What the Pope Really Said

ABRAHAM H. FOXMAN

Just hours after Pope Benedict XVI exited Rome’s main synagogue from his historic Jan. 17 visit, news headlines around the world focused on what he apparently said about controversial World War II era Pope Pius Xll’s efforts to save Jews during the Shoah. But, the media got it wrong, while missing the bigger story. In fact, during his two-hour visit, the pope never mentioned Pope Pius XII by name, and made only a brief reference to how the Vatican had assisted Jews, during the Shoah, “often in a hidden and discreet way.”But, what has not been widely reported is the important theological progress Pope Benedict XVI made in his speech, which will hopefully permanently deepen the understanding, respect and dialogue between Jews and Catholics. Theology doesn’t usually capture news headlines, but it is nonetheless profoundly important. As columnist Ross Douthat has written, “Theology has consequences. It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them.”

With this in mind, I think it is crucial for us to reflect on what Pope Benedict XVI said at the Rome synagogue. The pope referred several times to Jews as the “people of the Covenant” or “the people of the Covenant of Moses.” In essence, and of great importance, is that Benedict continued the historic theological affirmation of his predecessor Pope John Paul II, who recognized Judaism as a living dynamic religion with its own continuing sacred purpose to do God’s will, as Jews, to help repair the world. This marked a profound positive transformation in the often tragic 2,000 year history of Jewish-Christian relations.

Prior to the 1965 Second Vatican Council, Christian tradition had assumed that God’s covenant with the Jewish people had been completely fulfilled, superseded, or rendered obsolete by the birth of the Church Pope Benedict’s positive perspective on Judaism’s covenantal relationship with God clearly rejects such views. The pope announced that Catholics should promote “a renewed respect for the Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament.” This is a critical development in light of attempts by some Christians to deny the valid Jewish interpretation of Jewish Scripture, or Torah.

Pope Benedict XVI went even further by becoming the first pope to publicly quote from the sacred rabbinical work, The Ethics of the Fathers. By quoting the famous line of Simon the Just, that “the world is founded on three things: the Torah, worship and acts of mercy,” Pope Benedict made it clear that the teachings of the ancient rabbis, upon which today’s Judaism is built, are also meaningful for Christians. Taken together, Pope Benedict’s statements make it unmistakable that super-secessionism — the notion that Christianity had replaced an obsolete Judaism has no place in the Roman Catholic Church. This is all for the good.

Yet, a gray cloud continues to hover over the Jewish-Catholic relationship. Critical unresolved issues concerning the Holocaust continue to reverberate 70 years later. We remain troubled by Pope Benedict’s recent decision to put Pope Pius XII back on the path to sainthood without first opening the relevant Vatican secret archives from 1939-46. Opening the archives to qualified, independent historians and scholars to study the documents and determine what Pope Pius XII did and did not do to help Jews would bare the facts. We believe there can be no conclusions reached about Pope Pius XII by any side until the relevant Vatican archives are opened. For example, in 2007 I called for Yad Vashem to take down a museum photo caption that criticized the pope’s apparent silence because it was premature and judgmental.

Who the church makes a saint is the church’s business. But, when Pope Pius XII apologists increasingly claim that his rescue of untold numbers of Jews is part of his sainthood, then it becomes the business of the Jewish people and we have a duty to seek the historical truth and protect the memory of Holocaust victims and survivors. There will no doubt be new issues and topics for the Vatican and the Jewish people to discuss and resolve. With the positive words of Pope Benedict XVI at the Rome synagogue, we hope to be able to begin a new phase in this historic Catholic-Jewish dialogue in a new atmosphere of trust and mutual respect.

Abraham H. Foxman is national director of the Anti-Defamation League
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