Whitby & Kleve
Dove, Anthea
THE ECUMENICAL TASK: 1993 JUDITH HERSHCOPF BANKI ANTHEA DOVE BALTIMORE & EISENACH ...
...But it seems to me that if I ground rules excluded explicit theological language from the am to make any headway in the understanding of how people proceedings...
...The small piece of barbed wire came from the concentration the baby will put his hand into the viper's lair...
...The church When you have chosen to go nowhere that had been a medieval building of great beauty was now a Over Christmas and Now Year's, the train heap of rubble...
...How different...
...From May 4 to 7, some sixty official representatives and I do not remember being at all frightened, only delighted at invitees of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee the break in lessons, the change in routine...
...I love my tradition...
...education, with particular reference to the way showed a considerable proportion of the countries colored in Catholics and Jews teach about one another in their textbooks bright red...
...In what was Yugoslavia taneous pride and delight in being a member of the Roman we see Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians-Orthodox, Catholics, and Catholic church...
...Will carry you there, accidentally But as the years went by and Ray grew older his attitudes With an afternoon whistle, passing began to change until at last he was filled with unbearable reThrough town...
...Ray lives in the historic town of Whitby Hilda in the great abbey of Whitby, traveled to north Germany on the north Yorkshire coast, and gradually more and more of and converted the people to Christianity...
...There were about a hundred of us squashed on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), came together in together round the ancient boiler...
...But hearts were touched and When an altar is consecrated, it is usual to insert holy relics thoughts were stirred...
...And outgrims were Anglican...
...perhaps, the train carries you (rebuilt but no longer so beautiful...
...Once inside the church (ILC), consisting of the Holy See's Commission for Religious we filed down into the crypt and there we took our places, sitRelations with the Jews and the International Jewish Committee ting on the stone floor...
...I see that my country now cipline, who seek to worship and to serve him...
...Benefactors $1,000 Supporters $500 Patrons $250 The connection between Kleve and Whitby goes back a long Charters $125 Sustaining $50 way...
...THE ECUMENICAL TASK: 1993 JUDITH HERSHCOPF BANKI ANTHEA DOVE BALTIMORE & EISENACH WHITBY & KLEVE n the spring and summer of 1992, two important inter- IN hen I was very young I attended a Church national Jewish-Christian conferences took place on two of England primary school...
...They waited until they had collected enough money to build Whitby and Kleve are unimportant places...
...A married man was ordered to the death chamber...
...Have you renewed your Associate membership...
...10038 Willibrord, whose master, Saint Wilfrid, was a pupil of Saint Commonweal 15 January 1993: 13...
...a case of standing together and being a light to the world, as of And yet, although I have come to think of myself as a citizen sharing the truth and proclaiming the kingdom of truth, justice, of the world, a creature of the planet Earth, and may seem to some and love for which all people long...
...At the end of Mass there was a queue to read Graves of them all, and yourself as one...
...Can we realistically hope for reconciliation...
...During the German occupation of Poland, a soldier The cow and the bear will graze, from Kleve discovered that some of his comrades were about their young will lie down together...
...The relics of Kleve ment, slight and almost imperceptible, toare unconventional, but surely as holy as the bones of martyrs...
...His name is Ray Hamley and he was a British Where the Train Carries You bomber pilot in the Second World War...
...led me to where I am now...
...no headlines...
...to demolish Saint Adalbert's shrine...
...He read Ray's letter to his Across snow-swept distances to a Christmas congregation at Mass the following Sunday...
...The mayor Their logic, discovering vistas to nowhere...
...to be a paragon of tolerance, to others an absolute renegade, yet It is terrible to think of what we have done to one another in there is still some gladness and pride in me that I come from this the past in the name of religion...
...El ered, taken to Dachau, and murdered...
...secuted and carried off to concentration camps to be killed...
...Like peace, ecumenism has to begin From July 12 to 16, an interreligious consultation of the with me and I see a clear parallel between my nationalism and International Council of Christians and Jews took place in "Haus my religious development...
...Whether it is possible to impose this artificial con- can come to share in the truth, then I have to start by trying to dition on serious discussions between Roman Catholic and Jewish work it out for myself, by tracing the influences which have religious thinkers is another question, considered later...
...the ILC, and the first to be held in the Western Hemisphere...
...ers and sisters, equal in the sight of God though far from equal But such gratitude and happiness are as nothing compared in terms of human suffering...
...The infant will play over the den of the adder...
