Correspondence
Rational, but brief I have subscribed to your magazine for only a short time, but am enjoying it immensely, not the least for its condensation of rational discourse into so few pages! I am...
...I would not be here if it weren't for the pope...
...What is the church if not Saint John Chrysostom, the archetypical anti-Semite, if not the popes who preached the Crusades, if not the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 that set forth the medieval code for treatment of the Jews...
...I thank John Garvey for this article...
...The modifying influence of the human channels may be essential to God's revealing mode...
...One needs to explain why genocide was not conceived until the twentieth century, after the church's political power in what had been "Christendom" was long broken, as well as why racial anti-Semitism flourished in some European countries more than in others, although the Christian teaching was virtually the same throughout the region...
...These teachings and actions created a condition, which the pope has termed a "lulling of consciences" of Christians, such that many became easy prey for Hitlerian anti-Semitism in the twen~eth century...
...First, "anti-Judaism" needs to be used here, since "anti-Semitism" as such was only invented in the nineteenth century, and the concept of pseudo-scientific racialism upon which it depends was developed only a short time before that...
...I found John Garvey's "How Is the Bible True...
...In this view one can explain both the differences and the continuities between anti-Judaism and racial antiSemitism...
...I am a lifelong Protestant, still searching for a church that combines conservative faith with skeptical, intelligent, yet hopeful reasoning...
...REV...
...Pius XII & the Jews I can find a lot to agree with in your editorial, "Misremembered...
...Who is/are the church as such if not the people who have had leadership roles through the centuries, popes, bishops, and councils...
...One of them, a Holocaust survivor, told my father, "Don't believe anyone who tells you the pope did not help the Jews...
...One way of viewing the issue was put forward by the historian Yosef Yerushalmi some years ago...
...Were they the church...
...Second, the document should not in my judgment be read to preclude "any connection" between Christian anti-Judaism (which is a theological polemic against the tenets of Jewish faith) and modem racial anti-Semitism (which is directed against Jews as a people...
...March 27] to be very reflective of my own viewpoint, one I haven't been able to put into words, so that I appreciated his articulation of it...
...I'd like to add this quotation from George MacDonald concerning the Holy Scriptures: "This story may not be just as the Lord told it, and yet may contain in its mirror as much of truth as we are able to receive, and as will afford us scope for a life's discovery...
...The church & the Shoah In Commonweal's interpretation, the Vatican statement, "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah," argues that "there was no connection between nearly 2,000 years of church-inspired anti-Semitism and Nazi race hatred" ("Misremembered/' editorial, April 10...
...There were always individuals who had sense enough to ignore these teachings...
...CELIA CUMMINGS E1 Granada, Calif...
...Thus, Christian teaching is validly seen as one cause leading to the Holocaust...
...But I always come back to a nagging doubt when people say that Pius XII should have spoken openly against the Nazis...
...Are we simply to forget Cardinal Tisserant's warning in 1943 that Pius would merit the censure of history for his failure to speak out...
...While the document does not specifically state how a connection is to be made, in my reading it leaves plenty of room for one...
...The writer is associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops...
...In the fifties and sixties, he made many business trips to New York City, often for meetings with Jewish businessmen...
...ANTHONY DI RUSSO North Walpole, N.H...
...Such distinctions are vital if we are to develop sound educational materials on the Holocaust for future generations...
...He saved my life...
...Fifty years later and thousands of miles away, that is easily said...
...And they are the ones who perpetuated the hostility toward Jews so unfortunately embedded in the New Testament...
...Yet other factors were involved as well, such as the development of pseudo-scientific racism, economic scapegoating, etc...
...But where was the courage and moral leadership needed to condemn the enormities of the Holocaust...
...Christian anti-Judaism was one key factor, a "necessary cause" but not a "sufficient cause" of the Holocaust...
...The church as such' The editorial "Misremembered" puts a finger on the central issue, the "church as such...
...For my part, I always remember my father's experience years ago...
...In 19741 took a whole day in Rome to visit the Ardentine caves where the vic(Continued on page 28) Commonweal 4 May8,1998...
...This may be too narrow (or too exaggerated) an interpretation...
...EUGENE J. FISHER Washington, D.C...
...It does acknowledge that Christian antiJudaism (misinterpretations of the New Testament), a.k.a, the "teaching of contempt," did, over the centuries, result in negative attitudes toward and treatment of the Jews of Europe, such as the massacre of the Jews of the Rhineland in 1096, the expulsions of the Jews from England in the twelfth century and from Spain in 1492, forced ghettoization, the disciplinary decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, blood libel charges, etc...
...As for Pius XII, of course he saved thousands of Jews...
Vol. 125 • May 1998 • No. 9
