The pope the jews and Hitler Essay Example For Students

The pope the jews and Hitler Essay OVER THE past four decades, the attitude of the Catholic Church toward Judaism and the Jews has undergone a sea change. On the theological level, the decisive event was the Second Vatican Council, which in 1965 finally lifted the collective charge of deicide against the Jewish people, reversing the longstanding Augustinian view that the Jews would eternally bear the mark of Cain. But of no less importance has been the current Popes personal commitment to reconciliation. Since his election in 1978, John Paul II has repeatedly broken new ground in relations with the Jewish community, becoming the first bishop of Rome to visit a synagogue in the Eternal City, establishing diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the state of Israel, and emphatically denouncing anti-Semitism. We will write a custom essay on The pope the jews and Hitler specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now Indeed, no other Pope has had so direct an experience of Jewish life and suffering. As a youth growing up in the small Polish town of Wadowice, Karol Wojtyla (as John Paul II was then named) counted Jews among his closest friends and came to know the rhythms of Jewish observance and family life. He would later witness firsthand the Nazi murder of Polands Jews. Speaking of his hometown in 1994, John Paul II remarked that it was from there that I have this attitude of community, of communal feelings about the Jews. These recollections inform his repeated reminder to Catholics that Europes Jews were exterminated only for the reason that they were Jewsa bitter and sorrowful truth that seems to have become part of his most intimate credo. Against this record of institutional progress and personal sympathy, however, must be set the Churchs less than felicitous handling of a range of issues related to the Holocaust. The death camp at Auschwitz has been a particular source of contentiousness, first with the establishment there of a Carmelite convent in the 1980s and more recently with the proliferation on its grounds of memorial crosses erected by militant local Catholics. Both episodes have been seen as efforts to reorder historical truthcomparatively few Catholics were killed at the campand, perhaps worse, to appropriate the millions of Jewish dead into the sacred drama of Christian martyrdom. Similarly controversial was John Paul IIs canonization of Father Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish Catholic priest who had opposed the Nazis but was also the founder of a viciously anti-Semitic newspaper in prewar Poland. Nor were matters helped by the Popes canonization last October of Edith Stein, a German Jewish intellectual who con verted to Catholicism and became a nun but was nonetheless consigned by the Nazis as a Jew to Auschwitz, where she perished in the gas chamber. If these incidents seemed to reveal a lack of sensitivity to Jewish feelings, let alone to the separate integrity of Jewish history, no less disappointing has been the Churchs effort to come to terms with its own actions during the Holocaust. The Vaticans first authoritative statement on this subject, a fourteen-page document that had been over a decade in the making, was issued a little over a year ago under the title We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah. Clearly to the dismay of Church authorities, however, it was greeted with only lukewarm appreciation by Jewish organizations, which, while hailing the Churchs genuine desire for self-examination and repentance, faulted its unwillingness to confront unpleasant truths. Although this episode has attracted its share of attention in the general press, We Remember itself has so far received relatively little in the way of sustained analysis. But both the document and the response to itas well as the ongoing response to the responseoffer a good barometer of the Churchs evolving relationship with the Jewish people. MAKING ITS sympathies clear from the start, We Remember refers to the murder of European Jewry as the Shoahthe Hebrew word meaning catastrophe. The event, declares the Vatican statement, was an unspeakable tragedy, one that can never be forgotten. Moreover, the document continues, although the obligation to recall and understand the Shoah falls upon everyone, it is felt with particular urgency by the Church, not only because of its very close bonds of spiritual kinship with the Jewish people but also because of its remembrance of the injustices of the past.With respect to those injustices, We Remember is forthright. The Shoah took place, it acknowledges, in countries of longstanding Christian civilization, countries where anti-Jewish sentiment and practices were common. Over the centuries, the Jews of Europe had faced generalized discrimination, expulsions, forced conversions, and scape-goating that at times resulted in violence, looting, even massacres. Nor was this hostility someho w accidental to Christianity. Behind much of it, the Vatican statement observes, were erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament concerning the alleged culpability of the Jews for the death of Jesus. .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde , .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde .postImageUrl , .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde , .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde:hover , .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde:visited , .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde:active { border:0!important; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde:active , .