Reflections on the Vatican's 'Reflection on the Shoah.' - Roman Catholic document 'We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah'

Cross Currents, Winter, 1998 by A. James Rudin

The forthright statements of the German and Austrian bishops have a much more historically balanced view of the official Catholic responses to Nazi anti-Semitism than does the Vatican document. In addition, there seems to be a tension between the bishops' statements and We Remember regarding the behavior of the church as a church and its individual members.

Father McBrien cites the Second Vatican Council's "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church" (Article Eight): "The Church, however, clasping sinners to its bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and renewal." For McBrien, "there is no theological or doctrinal impediment to attributing sin to the Church as such in this whole terrible matter of the Shoah and of the Church's complicity in it."

McBrien is challenging one of the central themes of We Remember: the clear distinction between the church and the behavior of its members. In May 1998, Cardinal Cassidy delivered an important address on the Vatican document in Washington, D.C., at the Annual Meeting of the American Jewish Committee. In that address the cardinal said: "This distinction- the church and the members of the churchruns throughout the Vatican document and is not readily understood by those who are not members of the Catholic Church. Let me state firstly that when we make this distinction, the term 'members of the church' does not refer to a particular category of church members, but can include according to the circumstances popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, and the laity."

During the same address, Cardinal Cassidy declared: "For Catholics the church is not just the members that belong to it. It is looked upon as the bride of Christ, the heavenly Jerusalem, holy and sinless." This distinction between the "sinless" church and "members of the church" who may act in sinful ways, and even commit genocide, is, of course, an internal Catholic matter. But this distinction is confusing, especially when the German and Austrian bishops speak of a "sinful Church and in need of conversion," or when the Second Vatican Council speaks of the church as "always in need of conversion and penance."

The section dealing with Nazi anti-Semitism, the Shoah, and the Catholic Church at the heart of We Remember is the most problematic and troubling. It makes a sharp distinction between "anti-Judaism" and "anti-Semitism." Admitting that "Christians have been guilty of anti-Judaism" for centuries, it carefully removes the church from the anti-Semitism that resulted in the Shoah. In its September 1998 response to We Remember, the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations declared that the suggested dichotomy between "anti-Judaism" and "anti-Semitism" is misleading. One shades into the other.

In the document's most surprising, even astonishing statement, it states that "the Shoah was the work of a thoroughly modern neopagan regime. Its anti-Semitism had its roots outside of Christianity and, in pursuing its aims, it did not hesitate to oppose the Church and persecute her members also." This statement flies in the face of nearly twenty centuries of anti-Jewish teaching and preaching by many church leaders. Ironically, ancient paganism was far more tolerant of Jews and Judaism that was the Christian Church.