Benedict XVI at Auschwitz
June 7, 2006, 10:25 am
Posted by Grant Gallicho
Here’s a sneak preview of our June 16 editorial. A sample:
Ostensibly designed to draw attention to the church’s Jewish origins,
and to embrace the two faiths’ shared love for God, Benedict’s remarks
may have the opposite effect. It seems unlikely that many Jews will
take consolation from the theological assertion that the systematic
murder of 6 million–murders carried out in nearly every instance by
baptized, and in many cases even believing, Christians–was “ultimately”
an assault on Christian faith. The Holocaust was a desecration of many
things, surely; but first and last it was about the slaughter of the
Jews.
Now go read the whole thing. Comments are open. Fire away.
I think this editorial misreads the crucial passage in Benedict’s speech and makes a mistake in emphasis. Commonweal believes that Benedict was saying that the Holcaust was “ultimately” an assault on Christianity, and that this does not do justice to the murder of so many Jews. Other phrases in the speech acknowledge the goal of the Holocaust: : “destroying Israel;” “to crush the entire Jewish people.”
When Benedict posits that there was even a further goal — what they “ultimately” wanted — he is referring to the killing of God and replacing the faith of israel, (the taproot of Christianity) with faith in power and the rule of man. Both Christianity and Judaism have faith in the God of Abraham and Sinai; the ultimate goal was to kill that God and substitute the rule of man. It is a mistake to read the sentence in question as ultimately an attack on the Christian faith.
As I understand, the speech was delivered in Italian, and the sense of that passage seems a little clearer there:
“Se questo popolo, semplicemente con la sua esistenza, costituisce una testimonianza di quel Dio che ha parlato all’uomo e lo prende in carico, allora quel Dio doveva finalmente essere morto e il dominio appartenere soltanto all’uomo – a loro stessi che si ritenevano i forti che avevano saputo impadronirsi del mondo. Con la distruzione di Israele, con la Shoa, volevano, in fin dei conti, strappare anche la radice, su cui si basa la fede cristiana, sostituendola definitivamente con la fede fatta da sé, la fede nel dominio dell’uomo, del forte.”
I don’t think a fair reading of this can lead to the supersessionist construction Commonweal gives, and unnecessarily finds cause for offense.
Apologies for spelling, typos and other mistakes in the above post — I hit the “post” button by mistake before finishing.
I think that Benedict’s Italian says at the very least that Nazism was an attack on the foundations from which Christianity arose and on the God of Christianity. That seems to me, and not all that indirectly, to mean an attack on Christianity itself. And there is something to that, perhaps. But above all the Nazis regarded Jews as vermin. If they could not be removed by emigration from the sphere of power of the new Germany, they must be systematically annihilated. As for the Christians, at least in name, who supported this enterprise, one can hardly deny that the odious and one must also say deeply muddleheaded anti-Judaism of the Christian churches throughout the centuries made it all too easy.
I admire your editorial. You say much that needs to be said. Benedict had two difficulties to overcome. He is a German and was, however lukewarmly, a German soldier. He is also the spokesman for the largest Christian denomination with its unhappy history in the matter of the Jewish people–and I am not at all talking about Pius XII. He finessed the first difficulty by insisting that he came as a Catholic–he might better have said Christian–rather than as a German. The second difficulty he did not successfully address. You do well.
Could the Pope as a German, a Christian, and a Catholic have said something everyone would have thought sounded “right”? I doubt it.
Maybe the bottom-line question is this: Flawed as the message may have been, was the Pope’s trip and speech better than staying home and never mentioning Auschwitz at all?
I checked Tikkun’s Web site to get their editors’ take, but didn’t see any coverage. Possibly the event hit after their deadline for May/June. For those interested in seeing what might crop up, the site is http://www.tikkun.org.