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u4cf6d69881efa2871217194b77bc6dde:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Seeing And Knowing The Visual Arts EssayBut then, during the 19th century, things changed. The anti-Jewish animus, formerly based in religion, mutated, according to the Vatican statement, into a set of prejudices whose origins were sociological or political, springing from a false and exacerbated nationalism and from anxiety about Jewish influence. Emerging at roughly the same time, and of particular importance for later developments, were certain pseudoscientific ideas about superior and inferior peoples, ideas that denied the unity of the human race.What Nazism added to this virulent mix, We Remember continues, was a totalitarian ideology that assigned an absolute status to the German state and people. Refusing to acknowledge any transcendent reality as the criterion of moral good, the Nazis saw fit not only to attempt to destroy the Jewswitnesses to the one God and the Law of the Covenantbut also to reject Christianity and the Church. The Shoah, in short, was the work of a thoroughly modern neopagan regime whose racist anti-Semitism must be sharply distinguished from the anti-Judaism of which, unfortunately, Christians also have been guilty.Indeed, in order to emphasize the saliency during the Shoah itself of the Churchs constant teaching concerning the equal dignity of all races and peoples, We Remember cites several Church leaders for their acts of resistance and rescue. Three German churchmen are singled out for their opposition to National Socialism, as are Pius XI and Pius XII, the two Popes who held office during the Nazi era. Pius XII in particular is praised for what he did personally or through his representatives to save hundreds of thou sands of Jewish lives.At the same time, We Remember also concedes that many members of the Church in Nazi-occupied Europe did not do everything in their power to help the persecuted Jews. The spiritual resistance and concrete action of other Christians, it laments, was not that which might have been expected from Christs followers. Appalled though these ordinary Catholics may have been by the assault on their Jewish neighbors, they were not strong enough to raise their voices in protest. For the errors and failures of its sons and daughters, the Church proclaims its deep regret, describing its present statement, in another echo of Hebrew sources, as an act of teshuvahrepentance. Finally, looking to the future of Jewish-Christian relations, We Remember concludes by urging Catholics to attend both to the Hebrew roots of their faith and to the salutary warning of the Shoah: that the spoiled seeds of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism must never again be allowed to take root in any human heart.WHATEVER ONES final judgment of this mea culpa, one cannot but commend both its tone and its basic aims. Throughout, the long history of Christian persecution of the Jews is discussed with candor and in a spirit of contrition. As for the Shoah itself, it is evoked in terms that leave no doubt as to the Churchs recognition of its horror, as well as its repudiation of any effort to deny or trivialize the event. (In the United States, Patrick J. Buchanan may be the best-known Catholic guilty of this relativizing tendency.) Nor is there any mistaking the sincerity of John Paul II when in a letter accompanying We Remember he declares his hope that the statement will help to avert a ny future recurrence of the unspeakable iniquity of the Shoah.But there is a good deal more to be said about the moral and historical worth of We Rememberand much of it, unfortunately, is not especially flattering to the Churchs declared aspirations. To begin at the most general level, it is impossible to accept the Vaticans effort to distinguish as sharply as this document does between Christian anti-Judaism and modern anti-Semitism. While it is tree that the factors cited in We Rememberfrom nationalism to race science to inflated ideas of Jewish influencedid play an important role in the emergence of anti-Semitic ideologies in the 19th century, these ideologies presupposed a cultural framework that had been fashioned by centuries of medieval Christian theology, ecclesiastical policy, and popular religious myth. .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 , .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 .postImageUrl , .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 , .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4:hover , .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4:visited , .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4:active { border:0!important; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4:active , .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4 .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .ub0dbd8b571d1f1af92feef7a445ee5e4:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Symbolism in A Streetcar Named Desire Blanches EssayA partial list of the relevant precedentsnone of which makes an appearance in We Rememberwould include the demonization of the Jews by the early Church fathers; the vast library of medieval polemical literature known as against the Jews (adversus judaeos); and the endlessly promulgated images of the Jew as Satan, anti-Christ, Judas, or Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew condemned to eternal exile for his deadly sins. A number of the Holy Sees legislative actions against the Jews have also echoed fatefully down the ages. One thinks in particular of the order issued by Pope Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) requi ring Jews to wear distinctive garb and yellow badges, and of the decision by a succession of 16th-century Popes to confine the Jews of Rome and the papal states to ghettos. There is, of course, some validity to We Remembers claim that Nazism, by virtue of its neopaganism, stood outside the Christian tradition. Hitler was contemptuous of the effeminate pity-ethics of Judeo-Christianity, which he saw as completely antithetical to the Nazi movements heroic belief in God in nature, God in our people, in our destiny, in our blood. Surveying the Third Reich, one easily finds evidence of this primitivistic cult of vitality and struggle: in Nazi art and architecture, in the ideology of the Hitler Youth, in the determination of Heinrich Himmler to cultivate a perfect warrior-race of blonde, blue-eyed Germanic heroes, and in the work of volkisch sectarians like Alfred Rosenberg, who dreamed of a new Germanic religion. Pagans though they may have been, however, the Nazis did not hesitate to draw upon Christian rhetoric and symbolism to bolster their new political religionand nowhere more so than in their war against the Jews. Christian motifs abound in a typical anti-Semitic rag like Julius Streichers Der Sturmer. One finds there the crucifixion (Golgotha has not yet been revenged), the image of the eternally cursed people, the usurious Jew squeezing the poor peasant dry, the Jew as the devil in human disguise and as the ritual murderer of Christian children. Nazism radicalized these popular stereotypes drawn from the Christian Middle Ages, but it did not invent them.(*)The Vatican document is by no means mistaken to argue that the ideology of the Third Reich was profoundly anti-Christian; nor is it wrong to draw a distinction between Christian and Nazi anti-Semitism. But the differeBibliography: