in the Western diaspora.

A settlement that preceded by far the arrival in the imperial city of the first followers of Christ, who reached Rome in the decade of the 40s in the first century. [Is it deliberate that Vian does not use the suffix 'after Christ' or 'anno Domini'?]

Thus started - almost 15 years before Paul would describe the mysterious relationship between the two peoples in his letter to the Christians of Rome - a story of contiguousness and closeness, but also of rivalry and disputes, quarrels and friendships, curiosity and sufferings, reciprocal attraction and reciprocal ignorance.

As Suetonius already seemed to attest with regard to the expulsion of the Jews from the city because of the disorders caused precisely by the announcement of Christ (impulsore Chresto). And as it usually happens among those who belong to the same family, even among brothers, as Jews and Christians are, whether they wish to recognize it or not.

Notwithstanding coarse attitudes from both sides, notwithstanding Christian anti-Judaism, which is radically different from the papan anti-Semtisim of antiquity and that of the contemporary and modern age, which led to the Shoah.

Which the Catholic Church of Pius XII opposed as it could, through the silent - and sometimes heroic - resistance of charity, which saved very many human lives.

To the victims of that tremendous persecution, Benedict XVI will pay homage in the Rome ghetto, as he has done on other occasions, especially in Auschwitz and in Israel. [He has visited both places three times.]



Few Catholics in the 20th century have done as much as Joseph Ratzinger - as theologian, as bishop, as the official in charge of the organism which is the custodian of Catholic doctrine, and now, as Pope - to bring together Christians and Jews.

Recalling this, almost with indignation, was Benedict XVI himself, in his letter to all CAtholic bishops after he lifted the excommunication of the Lefebvrian bishops, an act that was turned against him by exploitative interests:

"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".

The roots of this choice by Joseph Ratzinger go back to the war years, to his aversion to the pagan ideology of National Socialism and to his formation as a child.

In this regard, his recollections - in his 1997 memoir of his life before he became an archbishop - of the time he spent in the seminary in Freising soon after the war, are significant:

---

No one doubted that the Church was the locus of all our hopes. Despite many human failings, the Church was the alternative to the destructive ideology of the brown rulers; in the inferno that had swallowed up the powerful, she had stood firm with a force coming to her from eternity.

It had been demonstrated: The gates of hell will not overpower her. From our own experience we now knew what was meant by 'the gates of hell'; and wel could also see with our own eyes that the house built on rock had stood firm.

---

In understanding Judaism, the young seminarian credited above all the teaching he got in Munich from the Biblical scholar Friedrich Stummer, as Ratzinger underscores in a passage which, for its not merely historical interest, deserves to be cited extensively:

---

Thus it was that the Old Testament was opened up and became precious for me. More and more I came to understand why the New Testament is not a different book of a different religion that, for some reason or other, had appropriated the Holy Scriptures of the Jews as a kind of preliminary structure.

The New Testament is nothing other than an interpretaiton of 'the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings' found from or contained in the story of Jesus.

Now these 'Law, Prophets, and Writings' had not yet, at the time of Jesus, grown together to form a definitive canon; rather, they were still open-ebded, and as such, offered themselves spontaneously to Jesus's disciples as a testimony to him, as the Sacred Scriptures that revealed his mystery.

I have ever more come to the realization that Judaism (which, strictly speaking, begins with the end of the formation of the canon, that is in the first century after Christ), and the Christian faith described in the New Testament are two ways of appropriating Israel's Scriptures - two ways that, in the end, are both determined by the position one assumes with regard to the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. The Scripture we call today Old Testament is in itself open to both ways.

For the most past, it was only after the Second World War, that we began to understand that the Jewish interpretation, too, in the time 'after Christ', possesses of course a theological mission of its own.

---

This historical and theological conviction deepened over the next decades and led Cardinal Ratzinger to write the Introduction in 2001 to teh innovative text of the Pontifical Biblical Commission on "The Jewish people and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible", and to his first drafts, begun in 2003, on his book JESUS OF NAZARETH, where the references to Judaism are continual and fundamental.

In his brief introduction to the 2001 document, the German cardinal {then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and ex-officio President of the Commission), after having re-stated that "without the Old Testament, the New Tastement would ne an indecipherable book, a plant without roots and destined to dry up" (No, 54), underscored that "the Christian hermeneutic of the Old Testament, which is doubtless profoundly different from that of Judaism, corresponds nonetheless to potentiality of the sense that is effectively present in the texts)" (No. 64).

"This is a result that seems to me of great importance," he adds, "for the continuation of dialog, but above all, even for the foundations of the Christian faith".

Called to succeed John Paul II, Benedict XVI declared, one month after his election, that he considered it providential that a Polich Pontiff was succeeded by a German, almost as though to symbolically close the horrors of the Second World War.

Towards the continuing quest for reconciliation and friendship with "our brothers of the Jewish people, to whom we are linked," he said at the inaugural Mass of his Pontificate, "by a great spiritual patrimony in common, which has its roots in the irrevocable promise of God".

A journey that began in Galilee and Judea at the time of the Roman domination and has gone on through twenty centuries - becoming much broader and level going in the second half of the twentieth century. Thanks to many men and women of good will, among whom the successors to the Galilean fisherman stand out.

It is with this background that Papa Ratzinger's visit to the Jewish community of Rome must be seen. It comes after many encounters with reprssenatives of world Jewry, and especially, his visits to the Synagogue in Cologne and in New York, and his trip to Israel during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

This will be a historic visit, but also a normal one.

NB: Some of the sentences, especially in the first part of the essay are incomplete, but it is Mr. Vian's characteristic writing style to employ this kind of ellipsis for secondary ideas that derive from a stated premise.





Amid tension, Pope Benedict
to visit Rome synagogue
by JEFF ISRAELY in Rome

January 16, 2009


When Pope John Paul II stepped into Rome's central synagogue on April 13, 1986, the man in white was met by a thunderclap of applause. After centuries of Jews suffering through pogroms, ghettos, Nazi death camps and arm's-length-at-best cohabitation with Christians, the first-ever papal visit to a Jewish house of worship — entering the synagogue side by side with Rome's avuncular chief Rabbi Elio Toaff — was much more than a photo op. It was a shared embrace to begin to heal the wounds of history.

Still, the momentous visit 24 years ago, during which John Paul referred to Jews as Christians' "older brothers," could never fully erase that history.

And indeed, when John Paul's successor, Benedict XVI, crosses the Tiber River on Sunday to visit that same synagogue, he will be dogged by a new dispute about the past: the controversy over the Vatican's decision last month to push for possible sainthood for World War II-era Pope Pius XII, whom some Jewish groups and scholars blame for not doing enough to try to halt the Holocaust.

Because of this and other tensions in the five years of his papacy, Benedict may be met by slightly more tepid applause from his Jewish hosts.

One of Italy's leading rabbis, Giuseppe Laras, said he would boycott the service, citing a number of sore points with the Pope, most notably his decision to reactivate Pius XII's sainthood dossier, which Benedict himself had put on hold three years ago to await more historical study. [More accurately: while he, Benedict, ordered a rreview of available Vatican documents by a German historian he trusted.]

"The Pope's visit to the Rome synagogue is a negative fact," Laras, head of the Italian Rabbinic Assembly, told the German-Jewish community newspaper Juedische Allgemeine Zeitung. "[The visit] won't bring anything worthwhile, but will only serve the most reactionary sectors of the Catholic Church."

Other Jewish leaders from around the world have also reacted with consternation at the move toward beatifying Pius XII. Although the naming of saints is an internal matter for Catholics, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee said "the Church's repeated insistence that it seeks mutually respectful ties with the Jewish community also means taking our sensitivities into account on the Holocaust era."

Church leaders have sought to reassure their Jewish counterparts both inside and outside of Italy, with some even urging the Vatican to postpone the Pope's long-scheduled visit to the early 20th century Great Synagogue of Rome.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said that the "heroic virtue" designation that came with Pius being given the title "venerable" last month — the first step toward his beatification and eventual sainthood — is not a historical verdict but an internal religious evaluation.

Lombardi also emphasized how much the Church treasures its rapport with the Jews, and said that the study of Pius's war record will continue.

Although he has not personally seen the documents in the Holy See archives [How about looking at the authoritative 12-volume compilation by Fr. Blet et al and released by the Vatican under Paul VI?], one senior Vatican official tells TIME that he is confident that Pius would not have been elevated to venerable status without solid evidence in the records showing he had tried his best to save Jews during the Holocaust, either by sheltering them or by not issuing a public papal denunciation, which could have just accelerated the killings.

"We also need to try to see those events as they were being lived at the time, and be much more understanding about the value in the prudence that was exercised," he said. "History is not that tidy."
(Read: "Pope Benedict on the Question of Judaism.")

Some Jewish leaders, however, are not as upset about Benedict's synagogue visit. Riccardo Di Segni, who took over as Rome's chief rabbi in 2001, has not always seen eye to eye with Benedict.

He cancelled a Catholic-Jewish meeting last year after the Pope's decision to allow wider use of the traditional Latin liturgy, which includes a Good Friday prayer calling for the conversion of the Jews. But he and other Jews felt it was better to move ahead with the synagogue visit as planned. [Of course! They do not want to be seen as reneging on an invitation freely given by Di Segni in 2005!]

Riccardo Pacifici, president of Rome's Jewish Community, says that the potential upside of the visit outweighs any doubts over whether Pius deserves to be a saint.

"We hope the images going out to the world of the Pope coming to a Jewish house of worship ... will send out a signal on the individual level that we can all dialogue with the 'other' with the force of our conscience and our heads held high, and without feeling barriers of fear or prejudice," he says. [But that has alwasy been the post-Vatican II attitude of the Church. The preejudice has been entirely on the part of the Jewish leaders taking part in the dialog.]

While Di Segni has indicated he will speak about the Pius case during the service on Sunday, it is unclear whether Benedict will mention it, or details of his own experience as a teenager in Germany during World War II.

In contrast to John Paul's willingness to talk about the war years, Benedict has offered scant recollections of his forced conscription into the Hitler Youth group. [What is there for him to tell? His wartime participation was carried out with his fellow teenage classmates in a service-with-study setting, where their specific assignment was to man an anti-aircraft battery and its associated communications. Apparently, they had no direct contact with the enemy or with captives.]

"I believe every elderly German has something worth telling Jews, and maybe also asking forgiveness," Pacifici says.

Tulia Zevi, another top Italian-Jewish leader, says that even John Paul's visit to the synagogue 24 years ago was met with some hesitation at first.

"There were very mixed feelings, excitement but also skepticism. But we also understood it was a very big event," Zevi recalled.

One of the other Jewish leaders who attended that 1986 service will also likely be revisiting his memories this weekend. Toaff was five years older than John Paul when he greeted him on the steps of the synagogue on that spring day.

When John Paul died in 2005, the rabbi was one of just two living people mentioned in his last will and testament. At 94, still with a wry smile, Toaff will be there Sunday to help welcome the new Pope. It's possible that in his own way, John Paul will be there, too.

Last October, David Goldman at FIRST THINGS, had a blog entry about this article, in which he specifically undercored Sagiv's statement that "Benedict XVI — the former Joseph Ratzinger — is actually one of the best friends the Jewish people has ever had in Vatican City". I posted his blog entry in ISSUES.

At the time, the full article was not available online, but it is now. And it makes for very informative reading that presents the Jewish viewpoint effectively but also recognizes its faults and errors. It is excellent background reading in connection with the Pope's visit to the Rome Synaoguge today.


Coming to terms with Christianity
By Assaf Sagiv

October 2009, Autumn Issue


Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Israel this past May is not likely to be remembered as a landmark event. Nor is it likely to be viewed as a turning point in the history of Jewish-Catholic relations. Sadly, however, it will be remembered as a decidedly less-than-pleasant affair.

To be sure, feelings were tense from the outset, with Israeli politicians on both the right and the left openly expressing their dissatisfaction at the Pope’s impending visit; Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin went so far as to boycott the official welcoming ceremony at Ben-Gurion Airport.

The Pope’s much-anticipated speech at Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, hardly improved matters, at least for those who sought an express apology for the Holocaust (and didn’t get one). Indeed, the atmosphere surrounding the Pope’s presence became so bitter that Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi was forced to convene a press conference in Jerusalem to cool tempers on both sides.

“There is not always a willingness to understand well,” he noted with obvious frustration. “Sometimes there are prejudices, and not everyone is open to an attitude of readiness to listen.”

Of course, the discomfort felt by many Israeli Jews during the Pope’s visit was not unjustified. In recent months, already strained relations between the Vatican and the Jewish world were exacerbated by several developments:
- Pope Benedict’s lifting of the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, an antisemitic Holocaust denier;
- his public endorsement of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, which was boycotted by both Israel and the United States on account of its virulent anti-Zionist slant;
- his decision to allow for the wider use of the Tridentine Mass, which expresses the hope that the Jews will convert to Christianity [an erroneous claim, which refers to the pre-1962 version of the Good Friday prayer said once a year and not in a Mass , but revised in 2007 by Benedict XVI. percisely in view of Jewish objections - which were never once expressed by them in the time of John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II, under whom the traditional Mass was used one way or the other - in order to make clear the prayer's source from Paul's Letter to the Romans, something no Jews have found fault with through the centuries!];
- and his personal history as a member of Hitler Youth and the Wehrmacht, albeit as an unwilling conscript.

In Israel, a country already beset by bitter collective memories of Christian persecution, all of this could not help but incur suspicion and resentment toward the man who wished to bring a message of peace to the Holy Land.

