Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Pope Benedict XVI’s tour of the Middle East this week was expected to cross several political minefields, and so it has. After his visit on Monday to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, some Israelis complained that the German-born pope spoke only in generalities about the Holocaust and did not mention Nazi Germany. Does that criticism have some validity, or is it unfair?
Give Him a Fair Hearing
Colleen Carroll Campbell is an Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow, author of “The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy” and host of “Faith & Culture,” a TV and radio show that airs on EWTN.
Papal watchers have long predicted that Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the Holy Land would be a public relations minefield. A figure as important as the pope, in a region as volatile and divided as the Middle East, is bound to provoke controversy no matter how lightly he treads and how peaceable his message.
Sure enough, just a few days into his pilgrimage, Benedict already has endured an onslaught of harsh, hair-trigger criticism. Some Muslims are angry that his first stop in Israel was at the presidential palace. Some Christians say he has devoted too much time to interreligious outreach rather than to his own flock.
The most vocal criticism thus far has come from some Jews who blasted Benedict’s visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial as an insulting flop. Among their complaints: Benedict decried the death of “millions” of Jewish Holocaust victims rather citing the more exact estimate of six million Jews; he offered no personal reminiscences of his youth during World War II, including his brief (and unwilling) conscription in the Hitler Youth; and he failed to apologize for the Holocaust.
The criticism is unfair. For starters, Benedict already cited the six million figure earlier that same day at the airport in Tel Aviv, where he denounced anti-Semitism as “totally unacceptable” and said “every effort must be made to combat anti-Semitism.” Regarding his German roots, Benedict discussed them during earlier visits to Auschwitz and Cologne, and the historical record is clear that he and his family were firm opponents of the Nazis. As for taking the rap for the Holocaust, Benedict has expressed regret for anti-Semitism among Christians, but he has rightly distinguished Christianity from the “insane racist ideology, born of neo-paganism” that gave rise to Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jewish people.
What has received precious little press attention is what Benedict did say at Yad Vashem: that the suffering of Jewish Holocaust victims must “never be denied, belittled or forgotten” and that the Catholic Church “feels deep compassion” for Holocaust victims and is committed to “praying and working tirelessly to ensure that hatred will never reign in the hearts of men again.” Benedict reiterated that pledge the next day in his remarks to Jerusalem’s chief rabbis, when he pointedly reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s commitment to “the path chosen at the Second Vatican Council for a genuine and lasting reconciliation between Christians and Jews.”
Those are the words of a man who seeks reconciliation. In a region torn apart by violence and division, such a peaceable message deserves applause, not denunciation.