Editorials

...Kolbe's negative references to Jews almost always came in tandem with - indeed seemed to be derived from - his warnings about Freemasonry...

...Russian xenophobia discourages close scrutiny by outsiders, and Western estimates of Soviet reality often turn out to be based on completely mistaken assumptions...

...for his anti-Semitic activities...

...TRUTH & SAINTHOOD Has the Catholic church just canonized a "rabid anti-Semite...

...Did they conduct "endless tirades against the Jewish community," as the Wiener Tagebuch wrote...

...Even the latter, of course, he hoped to convert through prayer and example - but he also wanted to counteract what he imagined to be their mysterious, nefarious influence...

...What was the character of the publications he founded and over which he exercised some degree of control, even when his editorship became nominal...

...it jeopardizes civil accreditation and public support of Catholic universities and colleges...

...But in any case a lengthy analysis of the Soviet economy recently done for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress by the Central Intelligence Agency challenges the assumption that the economy of the USSR is in such precarious condition...

...Whatever its appeal as platform rhetoric, there is no point in basing foreign policy on wishful thinking...

...Did they maintain, as the New York Review of Books writer states (echoing the Jewish Chronicle almost word for word), "a relentless anti-Semitic campaign'' ? Did Father Kolbe allow others to do what he personally did not do...

...The greatest problem inside the USSR is housing, with ' 'per capita living space in urban areas in 1980 still remaining below the minimum norm for health and decency set by the government in 1928...

...of 3 96 other writings, only 16 refer to Jews...

...Problematic details, in some cases more than irritating tics, remain...

...Hitchens also believes that the American left would be invigorated if it were more anti-religious...

...According to this view, either the Soviet Union must yield clear military supremacy to the U.S...

...That now seems to be the case with the fundamental attitude underlying the stance of the Reagan administration toward the USSR...

...Would the prospects for world peace be advanced or set back by such an event...

...Saints, too, are sinners...

...You can be cremated, advise on the selection of your pastor or bishop, adjudicate marital cases, attend interminable committee meetings at all levels (except the pope's maybe), preach in church (but not the homily at Mass), administer all those coming priestless parishes, demand good sermons, decent music, and financial accountability of the clergy, join the Masons (just when there's little reason to want to), and if you happen to be a widowed deacon (no women need apply...

...Some other specific findings of the report: . Total Soviet military expenditures amounted to 11 to 13 percent of the gross national product in 1970, and since then have increased at just above the average annual rate of GNP growth...

...In that respect, making Father Kolbe out to be a Nazi is just his idea of spirited conversation...

...What would actually happen inside Russia in the event of a national collapse...

...citizen...

...Two scholars, Daniel L. Schlafly, Jr., an Eastern European historian at St...

...Plainly and simply, Kolbe was a believer in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and in the existence of a Communist-Freemason-Zionist conspiracy to subvert and destroy Christianity...

...The CIA is not infallible, of course, and the findings of this massive study are far from suggesting that the Soviet Union is anywhere close to being an admirable model for other countries to follow, even on narrow economic grounds...

...Although the increase in the Soviet gross national product has dipped in recent years, due in some measure to poor harvests, the Russian GNP has nonetheless grown at an average rate of 4.8 percent in Western terms over the last three decades...

...In other words, we can spend as much as or more than the Soviets on arms while still spending a smaller percentage of our gross national product...

...As canonists, eager to place the new code in perspective, are the first to point out, we survived without a universal code for nineteen hundred years...

...An Austrian monthly Wiener Tagebuch had made similar charges last April, in anticipation of Father Kolbe's canonization...

...or the U.S...

...Why bring up this1} Wasn't Kolbe only reflecting his times and milieu...

...We have not seen the final text...

...Rowen said, "can play an important role in relieving critical shortages, spurring technological progress, and generally improving Soviet economic performance.'' But he added,' 'The ability of the Soviet economy to remain viable in the absence of imports is much greater than that of most, possibly all, other industrialized economies...

...Again this move toward more abundance and variety on Soviet dinner tables slowed in recent Brezhnev years, something new leader Andropov will undoubtedly have to worry about...