What was overlooked amidst all this animosity and mistrust, however, is the fact that Benedict XVI — the former Joseph Ratzinger — is actually one of the best friends the Jewish people has ever had in Vatican City.

On the eve of the Pope’s visit, Aviad Kleinberg, a scholar of Christian history and a columnist for the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, attempted to remind his readers of this.

Ratzinger, he explained,

---

was the confidant of Pope John Paul II, and his immense theological authority was a critical aspect of the previous Pope’s moves….

John Paul and Ratzinger buried once and for all not only the accusation of the Jews’ murdering the messiah, but the entire theological theory that the Christians replaced the Jews and are now the Chosen People and that the New Testament annuls the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is still valid, declared the two, and the Jewish people is still God’s chosen and beloved people.

---

A few days later, in reaction to what he called an “embarrassing demonstration of tactless and boorish behavior” toward the Pope, Kleinberg wrote:

---

It is particularly obtuse of us to demand of others what we would never demand of ourselves. Try suggesting to any of our rabbis that they should declare what John Paul II and Benedict XVI have declared.

For example, that Christians are our young and beloved brethren and that their covenant with the Lord is also intact — ‘Excuse me?’ you say. ‘Did we understand you correctly? Give us a break!’

Indeed, while Catholic leaders of recent times have repeatedly expressed sorrow and even remorse for hundreds of years of antisemitism, the Jewish world has not yet shown a comparable willingness to reconsider its own perception of Christianity.

No one, of course, has demanded this of Judaism, for understandable reasons. Ever since Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century c.e., it was the Jews, the so-called Christ-killers, who were persecuted by the Church, and not the other way around.

Today, however, circumstances demand that all established religions reexamine their traditional attitudes toward each other. Christianity, in all of its various denominations, has generally risen to the occasion. Judaism, for its part, has not.

---

The intensity of Judaism’s traditional antagonism toward Christianity cannot be overstated. Throughout their history, Jews have preferred torture, death, and even mass suicide to forced conversion to the Christian faith.

This enmity toward Christianity even found its way into Jewish liturgy: Recited by observant Jews three times a day, Birkat Haminim, “the Blessing Against the Heretics,” was originally written as a prayer for the downfall of Christians and all apostates. Though the blessing has been revised over time — primarily out of fear of non-Jewish reprisal — its spirit of rage has outlived any textual modification. [Which, mutatis mutandis, no one can say of the Good Friday prayer. The pre-1962 prayer was condescending at worst - not angry or wrathful - referring to Jews as 'blind', and John XXIII took away that terminology. Benedict XVI's revision is beautifully and purely Pauline in spirit!]

Jewish acrimony toward Christianity was not solely a reaction to the persecution suffered by the Jewish people under Christian rule, however.

It also has a lot to do with the fact that, almost from its inception, the Church claimed to be Judaism’s replacement, the new (and universal) “Israel of the spirit” that superseded the old “Israel of the flesh.”

The Israeli philosopher and Orthodox Jew Yeshayahu Leibowitz, known for his sharp tongue and blunt style, repeatedly stressed this point in his writings.

“Christianity… is nothing but the denial of the right of Judaism to exist,” he maintained. “The relationship of Christianity to Judaism is unlike that of other religions or faiths, whether pagan or Islamic, which deny the Torah of Israel and would nullify it. Christianity does neither, but claims that it is Judaism and there is no Judaism apart from it.”

Therefore, asserted Leibowitz, Judaism feels nothing but “repugnance” toward Christianity: “This feeling is an integral aspect of the living Jewish awareness and is very different from the Jewish attitude to other forms of worship of strange gods, and, needless to say, to Islam.”

Alas, lamented Leibowitz sarcastically, the deep-seated Jewish hatred of Christianity “has ceased to exist among those Jews who rejoice at the absolution of Judaism by the Vatican Church Council and attribute importance to its statement concerning the ‘guilt of the Jews.’ [This hatred] is hardly characteristic of modern Reform Judaism in the United States and is completely absent from the secular State of Israel.”

Harsh words, and, for the most part, quite wrong. In contrast to the impression one might get from Leibowitz’s polemics, the truth is that even among Orthodox Jews, notable figures have disapproved of Jewish contempt for Christianity.

Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, for instance, a leading posek (“decisor” of Jewish law) of the twentieth century, held an opinion diametrically opposed to that of Leibowitz. Indeed, in a 1965 letter, Weinberg went so far as to condemn halachic rulings that, in his view, conveyed an inappropriate, condescending, or disparaging attitude toward Christians:

---

In my opinion, it is fitting to put an end to the mutual hatred between the religions. More than Christianity hates Judaism, Judaism hates Christianity.

There is a dispute if the Torah forbids stealing from Gentiles, and everyone holds that deceiving a Gentile and breaking a pledge made to him is permitted….

According to Maimonides, if a Jew has sexual relations with a Gentile [woman], the Gentile should be killed, because she has driven the Jew to sin. This law treats the Gentiles the same way it treats animals. [But] Maimonides arrived at this ruling on his own.

It has no basis in the Babylonian or Jerusalem Talmud. We must solemnly and formally declare that in our day this does not apply.

---

As a Holocaust survivor, Weinberg had experienced firsthand the atrocities of antisemitism. Nevertheless, he courageously rejected expressions of extreme animosity toward Gentiles.

Crucially, he did so without forsaking the tradition of his forefathers and without appearing to grovel before the Church. Instead, he understood that Judaism has to purge itself of its accumulated resentment of Christianity — and that it must do so in an earnest and public manner.

Weinberg, a progressive figure by all accounts, may have been prone to modern sensitivities. The fact of the matter, however, is that conciliatory statements about the Christian faith had been voiced by important Jewish leaders in earlier times, when the concepts of tolerance and pluralism were far from common.

One of the most prominent of these leaders was Rabbenu Tam. This distinguished twelfth-century rabbi almost lost his life in the anti-Jewish riots that accompanied the Second Crusade, and he witnessed firsthand the destruction of the French Jewish community of Blois at the hands of a bloodthirsty mob.

Despite these grim experiences, Rabbenu Tam rejected the claim — whose most renowned exponent was the great theologian Maimonides — that Christianity is a form of idolatry. In accordance with this stance, he did not forbid Jews to form business relationships with Christians.

Other Jewish decisors were concerned lest a Gentile invoke the name of his god when entering into a contract, and the Jewish partner would thus be guilty of participating in an idolatrous act. Rabbenu Tam, by contrast, ruled that a Christian oath is not problematic, because “in the present times, they all take oaths in the name of their saints, but do not view them as deities. Although they mention God’s name along with the others, they have a different intention in mind, so that, in any case, their oaths do not involve idolatry, as they too have the Creator in mind.”

The assertion that the Christians have the “Creator” in mind — i.e., the same God in whom the Jews believe — and that, therefore, a common denominator unites both religions, can also be found in the writings of Rabbi Moshe Ravkash, a leading seventeenth-century posek.

In his halachic treatise, Be’er Hagola (“The Well of the Exile”), Ravkash criticized the analogy, popular among Jews of his time, between the biblical Egyptians who afflicted the People of Israel and Europe’s Christians:

The Gentile nations under whom we, the Israelite nation, take refuge, and among whom we are scattered, believe in the creation of the world and in the exodus from Egypt and in the pillars of religion, and they are devoted to the Creator of the heavens and the earth…. Not only is there no prohibition against saving them, but we are even required to pray for their well-being.

Possibly the most favorable Jewish statements on the Christian faith were made by Rabbi Jacob Emden in the eighteenth century. One of the most esteemed Jewish thinkers of his generation, Emden was not content simply to point to those beliefs that Judaism and Christianity held in common.

He also extolled Jesus as a great spiritual figure worthy of the Jewish people’s deepest appreciation. Emden believed that Jesus and his disciples never intended to convert the Jews or to abolish the Torah’s commandments. Instead, they took it upon themselves to spread a universal moral code among the nations of the world and to purge humanity of idolatry:

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But truly even according to the writers of the Gospels, a Jew is not permitted to leave his Torah…. We see clearly here that the Nazarene and his Apostles did not wish to destroy the Torah from Israel, God forbid….

The writers of the Gospels never meant to say that the Nazarene came to abolish Judaism, but only that he came to establish a religion for the Gentiles from that time onward. Nor was it new, but actually ancient; they being the Seven Commandments of the Sons of Noah, which were forgotten. The Apostles of the Nazarene then established them anew.

However, those born as Jews, or circumcised as converts to Judaism… are obligated to observe all commandments of the Torah without exception…. It is therefore a habitual saying of mine… that the Nazarene brought about a double kindness in the world.

On the one hand, he strengthened the Torah of Moses majestically, as mentioned earlier, and not one of our sages spoke out more emphatically concerning the immutability of the Torah.

And on the other hand, he did much good for the Gentiles… by doing away with idolatry and removing the images from their midst. He obligated them with the Seven Commandments so that they should not be as the beasts of the field. He also bestowed upon them ethical ways, and in this respect he was much more stringent with them than the Torah of Moses, as is well-known.

---

One might take issue with Rabbi Emden’s theological interpretations, but his main argument cannot be discounted. As Emden rightly points out, Christianity instituted a system of beliefs and values that greatly advanced human morality, bringing it closer to the ideal espoused by Judaism.

In its own way — and on a much wider scale — Christianity carried on the campaign against paganism that the early Hebraic religion had begun. It fought against the same abominations that the Jewish Bible condemns: ecstatic fertility rites, human sacrifice, and other licentious practices.

Moreover, wherever Christianity established itself, it advocated a tradition rooted in Judaism, praising what Nietzsche, the Church’s sworn enemy, called “the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness.”

Indeed, even the harshest Jewish critics of Christianity have been hard put to discredit its enormous cultural and spiritual contribution to the world.

Maimonides admitted as much when he said that the Christian faith “paves” the way for the coming of the Messiah, because it will “prepare the whole world to serve God with one accord.”

Ultimately, this acknowledgment that Judaism and Christianity (as well as Islam) share the same fundamental goals may permit us to hope that both religions’ mission to improve the world might also hold the key to repairing the damaged relationship between them.

There is an old Yiddish joke in which a Christian priest attempts to convince a Jew to convert by saying, “I will give you a hundred gold pieces if you agree to believe in three things: that Jesus was born of a woman, but of Immaculate Conception; that Jesus gave five thousand men five loaves of bread and two fish, and they all ate to their hearts’ content; and that Jesus died on the cross, but rose from his grave three days later and lived.”

The Jew pauses to think and then says, “You are asking a lot of me. I don’t think I can do this myself. Allow me to bring a partner.”

The priest consents, and the following day the Jewish man returns with his Christian neighbor. “Your holiness,” he says, “please hand over the hundred gold pieces you promised me.”

“So you believe?” asks the priest.

“Together, my partner and I each believe our share,” the Jew replies. “I believe Jesus was born of a woman, and my partner believes in the Immaculate Conception; I believe Jesus gave five thousand men five loaves of bread and two fish, and my partner believes they all ate to their hearts’ content; I believe Jesus died on the cross, and my partner believes he was resurrected three days later and lived.”

In its own lighthearted way, this joke conveys the deep theological divide separating Judaism and Christianity. Insofar as Jews wish to remain Jewish, they cannot accept many of the basic tenets of the Christian faith:
- They must reject incarnation, because they believe there is an infinite, unbridgeable, and ontological gap between the Creator and his creation;
- They must reject the Trinity, because it contradicts the Jewish belief in God’s unity;
- They cannot recognize Jesus as the Messiah, because Jewish tradition holds that the redeemer will not be a divine and suffering victim, but an earthly champion who will lead his people to victory;
- They cannot believe that God superseded his covenant with the Jews through a new covenant with all of the world’s nations;
- and finally, they cannot consent to the Apostle Paul’s claim that Jewish law has been rendered obsolete by the Grace of Christ.

Despite these considerable differences, Christianity and Judaism also have a great deal in common. They both draw their inspiration from the Jewish Bible and the historical narrative it relates; they both believe in God’s providence and benevolence, which guides humanity toward peace and prosperity; and, perhaps most important, they both espouse absolute values.

These values, they insist, constitute the moral order according to which all men should live. These shared beliefs — usually referred to as the Judeo-Christian tradition — have served as the foundation of Western civilization ever since the Middle Ages.

More than anything else, however, Christianity and Judaism are united by the threats facing them and the world they wish to construct.

Today, both religions are on the same front of an all-out war that radical Islam has declared on the West and its values. This confrontation has been forced upon the two faiths against their present inclination.

Over hundreds of years, Judaism and Christianity have had to accept a degree of religious tolerance. For Judaism, this resulted from political weakness and the constraints of a life in exile under the auspices of non-Jewish nations.

For Christianity, the turning point was the religious wars that threatened to tear Europe apart.

Islam, by contrast, did not undergo a similar process, and has thus not internalized the mostly pragmatic need to tolerate the existence of other cultures and allow them to live in accordance with their own religious beliefs.

Consequently, Islamists have declared a war whose ultimate goal is the subjection of all infidels and the imposition of the rule of Islam over the entire world.

This terrorist campaign has placed Christians and Jews in the same camp, fighting side by side in order to defend their cultural and political heritage.

One can only hope that moderate Islam, which does not cultivate such violent religious hatred, will join forces with Christianity and Judaism and take a stand against the murderous jihad waged by the likes of al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

But no less, and indeed perhaps more, dangerous than religious terrorism is the spiritual barrenness that has come to define much of contemporary Western culture.