The trip to Auschwitz was obviously very difficult for Pope Benedict. It seems to have been next to impossible for him to speak the words of repentance that were needed to meet the occasion. He writes well, and speaks so clearly that it is impossible to miss his main point. But the heart of his message, the key idea that the Nazi persecution of the Jews was an effort to “kill God” and their effort to destroy Israel was a covert attack on Christianity in order to replace it with a faith of their own invention, was strangely off the mark.
When Benedict returned to Italy he took the opportunity to reflect on and review his trip, and, taking note of the upset caused by his lack of focus on Jewish suffering, spoke out more forcefully, condemning anti-Semitism and deploring the treatment of the Jews at Auschwitz.. But even while making this point, he returned to his idée fixe, saying “ May modern humanity not forget Auschwitz and the other ‘death factories’ where the Nazi regime attempted to eliminate God in order to take his place.”
John Allen’s joy that the Pope had gotten past “Christian guilt for complicity in the Holocaust as a point of departure” at Auschwitz and his ecstatic praise of Benedict’s performance pass belief. But it is a comfort to see that the editors of Commonweal were able to put what happened in a useful perspective. In many of his recent statements Pope Benedict has expressed a strong animus against what the editors term “secular modernity.” But the Christian tradition in which those who ran Auschwitz were raised badly needed the critique and the example of those “secularizing forces that resisted the church’s authority in the name of freedom and dignity for Jews.” And it still does.
While in no way wishing to downplay the horrendous genocide against the Jewish people undertaken with frightening calculation by Nazi Germany, Benedict also pointed out that other ethnicities were targeted for elimination, or reduction. To that end, 6 million Poles, despite that nation’s historical anti-Semitism, were slaughtered. Other groups, like the Roma, were also targeted for complete annhilation, not to mention physically and mentally handicapped people, as well as the mentally ill. Purification of memory requires painful and complete honesty. This mean not forgetting ANY of the victims and making the vow NEVER AGAIN and actually meaning it.
Purification of memory also requires us to remember who courageously resisted evil. It means holding them up as examples of what each of us are called to do in the face of evil, which, sadly, persists in the world- RESIST EVEN TO THE SHEDDING OF OUR OWN BLOOD!
All in all, the Holy Father’s remarks were well-balanced. I agree with Jean that the Holy Father could have never pleased anyone. After all, in the face of such evil, where does one even begin, let alone end? It seems somewhat of a Ratzingarian trait when put in a situation where it is impossible to please everybody, like his visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, to say what needs to be said. Nazism was anti-God. Mit Brennender Sorge even points this out. His remarks, far from being superseccessionist, recognizes the deep, deep necessity of Jews for Christians.
Susan Gannon wrote, also quoting the editorial:
“But the Christian tradition in which those who ran Auschwitz were raised badly needed the critique and the example of those “secularizing forces that resisted the church’s authority in the name of freedom and dignity for Jews.” And it still does.”
Perhaps when correcting orthodoxy the sentence above can be continuously read. In Jesus’ most powerful response concerning who is our neighbor, he did not ask the Good Samaritan to recite the creed but let his actions speak for themselves.
Why people continue to favor orthodoxy over orthopraxy is the problem. It does not help saying that in an ideal world they should be the same because they do not and orthopraxy (not orthodoxy) covers a multitude of sins.
Actually we need both orthodoxy and orthopraxy they work together when used in a balanced way. I also believe that there is always some body that will take whatever the Pope does apart and will never be happy with what he does or says. Sometimes we each need to step back and “really” listen to what he says. We can then ask God for the Grace to understand the truth in what Pope Benedict XVI is trying to convey.
Another group that was persecuted by the Nazis and is conveniently overlooked on a regular basis …. see the section entitled “Concentration Camps.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gays_in_Nazi_Germany_and_the_Holocaust
One thing about the Pope’s visit that really piuzzled me was the adoption on his part of the post-Holocaust theology of the absence of God. This does not seem to me to be consistent with Ratzinger’s past theological thinking. All fine and good. But the press never really picked up on the series of questions he asked God: “Where were you?” “Why were you silent?” Now shouldn’t someone be asking Ratzinger where he was and why he was silent at the time? Is it just me or was there something bizarre and disappointing in his exchange with God? Shouldn’t he have acknowledged that he was the silent one and he was absent from the light of the Jews. It struck me too as being a bit arrogant, if not conveniently self-serving.