...There are several immediate reactions to these accusations that are natural - and unfortunate...

...We believe it better to sift through the Kolbe case calmly, unafraid to admit culpability if called for and to make distinctions when necessary: 1. It is clear that at least some of the accusations against Father Kolbe are false...

...Hitchens's defense is that any anti-Semitism whatsoever implies the Final Solution, and therefore restating Kolbe's views as Himmler's is only a matter of being "polemical...

...Well, yes and no...

...And even if Hitler had never existed, Poland had its own problem with anti-Semitism...

...In the end, we are made free, not by exaggerations nor by excuses, but by the truth...

...The Austrian journal stated, for example, that the anti-Semitism of the Polish clergy reached such a pitch that the Warsaw government had complained to the Vatican about it in August, 1938, specifically mentioning Father Kolbe...

...This is hardly the output of a "rabid anti-Semite" or a person "notorious...

...Though simplified procedures for marital annulments have been retained, it remains to be seen whether cancellation of the even more streamlined American norms was a wise move...

...military spending, on the other hand, dropped from 7.4 percent of the GNP in 1970 to 5.2 percent in 1981...

...That charge was leveled in an article published last fall in the London Jewish Chronicle and reprinted here in the Jewish Week on October 22, 1982, shortly after the canonization of Father Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish priest who was brutally starved and then lethally injected in a cellblock at Auschwitz after volunteering to take the place of a Polish soldier, a married man with children, who had been condemned to execution...

...Louis Center for Holocaust Studies, examined the report in the Wiener Tagebuch and found it rife with error...

...Noting that many commentators had argued that the Soviet economy was in serious trouble and susceptible to Western pressure, Representative Henry S. Reuss, the respected chairman of the joint committee, commented that on the basis of this 401-page CIA study, such conclusions were unwarranted...

...What is troubling is the absence of any such indication...

...bishops to persuade Rome of the gravity of the issue has barely begun...

...these were matched with what read, to us at least, as rather lame explanations provided by Kolbe's defenders...

...Only a handful of these treat of Jews at any length...

...In general, the bishop's authority appears inadequately circumscribed - and that doesn't need to mean hamstrung...

...Knowing that Father Kolbe courageously bore up under torture, willingly provided food, clothing, fuel, and sick care for perhaps two thousand Jewish refugees at his friary following the German invasion of Poland, and finally gave up his life for another Pole, one is tempted either to vexation or defensiveness...

...can push the USSR into economic collapse by forcing it into an escalated arms race which that nation cannot afford...

...It will be...

...And happily the formulating commission abjured the ecumenically risky temptation to set down a "fundamental law" that would hold for the Uniate churches as well as the Roman rite...

...The new code places that era behind us...

...it still seems to be very clear that the Soviet economy is a long way from being on its last legs...

...Now this was not the anti-Semitism of the Nazis, but it was anti-Semitism nonetheless...

...Imports from the West, Mr...

...What would be reassuring is some later indication iji Kolbe's life that he at least recognized this sin, even in the attenuated but still dangerous form that he had himself exhibited...

...Those accusations were reported by the St...

...Were they, as the Jewish Chronicle says, "a popular anti-Semitic press...

...Led by the president himself, administration theorists have based their policies on the assumption that the Soviet Union is in a well nigh desperate economic condition...

...real consumption percapita rose at an annual rate of 3.5 percent and thus tripled in that period...

...And for which some conservative Catholics, too, seem to have a nostalgic hankering...

...And the same news stories are obviously the sources for critical remarks on Kolbe appearing in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books...

...According to the report, the Soviet Union has used trade with the West to help modernize its economy, and food imports are important in maintaining a "quality diet," primarily by using imported grain as feed for meat production...

...Consequently, the susceptibility of the Soviet Union to economic leverage tends to be limited...

...Because his anti-Semitism was not racial nor even primarily religious but based on a fantastic belief in a modern historical conspiracy, Kolbe distinguished between good and bad Jews, between religious ones and the irreligious enemies of Christianity...

...Such questions remain to be explored...

...If a dispensing indult from this section of the code is not invoked, the recent joint study of the Canon Law Society of American and the Catholic Theological Society on cooperation between theologians and the bishops sets a precedent for resolving the issues here...