Modern life is blessed with unparalleled wealth, diversity, and creative energy, but it is also cursed with confusion, boredom, and lethargy.

Moreover, the tremendous technological power humanity now commands makes today’s nihilism especially threatening: The vast disparity between this power to enact dramatic changes in both our surroundings and ourselves, on the one hand, and the ethical judgment exercised by those who wield it on the other, should concern anyone who believes that humanity bears a special responsibility towards creation.

It should concern anyone who recognizes that this responsibility stems from the humility expected of man once he comprehends that he is not, after all, the measure of all things.

Clearly, the burden of contending with these threats to our shared values and beliefs does not fall solely on the shoulders of people of faith. Many nonbelievers actively take part in this endeavor, motivated by both a genuine ethical concern and a profound sense of moral responsibility.

There can be no doubting, however, that the great religions have at their disposal immense ideological resources that modern secularism is simply unable to command. They can summon a self-conviction and determination forged over hundreds, even thousands of years of enduring spiritual tests.

There is simply no substitute for the kind of experience and resolve they bring to the contemporary struggle over the fate of mankind.
The challenges we face, now and in the future, require both Jews and Christians to set aside their theological differences, even ones that are ultimately irreconcilable.

Reality demands that we try to forge unity wherever possible. This, of course, will not be easy. Removing old barriers and eliminating old grudges will require an active, arduous effort.

Christianity must realize that the vast majority of Jews will never abandon their religion and traditions and accept Jesus as their lord and savior. [Yes, we do realize that. Benedict XVI's revision of the Good Friday prayer to reflect the Biblical eschatological hope that at the end of time, all men will be one, reflects that realization.]

Judaism, for its sake, must let go of its historical bitterness, and stop demanding public expressions of Christian remorse at every turn. It must learn to see the great religion to which it gave birth as a partner and an ally, one deserving of our appreciation and respect.



Let me post this MSM article whose rewarmed errors, prejudices and downright ignorance on the subject matter constitute a monumental contrast to the informed overview of the Jewish article above.


Pope stuck in 'Groundhog Day'
scenario with Jews, expert says
By Richard Allen Greene


*NB - The 'expert' referred to is David Gibson.


January 17 (CNN) -- Pope Benedict XVI is set to take one step forward in Catholic-Jewish relations Sunday when he becomes the first Pope since 1986 to visit the main Jewish synagogue in Rome, Italy.

The problem is, the step forward comes immediately after he took one step back last month by moving his Holocaust-era predecessor closer toward sainthood.

In fact, much of Benedict's papacy has seen swings back and forth in the Vatican's relationship with the Jewish world.

The visit to Rome's synagogue is part of what should be an annual Catholic Day of Dialogue With Judaism, but it didn't happen last year.

The Vatican had recently reinstated an ancient prayer calling for the conversion of the Jews, decades after it was shelved as part of 1960s-era reforms. [WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! But this is the factoid that has now become the standard account of the good Friday prayere in media 'shorthand'.]

Italy's Jewish community pulled out of the 2009 Day of Dialogue in protest.

The Vatican reworded the prayer, smoothing feathers, then revoked the ex-communication of a renegade bishop who turned out to be a Holocaust denier.

Benedict apologized and visited Israel, then moved Holocaust-era Pope Pius XII a step closer to sainthood.

"It seems like 'Groundhog Day' has become the Catholic-Jewish feast," said David Gibson, referring to the Bill Murray comedy in which a man relives one day over and over, unable to move forward with his life.

"There is this cycle where the Pope is going to do what he is going to do, and then go through the motions of saying 'sorry,'" said Gibson, who writes about religion for Politics Daily and is the author of a biography of Benedict XVI.

["Go through the motions of saying 'Sorry'"??? How dare Gibson sayanything like that? I curse the day Gibson published a not-too-flattering biography of Benedict XVI and thereby came to be a go-to guy for American media for all things papal, much as Fr. Thomas Resse is!]

Sunday's visit to the synagogue will go well, Gibson is sure.

"At this point, he is going to say some very nice words about Judaism and Catholicism and the Jews' enduring covenant," Gibson predicted. "Then there will be something else" to set relations back. "There is going to be a dysfunctional cycle until something changes." [How disgustingly conedescending and smug! Father, forgive them....]

Lisa Palmieri-Billig, the American Jewish Committee's liaison to the Holy See, was guardedly optimistic about Sunday's meeting, which will be the first time Benedict XVI has visited the synagogue as Pope.

The Jewish community "believes that Benedict's desire to continue dialogue is sincere. They believe the dialogue and the relationship are very important."

But the Vatican's declaration last month of Pius XII's "heroic virtues" -- which puts him on the path to sainthood -- rankles Rome's Jews, she said.

The city's Jews were rounded up by the Nazis on Pius XII's watch, she said.

"They were there for two days in prison right near the Vatican and nothing happened," she said. "Then they were deported and only 17 came back."

[Some 2,000 of Rome's 10,000-plus Jews were involved. She makes it appear that all Roman Jews were left to the dogs, and that is typical of how hostile Jews gloss over and distort fact! All the accounts say at least 8,000 Roman Jews escaped the Holocaust, in large part due to Catholic efforts.]

The Vatican says Pius XII worked behind the scenes to save Jews from the Holocaust, but has refused to open its archives from his reign to show proof.

[It has never refused - but the so-called scholars interested in the 'truth' have meanwhile ignored what is now oepn in the Archives of his considerable relevant record till 1939 [as Apostolic Nuncio to Germany and later as Vatican Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli was very much involved in Vatican relations with Germany] - and worse, ignored and are ignoring the 12-volume compilation of relevant World War II documentation available in the Archives that was ordered by Paul VI in the 1960s.

The fact is the Jewish detractors of Pius XII have made up their mind - and nothing will change it, regardless of what the Archives will show five years from now. They have never acted out of anything but bad faith in all this!]

The Holy See says scholars will eventually be able to examine the paperwork, but not for several more years because of how long it is taking to catalogue and organize.

Jewish organizations have repeatedly called for the archives to be opened as soon as possible.

Palmieri-Billig says it is critical that the record be clear on Pius XII before the Vatican declares him a saint.

"Not that he is a villain; he is not a villain," she said. But "a saint becomes a model of behavior. He is taught in schools. Among the righteous at (Israel's Holocaust museum) Yad Vashem, you have people who risked their life to save Jews." [And does Yad Vashem honor only those who risked their lives to save Jews? There are many 'righteous among nations' recognized by Yad Vashem who were able to save Jews because they acted prudently rather than carelessly or with false heroics!]

The wartime Pope did not do that, she said. [And what is wrong with being prudent when you are the spiritual leader of hundreds of millions of Catholics? The Church is not honoring him as a martyr! This woman is absolutely hateful, for all that she tries to project 'fairness'! What important Jewish leader in the 1940s or other national leader committed any such act of martyrdom? Or is retrospectively expected to have done? ]

"If Pius XII becomes a saint, it will become more difficult to speak the historical truth. He will be held up as a saint. History will be rewritten," she said.

[This woman has a completely wrong idea of sainthood. Sainthood does not mean putting a stamp of perfection on everything that the saint every said or did in life. No man except Jesus Christ and by logical-theological implication, Mary his mother, can have perfection in life. Many great saints are well-known for having led dissolute un-Christian lives before coming back to God.

Being a saint does not change or rewrite historical fact, for or against the saint. Objective facts simply are. When Pius XII is eventually canonized, can Billig say that Jews hostile to him will stop trying to prove he was 'guilty' towrds the Jews? They won't. They will keep the issue alive - forever if they have to. Who is really culpable here of trying to rewrite history?]

In German, Billig means cheap - and Ms. BIllig indulges too easily in cheap commonplaces!]

"Of course it is the church's business who they choose, but this will have an impact on Catholic-Jewish relations," she said, adding that Rome's chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, has said he will bring up Pius XII on Sunday.

The Vatican issued a statement, after declaring Pius XII's heroic virtues, that the move was not meant to attack Jews.

Gibson, the biographer of Benedict, said that was true, but also somewhat missed the point. ['The biographer of Benedict'??? Excuse me! See what outrageous falsehoods/impressions the media perpetrates?]

"The restoration of the Latin Mass was not poking a stick in the eye of world Judaism. The move towards the canonization of Pius XII wasn't to provoke Jews. These actions are intramural Catholic politics, and Jews are -- as they have so often been in the past -- collateral damage," he said. [Restoring the traditional Mass and signing a decree that allows the beatification process to continue are 'intramural politics'? And Jews are 'as so often in the past collateral damage'? Gibson is simply fuelling the flames with counter-productive, mindless, and patently false statements like these! Who needs enemies, with 'in-house' serpents like Gibson?]

But that does not mean the Jewish world should not be concerned.

"The Church has to realize that at this point in its history, anything it does is going to have an enormous impact on the rest of the world. The Pope, like it or not, is a global leader," Gibson said.

{AW, BULL! Spare us your mealy-mouthed pontifications.]

The turnaround in Catholic-Jewish relations in the past 50 years is astonishing, he said, but that makes it all the more important not to lose momentum.

"If the Pope is not seen as a friend of the Jews, that can give license to others," he said.

But the Pope, whom he described as stubborn, will do what he thinks is best, regardless of consequences, Gibson said.

"Benedict doesn't take such calculations into account. He is going to do what he is going to do."

[Shut up, already!]


1/18/10
P.S. A reader, commenting on an article by Richard Owen about Pius XII in the Times of London, posted this reminder, which is often forgotten in all the current reporting:

Look what Jews were saying
about Pius XII earlier!

It is popular these days to question whether Pius XII did enough during WWII. What should be questioned is why did virtually every Jewish organization, (including the Jewish Anti-Defamation League), every major Jewish religious personality and Israeli leader of that era, who lived through the war, praise Pius XII unreservedly?

What happened? What smoking gun? What documents were discovered to change this? [From all accounts, the culprit was The Deputy, perhaps the most successful black propaganda to be foisted on the world ever!]

Here are some of the statements of contemporary Jewish leaders (remember, they are not armchair historians of our times. They are fellow sufferers and travelers):

The Israeli diplomat and scholar Pinchas Lapide concludes: “The Catholic Church, under the pontificate of Pius XII, was instrumental in saving the lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.”

He went on to add that this “figure far exceeds those saved by all other Churches and rescue organizations combined.” After recounting statements of appreciation from a variety of preeminent Jewish spokespersons, he noted. “No Pope in history has been thanked more heartily by Jews.”
At the Eichmann Nazi War Crimes Trial in 1961, a Jewish scholar, Jeno Levai, testified that the Bishops of the Catholic Church “intervened again and again on the instructions of the Pope.”

In 1968, he wrote that “the one person (Pius XII) who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences, is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others.”

In The Secret War Against the Jews in 1994, Jewish writers John Loftus and Mark Aarons write that “Pope Pius XII probably rescued more Jews than all the Allies combined.”

The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, sent the Pope a personal message of thanks on February 28, 1944, in which he said: “The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which form the very foundations of true civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our existence".

- Antal Prokecz
January 18, 2010

Sunday, January 17

Illustration, second from Left: The Torment of St. Anthony, Michelangelo. 1487.
ST. ANTHONY THE GREAT (Anthony Abbot) (Egypt, 251-356)
Coptic monk and abbot, Father of Monasticism
Just as St. Jerome wrote the biography of Anthony's great contemporary, St. Paul the Hermit, St. Athanasius wrote Anthony's,
which led to spreading the concept of monasticism in Europe. Born to wealthy parents, he decided at age 34 to give up all his
wealth and live an ascetic life. He was the first to do this in the wilderness, spending 13 years in the desert the first time
around. He would return to such solitude in later periods of his life, once as long as 20 years, where hw was said to have
fought monumental battles with the devil. The 'temptations of St. Anthony' became the subject for many paintings through the
centuries. With his reputation for prayer and personal mortification, he attracted many people to him for spiritual healing and
guidance. At age 54, he founded a monastery for which he drew rules based on 'ora et labora' anticipating the famous Rule of
Benedict of Norcia centuries later. In his 70s, Athanasius enlisted him to defend the faith against the Arian heresy. He
attended the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea in 325 A.D. to present this defense. He visited Paul the Hermit one year before
the latter's death, and buried him later. He himself died at age 105 in his beloved monastery (still an active one, it is located
in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, about 100 miles southeast of Cairo; extreme right photo in the panel).
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/011710.shtml


OR today.

OR continues its extended coverage of the Haiti tragedy: 2 million still awaiting first aid and food in Port au Prince, and a death toll that
may reach 200,000. Papal stories are the conferment of honorary citizenship on the Pope by the city of Freising, and an editorial on his
visit to the Rome Synagogue today (translated and posted on this page earlier). Other Page 1 stories: 68,000 flee northern Somalia battle
zone; the World Bank president says effects of the 2008-2009 economic crisis will be far-reaching and may last years, with more than 64
million persons worldwide expected to be at absolute poverty level in 2010. In the inside pages, an essay on the annual Week of Christian
Unity which begins tomorrow, and an interview with Mons. Antonio Meglio, president of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants,
who describes how the Church is fighting the 'new slavery' caused by immigration.



THE POPE'S DAY

Angelus today - The Pope's message drew attention to the plight of immigrant children, focus of this year's
World Day for Migrants observed by the Church. He spoke of his visit to the Synagogue today, and asked
the faithful to pray for many intentions: the people of Haiti, migrants, dialog with the Jews, and
Christian unity.

Visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome starts at 4 p.m. today. For all the bluster from some militant Jews,
the importance of the Pope's visit today to the Jews themselves is underscored by the late-breaking news
that the Vice Premier of Israel will be among those who will welcome Benedict XVI to the Synagogue.

Pope prays for Haiti, migrants.
dialog with Jews and Christian unity




Vatican City, January 17 (AsiaNews) - "Three intentions" entrusted "to the maternal intercession of Mary Most Holy, Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church" for "our brother migrants and refugees, religious dialogue with Jews and the unity of Christians” - thus, Benedict XVI concluded his reflection today at Angelus with the pilgrims in St Peter's Square.

At the end of the Marian prayer he once again recalled "the dear population of Haiti" affected by the earthquake, of whose situation he is being kept "fully informed" by the Apostolic Nuncio to the island nation. He also expressed encouragement for "the efforts of many charitable organizations to address the immense needs of the country".



Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's words:

---

Dear brothers and sisters:

On this Sunday, we observe the World Day for Migrants and Refugees. The presence of the Church alongside these persons has been constant through time, reaching singular goalposts at the start of the last century - just think of figures like the Blessed Bishop Giovanni Batista Scalabrini and of St. Frances Cabrini.

In the Message I sent for this occasion, I called attention to migrants and minor-age refugees. Jesus Christ, who as a newborn lived the tragic experience of a refugee because of Herod's threats, taught his disciples to welcome children with great respect and love.

Indeed, the child, whatever his nationality or skin color, must be considered first and always as a person, the image of God, to be promoted and protected against all marginalization and exploitation.

In particular, every care must be taken so that minors who find themselves living in a foreign land are given guarantees under the law, and most of all, attended to, in all the numerous problems that they must face.

While I encourage the Christian communities and the organisms committed to the service of minors who are migrants or refugees, I call on everyone to be aware, educationally and culturally, of their needs in accordance with the authentic spirit of the Gospel.

This afternoon, almost 24 years since the historic visit of the Venerable John Paul II, I will be going to the Great Synagogue of Rome - their Tempio Maggiore - to meet the Jewish community of the city and to mark another stage in the journey of concord and friendship between Catholics and Jews.

Indeed, despite problems and difficulties, there is an atmosphere of great respect and dialog among the believers of the two religions, as evidence of how much relationships have matured, and of the common commitment to treasure that which unites us: faith in the one God, above all, but also the protection of life and the family, and the aspiration for social justice and peace.

Finally, I wish to recall that tomorrow, the traditional Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins. Every year, it constitutes for those who believe in Christ, a propitious time to revive the ecumenical spirit, to meet each other, know each other better, pray and reflect together.

The Biblical theme, taken from the Gospel of St. Luke, re-echoes the words of the Risen Christ to the Apostles: "You will be witnesses to all this" (Lk 24,48).

Our announcement of the Gospel of Christ will be more credible and effective the more we are united in love, as true brothers. Therefore, I invite the parishes, the religious communities, the associations and ecclesial movements, to pray incessantly, particularly during the Eucharistic celebration, for the full unity of Christians.

Let us entrust these three intentions - our brother migrants and refugees, the religious dialog with the Jews, and the unity of Christians - to the maternal intercession of the Most Blessed Mary, Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church.


After the prayers, he said this:

Our thoughts these days are with the dear people of Haiti, for whom we pray with great sorrow.

The Apostolic Nuncio, who, thank God, is well, has kept me constantly informed, and that is how I first learned of the sad passing away of the Archbishop, as well as so many priests, religious and seminarians.

I am following and encourage the efforts of numerous charitable organizations who are taking responsibility for the immense needs of the nation. I pray for the injured, for the homeless, and for all those who tragically lost their lives.

On this World Day for Migrants and Refugees, I am happy to greet the representatives of various ethnic communities gathered here today. I wish for everyone that they may fully participate in the nation's social and ecclesial life while preserving the values of their cultures of origin. And I greet all the Brazilians who are descendants of Italian migrants from the Trentino region. Thank you for coming here today.

Finally, I address a special greeting to the participants of the second International Festival of Spiritual Itineraries, who are linked to us by satellite from the Nuova Fiera [new fairgrounds] of Rome, where Mass has just been celebrated by the President of the Pontifical Council for the pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees.


To the French and German pilgrims, he said something about today's Gospel:
The Gospel today offers us the lesson of the marriage at Cana. It invites us not to allow ourselves to be invaded by doubts and concerns, because Christ has really come for all men.

In Mary's example, let us allow ourselves to be led by her divine Son. Let us heed her "Do as he tells you". May the Blessed Virgin intercede for us and all men!

I implore her protection especially for the dear people of Haiti, so severely tried, so that they may find assistance and comfort. May Our Lady of Perpetual Help, patron saint of Haiti, protect her sons and daughters!


To Polish Pilgrims, he said:

...I join especially those who are praying in Tarnow where they are holding the principal celebration of the Day of Judaism in the Catholic Church of Poland.

May the benevolent encounter of different traditions and cultures lead to reciprocal understanding and mutual respect.


In his Italian greetings, he said:

A special greeting to the numerous members of the Associazione Italiana Allevatori [Italian association of animal breeders], who are here on the liturgical feast of their patron, St. Anthony Abbot.

Dear friends, I express my appreciation for your commitment to promote a just and fraternal development that is respectful of the environment, and I wish you well in your activities.

---

The Anglophone news agencies chose to focus their reporting of the Pope's Angelus today to the Synagogue visit. This one by dpa is the most balanced - the other reports are almost offensive.


Synagogue visit is new milestone
in Catholic-Jewish harmony



Vatican City, Jan. 17 (dpa) - Pope Benedict XVI, speaking Sunday a few hours ahead of his controversial visit to Rome's main synagogue, said the event would take place against the backdrop of "great respect and dialogue," between Catholics and Jews.

Addressing thousands gathered in St Peter's Square for his Angelus blessing, Benedict recalled how his afternoon visit to the Grand Synagogue comes almost 24 years after his predecessor John Paul II became the first modern-era pontiff to enter a Jewish house of worship when he visited the same building.

Benedict said his visit would mark "another milestone on the way of harmony and friendship between Christians and Jews," noting how the two religious communities were united "above all in faith in the only God," but also a shared concern for human life, "social justice and peace."

The visit has however, split Italy's Jewish community, with the head of the country's rabbinical community, Giuseppe Laras, saying he would boycott the event because of a series of Vatican moves seen as disrespectful to Jews.

In disaccord with Rome's Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni and the Italian capital's top Jewish community representatives who invited Benedict to the Great Synagogue, Laras and others in particular, cite recent rows over Benedict's decision in December to approve a decree which opens the way for war-time pontiff Pius XII's elevation towards sainthood.

The Italian-born Pius, who reigned from 1939 until his death in 1958, has been accused by some of showing indifference to the Nazi massacre of the Jews and of failing to speak out against Hitler.

The Vatican and other supporters, say Pius worked behind the scenes, striving to save those persecuted by the Nazis, including opening the doors of monastries, convents and other Church premises to shelter Jews.

In what promises to be a poignant moment on Sunday, Benedict, before entering the Great Synagogue, is to stop to pay homage before a plaque commemorating the October 16, 1943 round-up by the Nazis of Rome's Jews.

The 1,022 Jews taken prisoner, including some 200 children, were transferred to the death camp of Auschwitz. Only 17 survived. Critics allege that Pius could have stopped the deportation by publicly condemning the round-up.

Supporters say the Pontiff was taken by surprise by the move, and that the event gave further impetus to Pius-inspired Church measures to shelter Jews.

Di Segni has indicate he may raise the topic of Pius when in private talks Benedict shortly after main ceremony in the synagogue.



There seems to have been a change - for the worse - since the New Year at Vatican Radio. Those slide shows they provide on the site, with photos of the major events of the Pope's day, used to be updated promptly - within minutes after the Angelus ends, in the case of the Angelus. But the slide show on the site is still stuck at the Wednesday GA, and it has been that 'behind' the past two weeks!

None of the Anglophone news agency reports incorporated the late-breaking news that the Vice-Premier of Israel will be at the Rome synagogue for the Pope's visit:


Israel's vice-premier says
Pope's visit is historic
Translated from



ROME, January 17 - Pope Benedict XVI's visit today is of historical importance, in the view of the Israeli government, according to its Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom, even as Israeli media played up minority objections from Italy's Jewish community. [Israeli media is very much a mirror of Western MSM biases and failings!]

"Benedict XVI was in Israel less than a year ago when he visited the Holocaust Museum at Yad Vashem," Shalom told Radio Jerusalem. "His visit today is a historic event that inspires remarkable emotion".

Shalom is in Rome to prepare for a coming visit to Israel of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and will be at the Rome Synagogue today to welcome the Pope.

"It is a religious not political event," he said, "that symbolizes the rapprochement between Jews and Catholics. It is important to reduce differences in opinion, especially in view of the coming International Day to commemorate the Shoah".

But the Isareli media has been focused on 'divisions' within the Italian Jewish community over the Pope's visit. There are those who question the timeliness of the visit, considering that Benedict XVI, according to the newspaper Haaretz, "is set on the beaitification of Pius XII".

The newspaper Maariv plays the same tune, adding that 'formidably strong emotions' have been roused over the visit which, it said, will be followed by at least 600 international journalists. [Who, one imagines, are not so much drawn by the intrinsic significance of the visit, as by the salivating prospect of any possible confrontation or negative remarks at the event!]



Israeli President says he trusts
the 'philosopher Pope'





ROME, January 17 (Translated from Apcom) - On the day of Benedict XVI's visit to the Synaoggue of Rome, Israeli President Shimon Peres, in an excluive interview with Sky-TG4, said that the Pope's relationship with the Jews is 'profound and sincere'.

"As for relations between Jews and Catholics," Peres said, "this Pope has shown great respect, and I have great confidence in him".

Peres told correspondent Renato Coen, "Of course, we do not agree on some things, there is no total agreement, but overall, I believe he is a very deep man, and his relationship with the Jews just as profound and sincere".

"There have been choices made that concern Catholics alone, and some which have to do with relations between Catholics and Jews, such as the controversy over the process of beatification for Pius XII".

He ended with words of appreciation for Joseph Ratzinger: "I think he is a philosopher-Pope, and I have always been struck by his profound capacity for comprehension, that he is not concerned about public relations as much as he is by, shall we say, the sacred mysteries, and I certainly consider him a friend."

THE HOLY FATHER'S VISIT
TO THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE


Pope Benedict XVI arrived at the Portica Ottavia entrance to the Jewish Ghetto at 4 p.m. where he was welcomed by Riccardo Pacifici, president of the Jewish Community of Rome, and Renzo Gattegna, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. They walked down towards the Synagogue.




Waiting to welcome the Pope to the Synagogue was the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo di Segni, along with other rabbis from Italy and Israel, among them the former Chief Rabbi of Rome, Elio Toaff, who had welcomed John Paul II to the Synaogue 24 year ago.









At the Rome Synagogue,
Benedict XVI defends Pius
against critics
By ARIEL DAVID





ROME, Jan. 17 (AP) - – Pope Benedict XVI defended his predecessor Pius XII against Jewish critics Sunday, telling the audience at a Rome synagogue that the Vatican worked quietly to save Jews from the Nazis during World War II.

Many Jews object to Benedict moving Pius toward sainthood, contending the wartime pope didn't do enough to protect Jews from the Holocaust. The Vatican has maintained that Pius used behind-the-scenes diplomacy in a bid to save Jewish lives.

While he didn't mention Pius by name, Benedict told Jewish leaders in the synagogue that the Vatican "itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way."

Benedict said Catholics acted courageously to save Jews even as their extermination "tragically reached as far as Rome."

He spoke shortly after Jewish Community President Riccardo Pacifici criticized Pius, saying Italian Catholics worked to save Jews but the "silence" of Pius "still hurts as a failed action."

Pacifici said his grandparents were killed at the Auschwitz death camp while his father was saved by Italian nuns in a Florence convent.

Several prominent Jews had said they would boycott but Benedict was welcomed with warm applause as he began his visit, which he predicted would improve relations between Catholics and Jews.

The temple sits in the Old Jewish Ghetto, the Rome neighborhood near the Tiber where for hundreds of years Jews were confined under the orders of a 16th century pope.

Relations between Jews and the Vatican have at times been tense over the Vatican's sainthood efforts for Pius, who was pontiff from 1939 to 1958.

Those tensions flared again after Benedict last month issued a decree hailing the "heroic virtues" of Pius, an important step before beatification, which is the last formal stage before possible sainthood.

Some Jews also have been angered by Benedict's reaching out to Catholic traditionalists, including his revival of a prayer for the conversion of Jews. [WRONG, WRONG, WRONG1]

Another sore point is Benedict's decision to revoke the excommunication of a renegade bishop who had denied that millions of Jews died in the Holocaust. The Vatican has said it wasn't aware of the bishop's views when the excommunication was lifted. [And even if it was, the bishop's historical obtuseness had nothing to do with his excommunication and the lifting of it!]

In his weekly noon appearance to pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter's Square, Benedict predicted that his visit would be a "further step on the path of harmony and friendship" between Catholics and Jews.

He recalled a 1986 visit to the temple by Pope John Paul II, who was widely credited with dramatically improving relations with Jews. The late pontiff, who lived under Nazi occupation in his Polish homeland, where Jews were largely annihilated, affectionately referred to Jews as "our elder brothers" in faith during that groundbreaking visit.

