Breaking the Silence
by James Carroll
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 61
Winter 1998

Introduction

John Paul II has forged a new relationship between Catholics and Jews. He also upholds papal infallibility. So what does this say about the role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust?
In the aftermath of the Vatican's statement from the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, "We remember: a Reflection on the Shoah", we publish a review of the Church's troubled, ambivalent history and a response by a Jewish theologian and Rabbi.

James Carroll
James Carroll, is novellist and former Roman Catholic priest. He won the US National Book Award for Non-Fiction for his novel, An American Requiem (Houghton Mifflin). This article has been adapted with the author's help and permission.

DURING THE SECOND WORLD War, young Karol Wojtyla risked his life to study for the priesthood in Kraków, a city terrorized by the Nazis. His reward, after his ordination, was to go to Rome for graduate work in theology; and it was in Rome that I began a journey that would take me back along the path of the man who, as Pope John Paul II, holds an unparalleled position of moral leadership in the world. John Paul II is now 78 and in poor health. Although his role in the demise of the Soviet Empire has been emphasised of late, the end of his story will take its truest meaning from its beginning, in the time of the war with Hitler's Germany.

I was in Rome to attend the Papal Mass celebrating the 50th anniversary of Wojtyla's ordination to the priesthood, so thoughts of him as a young man came naturally. From 1946 until 1948, he attended the Dominican theological school, the Angelicum, only three blocks from the Palazzo di Vanessa, where I stood one chilly November evening. Also nearby was another, more liberal theological center, the Gregorian Institute, which is run by Jesuits, known for their spirit of independence. I was curious to know what one of its theologians-a long-time Vatican observer, a theologian from Melbourne named Gerald O'Collins-thought of His Holiness at this milestone.

I knew of Father O'Collins because, years before, he'd done a stint at the Jesuit theological school near Harvard while I, a Catholic priest at the time, was chaplain at Boston University, across the river. When I telephoned him in Rome, he agreed to meet me. "I'll be the one wearing the red scarf", he said, proposing a rendezvous under the balcony of the Palazzo di Venezia, made famous by Mussolini. Even though the mammoth crenellated building and its vast square to which Fascists thronged are identified with Il Duce, the palace once served as the dwelling of Popes. But then so did many places in Rome.

Father O'Collins arrived, in his red scarf an epiphany of friendly exuberance. He led me to a small neighbourhood restaurant, L'Abruzzi, and its diminutive owner greeted the large Irish-Australian like a brother. We settled in for an elaborate multi-course dinner. The third time I called him "Father," the priest slapped my shoulder. "Gerry! Call me Gerry!" I liked him at once.

Then the conversation turned to His Holiness, Gerry slapped the table, a show of pure enthusiasm that, frankly, surprised me. "The things this Pope has done! The first Bishop of Rome ever to enter the Jewish synagogue! That was an astonishing thing here." The Pope's visit occurred in 1986, launching a new chapter in the relationship between Catholics and Jews. No doubt driven in some way by his own experience as a young man living near Auschwitz, he has regularly denounced anti-Semitism and lamented the Holocaust. In 1993, he established diplomatic relations with the State of Israel and in 1994 he sponsored at the Vatican the remarkable Gilbert Levine concert commemorating the Shoah.

"And then," O'Collins continued, "on one of his early trips to Africa-his speaking to twenty or thirty thousand young Muslims! What Pope has ever done such a thing?" What Pope has given thousands of speeches all over the globe, written world-wide best-sellers, sparked democratic uprisings, challenged the Mafia, dominated the media as a pop icon, redefined the political uses of moral authority-or survived a bullet? "And after the assassination attempt-the way he came back! What integrity and courage! I give him a lot of credit . . . The guy should have been killed and then, the next thing, he's coming down the street at high noon".

O'Collins was measuring the era of John Paul II by the standard of something larger than the liberal-conservative argument within the Church. Since Wojtyla stepped into the Shoes of the Fisherman, in 1978, his papacy has marked "the coming of the world Church", as O'Collins put it. "We have a hundred and thirty nations represented here at the Gregorian", he went on. "In Africa, there are something like ninety million Catholics, from being about two million at the beginning of the century. And think-"he leaned across the pasta, gesturing with his tumbler of wine"-think of the astonishing survival of the Church in Central and Eastern Europe! Just yesterday-the story of the Albanian Jesuit."

The anniversary mass

O'Collins was the first of my Roman hosts to refer to this, but several others would do so as well. An emotional encounter had occurred the day before between Father Anton Luli, an 86-year-old Jesuit priest, and the Pontiff, and reports of it were passed along as an instance of why so many found His Holiness irresistible. As his anniversary had approached, John Paul had invited any Catholic priest in the world who was also marking 50 years since ordination to come to Rome to celebrate with him.

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