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Thanks to Beatrice and her site
for this excellent rebuttal of the objections voiced immediately after the Holy Father's address at Yad Vashem last May 11, by Rabbi Meir Lau, a leading Jewish rabbi.
It is dated May 14 and was picked up from an Italian Catholic site's press round-up on May 22. I have not had the time to check out whether there has been any response from Rabbi Lau or his side, but I will do that.
In any case, Introvigne also presents a powerful argument that the Pope's Jewish detractors are putting themselves in league with anti-Pope Catholic progressivists who are often among those most militant in advocating the cause of Palestinians and Hamas against Israel's legitimate concerns for its security and sovereignty.
This is a translation from the original Italian.
Open letter to a rabbi
'disappointed' with
the Pope's words at Yad Vashem
by Massimo Introvigne
Director of CESNUR
(Center for Studies on New Religions, Turin)
Dear Rabbi Lau:
My name probably means nothing to you, but a simple search through the Internet will convince you that the undersigned is not a foe of Israel. On the contrary, I am a scholar of religious pluralism who has never hesitated to condemn ultra-fundamentalist Islamist terrorism, particular that of Hamas, to support the right of your nation to security (which evidently does not mean sharing each and every choice made by changing governments in Israel) and to denounce every form of
anti-Semitism.
In your capacity as the former Chief Ashkenazic Rabbi of Israel, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, and president of the Administrative Council of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial, your words on the visit of the Pope on May 11 to that memorial have a particular significance as your conutry's media have underscored.
To the Pope's address, which the great majority of Catholics - though not Catholics only - found not just rigorous but moving, you posed three substantial objections.
The Pope does not need to be defended. The purpose of this letter is only to point out to you that each of those objections is not only unfounded, but also ultimately harmful to the causes that you purport to defend.
First of all, you stated that Benedict XVI's address at Yad Vashem 'lacked something' because the German Pope "never once mentioned the Germans or Nazis responsible for that bloodbath, nor did he express regret in their behalf".
You, Rabbi Lau, are not Catholic, but certainly you know that the man who visited Yad Vashem did so not as a German but as the Pope of the universal Church, and it is this fact that makes his visit and his tribute so significant.
Dozens of German political and cultural representatives have visited Yad Vashem over the years and have been profuse in their 'expressions of regret' but, rightly, none of their visits has had the worldwide resonance of Benedict XVI's visit: not because the Pope is a German intellectual who is more authoritative than the other Germans that preceded him, but because the Pope is the Pope.
On the other hand, your criticism is in direct contrast with the historiographic line of Yad Vashem itself, which insists that the responsibility for the Holocaust cannot be attributed only to the Germans or the Nazis, because in fact, it is the poisoned fruit and finale of the entire history of anti-Semitism.
It is possible that you and I will not agree on some details of this history but, setting aside this possible divergence: If Benedict XVI had pointed the finger only at German national Socialism, would he have not then be accused of laying the blame on just one country and on just one phase of the sad history of anti-Semitism while ignoring other phases which were by no means just limited to Germany?
Does not the Pope's position condemning anti-Semitism as a sin which comes from the heart of man - of all men, not just the Germans -
correspond to the most profound raison d'etre of Yad Vashem?
In the second place, you said you expected and would have been happy if the Pope had offered 'apologies' for the silence of Pius XII during world War II. We will not be able to resolve here and now this historiographic controversy which has dragged on for decades.
Nonetheless, the Pope has responded to this - in his address to the participants of a congress on "The legacy of Pius XII's Magisterium and the Second Vatican Council" on November 8, 2008. [Actually, the occasion was earlier - Benedict XVI's homily on Oct. 9, 2008 at the Mass to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Pius XII's death.]
On that occasion, Benedict XVI recalled that Pius XII deployed during World War II an 'intense work of charity in defense of persecuted persons, without any distinction of religion, race, nationality or political affiliation".
He continued:
And how can we forget his Christmas Radio Message in December 1942? His voice broken by emotion, he deplored the situation of "hundreds of thousands of men and women who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline" (AAS, xxxv, 1943, p. 23), with a clear reference to the deportation and extermination of the Jews.
He often acted secretly and silently because, in the light of the practical situations of that complex period of history, he foresaw that only in this way could he avoid the worst and save the greatest possible number of Jews.
Numerous and unanimous attestations of gratitude for his interventions were addressed to him at the end of the war, as well as at the time of his death, from the highest authorities of the Jewish world such as, for example, Israel's Minister for Foreign Affairs Golda Meir, who wrote: "When fearful martyrdom came to our people, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict" and concluded with emotion: "We mourn a great Servant of peace".
- Homily at the Mass to commemorate the 50th anniversary
of the death of Pius XII, St. Peter's Basilica, Oct. 9, 2008
The quotation from Golda Meir, as you well know, is significant for an aspect that I wish to highlight.
Up to the Second Vatican Council, no important representative of the Jewish world would ever have thought of criticizing Pius XII. On the contrary, the most eminent figures of the Israeli and international Jewish community praised and thanked the Pontiff.
What changed around the time of Vatican II? We know.
In Germany, in 1962, a great propagandistic media campaign accompanied the world premiere of Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy which accused Pius XII of complicity with Hitler.