Italy's Jews are a tiny minority: about 30,000 in a predominantly Roman Catholic country of some 60 million. The neighborhood is the sentimental heart of Rome's 12,000-strong Jewish community, although many of them live elsewhere in the capital.

The German-born Benedict, ahead of his meeting with Rome's Jewish community, said that "despite the problems and difficulties, you can breathe in a climate of great respect and dialogue among the believers of the two religions, testimony to how matured the relations are and to the common commitment to value that which unites us."

Those unifying factors were: "faith in the one God, above all, but also safeguarding life and the family, the aspiration for social justice and peace," Benedict said.

Under the leadership of John Paul and Benedict, the Vatican has been seeking common ground on such conservative agendas as traditional families while forging stronger relations with other religions, including Judaism and Islam.

Before entering the synagogue, the Pope was scheduled to attend a wreath-laying ceremony in front of a plaque that recalls the Oct. 16, 1943, deportation of Jews in Rome during Nazi occupation. Another stop was planned at another memorial, which recalls the 1982 attack on the synagogue by Palestinian terrorists that killed a 2-year-old Jewish boy.

Benedict has visited synagogues in Cologne, Germany, and in New York during papal pilgrimages since he became Pontiff in 2005.






Reuters persists in its overt fault-finding with the Catholic Church in the way it slants its stories. Compare this approach to AP's above. It reminds me of their decades-long slanting of war news form Vietnam and Iraq to portray the Americans as out-and-out villains without any redeeming virtue whatsoever!

As for the title of the article, what logic on earth makes it valid for anyone to 'confront' Benedict XVI for what one of his predecessors did or did not do? He is not responsible for Pius XII's actions in anyway, and especially not to people who see the late Pope as a stick figure defined only by his 'silence' about the Nazi persecution of the Jews! And who ignore all the abundant facts of how Pius XII and his Church helped the Jews all they could but did so prudently and discreetly.




Jewish leader confronts Pope
on Holocaust 'silence'
By Philip Pullella





ROME, Jan. 17 (Reuters) – An Italian Jewish leader told Pope Benedict on Sunday that his wartime predecessor Pius XII should have spoken out more forcefully against the Holocaust to show solidarity with Jews being led to the "ovens of Auschwitz."

The comments, from the president of Rome's Jewish community Riccardo Pacifici, were made during the Pope's first visit to Rome's synagogue and were some of the bluntest ever spoken by a Jewish leader in public to a Pope.

"The silence of Pius XII before the Shoah, still hurts because something should have been done," Pacifici told the Pope, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

"Maybe it would not have stopped the death trains, but it would have sent a signal, a word of extreme comfort, of human solidarity, toward those brothers of ours transported to the ovens of Auschwitz," he said.

[Great! In wartime, how would those Jews sent to Auschwitz have known if the Pope had spoken for them? And anyway,what Jew would even think of the Pope in any way when he is facing the horror of extermination? He won't even think of his own leaders - he will only think of God and his loved ones! No one would be wringing his hands and saying, "Lord! If only the Pope would say something in our behalf!" I cannot believe this reductio ad absurdum of Pacifici's point, which is that of the other anti-Pius Jews as well!

What about the thousands of other Jews in Rome who knew from personal experience how they were being helped by Catholics, and who could not very well advertise it, any more than the Church could advertise what it was doing for the Jews?

In any case, where and who, if any, Mr. Pacifici, were the Jewish leaders who spoke up publicly for their persecuted brethren during the war years? I would like to think they had their reasons to be prudent as valid as Pius XII had.

The fact is Pius XII did not protest publicly either for what the Nazis were doing to Catholics - and for the same reason: Discretion is the better part of valor. It didn't mean he didn't do anything behind the scenes! The anti-Catholic pogrom may not have been on the scale the Nazis were killing off the Jews, but as Pope, Pius XII had direct responsibility for them, whereas his responsibility towards the Jews was indirect insofar as they are all humans worthy of respect.

Why is moral perfection demanded of Pius XII but not of anyone else, especially Jewish leaders themselves? That is the utter hypocrisy of the militant Jews' anti-Pius position all along.

That and the fact that none of them ever dredged up so much muck in the years before The Deputy came out - when it was seized upon by so many Jews and liberals as a convenient but supreme pretext to denigrate the Church and its spiritual leader for their supposed failure to act against one of the worst crimes against humanity ever perpetrated!]

The visit, Benedict's third trip to a Jewish temple since becoming Pope in 2005, has deeply split [Yeah right! If a two-man boycott can be called a deep split! See how overnight the MSM have created this myth of a 'deep split' after exactly one rabbi and one Shoah survivor said they would boycott the event!] Italy's Jewish community after he took the decision last month to advance Pius XII on the path toward sainthood.

Many Jews say Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, did not do enough to help Jews facing persecution by Nazi Germany.

In his speech to the Pope, Pacifici paid tribute to Italian Catholics, priests and nuns during the war and said their efforts made Pius's "silence" hurt even more. [BS! the priests and nuns did what they did in discreet silence and secrecy, too!]

The Vatican maintains that Pius was not silent during the war, but chose to work behind the scenes, concerned that public intervention would have worsened the situation for both Jews and Catholics in a wartime Europe dominated by Hitler. [Can anyone dispute the logic and realism of this an argument?]

The Pope, speaking after Pacifici, broadly stuck to this stance, although he did denounce the Holocaust as "the most extreme point on the path of hatred" and acknowledged that "unfortunately, many remained indifferent."

"The Apostolic See (the Vatican) itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way," Benedict said, referring to the wartime record of the Catholic Church.

Benedict was welcomed by Jewish leaders from Rome and abroad as he arrived at the synagogue on the banks of the Tiber a short distance from the Vatican to begin the two-hour visit.

Before entering the temple, Jewish leaders showed the pope a plaque recalling the deportation of Rome Jews by Germans on October 16, 1943 and another to a two-year-old boy killed in a gun and grenade attack on the synagogue in 1982.

The visit comes 24 years after Pope John Paul became the first Pope in nearly 2,000 years to enter a synagogue and called Jews "our beloved elder brothers."

Benedict, a German who was drafted into the Hitler Youth and German army as a teenager during World War Two, has had a more difficult relationship with the Jewish community.

Many are still seething at his decision last year to start the rehabilitation process of traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson, who denied the extent of the Holocaust. [How can lifting the excommunication of four bishops ordained illegally together be considered as the 'start of a rehabilitation process for Williamson'? It's not for the Church to rehabilitate Williamson - he must do it himself!]

And some in the Jewish community, including at least one senior rabbi and a Holocaust survivor, decided to boycott the Sunday synagogue visit after Benedict approved a decree recognizing Pius's "heroic virtues."

The two remaining steps to sainthood are beatification and canonization, which could take many years. Jewish groups wanted the process frozen until more Vatican archives are opened to scholars.


I bet Rabbi Laras is tearing his hair out right now for boycotting the event and passing up the chance to use it as Mr. Pacifici did in order to reproach Benedict XVI directly! Because if he had attended, he surely would have been asked to say a few words as president of the Rabbinical Assembly of Italy. He's been clearly upstaged. Who's the hero now to the anti-Pius elements? Laras who boycotted, or Pacifici who 'stuck it' to the Pope?





John Allen considered this visit special enough to work on a Sunday and file an immediate report:


Tensions over Pius XII surface
in Pope's synagogue visit

January 17, 2010


Heading into Pope Benedict XVI’s much-anticipated Jan. 17 visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome, one towering question loomed. What impact would the recent move towards sainthood for Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff whose alleged “silence” on the Holocaust has long fueled controversy, have on the broader Jewish/Catholic relationship?

In the wake of the visit on Sunday, two answers seem equally clear:

• One, fraternal relations between Jews and Catholic will survive the latest round of tensions over Pius XII, with the enthusiastic welcome given to Benedict XVI as proof of the point.
• Two, those tensions also aren’t about to disappear.
[But who in his right mind expected them to disappear, anyway? Any more than they did not disappear after Nostra aetate and 27 years of John Paul II. Two millennia of mistrust and outright hostility do not disappear overnight, least of all with those Jews who have developed a really morbid victim complex. Look at the situation with the Orthodox Christians, which has lasted one millennia less, or with the Protestant Churches, which is 15 centuries less!]

This was only the second papal trip to the Rome synagogue, after John Paul II’s groundbreaking visit in April 1986. Benedict was greeted warmly, including an emotional reunion with the former Chief Rabbi of Rome, Elio Toaf, who hosted John Paul twenty-four years ago.




The crowd featured a cross-section of Jewish, Catholic, Muslim and civil dignitaries, including a small number of Holocaust survivors in blue-and-white scarves, the colors of the Israeli flag.

The small but growing Jewish community in Rome seemed visibly grateful for Benedict’s presence, giving him two standing ovations and interrupting his speech with applause nine times.

Benedict said his visit was meant to express “the esteem and affection which the Bishop and the Church of Rome, as well as the entire Catholic Church, have towards this community and all Jewish communities around the world.”

The Pope likewise affirmed the “irrevocable commitment” of Catholicism to dialogue with Judaism, condemned “the scourge of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism,” and underscored the indelible memory of “the singular and deeply disturbing drama of the Shoah,” the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

Yet there were also clear reminders of divisions over the memory of Pius XII, for whom Benedict XVI recently approved a decree of heroic virtue, which permits him to be referred to as “venerable” and leaves only the documentation of one miracle for beatification and another for canonization.

“The silence of Pius XII on the Holocaust is still painful,” said Riccardo Pacifici, head of the Jewish Community of Rome, in his remarks to Benedict XVI.

“Perhaps he could not have stopped the trains of death, but he could have transmitted a signal, a final word of comfort, for our brothers on their way to the camps of Auschwitz,” Pacifici said.

Pacifici also called upon the Vatican to open its archives from the era of Pius XII. [Totally unnecessary grandstanding move - since the Vatican has already said it will open the Archives by 2014!]

While the Vatican has already published multiple volumes of material which it asserts contain everything relevant to the Pope’s conduct during the war years, other material has not yet been unsealed.

[Oh yeah! Somewhere in that Archive, there must be a letter or letters in which Pius XII writes Adolf Hitler to tell him he's going to keep silent about the Jews if only he will spare the Catholics, or some journal entry in which Pius XII discloses his deep-seated and irrevocable anti-Semitism!

Get real, people! If your main complaint is that he kept silent or did not do anything, how do you prove something that did not happen? You expecting a letter, note or journal entry in which Pius XII says 'I will not speak about the Jews in public because it's not my business' or something just as stupid and 'incriminating'?

Pius XII's detractors ignore everything else about him other than his 'silence' in World War II. They forget he was an intellectual, a great man of the Church, and more than all that, a holy man. His reputation for holiness - to a far greater degree than was attributed to John Paul II in his lifetime - was such that in my childhood in the 1950s, the nuns and missionaries who taught us venerated him as a saint! Without knowledge at the time of the visions he had in the Vatican Gardens!]



Rome’s Chief Rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, was more indirect, but no less clear in his reference to Pius XII.

“The silence of God about the evils of the world, or our inability to hear his voice, is an inscrutable mystery,” Di Segni said. “But the silence of man is a different matter. It confronts us, it challenges us, and it does not escape judgment.”

[Whose judgment? Man's? Man is to judge Pius XII, not God? Have the Jews never thought - since they do not have the Sacrament of Penance - that Pius XII would have told his confessor about any moral failings, shortcomings or wrong decisions he made, including any that may have had to do with speaking out on the Jews? And done any penance if it was called for?]




In his speech, Benedict XVI issued what amounted to a veiled defense of his controversial predecessor.

Benedict noted that the Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews reached as far as Rome, and conceded that “unfortunately, many remained indifferent.”

“But many, including Italian Catholics, sustained by their faith and by Christian teaching, reacted with courage, often at risk of their lives, opening their arms to assist the Jewish fugitives who were being hunted down, and earning perennial gratitude,” the {ope said.

Benedict then added: “The Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.”

It has long been a central contention among defenders of Pius XII that he was compelled to act behind the scenes to save Jews, because public proclamations would have done more harm than good, triggering even more ferocious crackdowns.

Whatever Roman Jews make of Pius XII, their gratitude for numerous Catholics who came to their aid during the Holocaust is still palpable.

Pacifici, for example, whose grandfather was the Chief Rabbi of Genoa and who died at Auschwitz, said that he is alive today because other relatives were sheltered in a convent of the Sisters of Martha in Florence. [Yet, from the irrational mindset of the detractors, all these acts of rescue do not count, in effect, because Pius XII kept 'silent'!]

“This is not a unique story in Italy,” Pacifici said. “Numerous monasteries and convents risked their lives to save Jews.”

The polarizing nature of disputes over Pius XII was reflected not only inside the synagogue, but also in those who weren’t there. Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, President of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly, boycotted in protest over the move towards sainthood for Pope Pius, which he charged is part a broader deterioration in Jewish/Catholic relations under Benedict XVI.

“During the current pontificate, the fraternal relationship (between Jews and Catholics) has become steadily weaker,” Laras told reporters in the run-up to the event.

Only the church “will draw any advantage” from the Pope’s visit, Laras said, “above all its most backward circles,” while it “will not have a positive effect on Jewish-Catholic dialogue.”

[Why does Allen not question this silly statement? How does the Church - and its 'reactionary circles' who oppose fraternizing with the Jews - benefit from it in any way? Benedict XVI did not make the visit in order to 'gain' anything or to score points. He made it because he feels it is the right thing to do - and he was invited, after all! He did not force himself on Di Segni.]

Predictably, reaction to the synagogue visit was somewhat mixed.

