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Will Successor Tread Pope’s Jewish Path?

Much of John Paul\'s teachings about the Jews have been promulgated as church doctrine, and thus, technically are official church policy. But even before John Paul II died, there were indications that his policies had not been accepted unanimously among church leaders -- or that they had trickled down to the world\'s 1.1 billion Catholics.
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April 14, 2005

 

As the College of Cardinals prepared to begin secret deliberations next week to choose a successor, the question remained to what extent John Paul’s exceptionally proactive policy regarding Jews would endure.

“It seems unlikely that the next pope will have the same interest in the church’s relations with the Jews, and the same sense of responsibility in combating Christian anti-Semitism,” said professor David Kertzer of Brown University, an expert on papal relations with the Jews. “John Paul II had an extraordinary biography for a high church official in his early relations with Jews, and of course, lived through an extraordinary moment in history,” he told JTA from Rome.

Born Karol Wojtyla in the small Polish town of Wadowice, John Paul II, who died April 2 at 84, had Jewish friends and neighbors. During his life, he was an eyewitness to both the Holocaust and totalitarian communism. As a bishop, he took part in the Second Vatican Council, which modernized aspects of church practice and doctrine. In 1965, the council issued the Nostra Aetate declaration that condemned anti-Semitism and called for “mutual understanding and respect” between Catholics and Jews.

Elected pope in October 1978, John Paul IImade bettering Jewish-Catholic relations a cornerstone of his papacy. He repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism, commemorated the Holocaust and met with Jewish leaders and laymen. He also oversaw the establishment of diplomatic relations with the State of Israel.

Against this background, observers considered John Paul II’s decision to mention Toaff in his will to be highly significant, seeing it as an indication to his successor not to turn back from his path. Toaff and John Paul II’s longtime secretary were the only living people mentioned in the will.

“It is a significant and profound gesture for Jews,” the retired Toaff told the Rome daily La Repubblica. “But I think it is also an indication to the Catholic world.”

John Paul, he said, “wanted to indicate a road aimed at further destroying all the obstacles that have divided Jews and Christians through the centuries.”

He said he hoped the next pope would uphold John Paul II’s legacy and “do even better.” However, he added, “it is unlikely that there will be someone else like him. Even if we are optimistic, I see many difficulties in finding a successor of his stature.”

Much of John Paul’s teachings about the Jews have been promulgated as church doctrine, and thus, technically are official church policy. But even before John Paul II died, there were indications that his policies had not been accepted unanimously among church leaders — or that they had trickled down to the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics.

“The most important challenge for Catholic-Jewish relations is to take the historic changes in church teaching concerning Jews, Judaism and Israel from the Olympic heights down to the grass roots,” Rabbi David Rosen, director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, told JTA some time before John Paul II died.

“In many parts of the world there are even bishops who are ignorant of the teachings on this subject, let alone the rank and file,” Rosen said. “Ignorance of this and the concomitant residual anti-Jewish attitudes still prevail in many parts of the Catholic world, and there is still an enormous job to do in this regard.”

Not only that, he said, but “the younger generation of bishops who have not been through the period of the Shoah and were not part of the official transformation of Vatican II do not necessarily appreciate the historical, as well as theological imperatives, involved.”

Brown University’s Kertzer said he already had noted “backsliding in the last few years, when the pope had become infirm and no longer really in control. There has clearly been an important reactionary movement within the church that resents much of the legacy of the Second Vatican Council, and with it the sense that the church has a historic problem with anti-Semitism.”

At a January conference in Washington, for example, Cardinal Avery Dulles, a major Catholic theologian, affirmed the traditional belief that Christians will want “all men and women, Jewish and gentile” to “benefit from Christ’s teaching” and convert to Christianity.

Kertzer also said, “Even John Paul II was unwilling to criticize any of his papal predecessors, nor directly rebuke past versions of canon law. He was thus unwilling to fully come to terms with the church’s institutional responsibility for anti-Semitism in the past. There is little likelihood at the moment that this history will be seriously revisited by John Paul II’s successor.”

Nonetheless, Jewish leaders hope his legacy will prevail.

Rabbi Arthur Schneier of Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue, who attended the pope’s funeral, said the unprecedented gathering of world leaders, religious representatives and faithful “really showed the capacity and the potential of a righteous person to be a magnet for pulling the world together.”

Whoever was present at the funeral, he said, “would just have to, in his memory, embrace a legacy of coexistence, a legacy of reconciliation.”

Observers noted that in addition to mentioning Toaff in his will, John Paul IIalso highlighted the Second Vatican Council in his testament. He called it a “great gift” to which the entire church and clergy was indebted, and a “great patrimony” he wished to entrust to future generations of Catholics.

“I hope that there is neither a slowing nor an inversion of the road that was opened by the Second Vatican Council and consolidated by John Paul II in the course of his pontificate,” said Tullia Zevi, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. “It was a pontificate characterized by a dialogue relationship with the Jewish world that was very satisfactory, and I hope that in the future, this relationship could extend also to the other great monotheistic religions, Islam, and to the secular world.”

JTA Staff Writer Rachel Pomerance contributed to this story.

 

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