Documents that subsequently emerged from Soviet archives and the testimony of General Ion Mihai Pacepa - who was an official in the secret service of Communist Romania and was personally involved in the anti-Pius XII operation - allow us today to conclude without any doubts that Hochhuth's play was commissioned by the KGB, specifically by General Ivan Ivanovich Agayants (1911-1968), of Department D (Disinformation) of Soviet counter-intelligence.
Agayants personally collaborated in the editing of the text signed by Hochhuth who was - and is - so unfriendly to your people that he was exposed in 2005 to be a supporter and public defender of the negationist theses of the British author David Irving [the same author who inspired Bishop Williamson's negationism].
The goal of the KGB was to discredit Pius XII's anti-Communist Magisterium which was considered the epitome of anti-Soviet, pro-American positions during the Cold War.
Launched by the KGB, the anti-Pius XII movement was then picked up by Catholics or ex-Catholics (ex-seminarians like John Cornwell and Garry Wills, or ex-priests like James Carroll), who sought to attack Pius XII and embarrass the Church - not on the question of Communism -but on issues that had to do with artificial contraception, abortion and homosexuals, continuing issues today that had been anticipated by Pius XII's Magisterium.
All this is documented by a good number of historians, but I think that you may be particularly familiar with the writings of one of your colleagues, the rabbi and historian David Dalin.
Following Dalin's footsteps, I wish to invite you to reflect on a paradox: the Israeli men of culture and politics who now intervene quite militantly against Pius XII are more or less willing victims of maneuvers which ably drew them first, to the trap set by the KGB and then, into an intra-Catholic controversy in which progressivists have attacked the Popes for reasons that have nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
On the contrary, the Soviet Communists were and Catholic progressivists have often been in the front lines when it comes to attacking Israel while waving the flag for the Palestinians or Hamas.
Is it really worth your while to march with, or rather, follow the footsteps of such company?
The third criticism highlighted by the Israeli press: that the Pope, even if he did not wish to apologize for Pius XII, should have apologized for what they call 'the most terrible error of his Pontificate', namely, revoking the excommunication to four bishops of the FSSPX founded by Mons. Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991), one of whom - Mons. Richard Williamson - has expressed sympathy for negationist theses about the Holocaust.
After the Williamson case, the condemnation of negationism - of whose origins you, Rabbi Lau, are fully aware, and which are certainly not from the Catholic world - by both the Pope and the Holy See has been loud and clear, restated, in fact, at Yad Vashem by the Pope himself.
I would invite you to reflect further on the fact that, as it was for Pius XII, even this time, prominent figures of the Jewish and Israeli world risk being embroiled, even if unaware perhaps, in intra-Catholic wars completely extraneous to questions about the Holocaust.
Most informed Catholics understand well that the progressivists who turned against the Pope for revoking the FSSPX excommunications could not care less about negationism.
None of these progressivists knew - before the media bomb lit by two militantly anti-Catholic French activists [on the eve of Swedish TV's delayed telecast of a November 2008 interview with Mons. Williamson] - that Mons. Williamson had ever expressed negationist ideas.
And, note once more, that the progressivist elements who vented themselves against the Pope were often the very same ones who are on the anti-Israel side of the conflict with the Palestinians.
And what is it exactly that these elements want? They do not wish their interpretation of the Second Vatican Council on the bases of progressivist theology and mentality questioned in any way.
Together with other acts [in Benedict XVI's Pontificate], the start of a dialog with the FSSPX - which will not be easy - through the revocation of the bishops' excommunication was a sign that a dismantling of that interpretation of Vatican-II is well underway.
Such dismantiling will render the intra-Catholic dissent more difficult with respect to the Pope's Magisterium on issues like euthanasia or gay marriage.
Thus, the stakes in play are, even here, anything but opinions on the Holocaust, but rather issues - prescisely like euthanasia and gay marriage - in which your own positions are much closer to that of the Pope than to that of his detractors.
My question, therefore is - even with respect to the revoked excommunications - why you would wish to enroll yourself in a war against the Pope promoted in the name of objectives that you personally do not share with persons who, in large part, have no particular sympathy for your cause nor for your nation.
The occasion of the Pope's visit to Israel, in general, and to Yad Vashem, in particular, in order to overcome ancient misunderstandings, was historic. I ask you to contribute to not detracting from the importance of the occasion.
Please seek to discern equitably as a scholar, the voice of reason. and as a rabbi, the voice of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who still speaks to believers who are willing to listen.
The Pope said in Jerusalem:
Each one of us here also knows, however, that God’s voice is heard less clearly today, and reason itself has in so many instances become deaf to the divine.
Yet that “void” is not one of silence. Indeed, it is the din of egotistical demands, empty promises and false hopes that so often invades the very space in which God seeks us.
Can we then make spaces – oases of peace and profound reflection – where God’s voice can be heard anew, where his truth can be discovered within the universality of reason, where every individual, regardless of dwelling, or ethnic group, or political hue, or religious belief, can be respected as a person, as a fellow human being?
- Address at Inter-Religious meeting, Notre Dame Center
Jerusalem,, May 11, 2009
Help us to hope that the answer to this can be Yes.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/06/2009 23:43] |