I think your editorial makes many good points by raising questions for historians to ponder when they consider this chapter of Benedict’s papacy.
When Ivan Karamzov observed that without God all is permitted, it wasn’t “a tidy theological syllogism.” It is fitting that a Pope remind us in a place of evil that man is dependent on God. His reflections weren’t offered in the spirit of a “proof text against atheism” which seems to get the tone of the speech exactly wrong: as the editorial itself observed, the speech noted God’s silence, and went on to quote the Psalmist’s cry that God rouse himself from sleep! Some proof.
Not everything can be said at once — the purification of memory is a continuing obligation– which does not mean that nothing should be said.
Whatever the purification of memory is (sounds like a lobotomy) it surely should not be the same as the obliteration of memory.
The editorial noted the question of God’s silence but did not engage the question of Ratzinger’s silence. There were plenty of decent Germans including scores of religious and priests who did not remain silent, and who paid with their blood for standing up to the Nazis. Ratzinger is not among them. He has some explaining to do.
Purification of memory comes from John Paul II and, according to him, is basically being brutally honest about what occurred during Hitler’s violent and destructive reign. Perhaps “reckoning” would be a more colloquial way of putting it. Anyway, it is a necssary precondition to reconciliation. So, it is the furthest thing from a lobotomy- it is an honest and, therefore, necessarily painful coming-to-grips with the truth about the Shoah. Of course, this includes examining the ugly thread of Christian anti-Semitism which, without doubt, contributed to the Nazis’ campaign of extermination against European Jews.
This puts me in mind of Bill’s comments on the relationship or, according to his take, the unrelated nature of orthodoxy to orthopraxis. Christian orthodoxy teaches that we are saved by faith and not by works. More than a slogan or a neat summing up, this bit of revelation becomes the basis for forgiveness. So, while orthopraxis (to quote Bill paraphrase St. Peter) may cover a multitude of sins, our works will not save us.
I think Deus Caritas Est makes a strong case that orthopraxy and orthodoxy, while distinguishable, are, to some degree and ideally, inseparable. After all, both flow from love. If orthodoxy, in its essence, means understanding in the first instance that we are loved, orthopraxis becomes the only appropriate response to first being loved by, in turn, loving.
I agree that doing the right thing does not require believing the right way. The Good Samaritan stands as a statement by our Lord himself in support of this position. One can find many courageous Nazi resisters among people of differing beliefs as well as from among those who professed no religious faith.
It is also true that a Christian can believe correctly and yet lack the moral courage, or merely lack enough concern, to act. However, that person would betray his/her beliefs. Without engaging in too much eisegesis, I believe this is what Benedict was articulating: Genuine Christian faith calls Christians to witness (martyria) in the face of evil.
So, again, by pointing to those whose orthodoxy caused them to witness to a love stronger than death, Benedict took the correct approach.
In many ways the editorial raises important issues, and I don’t disagree with the history it invokes. But there’s more to Benedict’s argument, even as history and not merely as theology, than the editorial seems to acknowledge.
FDR’s prayer on D-Day — exactly 62 years to the day before the editorial — spoke of “our religion” as one of the things under attack by the Nazis:
“Almighty God: our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.”
IMO that gets it right. The only thing that those general words conceal is the ignorance/indifference in the Christian world at that time to the fact that the Jewish people were the primary target among all of the suffering humanity. Nothing Benedict said, though, would seem to contradict that.
This appeared in Commonweal’s pages in December 1939 (I just saw it in “Commonweal Confronts the Century”):
“The enemy with whom we are dealing holds high the banner of blasphemy and of pagan empire; the alliance of atheism with idolatrous racism has uncovered its true countenance. But if it acts in its true character of iniquity by swallowing and by absorbing the things of God into the things of Caesar, we act in our true character of justice by maintaining the distinction between them, even though the temporal cause which we defend is in closest relation to the sacred welfare of souls.”