...And of these 31 references, perhaps nine were favorable toward Jews or urged moderation in Catholic criticism of Jews...

...A striking finding of the CIA study and one that goes directly counter to the Reagan folk wisdom: Soviet trade with the West amounts to only 5 percent of the Russian GNP, and the Soviet ability to live without imports is far greater than had been theorized in this country...

...marry again...

...There were good reasons why Poland in the nineteenth century harbored a greater proportion (four-fifths) of the world's Jews than Israel does today, and why a great rabbi had written several hundred years before, "It is better to live on dry bread - but in peace - in Poland...

...No such complaint has, in fact, been found...

...Eventually the New York Times printed a report from Rome which quoted a number of Father Kolbe's statements containing anti-Semitic stereotypes...

...As he put it, "This important study helps put into perspective for Americans the fact that the USSR, far from being on the verge of collapse, has experienced major growth...

...Thus these findings seem to support those analysts who continue to contend that American trade embargoes against the Soviet Union have only limited effects and hence to argue against the policy of the Reagan administration, which has sought to tighten Western controls on non-strategic trade in order to bring pressure on Moscow - a policy that often brought conflict with our European allies and with U.S...

...There should have been...

...That story is far more complicated than most people realize...

...officials that economic pressure can achieve a Soviet collapse in the foreseeable future is illusory...

...Finally, the new code suffers from what are not tics but the ticking of time bombs...

...And anti-Semitism is specifically the sin of that era...

...In almost every feature it underscores the subordinate role of law itself in sustaining the main point: the spirit of the Gospel...

...Actually Hitchens is a bright young English writer who suffers from George Bernard Shaw Disease - the conviction that no degree of unfairness can be a worse crime than being boring...

...The Times quotes, in turn, were the basis for a column in the January 15 Nation in which Christopher Hitchens, the Nation's Washington correspondent, said that Kolbe had been "stoking the very oven in which he was to perish" and was "a man who really belonged in the Inquisition...

...But on balance, the new code of canon law seems a creditable piece of work...

...Louis University, and Warren Green, director of the St...

...Though much is improved in the new law to credit the active role of women in the church, they are still effectively excluded from any position of governance - still a "they...

...Although in an occasional and perhaps even "moderate" way, Father Kolbe appears to have agreed with this policy...

...These are legitimate questions...

...Of 1,006 letters, only 14 refer to Jews at all...

...Does this give one license to say anything at all about Kolbe's attitude...

...3. Although Maximilian Kolbe was by no means the virulent anti-Semite his accusers suggest, there is no denying the anti-Semitic character of some of his beliefs and remarks...

...Liturgical inculturation is ignored...

...Said Mr...

...What does all this have to with sainthood, at least for those of us who, unlike Hitchens, don't consider the whole idea a piece of priestcraft left over from the Dark Ages...

...Sound like work...

...The problem is that Father Kolbe has been proclaimed specifically a saint for our era, the era of the Holocaust...

...An elderly priest reminded us the other day that, whatever the legalism of the post-Tridentine church may have been (our memory is short), it didn't come close to the toxic variety which rode in on the heels of the church's turn-of-century anti-modernism crisis and the promulgation of the 1917 code...

...businessmen...

...And in the absence of any word from Kolbe, the church should have supplied that word itself, thoroughly airing and reflecting on this question in the course of Father Kolbe's canonization...

...And though the layperson's position in the church is greatly enhanced, many of the institutional bodies and procedures that would give muscle to lay participation are unmandated - left at the bishop's discretion - though "strongly urged...

...This is not as alarming as it may first appear: the Soviet gross national product in 1982 was calculated to be $ 1.6 trillion or $6000 per capita, which is roughly only 5 5 percent of the American gross national product...

...The same quotes were also the basis for a muth more measured column by Richard Cohen in the December 14 Washington Post...

...Nonetheless, it seems plain enough that any hope entertained by US...

...As for the continued exclusion of women, the work of the U.S...

...Kolbe's belief was not racial...

...Schlafly and Green have also surveyed the extent letters, articles, radio sermons, notes, etc., of Father Kolbe's...