Fr. John Pawlikowski, a veteran of Jewish/Catholic dialogue at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, said on Sunday that Benedict’s visit was “a positive step forward that has the potential to erase the negative developments during this papacy and restart a constructive discussion.”

At the same time, Pawlikowski also said that Benedict’s speech left several questions unanswered, including difficult theological questions such as the on-going validity of the Jewish covenant and the Catholic approach to missionary efforts directed at Jews.

[Is he out of his mind? Did he really expect the Pope to get into a discussion of theological differences during a friendly call, or even a diplomatic visit, if you will? As for the questions Pawlikowski raises, he will find the answers he wants if he reads through Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's texts thta have to do with Judaism. The Pope is on theologically sound ground, but it was neither the place nor time to discuss them! It infuriates me wehn reporters just take silly statements like that without rebuttal on the spot, while they are with the person who is making them!]

On Pius XII, Pawlikowski called for “fast-tracking the release of the relevant Vatican archival materials as well as a hold on any future movement on Pius’s canonization.” {GRRRR! A thousand thumbs down on this man!]

German Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s top official for relations with Jews, offered a largely sunny reading of the dispute.

“On Pius XII, we can have different opinions, and I’m sure we will have them,” Kasper said. “We’re two different communities, and it’s inevitable that there will be disagreements. There will always be some problem. But we also have many, many things in common. This visit should underline our common heritage and our common commitment to dialogue and peace.”

“In this world,” Kasper said, “we already have enough conflicts.”

Before arriving at the synagogue, Benedict XVI briefly paused at two memorials. One recalls the deportation of Roman Jews in October 1943, the other a terrorist attack on the synagogue in October 1982 in which 37 people were injured and one two-year-old boy was shot to death. The pope greeted members of the boy’s family.

While the move towards sainthood for Pius XII is the most recent sticking point in Catholic/Jewish relations, it’s hardly the only one.

Another is formed by the long-running negotiations between the Vatican and Israel over implementation of the 1993 Fundamental Agreement, which involves a cluster of thorny matters such as the tax and legal status of church properties, entrance visas for church personnel, and the capacity of chaplains in the military, prisons and hospitals to minister freely.

On that front, the Vatican drew support from a prominent Jewish source on Sunday. Rabbi David Rosen, a longtime veteran of Catholic/Jewish dialogue, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israel’s behavior towards the Vatican has been “outrageous.”

“Any [other] country would have threatened to withdraw its ambassador long ago over Israel’s failure to honor agreements,” Rosen said.

Rosen also rejected suggestions that Catholic/Jewish relations have taken a step backward under Benedict XVI in comparison to his predecessor, John Paul II.

“Most people don’t know that almost every current problem in Vatican-Jewish relations began not with Pope Benedict, but with his predecessor Pope John Paul II, who is now seen as a saint by Jews,” Rosen said.

Benedict made the roughly ten-minute trip to the synagogue, which lies just across the Tiber River from the Vatican, on an evocative date. Roman Jews recall Jan. 17 as Mo'ed di Piombo, marking a day in 1793 when a massive rain, which tradition regards as miraculous, saved the Jewish community from a pogrom. A Roman mob at the time blamed the city's Jews for supporting the French Revolution.

How deplorable it is that in the media's morbid preoccupation over its 'tension watch' in Jewish-Catholic relations, the initial reports said virtually nothing about the Holy Father's splendid, beautifully crafted, eminently sensible discourse on the essence of those relations other than his reference to what the Vatican did in World War II!

Without saying so explicitly, he also brings a whole new light to why Western civilization is said to be based on the 'Judaeo-Christian tradition'. And he spoke of Jesus a couple of times in the most natural way.

I had long thought about this visit in my mind as 'Benedict in the lions' den'. Watching the broadcast, I was very thankful the lions all seemed benign and well-disposed. And while I question the logic of the challenges from Mr. Pacifici and the more veiled one from Rabbi Di Segni, they did what was expected of them by their community, and spoke what each of them, personally, feels strongly.

Thanks to the English service of Vatican Radio for providing a prompt translation.







The Pope's address to
the Jewish Community of Rome:
'To confirm and deepen
a journey already begun'
Translation by

---

“What marvels the Lord worked for them!
What marvels the Lord worked for us:
Indeed we were glad.” (Ps 126)

“How good and how pleasant it is
when brothers live in unity.” (Ps 133)


Dear Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Rome,
President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities,
President of the Jewish Community of Rome,
Rabbis,
Distinguished Authorities,
Friends, Brothers and Sisters,

1. At the beginning of this encounter in the Great Synagogue of the Jews of Rome, the Psalms which we heard suggest to us the right spiritual attitude in which to experience this particular and happy moment of grace: the praise of the Lord, who has worked marvels for us and has gathered us in his Hèsed, his merciful love, and thanksgiving to him for granting us this opportunity to come together to strengthen the bonds which unite us and to continue to travel together along the path of reconciliation and fraternity.

I wish to express first of all my sincere gratitude to you, Chief Rabbi, Doctor Riccardo Di Segni, for your invitation and for the thoughtful words which you have addressed to me.

I wish to thank also the President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Mr Renzo Gattegna, and the President of the Jewish Community of Rome, Mr Riccardo Pacifici, for their courteous greetings.

My thoughts go to the Authorities and to all present, and they extend in a special way, to the entire Jewish Community of Rome and to all who have worked to bring about this moment of encounter and friendship which we now share.

When he came among you for the first time, as a Christian and as Pope, my Venerable Predecessor John Paul II, almost 24 years ago, wanted to make a decisive contribution to strengthening the good relations between our two communities, so as to overcome every misconception and prejudice.

My visit forms a part of the journey already begun, to confirm and deepen it. With sentiments of heartfelt appreciation, I come among you to express to you the esteem and the affection which the Bishop and the Church of Rome, as well as the entire Catholic Church, have towards this Community and all Jewish communities around the world.

2. 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, through important steps and significant gestures.

Among them, I should mention once again the historic visit by my Venerable Predecessor to this Synagogue on 13 April 1986, the numerous meetings he had with Jewish representatives, both here in Rome and during his Apostolic Visits throughout the world, the Jubilee Pilgrimage which he made to the Holy Land in the year 2000, the various documents of the Holy See which, following the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration Nostra Aetate, have made helpful contributions to the increasingly close relations between Catholics and Jews.

I too, in the course of my Pontificate, have wanted to demonstrate my closeness to and my affection for the people of the Covenant. I cherish in my heart each moment of the pilgrimage that I had the joy of making to the Holy Land in May of last year, along with the memories of numerous meetings with Jewish Communities and Organizations, in particular my visits to the Synagogues of Cologne and New York.

Furthermore, the Church has not failed to deplore the failings of her sons and daughters, begging forgiveness for all that could in any way have contributed to the scourge of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism (cf. Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, 16 March 1998).

May these wounds be healed forever! The heartfelt prayer which Pope John Paul II offered at the Western Wall on 26 March 2000 comes back to my mind, and it calls forth a profound echo in our hearts:

“God of our Fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the nations: we are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”

3. The passage of time allows us to recognize in the Twentieth Century a truly tragic period for humanity: ferocious wars that sowed destruction, death and suffering like never before; frightening ideologies, rooted in the idolatry of man, of race, and of the State, which led to brother killing brother.

The singular and deeply disturbing drama of the Shoah represents, as it were, the most extreme point on the path of hatred that begins when man forgets his Creator and places himself at the centre of the universe.

As I noted during my visit of 28 May 2006 to the Auschwitz Concentration camp, which is still profoundly impressed upon my memory:

“the rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people”, and, essentially, “by wiping out this people, they intended to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that remain eternally valid” (Discourse at Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp: The Teachings of Pope Benedict XVI, II, 1 [2006], p.727).

Here in this place, how could we not remember the Roman Jews who were snatched from their homes, before these very walls, and who with tremendous brutality were killed at Auschwitz? How could one ever forget their faces, their names, their tears, the desperation faced by these men, women and children?

The extermination of the people of the Covenant of Moses, at first announced, then systematically programmed and put into practice in Europe under the Nazi regime, that day tragically reached as far as Rome.

Unfortunately, many remained indifferent, but many, including Italian Catholics, sustained by their faith and by Christian teaching, reacted with courage, often at risk of their lives, opening their arms to assist the Jewish fugitives who were being hunted down, and earning perennial gratitude. The Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.

The memory of these events compels us to strengthen the bonds that unite us so that our mutual understanding, respect and acceptance may always increase.

4. Our closeness and spiritual fraternity find in the Holy Bible - in Hebrew, Sifre Qodesh, or “Book of Holiness” – their most stable and lasting foundation, which constantly reminds us of our common roots, our history and the rich spiritual patrimony that we share.

It is in pondering her own mystery that the Church, the People of God of the New Covenant, discovers her own profound bond with the Jews, who were chosen by the Lord before all others to receive his word (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 839).

“The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews ‘belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs and of their race, according to the flesh is the Christ’ (Rom 9:4-5), ‘for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable!’ (Rom 11:29)” (Ibid).

Many lessons may be learnt from our common heritage derived from the Law and the Prophets. I would like to recall some of them:
- first of all, the solidarity which binds the Church to the Jewish people “at the level of their spiritual identity”, which offers Christians the opportunity to promote “a renewed respect for the Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament” (cf. Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Jewish people and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, 2001, pp.12 and 55);
- the centrality of the Decalogue as a common ethical message of permanent value for Israel, for the Church, for non-believers and for all of humanity;
- the task of preparing or ushering in the Kingdom of the Most High in the “care for creation” entrusted by God to man for him to cultivate and to care for responsibly (cf. Gen 2:15).

6. In particular, the Decalogue – the Ten Words or Ten Commandments (cf. Ex 20:1-17; Dt 5:1-21) – which comes from the Torah of Moses, is a shining light for ethical principles, hope and dialogue, a guiding star of faith and morals for the people of God, and it also enlightens and guides the path of Christians.

It constitutes a beacon and a norm of life in justice and love, a “great ethical code” for all humanity. The Ten Commandments shed light on good and evil, on truth and falsehood, on justice and injustice, and they match the criteria of every human person’s right conscience.

Jesus himself recalled this frequently, underlining the need for active commitment in living the way of the Commandments: “If you wish to enter into life, observe the Commandments” (Mt 19:17).

From this perspective, there are several possible areas of cooperation and witness. I would like to recall three that are especially important for our time.

The Ten Commandments require that we recognize the one Lord, against the temptation to construct other idols, to make golden calves.

In our world there are many who do not know God or who consider him superfluous, without relevance for their lives; hence, other new gods have been fabricated to whom man bows down. Reawakening in our society openness to the transcendent dimension, witnessing to the one God, is a precious service which Jews and Christians can offer together.

The Ten Commandments call us to respect life and to protect it against every injustice and abuse, recognizing the worth of each human person, created in the image and likeness of God.

How often, in every part of the world, near and far, the dignity, the freedom and the rights of human beings are trampled upon!

Bearing witness together to the supreme value of life against all selfishness, is an important contribution to a new world where justice and peace reign, a world marked by that “shalom” which the lawgivers, the prophets and the sages of Israel longed to see.

The Ten Commandments call us to preserve and to promote the sanctity of the family, in which the personal and reciprocal, faithful and definitive “Yes” of man and woman makes room for the future, for the authentic humanity of each, and makes them open, at the same time, to the gift of new life.

To witness that the family continues to be the essential cell of society and the basic environment in which human virtues are learned and practised is a precious service offered in the construction of a world with a more human face.

7. As Moses taught in the Shema (cf. Dt 6:5; Lev 19:34) – and as Jesus reaffirms in the Gospel (cf. Mk 12:19-31) - all of the Commandments are summed up in the love of God and loving-kindness towards one’s neighbour.

This Rule urges Jews and Christians to exercise, in our time, a special generosity towards the poor, towards women and children, strangers, the sick, the weak and the needy.

In the Jewish tradition there is a wonderful saying of the Fathers of Israel: “Simon the Just often said: The world is founded on three things: the Torah, worship, and acts of mercy” (Avoth 1:2).

In exercising justice and mercy, Jews and Christians are called to announce and to bear witness to the coming Kingdom of the Most High, for which we pray and work in hope each day.

8. On this path we can walk together, aware of the differences that exist between us, but also aware of the fact that when we succeed in uniting our hearts and our hands in response to the Lord’s call, his light comes closer and shines on all the peoples of the world.

The progress made in the last forty years by the International Committee for Catholic-Jewish Relations and, in more recent years, by the Mixed Commission of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and of the Holy See, are a sign of our common will to continue an open and sincere dialogue.

Tomorrow here in Rome, in fact, the Mixed Commission will hold its ninth meeting, on “Catholic and Jewish Teaching on Creation and the Environment”; we wish them a profitable dialogue on such a timely and important theme.

9. Christians and Jews share to a great extent a common spiritual patrimony, they pray to the same Lord, they have the same roots, and yet they often remain unknown to each other.

It is our duty, in response to God’s call, to strive to keep open the space for dialogue, for reciprocal respect, for growth in friendship, for a common witness in the face of the challenges of our time, which invite us to cooperate for the good of humanity in this world created by God, the Omnipotent and Merciful.

10. Finally, I offer a particular reflection on this, our city of Rome, where, for nearly two millennia, as Pope John Paul II said, the Catholic Community with its Bishop and the Jewish Community with its Chief Rabbi have lived side by side.

May this proximity be animated by a growing fraternal love, expressed also in closer cooperation, so that we may offer a valid contribution to solving the problems and difficulties that we still face.

