The Pope and the Jews: A failure to communicate?
A perceived Catholic “silence” over Benedict XVI’s fiasco with the SSPX was raised earlier, with a focus on the relative absence of strong American voices. But overseas, at least, and from the Pope’s native Germany in particular, objections are being raised as the furor grows among both Catholic and Jewish communities.
The latest comes from the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, Cardinal Walter Kasper, a German like Ratzinger, but considered a much more pastoral figure. According to this Reuters write-up, Kasper told Vatican Radio’s German-language program that he was not consulted on the pontiff’s decision to rehabilitate the schismatic Traditionalist bishops–one an overt Holocaust denier, the rest associated with dodgy statements on Jews.
“There wasn’t enough talking with each other in the Vatican and there are no longer checks to see where problems could arise,” said Cardinal Walter Kasper in a blunt interview with Vatican Radio’s German program, broadcast on Monday night……Vatican sources and officials had said privately the decision was taken without wide consultation. Kasper, who was left in the dark, appeared to be venting his frustration.
“Of course, explaining something after the fact is always much more difficult than if one did it right away. I would have also liked to see more communication in advance,” said the cardinal, who like Pope Benedict is German.
“I’m watching this debate with great concern. Nobody can be pleased that misunderstandings have turned up. Mistakes in the management of the curia (Vatican administration) have certainly also been made. I want to say that very clearly,” he said.
This “mistakes have been made” line is a recurring theme even as others speak out about the pope’s move. At “Whispers,” Rocco has a good roundup, including the archbishop of Hamburg saying Benedict should have lifted the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson only if he had recanted his “unspeakable” claim that the Nazis did not use gas chambers. Archbishop Werner Thissen also criticized the Vatican for “sloppy” management. Also, Bishop Gebhard Fuerst of Rottenburg-Stuttgart “branded the rehabilitation ‘a betrayal of trust, especially among Jewish sisters and brothers in their relationship to the church’ and and last week, Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, the bishop in Pope Benedict’s home city of Regensburg, said Williamson would not be welcome in its churches.”
Rocco also noted that Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, a close friend and former student of Professor Ratzinger, said in an interview with Austria’s state broadcaster that “he who denies the Holocaust cannot be rehabilitated within the church.” (Such statements in themselves could be cause for debate.)
But Schonborn also distinguished “between the nature of Benedict’s ‘intent’ for an ‘outstretched hand’ and a ‘mistake’ on the part of his advisers that failed to ‘examine the matter carefully’,” Rocco writes.
The pope’s commincation apparatus also came under fire by another Jesuit, Fr. Thomas Reese, a leading political scientist of the church, who told Reuters:
“This and other controversies point to a fatal systemic flaw in the Benedict papacy that is destroying his effectiveness as pope: He does not consult experts who might challenge his views and inclinations,” said Father Tom Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Centre at Georgetown University.”He is surrounded by people who are not as smart as he is and who would never think of questioning him. A smart man surrounded by less than smart people will always get in more trouble than an average man who consults smart people who are experts in their fields,” said Reese, a leading U.S. Jesuit.
There may be something to be said for blaming a bad communications strategy, but I think this can also be a way of deflecting responsibility for that strategy from Benedict–after all, similar uproars have resulted from his statements many times before, as pope and as cardinal, and they often came after advisers strongly urged him to take another course or to do more prepratory work. Moreover, the man and the message must also be looked at for what they are, and for what no manner of p.r. could finesse.
As Charlotte Knobloch, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said: “We’ve heard the pope’s speech about Muslims in Regensburg, another statement about judging the Protestant church, then about evangelising Jews, the old Latin Mass, and now the rehabilitiation of a Holocaust denier. I don’t think this is a coincidence. The pope is a highly educated man. He says what’s being thought in the Church.”
The idea that the Pope has been badly advised or ill served by those around him is no excuse for his handling of the SSPXers. He himself has chosen those who advise him and who belong to his inner circle. He has chosen them for who they are, men of his own mindset, even if in a less nuanced version. It is good that undoubtedly loyal Catholics should recognize that the Pope has done something ill considered. It is even better if they can put this recognition into words directly and without interposing the pope’s inner circle as a target so as to leave the Pope himself untouched by any critical note. What would the Apostle Paul have said to Benedict were he with us today. See Galatians.
I agree entirely with Joseph Gannon. I would also recommend the very helpful piece by the veteran John Thavis, “Vatican and traditionalists: A story whose end has not been written,” which is the lead piece today on the Catholic News Service site. Here again we see internal Vatican disagreement, in this instance over various canonical consequences of the pope’s decision. Why were these not considered before the fact?
Hopefully this episode will teach repentant schis.atics not to be anti-Semites, much as the sex abuse outrage hopefully taught priests not to become pederasts and vice-versa.
But no amount if negative publicity should deter the Pope from bold ecumenism, which he announced from the beginning would be his #1 priority.
See II Corinthians.
This episode should not be reduced to “bad publicity.” I realize, Kathy, that you believe those of us who are troubled by this matter are in the grip of the op-ed pages, but even those free of such confusion can see that real damage has already been done to Jewish-Catholic relations.
Thanks for your post, Mr. Gibson. Interesting to read and see Kasper and other European bishops react to this.
Two more pending stories that may only serve to heighten this “communication” issue:
a) Legionnaire of Christ – removing all evidence of Maciel from their midst; allegation that he fathered children and led a double life;
b) expected announcement of new NYC archbishop? Interpretations of this appointment will be interesting, to say the least within the context of this latest news.
Yes, I just posted some of the Maciel stuff at “Pontifications”…
http://blog.beliefnet.com/pontifications/2009/02/father-maciel-is-he-your-daddy.html
My, he was active. But will anyone care? I do think this may be a case, however, where such mounting evidence could lead to a necessary catharsis for the movement (order?) by moving away from his legacy and beyond him. That could serve to bring them into the church more closely, something Benedict seems to be trying to do with all the movements, and the LoC in particular. It was he who re-opened the case–thanks again to the courageous victims and journsos Jason Berry and the late Gerald Renner–and Benedict who abolished their “private vows.”
As for NYC, I’ve heard everyhting and will believe it when I see it…
The good news is that the issue regarding those who are against Semitism will be addressed because it is necessary to address this issue before these bishops can enter into communion with the Church. We all know that to be Catholic and against Semitism is an oxymoron.
Good for Cardinal Kaspar and the German bishops quoted above. Have we had a peep yet out of the much larger American episcopacy? And if not, why not?
For those in and around Boston, I note that Cardinal Kaspar is to be speaking at St. Paul Church on Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge on March 25 as part of their Spring Lecture Series. Details to follow, and I imagine they’ll be posted on the website:
http://www.stpaulparish.org/homepage.html
W.hile I’ve pretty much had my say on this, I congratulate Joe Gannon for getting to the heart of things immediately
Clearly there’s nothinhg wrong with criticizing the Pope’s decsions, as any student of basic church history could tell you.
But from the good old US hierachy and others we get blame tossed at Willaimson/Wagner et al, or the O”Malley apologetic(see Boston Globe yesterday) or the nice softening of “management mistakes” by the Curia.
I’d continue to suggest that the inability or unwillingness of our hierachy to directly criticize the Holy Father is a sign of quite immature leadership.
(Bill D. -I saw the rumors (from the right) on a New York Archbishop.
Guys like Meyers would be a disaster for many New Yorkers and furhet heighten division there -although that’s the way the game seem to be going now.)
Now that BXVI ‘threw Cardinal Levada CDF under the bus’ by not consulting CDF on SSPX , will the bus turn out to be the Fifth AVE line … next Cardinal A/B of NY? An American belongs at home…
Oh, so now it’s the fault of B16′s advisors. How about “the devil made me do it?”
Maybe it was “management errors” ….. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,605187,00.html
As has been said by some text-messagers: GMAFB!
It is time to have an open and thorough investigation of the Holocaust and all other Crimes of World War II instead of putting people in Prison who do not agree with the officially mandated truths about World War II.
What are you referring to, Anton?
Card. George speaks up–good for him: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2009/02/us_bishops_slam.html
It strikes me that the biggest gaffe was the failure to take the SSPXers seriously. IMHO they are not a group of lost boys looking for a helping hand to return to the fold. On the contrary they are bent on world domination and want to bring the Church back into communion with the SSPX. Their website is an eye opener, for those who have eyes to see!
Thanks again, Joseph, for keeping the focus on BXVI’s wisdom to readmit these guys (and appoint Wagner.)
I think in the US, it’s an easy decision to condemn arrant anti-semitism.
I have questions about Europe.
Is anti-semitism still a large factor in Germany(and I just don’t mean marching brown shirts)? In Italy? France? Spain?
Could some of that be lying inder the surface among some high placed Churchmen there?
Is Church leadership willing to compromise with that (if it exists, as say it does with Wagner) if such folk are otherwise ideologically loyal?
And what does that say?….
Anyone catch this at the end of Rocco’s post on Card. George’s response?
http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2009/02/act-of-mercy-vs-understandable-outrage.html
That kind of victimology has no place in this fandango.
Oh, man. Attention Vatican officials: that’s not the dossier you need to be compiling!
