Chronic ambivalence
Rudin, A. James
Surely to liberate Kuwait, stabilize the region, secure the world oil supply, and build an international coalition to protect small nations, all are legitimate goals. But will war achieve these...
...Joseph Doksansky, a Roman Catholic member of the Parliament and a Charter 77 leader, told me that the same charges are also swirling in his community...
...The worst epithet in today's Prague is "collaborator...
...And what of the Arab nation, and the great people of Islam...
...While repressive communism has been removed, the old Czech-Slovak rivalry has reappeared...
...It pervaded the public debate that preceded the war...
...their resolution through negotiation is the way to peace...
...Unlike most of his colleagues, he never served outside of Rome in a diplomatic ministry that began in the world of Mussolini, Hitler, and Roosevelt and ended in the world of ince the events of 1989 in from the world to the church, and to take Gorbachev, Bush, and Havel...
...Walesa admitted that when percent Roman Catholic...
...one free of anti-Semitism, extreme nationalism, and chauvin- I am drawn to Poland in a strange and mystical way that I ism...a Poland that will be pluralistic and democratic...
...Perhaps the war will end quickly...
...For all the contradictions of his rhetoric and the irrationalities and injustices of his policies, Reagan touched a deep moral nerve in American life...
...Prague is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, but all is not well there...
...The new weapons may make all this possible, and perhaps enable us to "solve" other cases of regional instability, like Central America...
...both of these in the service of five popes Persian Gulf on the concept that a success- The Vatican is not given to a style that per- from Pius XII through John Paul II...
...I left Rome with several strong impressions...
...His most recent book is Public Catholicism (Macmillan...
...Are they now, will they ever he, accepted as our brothers and sisters in a single human family...
...During our the continued presence of anti-Semitism in Poland is morally private meeting he pledged a "new chapter in Polish history, and politically unacceptable...
...The collaborationist controversy has not spared the Prague Jewish community...
...I was misunderstood, like taking a crash course in medieval and modem history and and I made some mistakes, and I do not want to repeat them...
...The alternative would be a peace settlement that embraces mutual security, Palestinian rights, arms sales and regional arms control, a truly multinational peacekeeping force, and stabilization of oil prices through international agreements...
...And will war strengthen the UN and build the coalition...
...But it It is to shift the focus of the discussion It is precisely because the passing of is most unlikely that we will ever have from 88: Commonweal...
...During can only accept, but not explain...
...Will the Gulf and the Middle East be more or less stable...
...Nothing has been tidied up for the tourist...
...describing the events and his role...
...Cardinal Casaroli held the position knowledge marked him from the school theme has intensified as President George of secretary of state for eleven years,having of classical European diplomacy...
...The speakers stressed the enormous positive achievements in Catholic- Jewish relations since 1965, including last September's Prague statement that called for Catholic teshuvah, "repentance," for all acts of anti-Semitism committed in the past...
...he Tiber, Moldau, and Vistula: Even to pronounce the names sets off intense ambivalent feelings within me...
...Casaroli from the official policymaking WORLD WATCH process will not be a noticed event outside a small circle of diplomatic and ecclesial Vatican observers, that a comment on his role in a more popular forum might be J. Bryan Hehir worthwhile...
...Will we apply those prin- ciples in the Palestinian case...
...We are clearly moving into a new generation of leadership in Catholic-Jewish relations...
...and to come to some resolution over Vatican relations with the state of Israel...
...This was my third visit to Poland in fourteen months...
...When I arrived, I learned of the bishops' pastoral letter on Jews, Judaism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust that was read in every Polish church in late January...
...ANTI-SEMITISM IN EUROPE CH]ROlq1[C P..wI]81VPt L C]E: TWO STEPS FORWARD...
...9 Wloclawek...
...What is it that makes us one people...