...Nonetheless, said Henry Rowen, chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council, "despite the large-scale expansion in agricultural imports, the Soviet Union remains basically self-sufficient with respect to food," with the average Soviet citizen getting about the same number of calories as the U.S...

...To write, for example, as Christopher Hitch-ens did in the Nation, that Kolbe "argued that the Jews had to die," although there is not a shred of evidence in Kolbe's writings to suggest he held such a belief, let alone argued for it, and plenty of evidence that he abhorred it...

...2. Other charges against Father Kolbe remain unsettled...

...Contrary to many observers, the Soviet standard of living has increased rapidly over the last thirty years...

...In short, while it seems to be true that the Russians have had their economic problems in the last few years - who has not...

...This means that the share of Soviet GNP devoted to military spending has increased slightly over the years...

...Louis Review...

...Unfortunately, there was no coming to terms, at that moment or at the moment of canonization, with Father Kolbe's own attitudes...

...O my people, the church belongs to you - its members, both glorious and flawed...

...It was, more than anything, fueled by that sense of Christianity besieged by the forces of the Enlightenment, that war-to-the-death between Godliness . and godlessness, which underlay so much of pre-Vatican-II Catholicism and has reemerged in Protestant fundamentalism's battle with "secular humanism...

...Again this growth rate has declined in recent years, and living standards still remain well below those of the United States, Japan, and most of Europe, both East and West...

...The one example it provides of anti-Semitic rhetoric from a publication Kolbe had founded actually appeared when Kolbe was in the middle of a six-year missionary endeavor in Asia...

...Although the growth in food supplies has been low, "the quality of the diet has nonetheless improved greatly, shifting toward a pattern of less reliance on bread and potatoes and more reliance on meat and dairy products - a shift typical of other countries as per capita income shifts...

...So far, neither Father Kolbe's accusers nor his defenders have offered the kind of evidence that could answer them one way or the other...

...Such a goal, of course, raises a host of unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions...

...Does not Father Kolbe's later service to Jews and his ultimate martyrdom at Auschwitz overshadow any earlier anti-Semitic statements...

...The flaws in the Soviet system come through plainly...

...Louis Post-Dispatch, stirring up a local debate in their own pages as well as in the Catholic St...

...Louis Jewish Light and the St...

...But knowing how deeply implicated Christians are in the making of the Holocaust, and how often the kind of defensive-ness just mentioned has prevented genuine self-examination, one is also tempted to acquiesce immediately in whatever charges of anti-Semitism are put forth...

...It also raises serious questions regarding the independence of Catholic schools and their relationship to bishops, matters that will need immediate clarification...

...The fact is, as Schlafly and Green testify, Kolbe's writings contain "few references to contemporary political, social, economic, cultural, or secular questions" at all...

...Still, the renewed nationalism that gave birth to twentieth-century Poland was confronting the long-established prominence of Jews in the nation's commercial and professional life - and many, though by no means all, of Poland's leaders exploited the native reserves of anti-Semitism to exclude Jews from economic power...

...Perhaps that is what the pope meant to do when he mnade his visit to Kolbe's Auschwitz cell the occasion for a denunciation of anti-Semitism...

...Rowen: "In fact, we do not consider an economic 'collapse' - a sudden and sustained decline in the GNP - even a remote possibility...

...The Austrian journal juxtaposes a quotation from a Jesuit journal in such a way as to link it, without any foundation, to Kolbe...

...Might not the prospect of an impending economic collapse provoke the Soviet leadership into last-gap military adventurism in an effort to save themselves...

...The ready belief in a fantastic conspiracy involving international Zionism was made possible by the Christian heritage of ignorance, superstition, and suspicion about Jews, the same images that occupied Father Kolbe's imagination also served the bloodthirsty doctrines of racial inferiority and extermination...

...Didn't he warn his colleagues against going too far in attacking Jews lest all possibility be lost to convert them...

...THE NEW CODE Well, it's now official...

...And though the requirement that the local bishop license theologians (give a "canonical mandate") may trouble no one in Europe or the third world, in the U.S...

...supplants it with something much better...