| Written by Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum and Redemptorist Father Paul Hansen,
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 The last time Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum and Redemptorist Father Paul Hansen shared these pages they discussed the idea of Jesus as Torah . With the help of Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Toronto we’ve invited them back to discuss the controversy surrounding the possible sainthood of Pope Pius XII, who was pontiff during the Holocaust.
The Vatican moved Pius closer to possible beatification by declaring him “venerable” in December.
Roy Tanenbaum: Fr. Paul, it is good to be invited to resume our dialogue. As I write, the Pope has just finished an historic visit to the synagogue in Rome. I believe Pope Benedict XVI is torn between a real sense of historical responsibility to the Jewish people and an internal need to realign right-wing dissidents to the church.
For a church as large as the Roman Catholic Church, I can understand that internal issues may be more pressing than external ones — that the Vatican might be more concerned about placating Catholics than Jews. Yet, I worry lest a drift to the right undo the good that was accomplished by the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate.
Is the rush to canonize Pacelli before all the documents of his period are open to public inspection just a matter of pragmatic choices? Or of whom to placate?
In the Talmud (Avot 3:21), Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaria says, “Where there is no Torah, there are no ethics; and where there are no ethics, there is no Torah.” Might we paraphrase for Catholics, “Where there is no Jesus, there are no ethics; and where there are no ethics, there is no Jesus”? It is not a chicken or egg proposition. Rather, neither can endure or attain a fully developed state without the other.
Paul Hansen: I am not a church historian and have not studied closely the life of Cardinal Pacelli nor Pius XII. Having been a theology student in Germany, I note with interest some of the discussion that is going on both within our church and the Jewish community. I too paid close attention to the recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the synagogue in Rome. Upon arrival, Benedict was applauded and warmly greeted. But other Jewish leaders boycotted the event.
Many within the Catholic community also want full disclosure of the Second World War documents before the process continues.
I was studying in Germany as the Vatican Council ended in 1965. Most of the leading theologians of the council were from Western Europe and we caught their enthusiasm and hope for the future. These theologians had lived through the war. From them, I learned one could no longer think theologically without passing historically through the Holocaust.
I also learned that context is important. As a political leader of our day remarked, “A text without a context is a pretext.”
Cardinal Pacelli represented the Vatican in Bavaria before the war. He loved the German people that he met. When Hitler signed the Concordat in 1933 with the Lutheran Church in the north and Catholics in the south, Pacelli knew the context well. The fear of the time was the “Red” menace from Russia.
A priest in Germany said that if priests had stood up in their churches in the 1930s and simply said that Jesus was a Jew, things may have been different. They didn’t. As a child, I was not really conscious Jesus was a Jew. I now know Jesus was born a Jew and died a Jew.
We have to look at the context of the times. We also have to reflect on our present context. Are we injecting our context and our issues into the context of Europe over 75 years ago?
RT: I find your comment about many Catholics wanting full disclosure of the documents helpful. I am also sensitive to your idea of judging a person in the context of that person’s own times. The Bible seems to concur, emphasizing that the non-Jew Noah “was righteous in his generation” (Gen. 6:9). I know what it means to be righteous — and everyone lives in one’s own generation. So what does it mean to be “righteous in his generation”?
Here’s an example of what the Bible might mean: Oskar Schindler, a war profiteer, womanizer and Nazi Party member, rose above his own baser instincts to meet the issues of his day, putting himself at risk and directly saving some 1,100 Jews. When you stop to think about it, this is a great religious message of renewal.
Recognizing obvious distinctions between the two men, would it not be important to be able to know that a man who is up for canonization, a man with much more power than a Schindler, could at minimum meet the issues of his day at least as well as this womanizer did?
Pope Benedict XVI has extended himself to meet with Jews more than any other pope. So, that this Pope seems to be on the side of those who would undo Vatican II is even more troubling.
Since Benedict became Pope, several right-wing shifts impinge on us Jews. What Catholics pray is ordinarily not a Jewish concern, but the reinstitution of the Tridentine-rite Good Friday liturgy praying for missionizing the Jews is of great concern. And the deliberately crafted revisions, which are still not in harmony with the vernacular rites, remain perilously close to the concept of contempt Nostra Aetate was designed to eliminate.
Then in January 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the 20-year-old excommunication of four bishops of a small ultra-traditionalist group that broke from the Catholic Church over the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. One of those bishops, Richard Williamson, was a Holocaust denier. Now the issue of the beatification of Pius XII arises.
On the surface, it seems like a pattern of backtracking from Nostra Aetate. That is why I would prefer to understand it as due to a need to placate certain right-wing Catholics within the church.
The Vatican is sophisticated and must know that even an expedient haste to canonize Pius XII before opening the documents to full public scrutiny is bound to strain Catholic-Jewish relations.
PH: I visited Schindler’s grave in Israel and heard his story from people who knew it well. However, your comment about Pope Benedict XVI siding with those who want to undo the Council is a much more serious concern.
Possible canonization of Pius XII is a story within this much larger story. The working document prepared by Vatican bureaucrats before the Council Fathers met in 1962 was thrown out by the first session of the Council. But now we see its content brought back into the life of the church. Many of the theologians who were present at the Council have been marginalized, dismissed or sanctioned. There is a tendency to view the Scriptures as a source of prayer and not a source for scholarship and prayer.
When he was Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI found elements of the Council difficult. Fr. Ratzinger did his doctoral work on St. Augustine and post-doctoral research on Bonaventure. This is his line of thought: Plato — Augustine — Bonaventure — Hans Urs Von Balthasar. It is an essentialist position that is primarily concerned with eternal truths that exists outside of history.
Many of the Fathers of the Council come from a different philosophical camp. They were steeped in the Aristotle: Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and the transcendental thomists such as Karl Rahner. This position has much more to do with history, human experience, consciousness and an existential view of life.
There is to this day tension between these two lines of thought. But the essentialists who want to remove the church and theology from history hold the day in Rome. There is often tension between those bishops and priests of the Vatican Council era and inspiration and those formed under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
The possible canonization of Pius XII fits into this much larger conversation that is presently going on within the Roman Church.
RT: That idea that Vatican II and Nostra Aetate were a “mistake of history” comes as a blow to all who have been working together over these past 40 years. We share the pain.
I am a traditionalist Jew, so I sympathize with the goals of traditionalist Catholics. Yet I would ask, “Is God the only one who functions in history?” Maybe that can be a topic for another discussion.
On the subject of Pius XII, the lack of transparency in not opening the wartime documents makes it look like the church has something to hide. Under such circumstances, even if he is canonized, his “sainthood” will be tainted. This has to be of concern to Catholic and Jew.
When Jews look at the Holocaust, we are forced to face the question, “Where was God?” But when Catholics look at the Holocaust, it seems serious Catholics have to face the question, “Where was the church?” As a theological (and not historical) question, “Where was the church?” is a much harder question than “Where was God?” It is the key theological issue underlying the question of canonizing Pius XII.
PH: Yes, maybe the question for the Christian community should be: “Where was the church?” Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Lutheran community and the White Rose movement in the Catholic community in Bavaria asked this question with their lives. Where was the church?
Today we need to ask anew: Where is God and where is the church in the struggles of our time?
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