I beg from the Lord the precious gift of peace in the world, above all in the Holy Land. During my pilgrimage there last May, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, I prayed to Him who can do all things, asking:

“Send your peace upon this Holy Land, upon the Middle East, upon the entire human family; stir the hearts of those who call upon your name, to walk humbly in the path of justice and compassion” (Prayer at the Western Wall of Jerusalem, 12 May 2009).

I give thanks and praise to God once again for this encounter, asking him to strengthen our fraternal bonds and to deepen our mutual understanding.


“O praise the Lord, all you nations,
acclaim him, all you peoples.
Strong is his love for us,
He is faithful forever.
Alleluia!” (Ps 117)

---

I already rue the predictable comparisons of Benedict XVI's visit with that of John Paul II in 1986. Being the second to do anything extraordinary is never 'as good' in the eyes of the world as being the first. Which is, of course, contrary to what Jesus taught.

But Benedict XVI is not in competition with anyone on anything - nor does he need to be because he is so evidently and eminently sui generis, just as every Pope is, for that matter. Even if his 'generis' is truly exceptional.

An Italian reporter noted that half of the lines applauded of the Holy Father's speech yesterday came at the Pope's references to John Paul II, which was to be expected.

What I deplore is the attitude - and not just among the Jews, but in general - of those who also intend their enthusiasmic reactions for John Paul II to be a way of saying to Benedict XVI, "Now, he was the good one, and you can't compare!" This is clearly implied every time someone - especially in the media - makes a gratuitous comparison of the two Popes.

Surely, no one can be more aware of this constant comparison game than Benedict XVI himself, from the moment he accepted his election as Pope. I doubt it ever fazed him because he knows who he is and what he is capable of doing. My heart is at ease about him in this respect because I am sure he has the grace of the Holy Spirit on him.

I do not look at this visit in terms of whether it was 'historic' or not, as the media do, or what it means in terms of relations with the Jews. Benedict XVI does not have to prove himself over and over for what his entire life as a theologian and man of the Church has shown him to be - someone who arrived early at the conviction of Christianity's essential unity with Judaism and has articulated more than anyone in the Catholic Church the theological bases for the Church's post-Nostra aetate rapprochement with the Jews.

He visited the Synagogue because it was the right thing to do at the right time and on the right occasion; he was exquisitely himself [the ultimate charmer by force of personality, even if he were not Pope]; and he said what he needed to say. Mission very well accomplished!

In the welter of Italian newspaper reports today on Benedict XVI's visit to the Rome Synagogue yesterday, this one by La Stampa's Vaticanista was perhaps the most enterprising. Riccardo Pacifici, president of Rome's Jewish community was an unexpected protagonist during the visit.



Not only did he welcome the Pope to the Jewish Ghetto, but in his remarks before the Pope's speech, he delivered a direct reproach of Pius XII, even as he acknowledged that he is alive today because his family was sheltered during the war by nuns in a Florence convent.

In the interview, he gives his impressions of the Pope's visit.


'When the Pope rose during his speech
to acknowledge the Shoah survivors,
it cancelled out all the controversy'
by GIACOMO GALEAZZI

January 18, 2010



Mr. Pacifici, what are the symbolic images you have from the visits to the Synagogue by John Paul II in 1986 and by Benedict XVI today?
Having participated in both events, I think they constitute unparalleled pages in history. In 24 years, the world has changed radically, but the effects of these visits can me measured in the long term.

John Paul II's embrace towards 'our older brothers in the faith' made history, and the same will be said for Benedict XVI's extraordinary gesture when, during his address at the Synagogue, rose to his feet, by himself and in great humility, as a sign of respect for the survivors of Nazi concentration camps.

All the polemics from before the visit were wiped out in that moment - the appreciation was unanimous.

Of the 400 survivors who had requested to participate in the event, only eight were unable to come.


What did the Pope say to you in private?
Everything was said in a climate far from any theological rigor, but in a way that was innovative, concrete, outside rhetoric.

Benedict XVI is conscious of his responsibility of being not just Pope, but also the representative of a nation that was responsible for the horrors of the Shoah and executioners for Hitler.

As someone who accmpanied him during the entire visit, I was struck by his gentleness, and by his interest to be told about how the Nazis rounded up the Jews in Rome, the Palestinian attack on Jews outside teh Synagogue in 1982, and the historical memories of the community.

He was aware that we were all treading on delicate ground during the visit. He went forward to greet Rabbi Toaff [emeritus Chief Rabbi who had invited and welcomed John Paul II in 1986], who is ailing, and said to him, "Thank you for having opened this stage [of our relationship]".

The word that best expresses the sense of the visit is 'Shalom', the last of the Berakha (Benedictions), which indicates the highest and purest aspiration, namely, spiritual integrity and serenity in one's perfect consciousness of God.


In your remarks, you were very emotional recalling your family who were saved by some nuns. Would the beatification of Pius XII be an obstacle to dialog?
We have no intention of getting into the beatification which is not the business of the Jewish world. But if he should be made a saint as someone who he is not, then we cannot accept that. [But they do not have to - they are not called on to venerate or recognize Catholic saints!]

His predecessor, Pius XI, had the courage to fight Nazism and in 1937, wrote a document in German to oppose that pagan ideology which threatened the Church. Then he condemned the new Italian laws about Aryans, and before he died, he was in the process of writing an encyclical in defense of the Jews. Pius XII did nothing to follow up his work.

[Pacifici is obviously manipulating facts to fit the anti-Pius XII Jewish view. Pacelli was Pius XI's Secretary of State and resident German expert, and from all accounts, was mostly responsible for the draft of Mit brennender Sorge, and obviously collaborated in Pius XI's major moves. As for Pius XI's planned encyclical, I have excerpted below* Wikipedia's duly footnoted entry about it.]


Benedict XVI has defended his silence on the question of the Jews.
There is no proof of any sort that he opposed Italy's racial laws. He did not write a single line to condemn those racial provisions. [I need to research this!]

But if we wish to judge men of the Church - priests, nuns, convents - we have an infinite list of 'righteous persons' because at the risk of their lives, they saved Jews. But there were also convents that opened their doors only if they were paid and turned out those who did not have the money to do so.

Today, the seeds of hatred are elsewhere but always very dangerous. For example, the equiparation of Hamas and the State of Israel, and demonstrations [in Italy] where Muslims burn the Israeli flag.

Our brothers in Israel live daily through an asymmetric war with Islamist terrorism, and there is a widespread distorted view of the Middle East conflict in which Israel is always seen as the responsible party.


So would you say there is peace with the Vatican now?
This meeting will have beneficial effects. Differences will continue about Pius XII's historical profile, but this can be more reasonably discussed after all the material from the Vatican Archives is available.

Before the visit, there was tension, of course, but it was the tension of enthusiasm. There was not the slightest protest. [He is speaking for the Jewish community of Rome. The boycott came from the rabbi who heads the Italian Rabbinical Assembly [who obviously did not join him] and who lives in Venice.]

There were some dissenting voices, but these were the same ones heard before John Paul II's visit. They are minority voices which have become even more sharp after 1986. But the community is open to dissent and does not require everyone to take the same position.

What is important is what will come after this visit.


*Here are known facts about Pius XI's unpublished encyclical:

---

The text of a possible encyclical Humani Generis Unitas, The Unity of the Human Society, that Pius XI commissioned to denounce racism in the USA, Europe and elsewhere, colonialism and the violent German nationalism, was published by Georges Passelecq and Berard Suchecky under the title L'Encyclique Cachee De Pie XI (Pius XII's Secret Encyclical)[34].

Following Vatican custom, his successor Pope Pius XII, who according to the authors, was not aware of the text before the death of his predecessor,[35] chose not to publish this encyclical.

However, his first encyclical Summi Pontificatus (12 October 1939), published after the beginning of World War II, has the identical title On the Unity of Human Society and uses many of the arguments of the text, avoiding all of the negative characterisation of the Jewish people and religion contained in the proposed text of the encyclical.[36]

Summi Pontificatus sees Christianity being universalized and opposed to racial hostility and superiority. There are no real racial differences, because the human race forms a unity, because "one Creator [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth".

---

The Pope recalls the Decalogue
as mankind's moral guide

But will Benedict XVI's words fall on fertile ground?
Two Jewish writers say Judaism must also engage in self-criticism.





ROME, January 18, 2010 – Benedict XVI's words yesterday in the synagogue of Rome are all the more revealing in that they reverberated in a landscape that is not entirely friendly, as is inevitable between two faiths so united in their origin and at the same time so radically divided by Jesus of Nazareth whom Christians know as the Son of God.

Papa Ratzinger was welcomed to the synagogue by the chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, and by practically the entire Jewish community of Rome, the largest in Italy and one that inhabited the city "caput mundi" even before the arrival here of the apostles Peter and Paul, Jews who had converted to Jesus.

But the other leading rabbi in Italy, Giuseppe Laras of the Jewish community of Milan, wasn't there. He was skeptical of the event, saying "only the Church will benefit from it." In his view, the fraternal relationship between Jews and Catholics has not been strengthened under Benedict XVI but "has become weaker and weaker."

Rabbi Di Segni replied, "Time will tell which of us is right".


Indeed, there are many "undecided" questions between the Jews and the Church of Rome.

Even the date chosen for the visit had two different connotations. For the Jews of Rome, January 17 is the day of "Moed di piombo", commemorating a fire set in their ghetto by an anti-Jewish mob in 1793, which was fortunately extinguished by a violent rainstorm that fell from on a leaden (piombo) day.

For centuries, Jewish life in papal Rome was confined to this Ghetto,
At the end of his visit to the synagogue, Benedict XVI inaugurated an exhibit in the Jewish Museum showinhg how, in the eighteenth century, Roman Jews were required to participate in the installation ceremony for each new pope: with flowers, banners, and standards that they were required to set up in the area between the Colosseum and the Arch of Titus, which celebrates the definitive destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Roman empire.

But January 17 is also, in Italy, the "Day for the exploration and development of dialogue between Catholics and Jews." Since 2001, the Jewish community has been promoting it together with the Italian bishops, and since 2005, both sides agreed to dedicate it, in the next ten years, to one of the Ten Commandments, following the speech given that year by Benedict XVI in the synagogue of Cologne.

Last year, however, the Jewish community decided not to bserve the day, mianly at the urging of Rabbi Laras, who blamed Benedict XVI and, in particular, his decision to introduce into the ancient Roman rite for Good Friday the prayer that God "may enlighten" the hearts of the Jews, "that they may recognize Jesus Christ as Savior of all men." [I am surprised even Magister can get this all wrong! It's not easy to present the history of the Good Friday prayer briefly, but Benedict XVI certainly did not 'introduce the Good Friday prayer into the ancient Roman rite'!]

A prayer judged by Laras to be unacceptable, because it is aimed at the conversion of Jews to the Christian faith. [He claims it is - whereas soon after Benedict XVI's revision, Cardinal Kasper published an article clearly showing how the Pope freframed it in the eschatological language of Paul's Letter to the Romans, with the explicit statement that the prayer is not aimed at converting the Jews in the missionary sense! In fact, Laras should simply ask himself when was the last time the Catholic Church every proselytzied Jews!]

Not all Italian Jews agreed with that boycott. But the controversy surrounding Benedict XVI took on harsher tones and became 'worldwide' after he revoked the excommunication of the four Lefebvrian bishops, one of whom had made statements minimizing the extent of the Holocaust.

[Because many Catholics, including European bishops, openly protested his action], the Pope wrote a letter to all Catholic bishops dated March 10, 2009, to explain the reason for his opening towards the Lefebvrians. In the letter, he thanked "Jewish friends" who – more than many churchmen – had helped him "to remove misunderstanding and reestablish friendship and trust."

The storm died down a little. And so in 2010, the Italian Jews made known they would participate in the July 17 Day of Dialog, which this year is dedicated to the commandment "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," the fourth in the Jewish numbering.

The climate had been improved in part by Benedict XVI's trip to the Holy Land, last May. But even after that trip, the controversial questions remained open. Two of them in particular, both interrelated: Pius XII, and the Holocaust.

The accusation that many Jews all over the world – but also some Catholics – make against Pius XII is that he was silent in the face of the Nazi extermination of the Jews.

Before entering the synagogue yesterday, Benedict XVI stopped in front of the stone that commemorates the deportation to Auschwitz of a thousand Jews from Rome, on October 16, 1943.

Pius XII has been accused of failing to protest the deportation, as the president of the Jewish community of Rome, Riccardo Pacifici, reiterated in the speech with which he welcomed the Pope to the synagogue:

"The silence of Pius XII in the face of the Shoah still gives us pain, as an unfulfilled act. He might not have stopped the death trains, but he would have transmitted a signal, a word of final comfort and human solidarity, to our brothers and sisters who were being taken to the ovens of Auschwitz."

The Vatican has always maintained that Pius XII wished to avoid provoking, with public protests, further persecution. [It must be mentioned that when he praised the Dutch bishops for taking a stand against the deportation of Jews, the Nazis countered with deporting Catholics from Holland, including Edith Stein. He learned his lesson from that!]

On the contrary, there is vast documentation to show that Pius XII did a great deal to save the lives of many Jews, who found refuge in Catholic churches, convents and schools. Protection acknowledged with emotional words from Pacifici, whose own father found safety in a convent of sisters in Florence.

In the days leading up to Benedict XVI's visit to the synagogue, other cases of Jews who were saved became known. Some of them found refuge during the war in the Roman abbey of Tre Fontane, built on the site of St. Paul's martyrdom. The Germans had established themselves there, but they didn't realize that among the 'monks' in the abbey were several Jews.