...It makes no difference that I am gious or national ardor, then such ardor has become evil and not really interested in sport, or that the superpowers in poli- must be resisted and condemned...
...the Second World War, and whenever the One was a Vatican-Jewish meeting, the other a con- siren wailed, warning of an impending air sultation of the International Council of Christians and raid, our teacher would calmly lead us in Jews (ICCJ...
...Now aged eighty-four and unwell, he was unable to travel to Kleve...
...Our teachMr...
...The wood was a small fragment taken from the shrine the panther lie down with the kid, of Saint Adalbert...
...the lines morse...
...them...
...So it all came together in a celebration that was Germans of my youth, they were people...
...for it to be consecrated until they had made a sacrifice and a gift...
...Hainstein," a modest residence of the German Protestant The doubts about Britain came, gradually, almost unnoticed...
...I had no doubt then, Olam, "healing the world," i.e., common action toward shared that Britain was best...
...I had a map of the world on my wall which Catholics...
...the ruins of Whitby Abbey...
...to the consecration of the altar...
...church in Eisenach, in the formerly East German state of They were a part of natural maturing, of rationalization, and (Continued on page 14) (Continued on page 12) JUDITH HERSHCOPF BANKI, former interreligious affairs director of ANTHEA DOVE, a grandmother of five and a retired teacher, is now the American Jewish Committee, is a writer and consultant...
...Members of Kolbe's community came as the waters cover the sea...
...camp at Auschwitz, scene of unimaginable suffering...
...from the church...
...I am grateful and happy to be a has brought me to where I am now, seeing the Germans-like Catholic, at a deeper and more serious level perhaps, but in much the Russians, Jews, Zulus, and every other race-as my broth- the same way as I am grateful to be English...
...to Poland...
...the letter, and it was posted to Ray with hundreds of signatures...
...In all Reconciliation and feel the incomparable joy that comes from our games, they were the enemy...
...tics are also superpowers in athletic prowess: there is just a mo- For the ordinary concerned Christian the sense of powerment of spontaneous pride and delight which on reflection seems lessness in the face of bigotry and fanaticism is overwhelming...
...Then there was Ray, his friends were drawn into this association...
...A If we can recognize the nearness of this vision in our own Catholic man hid one of the Jews in his house to save him from lives, then we can dare to break free and involve ourselves in the Gestapo...
...Everyone present received our Leinung's parish...
...It has been a long process that the forgiving embrace of God...
...a school for the poor in Kerala, South India, and when the school The consecration of the new altar made was built, they were ready...
...Isaiah 11:6-9...
...of the ecumenical community at Hengrave Hall in Suffolk...
...and what both groups called Tikkun conquered, the people that belonged to us...
...It happens to me when I come away from the Sacrament of After the war, like any true Brit, I hated the Germans...
...He told them that Morning of children...
...We spent those hours in the crypt singing...
...Hosted by Baltimore's Archbishop church above only in theory, but we were safe enough unless William H. Keeler at Saint Mary's Seminary and University, the enemy scored a direct hit on the church, something that never cochaired by Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy of the Holy See and happened...
...There were Jews himself, to be both transcendent and immanent, to be paradise living in Kleve during the war, and as elsewhere they were per- at the end of time and to be very near...
...passed on his letter to Father Leinung, the priest of the church Crooningly...
...He succeeded in stopping The lion will eat hay like the ox...
...You pause...
...Cleveland, an area close by Whitby, got its name from **Ir***yk# the Saxon invaders from Germany...
...Within This happened when I saw what Oscar Romero did, and did our Christian world we see any variety of groups entrenched because he was a Roman Catholic...
...It happens when I see what within the limits of their own structures, unable, through what Mother Teresa does, and does because she is a Roman Catholic...
...We look round our world and see the apparently irreconcilable: And this brings me, at last, to the crux of this essay, to the blacks and whites in South Africa, Protestants and Catholics point I am trying to make...
...But it is the nature of the Kingdom, as of God The last relic was a twig from a living tree...
...yourself as one: he had answered the letter, saying that he personally was willOr grievingly, with the sound the train makes ing to forgive Ray, and had left it open so that anyone who wished Going, you are carried to the wind-swept could sign too...
...seems like loyalty but may be fear, to cross the barriers that divide us...
...The people had decided that it was not right Lord, redeemer and reconciler, in Holy Communion...
...Last No- working with a resource center for the disadvantaged in her homevembershe was honoredforhercontributions to interreligious dialogue town of Whitby, North Yorkshire...
...Recently I experienced something which I see Nancy G. Westerfield as a small sign of hope...