I’m afraid I am confused. Or more confused! Mons.Williamson is on record as having publicly denied the Holocaust for close to two decades. The paranoid theory about the sudden airing of the Swedish interview just doesn’t hold water.
Sadly, Benedict’s actions are about Empire. Those hundred of thousands who follow the Society of Pius X. Empire over principles. Orthodoxy over Christianity.
Paradoxically, Benedict is making it easier for people to follow their consciences and not follow the dead leadership prominent in chanceries. The liberty of the children of God has come about in strange ways.
This is a very lost person who is the bishop of Rome.
I just read the Italian report, and it seems credible, if unbelievable. But this being he Vatican, “Believe because it is absurd.”
Trying to pin it all on a “homosexual” and “abortion” activist in France also smacks of scapegoating–and I use the word deliberately.
Needless to say, the dossier sounds like the brainchild of a couple of cranks. Has anyone seen Cheney & Co lately? Just askin’…
PS Found ‘em!
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/cheney_dunk_tank_raises_800
“Attention Vatican officials’, this is a good time for a lesson on what is necessary to be in full communion with the Catholic Church. There are some who still do not understand “these bishops are still suspended”.
What I really don’t understand, besides Grant’s apparent ability to predict the long-term implications of things that are just happening, is this: whatever has become of the champions of free speech and diversity? What has happened to the big tent and the common ground? “Let us bring the gifts that differ,” and all that?
Seriously, are there limits to the thoughts and behaviors that Catholics ought to have? If there are boundaries, what are they?
“Whatever has become of the champions of free speech and diversity? What has happened to the big tent and the common ground? ‘Let us bring the gifts that differ,’ and all that?…Seriously, are there limits to the thoughts and behaviors that Catholics ought to have? If there are boundaries, what are they?”
Quick, call the FBI–someone has stolen Kathy’s idnetity and relaced it with a CTA zombie.
As for Grant’s gift of prophecy, I wouldn’t give him too much credit–it may be that he is simply reflecting what everyone in the entire Catholic and Jewish world and beyond are saying. Just a guess.
“THE SPIRIT OF VATICAN II!! THE SPIRIT OF VATICAN II!!”
Whoa, that was weird.
Elaine addressed this issue several threads ago: being hatefully bigoted is not grounds for excommunication. So it’s not a barrier to the lifting of an excommunication. Could someone please give a theological reason otherwise? Because the usually sober Card Schoenborn seems to have let us down here.
And there is such a thing as a news cycle.
If you spit up pea soup and start talking dirty, Kathy, I’m calling Max von Sydow.
I don’t see any prophesies from Grant. I see a reference to the “real damage [that] has already been done to Jewish-Catholic relations.” Like, for example, the chief rabbinate of Israel severing ties with the Vatican, canceling a meeting scheduled for March, and saying, “It will be very difficult for the chief rabbinate of Israel to continue its dialogue with the Vatican as before.” To cite one example. If that’s long-term, then the future is here!
I don’t think the hypocrisy angle is working here, Kathy. However canonically defensible, this lifting-of-excommunication business has been communicated in a way that has led to completely avoidable scandal. You don’t have to be a reactionary or a hypocrite to acknowledge that and regret it.
There are some who still do not understand “these bishops are still suspended”.
This is true, Nancy. And it seems to include the bishops themselves, at least judging from their recent statements.
Mollie, every Enneagram-labyrinth-Zen retreat led by consecrated Religious gives rise to completely avoidable scandal, and I don’t hear many calls for accountability.
I’m willng to wait and see on history. My guess is, when things cool off, diplomacy will follow.
Kathy, if you honestly think that’s a fair equivalency, then we’ll have to agree to disagree.
There’s a certain cumulative effect, Mollie. Many, many instances of cheezball-to-erroneous liturgical and other exercises that ought to have been Catholic. For forty years! Forty years of DIY religion in the Catholic Church. The spiritual vapidity is an enormous scandal, and you won’t see it in the papers.
Because it’s what the papers want.
I’m feeling much better now, David.
You are just not going to convince me (or anybody?) that 40 years of various manifestations of “spiritual vapidity” within the Church is equivalent to 40 years of “DIY religion” outside the Church… that happens to be in direct defiance of 40 years of building relationships of respect with the Jews and other non-Catholic communities. It isn’t just bias, or some kind of blind spot, that leads “the papers” to focus on the scandal of institutional anti-Semitism over less-than-orthodox religious practice. This is absurd.
Not my point at all, Mollie. The press is not wrong to pick this up. But it does have a bias towards secularism and would not even think of picking up a story that shows sectarian commitment in a positive light. Kudos go to the vague Christians or the humanist Christians, never to the cultic Christians or the moralistic Christians.
