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player ready...This week Jewish-Catholic relations are a spectator event.
The pope of the Roman Catholic Church, a legend in a white cassock, slowly makes his way toward the ancient Western Wall, across the plaza at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, into the offices of the chief rabbinate for the first time in history.
Pope John Paul II makes a speech. Israeli Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau gives a speech. They shake hands and pose together for cameras.
For the moment, both sides are happy to focus on those images. In the Middle East, even small gestures reverberate through the generations. These vivid symbols of how far Jews and the Catholic Church have come in 35 years will have lasting value in the memories of millions.
For now, at least, Catholic-Jewish relations are in the hands of a few aging men, all of them well acquainted with one another. But there is a lingering uneasiness among leaders of both faiths about what comes next.
In a few days, the pope will be gone; the next step belongs to the rest of the world, the pundits and activists, the people in the pews and those with only residual ties to their faith.
They will react to what is said and what is not said. They will decide just how full the glass of goodwill is.
Despite high expectations, John Paul II will not stand up this week and deliver a detailed new analysis of the church’s role in the Holocaust, or spill out some new point-by-point confession. Most notably, he will not expand on what the Vatican has already said about the actions of Pope Pius XII during World War II.
That is bound to disappoint some people, if recent history is a guide. The 1998 Vatican document “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah” dealt explicitly with both the role of Christians in the Holocaust, and the role of Pope Pius XII, but Jewish leaders who thought the church was equivocating vented their frustration almost immediately.
On March 12 in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the pope made a heartfelt confession about the sins of Christians and church leaders, but the very sweeping quality that made that prayer unprecedented disappointed Jewish activists who hoped for more specifics–in many cases, a criticism deferred, in the belief that the pope would go further this week in Jerusalem.
After this week, there can be no more deferring. Whatever is said is likely to represent the official stance of both sides for some time to come. There are no new documents in the wings, no upcoming events that promise new revelations.
Jewish and Catholic leaders alike recognize that.
Last week, Chief Rabbi Lau was asked whether he would be disappointed if, during this visit, John Paul II failed to discuss the role of Pope Pius XII in World War II. Lau just smiled, saying, “Why don’t we just be optimistic today?”
Cardinal William Keeler, archbishop of Baltimore and the leading American churchman in Jewish-Catholic relations, went a step further.
In a briefing with religion writers, just hours before the pope arrived in Amman, Jordan, Keeler warned that there could also be a backlash among Catholics if the response to the pope’s visit is negative.
“I have a concern that Catholics who have seen attacks on the Catholic Church in the past, particularly attacks on the pope (Pius XII)–that there’s a danger of provoking anti-Semitism if there are more attacks on the pope,” Keeler said. “Any broad, sweeping attack could cause a backlash.”
Keeler later said that he was not talking about violence, or even external displays of anti-Semitism. And he emphasized that it was not the right response for Catholics.
But he said he has already heard quiet mutterings from some in his own diocese. Catholic identity, he said, has been connected to the papacy throughout history, and attacks on Pius XII or criticism of John Paul II recall for some Americans the anti-Catholic bigotry of past generations.
That is one direction Jewish-Catholic relations could take in months and years to come. But it is certainly not the only one. The lead will come not from the institutional leaders, but from Jews and Catholics themselves.
When Lau first met Pope John Paul II in 1993, he asked the pontiff if it was really true that as a young priest in 1945, then-Rev. Karol Wojtyla had refused to baptize a Jewish orphan brought to him by Catholic guardians.
It wasn’t just one orphan, the pope replied. He refused to baptize any Jewish babies and young children being raised by Catholics, encouraging the foster families to respect the historic faith of the children.
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Fifty years later, it is that unusual history that gives the pope real credibility in Lau’s eyes.
The question is, who at the grass roots of Catholicism or Judaism is building that kind of bond today, and will it take another 50 years before the rest of the world sees its fruits?
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