...How were they alike...
...This contraption heated the Baltimore, Maryland...
...goals...
...All of these were our empire, the places that we had and educational institutions...
...We were traveling to join amid the various Roman Catholic dignitaries, were the Anglican our friends in a Roman Catholic parish, and most of the pil- rector of Whitby and the Protestant minister of Kleve...
...They are symbols that speak of reconciliation...
...a direct hit, Ray felt a satisfied glow of achievement...
...The Jew escaped, but the Catholic was discov- its realization...
...It was a job well done...
...But my heart reachThe first two relics were in their different ways connected es out for something greater and beyond, for the kingdom where with Poland...
...Commonweal 15 January 1993: 11 especially of a growing, deepening Christian faith...
...I emerged from my primary school a true-blue English girl...
...Because of the ban on "theological discussion" by the These very personal reflections must seem to have nothing Orthodox rabbinate, who make up a part of IJCIC, conference whatever to do with ecumenism...
...In the seventh century, Saint Commonweal Associates, 15 Dutch Street, N.Y., N.Y...
...And even more terrible for us, particular race, that I was born in this once-emerald isle...
...On a late day of December...
...both solemn and joyous, so many threads drawn into a living The consecration of the new altar was very important for Father center of unity and friendship...
...I love my country...
...It was a pilgrimage...
...It began with one man...
...ple of Father Leinung's parish invited the people of Whitby to The stone that the bishop placed over the relics came from come and join them in the consecration of a new altar...
...As he watched the destruction of a church in the Not always to destinations small town of Kleve in North Germany, where he had scored Ticketed...
...If hatred is the fruit of reliever happens to be next to me...
...There are moments when I feel spon- in Ulster, Hindus and Muslims in India...
...He sat down and wrote a letter to the Burgermeister of Before you on terminal or page derailing Kleve, asking forgiveness for what he had done...
...of all things...
...And I am able to acknowledge to the commitment I now feel toward God and toward all those that the British have played no small part in the oppression and everywhere in our world, whatever their particular creed or disvictimization of the world's people...
...These were not the hated glossy hair...
...In the sanctuary, were an odd assortment of people...
...The first was a piece of wood, the second a piece The wolf will live with the lamb, of wire...
...Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress er was the most fervent of patriots, and all our songs extolled and current chair of IJCIC, it was the fourteenth meeting of our country, with God sometimes thrown in for good measure...
...Muslims-fighting with the ferocity of caged animals...
...the priest for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God offered to take his place...
...As on Chaucer's pilgrimage of old, we The altar was consecrated during the Mass...
...She spent four years as a member by the Thirteenth National Workshop on Christian-Jewish Relations...
...There was a moveinto its fabric and cover them with a stone...
...In English, Immaculate One...
...Here it was There will be no hurt or harm that the Pole, Father Maximilian Kolbe, gave his life for anoth- on all my holy mountain er...
...It is not so much cuts an insignificant figure on the stage of the world...
...The Jew is still alive, living in Jerusalem where he planted a tree in memory of his rescuer...
...One was Catholic-Jewish, the other more broad- orderly procession across the country lane that divided the school ly Christian-Jewish...
...When we arrived after our journey by doing everyone in splendor were two little Tamil sisters, repcoach, ship, and coach again, we were welcomed not as strangers resenting Kerala, decked in red and gold with flowers in their or even visitors, but like old friends...
...Last year, the peo- then there was our pilgrimage...
...because we see it happening before our eyes on television, are I know this because, on those rare occasions when England the barbarities committed by those who maim and kill one anwins a gold medal at the Olympics, I jump up and hug who- other in the name of nationalism...
...ward the peace and unity our world so needs and desires...
...It was during continents: one in the United States, the other in Europe...
...This community has the same It is hard to pin our faith on such a vision, something so rededication to Mary as the church in Kleve: in German, Empfangis, mote from us in time and comprehension as the reconciliation in Polish, Niepokalanow...
...to be no bad thing...
...From this beginning a friendship began to grow between Ray 12: 15 January 1993 Commonweal and the people of Kleve...
...The meeting had three broad foci, intended for discussion I was proud of my king and queen, of Winston Churchill and and reflection in depth: the Shoah, its meaning for Jews and the Union Jack...
...He sent a twig from his tree instead...
...In the twelfth century, Adalbert took Chris- calf, lion and ox together tianity from the region round Kleve (now known as Westphalia) and a little child shall lead them...
Vol. 120 • January 1993 • No. 1