...In all of this use of old and new, referred to him as "a wise and expert col- through, from World War II to the cold war there is more to be analyzed than will be laborator" who had made "significant to the collapse of communism, would attempted here, because I have a different advances to improve the church behind the ensure from a secular diplomat a memoir, purpose...
...The eleven years as secretary of state were only a piece of a priestly voca- tion spent entirely in the Vatican foreign AGOSTINO CASAROLI office...
...Jewish and Christian leaders warned me that I should not meet with "so and so" because he was "a known collaborator...
...They stir up bitter memories of past Christian-Jewish relations, as well as hopes for a better future...
...These are the real issues...
...To visit Poland today is 1989, "it had not been a good meeting...
...Many of the Protestant leaders in Prague reminded me that Slovakia, a puppet state of the Nazis during World War II, had an anti- Semitic premier, Monsignor Joseph Tiso [see Commonweal, November 23, 1990], who was executed as a war criminal in 1947...
...Unconditional surrender, restoration of the ruling family in Kuwait, military occupation of Iraq, enhanced military capability for the Saudis, naval presence in the Gulf, with mobile forces nearby, a formula for regional stability...
...DAVID J. O'BRIEN DAVID J. O'BRIEN teaches history at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts...
...Who will he in charge...
...And what then will be the lesson of Iraq...
...his diplo- has become standard discourse in the Agostino Casaroli as Vatican secretary of matic manner and his extensive historical media, in the academy, and in politics...
...Noting that Warsaw is one of the transfer points for Soviet Jews I am sure that the pope, President Walesa, Cardinal Glemp, and on their way to Israel, Walesa told me: "Get them out of the Bishop Muszynski must be wondering as well...
...At the end of the three-day conference, Pope John Paul II spoke movingly of the unique relationship that Christianity has with Jews and Judaism, specifically cited the tragedy of the shoah (the Holocaust), and closed his talk with a quotation from the Babylonian Talmud, perhaps a first in papal history since the Talmud had been burned by church authorities in the Middle Ages...
...One of President Vaclav Havel's first acts last year was to restore diplomatic relations with Israel and end all PLO support...
...But the Czech Protestants also have other things on their minds...
...We can only Soviet Union now...
...The letter asks Polish Catholics to seek "forgiveness from our Jewish brothers and sisters.., for all incidents of anti-Semitism which were committed at any time or by anyone on Polish soil...
...That patriotic idealism, and the wondrous technology now enlisted in the cause of death, can be turned to the service of life and the building of a just and peaceful world...
...The administration's ann-twisting of old and new allies to prevent negotiation suggests that the real objective is to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime...
...in Catholic-Jewish relations...
...That we need only stand tall and be strong and we can bend history our way...
...Casaroli entered the diplomatic serTHE VATICAN'S STRATEGIST OF DIALOGUE vice in 1938 and retired in 1990...
...But who defines patriotism...
...Poland was once the world his campaign, Walesa had made a widely reported speech in center of Jewish life, a land the bishops' letter correctly describes which he declared that he was a "100-percent Polish Catholic...
...Archbishop Edward Cassidy is the new president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, succeeding Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, who was literally "present at the creation" of Nostra aetate in the 1960s...
...What happens then...
...But I made a conscious decision to talk with everyone I could, and I did...
...His presidency will be judged not only on its economic Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultation...
...But did not the debate amount to placing our fate in the hands of Saddam Hussein (hoping sanctions will "work") or George Bush (enforcing the UN dead- line...
...Hadjanek's assessment was echoed by others...
...My colleagues and I will never forget the NCC's failure to recognize the antireligious actions of the Communists...
...out the mass murder of millions...
...There is a much higher level of cynicism "No Blood for Oil"--and fatalism, "the decision is made, what can be done...
...In that direction lies a new patriotism, that delrmes the meaning of the American people in the building of a single human family capable of protecting human rights and overcoming political and economic oppression without the brutality of war...
...Young men and women appear each night on our television screens, humbling us by their willingness to fight for their counlry and for the moral ideal of resisting tyranny...