I used to work with these people, Mollie. I know what stories are worth bothering to pitch to them, and I’ve seen their style sheets.
As I see it, there is an enormously important fact being overlooked in this very ugly story. It is that a significant number of bishops of unquestionably good standing in the Chirch has actually had the courage to talk back to Rome in no uncertain terms and to do it •Publicly•.
When was the last time such a thing happened in the Church? Bishop Robinson of Austraiia has criticized Rome, but no doubt Rome sees him as a sort of isolated crank.
And perhaps most importsnt of all, they have criticized the Pope.
No, the issue is not aatter of a dogma, of Revelation. But isn’t antiSemitism a matter of morals?
Kathy
You’re right, the press is biased towards secularism (and sensationalism), but have you not noticed that it not the press but the Christians who are shocked by B16′s action?
Michael, are these the same Christians who sat panicking with their fingers crossed on their own denominations’ files of abusers while the Catholics got knocked around in public for five years?
Or the Christians who make every difficult ecclesiastical situation into another brick in the wall for changing the Church into a liberal democracy?
The public opinion argument is readily available. But the theological argument is still lacking. And the question of freedom of religion is still up in the air: is the Catholic Church free, in the EU and the States, to be cultic and hierarchical?
No, Kathy, it’s the Christians who are shocked by antiSemitism and shocked by a pope who isn’t shocked by antiSemitism.
Michael, when exactly did he say that he wasn’t shocked by anti-Semitism? On the other hand, how many times has he said the direct opposite? And what was he going to say in Israel?
Having your excommunication lifted is not the same thing as being appointed ambassador. It’s saying, you’re not an exile. You may live on our shores.
And then appears this video, so very handy…
Good for Cardinal George, at least, for speaking out. Maybe his example will encourage some of his fellows to raise their heads out of the foxholes.
I think it is important to recall a couple of things here:
One, the bishops are criticizing the way this was done, not the content of the act. They are careful to support and endorse the pope’s actions, and isolate the debate on anti-Semitism of the SSPX, and specifically Williamson. They are I think effectively letting it be known that no further moves can be made without total acceptance of V2 by the SSPX, and that’s to the good.
Two, there would have been no criticisms without media scrutiny and amplification. Cardinal George’s statement came 11 days after the decree was issued. The Maciel scandal would have remained buried, the sexual abuse scandal, and on and on without media scrutiny (and firstly the courage of victims). Whatever one thinks of the “media,” they/we are the ones uncovering and proclaiming truths that the church does not. That is the church’s challenge, not the media’s fault. God writes straight with crooked lines. Those lines run through the sacred and the secular.
David:
Your first point is well taken.
Your second point lacks sufficient nuance, I think. The media proclaims partial truths, always has, always will. Editorial policies have their own specific gravity and writers and editors always affect the story. “Every translation is an interpretation,” as my NT prof used to say.
Kathy, changing the subject is just not going to work. There’s no reason this couldn’t have been handled better, and pointing that out isn’t persecuting anybody.
Mollie,
I don’t see one single subject here, and neither do Commonweal readers, whose responses to earlier threads very quickly devolved into a discussion of vestments and monarchy.
Defending the recent indefensibles is bad enough, but Kathy’s blame the days of fredom and all kinds of liturgical misdeeds and the awful media is a particularly pitiable apologetic that normally I would not grace with a post – except it’s so bad!
C’mon, Bob, I said “The Spirit of Vatican II,” what more can you want from me?
Almost made my tongue spin off its roller.
So would you please lighten up, and if you would be so kind, could your future ad hominems contain criticisms and insights in addition to “I don’t like what Kathy said.” which is all you said above?
Kathy: saying you have presented a “pitiable apologetic” may be short on details, but it’s not actually “ad hominem.”
It’s bare negativity, aimed at another. So yes, it’s an ad hominem attack. Why is it not only allowed, but defended?
No, Kathy, it isn’t. Ad hominem would be insulting you; Bob is criticizing what you have contributed to this discussion. If you’re allowed to tell people you think they’re wrong, so is Bob.
If he had offered criticism, I wouldn’t have complained. Instead he offered derision, only, and in several ways in one brief comment.
Look, why don’t we let it go for now, because it’s almost certain to happen again soon enough anyway.
The point is, Kathy, it’s not “ad hominem,” and if you continue to accuse people of attacking you personally and unfairly when they haven’t, then, yes, you’ll be reminded of what “ad hominem” means.
If you feel Bob (or anyone) ought to elaborate on their criticism, go ahead and ask. But you’re not allowed to claim you’re being persecuted when you don’t like what someone says.
Thanks for clarifying the rules of discourse here, Mollie.