April 01, 2005JP IIThe Jews' relationship with the Popes have, for excellent historical reasons, varied from the ambivalent to the tempestuous. While the medieval Popes frequently did what they could to protect the local Jews from rampaging mobs, the uncomfortable facts remain that 1) Church teachings were the inspiration for those mobs, and 2) the Pope headed that church. As recently as the 19th Century, Pope Leo XIII was castigating the secular society that held out our greatest hope for full acceptance in the West. And during WWII, Pius XII was hedging the moral authority of his office. (I don't think he was complicit; I do think he encouraged local actions to save Jews; I do think that he failed to publicly condemn the greatest crime in history, a crime in which many Catholics participated or acquiesced.) This Pope changed a lot of that. From his visit to the Rome Synagogue, to his visit to Israel, to his frequent denunciations of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in general, to his building on John XXIII's Nostra Aetate (40 years old last week), to his long-overdue recognition of the State of Israel. Jews will miss this Pope. Let's just hope that his changes are institutional, and outlive his papacy, so that we don't miss him more than we think. Posted by joshuasharf at April 1, 2005 12:05 PM | TrackBack |
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