...The pope clysmic changes that Casaroli worked order...
...What would that acceptance require, here and now...
...The ancient, tragic Jewish community of Czechoslovakia lost one hundred and fifty-five thousand of its one hundred and eighty thousand population during the Holocaust, and even as a tiny remnant after the war, it suffered under a Communist government that was anti-Zionist (the 1952 Slansky trials) and anti-Israel (Czechoslovakia provided training for the Palestine Liberation Organization...
...Whether we do or not, will Israel be safer...
...One of the signers of the human rights document, Charter 77, is sixty-three-year-old Ladislav Hedjanek...
...I was part of the International Jewish Committee 86: Commonweal for Interreligious Consultations delegation to the Vatican on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary ofNostra aetate...
...And how far will we go for oil...
...Today there are less than ten I am proud to be a Polish Catholic, just as I would be proud if thousand in a Polish population of 38 million which is over 90 I were a 100-percent Polish Jew...
...He used Bush has staked much of his policy in the been appointed by John Paul II in 1979...
...Professor Jan Dus, a Bible scholar who was imprisoned for over a year, told me: "The NCC people consistently refused to face the incon- venient fact that Christians were being persecuted in this country, that communism was tyrannical, that human rights and religious liberty were being systematically denied...
...As soon as possible...
...And after visits to Rome, Prague, and Wloclawek last December, that ambivalence has only increased...
...record, but also on how effectvely it attacks and solves the probI met with Lech Walesa in Sopot, a small town near Gdansk, lems of "anti-Semitism and chauvinism...
...A key problem still remains: to make the many positive church teachings about Jews and Judaism into a living reality for Catholics throughout the world (indeed, "implementation" was the buzzword in Rome for all the delegates...
...Finally there are questions of patriotism...
...If there is one thing that distinguishes the opposition to administration policy now from that of the sixties, it is the cooling of that passionate love of country which made the struggle of those days so intense...
...It is a remarkable document...
...The Nazis carried him about this, he replied: "I really meant it in a positive way...
...I can only wonder what lies ahead...
...We can end this war in ways that will enforce for a time conformity to our will...
...among all of us today, and that is not a good thing...
...Let there be no mistake about it: advocates of peace and international justice lost the political and cultural debate surrounding Vietnam...
...Those who deny it need only try to answer the questions: What is the meaning of our national experience...
...He is the chairman of the Polish Bishops' Commission for Dialogue with Judaism...
...The choice, as always, is to be made not in war but in politics, in the continuing struggle to define the terms of the policy debate, influence the interpretation of our national symbols, and persuade people to support our cause...
...His theological training has characterized the tenure between the church and the world...
...so-called Iron Curtain...
...He has only recently resumed teaching philosophy and religion at Prague's charles University...
...That is where the battle must be joined...
...A. JAMES RUDIN During our meeting I sensed Walesa's acute awareness that A. James Rudin, a rabbi, is the American Jewish Committee's both he and his country were under the world's critical micro- interreligious affairs director and a past chair of the International scope...
...That Americans...
...presence be needed to intimidate Syria and Iran...
...Sanctions, diplomacy, political maneuvers, an enhanced block- ade, cautious military pressure exercised under UN, not U.S., command, if we had persisted with all these, we might have drawn Germany and Japan into a more responsible role, gradually built a structure for authentic regional cooperation, and ended with strong tools for defending human rights and the indepen- dence of small nations from the Baltic to Tiananmen to South Africa...
...Will we accept "self-determination" and "the rights of small nations" even if they are unfriendly...
...Far more than the righteous use of superior force, that vision can renew our national spirit, and give purpose and direction to our own lives...
...Walesa knows that three days after his election as president of Poland...
...Patriotic support for our men and women in the field could be counted on to do the rest...
...The fact that it will be a per- manent teaching document for Polish Catholics makes it of great 8 February 1991:87 historic importance...
