A Future with Memory
by John Levi
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 61
Winter 1998

Part 2

On 14 May 1948, the day on which modern Israel proclaimed its independence, the Vatican, operating in pre-Shoah mode, wrote in an editorial in the Osservatore Romano: "Modern Zionism is not the true heir of biblical Israel but Israel is a secular state . . . therefore the Holy Land and its sacred sites belong to Christianity, the True Israel". After all, how could a people who had been cursed by God return to its land? It took the Holy See a painful half century before an ambassador was appointed to the State of Israel and, even today, that diplomat lives in a convent in the coastal city of Jaffa while the Papal Nuncio's residence on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem stands empty.
Sadly, in its sweep of history, this new document prefers not to mention the death and suffering caused by the Church during the Crusades and the Inquisition. It declares that the Nazi movement was the result of "neo-paganism" and was not the result of the religious teaching of contempt. The document asks, "Did Christians give every possible assistance to those being persecuted, and in particular to the persecuted Jews?" And it answers "Many did but others did not."

Most historians of the Second World War would argue that the totalitarian nightmare of Central Europe yielded very few courageous souls. Indeed, the document goes on to say, "We cannot know how many Christians in countries occupied or ruled by Nazi powers or their allies were horrified at the disappearance of their Jewish neighbours and yet were not strong enough to raise their voices in protest." Many leaders of the Church failed this test. Sadly, the declarations of Pius XII during the period of the Holocaust were feeble and frequently muffled by his horror of Bolshevism. Not once did the Pope mention the word "Jew" in all his speeches during World War Two. Not once did he confront the fact that some members of his own hierachy were active participants in the Holocaust.

Most painful of all is the fact that the Vatican and the International Red Cross were the two "neutral" European organisations that knew exactly what was going on at Auschwitz, Maidanek and Treblinka, and chose, for different reasons, to keep the information to themselves. And sadly, following the War, the Church would use those same international connections to facilitate the 'rat lines' which enabled Nazi war criminals to escape to South America.

Pope John Paul II literally grew up in the valley of the shadow of death. His home town was Wadowice which is close to Auschwitz and the former home of tens of thousands of Jews. He saw his neighbours disappear and the experience shaped his understanding of life. He has frequently spoken of Judaism as "the older brother" of the Church. Pope John XXIII challenged the Church with his famous statement, "Can we Christians worship the God of love, without loving Jesus's kinsmen?" With "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah" the Church begins a significant new chapter. Jews must try to understand that, despite an appalling past, this is a painfully negotiated declaration of friendship and understanding.

To: Perspectives Issue 61

Veronica Brady Veronica Brady is a Loreto nun and author of the recent South of My Days: a biography of Judith Wright. This is an edited version of her address, "Australian Spirituality: the role of values and faith in the body politic", given at Zadok's 1998 Biennial Conference.