On the historiographical level, the black image of Pius XII as "Hitler's Pope" appears increasingly unfounded. But criticism of his public silence about the Holocaust remains strong and widespread. Thus, the negative reaction of many Jews to Benedict XVI's December 19 proclamation of his 'heroic virtues' - which means the process for his beatification can move on.

According to Rabbi Laras, that decision alone should have been sufficient reason for the Jews of Rome to cancel his visit to the synagogue.

But the question of silence about the Holocaust is more complex than it may appear. In addition to the silence of Pius XII, there were also the silences of others, which lasted long after the second war. The accusations against Pius XII became loud and persistent only after his death, beginning in the 1960's. Because before then, the Jewish world was also silent, not so much about that Pope [the Jewish world was far from silent in the immediate postwar years in praise of Pius XII's role in World War II!] as about the Holocaust itself:

"The fifteen years after the Second World War that in Europe was the period of silence and a great distancing from the Holocaust, was in fact a period of silence even in Israel."

So wrote Anna Foa, a Jewish professor of history at the La Sapienza University of Rome, in an article for L'Osservatore Romano on January 15, 2010.

Foa endorses the ideas of one of the leading scholars of Zionism, Georges Bensoussan, according to which the state of Israel was not born as a payback for the Nazi extermination of the Jews nor as an act of 'redemption'.

That the real force behind the state was Zionism, already a dominant force during the British mandate, which allowed settlement by Jews who wanted to recreate their historic homeland on the land of their fathers. [Zionism was always the historical premise for the State of Israel - in all the texts and arguments that preceded the United Nations vote that enabled it!]

The idea of the Holocaust as the foundation of the state of Israel gained strength only much later, after the Eichmann trial and especially after the war of Yom Kippur, in recent decades.

And what paved the way for it – Anna Foa writes – was precisely the fifteen years of postwar silence: a silence "inhabited by repressed memories, by new fears identified with the ancient fears that had come true in the Holocaust, by the sense of guilt and the desire for revenge."


When interpreted as the end result of the Zionist movement from the 19th century, the birth of Israel is no longer that "original sin" which even today many of its friends and enemies consider it to be.

The latter include many Catholics, led by Arab Christians in the region. The most authoritative of these, the Latin Ptriarch of Jerusalem Fouad Twal, was part of the Pope's delegation at the Synagogue yesterday. [I have always thought it highly improper of the Arab Catholic Patriarchs in the Middle East to take openly partisan sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their personal politics should not carry over into their pastoral work.]

According to this 'vulgate' view, the state of Israel was created by the great powers in order to 'compensate' for the Holocaust - so they see it as compensating for an injustice (the Holocaust) with another ('dispossessing' the local Arab population, i.e., the Palestinians - who, it must be said, fled the territory after the state of Israel was created and the Arab armies started a war seeking to destroy it; they were not driven out - they left on their own).

In 1964, when Paul VI went to the Holy Land, the Church of Rome had not yet accepted the existence of the new state. And when three decades later, in 1993, the Holy See finally recognized the state of Israel and established diplomatic relations with it, the Arab Christians took this as an act of betrayal.

Under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, acceptance of Israel has been without reservations.

On the other hand, the incessant use of the Holocaust as a weapon of accusation against the Church of Pius XII and his successors perpetrates Jewish self-identification as victims.

Foa concludes her article by pointg out that by taking the Holocaust, instead of Zionism, as the foundation of its political and religious identity, Israel risks "clinging to catastrophe instead of hope in the future"; it closes itself off in "a sorrowful identity that will always oscillate between Auschwitz and Jerusalem."

A second article in the Vatican newspaper last week went deeper into the same question.

The author, Mordechay Lewy, is the Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, also published his article in the monthly magazine of teh italian Jewish communities, Pagine ebraiche.

Lewy points out that "only a few representatives of Judaism are really involved in the current dialogue with Catholics." They are above all Reformed Jews, whereas the Orthodox denominations are more resistant.

The reason – he writes – is that the dialogue between Jews and Christians is asymmetrical. While the Christians have the Old Testament together with the New, the Jews tend to define their own religious identity in terms of "theological self-sufficiency."

They feel that they are the only ones "chosen" by God - in a strenuous effort to assert themselves in the midst of Christians who for centuries did everything they could to convert them, "kindly or, in the majority of cases, coercively."

In this way, "a deep and painful wound inflicted in the past is opened every time the victim finds himself in front of the symbols of the executioner."

This is still what happens today for many Jews, Lewy writes:

"They want to avoid any situation in which they have to forgive someone, especially if he is identified rightly or wrongly as a representative of the executioner. The Jewish victim seems incapable of granting absolution for wrongs committed long ago or recently against his brothers and sisters."

Self-criticism is not easy. But in the speech he addressed to Benedict XVI, in welcoming him to the synagogue, the chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, had words of hope about Jews and Christians being "brothers":

---

The narrative of Sefer Bereshit, Genesis, gives us some precious suggestions for understanding. As Rabbi Sachs explains, from the beginning to the end of the book, there is a leitmotif tying together the different stories.

The relationship between brothers starts out badly, with Cain killing Abel. Another pair of brothers, Isaac and Ishmael, live separated, the victims of an inherited rivalry, but are united in their gesture of compassion when they bury their father Abraham.

A third pair of brothers, Esau and Jacob, have an equally conflicted relationship, they meet for a brief reconciliation and an embrace and then their roads separate.

Finally, there is the story of Joseph and his brothers, which begins dramatically with an attempted murder and sale into slavery but is resolved with a final reconciliation when Joseph’s brothers admit their error and give proof of their willingness to sacrifice themselves one for the other.

If ours is a relationship of brothers, we should ask ourselves quite sincerely what point of this journey we have reached, and how far we still have to travel before we recover an authentic relationship of brotherhood and understanding, and what we have to do to achieve this.

---

Magister then reprints the English translation of the Holy Father's address at the Rome synagogue.



CNS, like other Catholic news agencies MIA on Sundays and religious holidays, has this story today, 1/18, on the Pope's visit. Better than CNA, which has not filed a story on the Pope since his Angelus message yesterday!


Visiting Rome Synagogue,
Pope honors the memory
of Holocaust victims
By Cindy Wooden



ROME, January 18 (CNS) -- Laying a wreath at a memorial to Roman Jews rounded up by the Nazis in 1943 and joining in a standing ovation to a dwindling group of Holocaust survivors, Pope Benedict XVI broke the ice with Rome's Jewish community even before he began to speak.

The Pope made his first visit to Rome's main synagogue Jan. 17, strongly affirming the Catholic Church's commitment to improving Catholic-Jewish relations, its respect and appreciation for Jewish faith, its condemnation of anti-Semitism and his own hope that Catholics and Jews can work together to bring biblical values back to society.

Pope Benedict began by telling some 1,500 people packed into the synagogue that he came to "confirm and deepen" the dialogue and to demonstrate "the esteem and the affection which the bishop and the church of Rome, as well as the entire Catholic Church, have towards this community and all Jewish communities around the world."

But he also responded to a widespread impression within the Jewish community, especially the community in Rome, that Pope Pius XII did not do enough to speak out against the Holocaust.

Pope Benedict's decision in December to advance the sainthood cause of Pope Pius led for calls within the Rome community for the visit to be cancelled, and some people boycotted the meeting.

The Pope said he could not come to the synagogue without remembering the Jews of Rome "who were snatched from their homes, before these very walls, and who with tremendous brutality were killed at Auschwitz."

"How could one ever forget their faces, their names, their tears, the desperation faced by these men, women and children?" he asked.

While many people remained indifferent to Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jews, he said, "many, including Italian Catholics, sustained by their faith and by Christian teaching, reacted with courage, often at risk of their lives, opening their arms to assist the Jewish fugitives who were being hunted down, and earning perennial gratitude."

Throughout the meeting, Holocaust survivors, wearing light and dark blue striped scarves, and their children wept at mentions of the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews.

Without mentioning Pope Pius by name, Pope Benedict told them, "the Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way."

Welcoming the Pope to the synagogue, Riccardo Pacifici, president of Rome's Jewish Community, said the only reason he was born was because his father had been hidden by nuns in a convent in Florence, but many others were not so lucky.

"The weight of history is felt even at today's event because there are wounds that are still open and cannot be ignored. For this reason, we also respect those who decided not to be here today," he said.

Pacifici told the Pope, "The silence of Pius XII during the Shoah is still painful today."

If Pope Pius had spoken out more loudly, he said, "maybe he would not have been able to stop the death trains, but he would have sent a signal, a word of comfort, of human solidarity, for our brothers and sisters who were transported to the chimneys of Auschwitz."

Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, spoke about the responsibility of people of faith to protect God's creation, starting with human life and human dignity.

"The silence of God or our own incapacity to hear his voice in the face of the world's evils is an inscrutable mystery," the rabbi said. "But the silence of man is on a different level; it makes us wonder, it challenges us, and it does not escape justice."

The rabbi said that despite continuing tensions, Catholics and Jews must move forward in their dialogue.

All of the speakers mentioned Pope John Paul II's visit to the synagogue in 1986 and every mention was met with clapping, but the longest applause came when Pope Benedict greeted the retired chief rabbi, 94-year-old Elio Toaff, who had hosted Pope John Paul's visit.

In his speech, Pope Benedict said that "the closeness and spiritual fraternity" of Catholics and Jews flows from sharing the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament.

"It is in pondering her own mystery that the Church, the People of God of the New Covenant, discovers her own profound bond with the Jews, who were chosen by the Lord before all others to receive his word," he said.

Pope Benedict said the Ten Commandments are central to the values that Christians and Jews share with each other and must share with an increasingly secularized world.

Acknowledging one God as the creator of the universe, calling for respect for human life and upholding the dignity of the traditional family, the Ten Commandments are "a beacon and a norm of life in justice and love, a 'great ethical code' for all humanity," he said.

The Pope told his audience that while Christians and Jews pray to the same God, "they often remain unknown to each other. It is our duty, in response to God's call, to strive to keep open the space for dialogue, for reciprocal respect, for growth in friendship, for a common witness in the face of the challenges of our time, which invite us to cooperate for the good of humanity in this world created by God."

After the Pope's visit, Rabbi Di Segni told reporters, "I think the speech calmed the atmosphere," which was tense after Pope Benedict advanced the cause of Pope Pius. "My first reaction is decisively positive," the rabbi said.

Pacifici, the president of the Rome community, said, "I think he understood what we were saying."

Renzo Gattegna, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, told reporters that Catholics and Jews still have many issues to discuss and resolve, but the Pope's visit marked a strong step forward.

Anna Foa, a member of the community and a historian who regularly contributes articles to the Vatican newspaper, said, "I was very happy. I think it went really well. I believe the Pope's speech marked an opening on several points," including "the irrevocable nature" of the Jews' covenant with God, the horror of the Holocaust and his firm commitment to the Second Vatican Council's teaching of respect for the Jews. [An opening? Joseph Ratzinger has been writing about these for decades!]

"I think it was a speech filled with great openness and I hope it means it will be possible to leave behind us all these misunderstanding and these real differences, which exist on many points. But you engage in dialogue with people who disagree," she said.


Right! For now, however, given the intractable hostility to Pius XII of the better-publicized Jewish circles, I think both sides should agree to disagree on Pius XII, and let further historical research deal with the issue. It is absolutely unproductive to talk in circles about it.


BTW, WHY HAVE ARE THERE NO PHOTOGRAPHS OUT THERE SO FAR OF THE POPE OFFERING FLOWERS AT THE TWO MEMORIAL MARKERS????

Monday, January 18

ST. CARLO DA SEZZE (Charles of Sezze) (Italy, 1613-1670)
Lay Franciscan, Mystic, Writer
Born near Rome, the young Giancarlo dreamed of becoming a missionary to India,
inspired by the mission of Fr. Junipero Serra in the Americas. but God had other
plans for him and he ended up a lay Franciscan brother. A simple soul, he was
assigned to various priories around Rome, serving as doorman, gardener, porter.
Through it all, he served the sick and the needy by collecting alms and feeding
them. His confessors urged him to write about his spiritual life, and though
unlettered, he left many writings including his autobiography, The Grandeurs
of the Mercies of God. It is said that at Mass one day, at the Elevation, a ray
of light struck him in the chest and left a wound on the same spot where Christ
had been pierced by a lance. After he died, the wound took on the shape of a
Cross, which was the basis for his beatification. In life, he was known for his
spiritual counsel and for miracles of healing and multiplication of food. As he
lay dying, Pope Clement IX is said to have called him to his side for counsel.
He was canonized in 1959.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/today.shtml



No OR today.



THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline
of Sacraments.

- Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris, and President of the French bishops conference, with
the Vice President, Mons Hippolyte Simon, Bishop of Clermont, adn the secretary-general, Mons. Antoine Herouard.

- Rabbi Jacob Neusner* and his wife

- Ecumenical delegation from the Lutheran Church of Finland, on the occasion of the Feast of St. Henry.


The Vatican announced that the Holy Father has accepted the retirement of Cardinal Godfried Daneels as
Archbishop of Malines-Brussels and named Mons. André-Mutien Léonard, who was Bishop of Namur, to succeed him.
[Mons. Leonard's nomination has been speculated on for weeks.]



*All week I had been wondering what Rabbi Neusner thinks of the Pius XII and Holocaust controversy. I hope he writes something
for L'Osservatore Romano.