...Its young rabbi, Daniel Mayer, was forced to leave his position and the country because he was reputed to have collaborated with the authorities...
...This time I was the house guest of Bishop Henryk Muszynski, the ordinary of this grim and polluted city...
...9 Rome...
...He told me it "will take two generations to cleanse the Protestant church of all the damage that was done by forty years of communism...
...The question is whether we are prepared to engage in such negotiation, and compromise our national objectives, in order to build, gradually, with many failures and considerable ambiguity, structures of collective security and intemational coop- eration...
...Who does not benefit from a secure oil supply...
...But is that our vision of "new world order," or is it Teddy Roosevelt's "righteous use of superior force...
...But will war achieve these things...
...ful resistance to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait sonalizes policymaking, so Casaroli's The length of this tenure and the cata- is a lynchpin in creating the "new world retirement was quiet and quick...
...clean" and that he had the papers to prove it...
...The state...
...For nearly a thousand years Polish he had met with American Jewish leaders in New York City in Jews struggled against anti-Semitism...
...Doksansky believes that Czechoslovakia's churches, Catholic and Protestant, will play a major role, "for good or ill" in shaping future Czech society...
...The Czechs, mostly Protestant, number about 10 million people, and the Slovaks, about half that number, are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic...
...Once posed that way, the debate's outcome was inevitable...
...For the remainder of the trip, I traveled on my own to develop an Eastern European interreligious coalition against resurgent anti-Semitism, extreme nationalism, and ethnic conflict...
...Hadjanek was stripped of his teaching job in 1977 and for twelve years was forced to be a coal stoker...
...Catholic indifference to Jewish suffering during the Nazi occu- pation of Poland, the letter says, "will forever gnaw at our con- science...
...Eastern Europe and the note of a person who might be described He was by training, style, and age a man larger and longer evolution as a man of the old order who has been of the "old order," the old order in both in U.S.-Soviet relations that strategically crucial in creating a new order church and state...
...as the"origin of the majority of Jews living in the world today...
...It represents the first time the Polish episcopate, includ- ing Cardinal Joseph Glemp, the primate of the Polish church, has addressed these themes in such a comprehensive and direct manner...
...watch and wait...
...President Bush took the commendable risk of asking Congress for its support, so it is their war now, and ours...
...Many of the Jewish participants who attended the Vatican conference were newcomers to international Catholic-Jewish meetings...
...Will a U.S...
...Dr...
...Almost every Protestant leader that I met in Prague was bitter about the "naive" and "dangerous" role that liberal American Protestant leaders, especially the National Council of Churches (NCC), played during the Communist regime...
...The Czechs have main- tained the hideous "Little Fortress," a scene of torture and killing, just as it was in 1945...
...Bishop Muszynski played a key role in the development of this ground-breaking document...
...When I questioned In 1939, 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland...
...The Communist regime con- trolled, subverted, and corrupted all facets of national life, includ- ing religion...
...No trip to Prague is complete without a visit to nearby Terezin, a stopping place for thousands of Jews, many of them children, before being transported to Auschwitz...
...But perhaps all these questions need not be asked...
...9 Prague...
...uniting technology and goodness, are destined to lead the world...
...Each group is suspicious of the other, and there are disturbing reports of renewed anti-Semitism in Slovakia...
...The NCC always underestimated the harshness of the old regime...
...On took shape in a perspective that would be of Mikhail Gorbachev until now, the con- December 1, 1990, Pope John Paul II profoundly revised and renewed by the trast between the old and new world order accepted the resignation of Cardinal teaching and spirit of Vatican II...
...From Richard Nixon's triumph in 1968 through Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech and Ronald Reagan's revolution, patriotic meaning was not that of Martin Luther King, Jr., or even Robert Kennedy...
...There is such a thing as evil in the world...
Vol. 118 • February 1991 • No. 3