- Jacques Maritain
That’s a perspective still widely held, at Commonweal as elsewhere, I’m sure. I see nothing wrong with Benedict pointing to it, though I think that cool heads can disagree on the appropriateness of doing so at Auschwitz.
The editorial opens by employing an either-or choice, where the Nazis “ultimately” aimed for the destruction of God and “not” the destruction of the Jews, or vice versa. Benedict used the words “deep down” to describe Nazi aims, and that implicitly recognizes the difference between the immediate Nazi aim (the Jewish Holocaust) and larger historical aims (German power untrammeled by ethics, Church, or God).
Finally, I think that Benedict is very right to be hard on the kind of secular modernity that ridicules faith. When I read the speech, I did not see a reference to secularism in and of itself. But cool heads can disagree.
>>Orthopraxy (not orthodoxy) covers a multitude of sins<<
St, Paul call your office.
Scott:
“Christian orthodoxy teaches that we are saved by faith and not by works.” ?
The last time I looked the letter of James was still canonical.
Kevin:
Yes, Hitler and his crew were enemies of Christianity as well as Judaism. Nonetheless it seems fair to say that Benedict’s language, seeming as it does, to elide the fact that Hitler’s goal of directly and finally EXTERMINATING ALL JEWS had a certain priority in his plans must be taken as either gauche, as I take it, or disingenous, as I would not care to take it.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was asked why he was involved against the war in Vietnam, he said if you are for people you are for them everywhere. As we question the German people we should remind ourselves that democracy did not come for the blacks in this country until the late 50′s and thereafter.
Perhaps we cannot compare it to the Holocaust, but when you humiliate one segment of the population, daily, death might be a better option. And we have television, print and radio evidence of the fierce resistance of the South in denying democracy to a substantial part of the population.
The Germans had no Civil Rights Commission, so we do not know how they would have defended the Jews if they had the chance. But we know that white people in the South fiercely opposed all efforts to give Blacks the vote and only gave in when the law went after them.
It would probably be a painful education to see how all the Catholic and Christian churches acted with Blacks even in the North after the Civil War.
Joseph:
“The last time I looked the letter of James was still canonical.”
Last time I checked Pelagianism was still a heresy.
True, Bill, as Christians in the U.S. we certainly have some reckoning to do with our past. As we all know, our country still bears the wounds of slavery and post-Civil oppression. I vehemently disagree, however, that “death might be a better option.”
Somehow we got diverted to justification. On one hand it seems simple while on the other few get it right. For example, a lowly Mexican standing on the street corner looking for a job may well be greater in the eyes of God while a theologian who writes fifty books and even becomes a martyr can very well be less.
This is what justification means that no works are good unless one gives God the complete credit, but the works, orthopraxy, are necessary. So the clear lesson in Matt:25: 31-46 applies to one who has faith first.
Scott:
“So faith, if it has no works, is dead” James 2:17
About 30 or so years ago, my parish had a covenant relationship (or something akin to it) with a nearby Lutheran parish. Naturally, the “faith vs. good works” matter came up in discussion.
Finally, I suggested to members of our little ecumenical group that maybe this matter could be practically resolved by understanding that a genuine faith will necessarily manifest itself in good works. The Lutheran pastor agreed with this statement.
I’ve held it ever since, and it seems to work for me when I give it a chance :).
Joseph:
If you take the effort to read my initial post you’ll see that it is quite specific on the realtionship between faith works that it is very much in accord with what is written in St. James’ letter.
One of the niceties of communicating in this way is to get beyond sound-bites and over-simplifications in which we are awash.
Scott:
I have reread your post and I am unable to to see how it can be construed as you would like. There is also the question of Pelagianism. According to the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church: “Theologically Pelagianism is the heresy which holds that man can take intial and fundamental steps toward salvation by his own efforts apart from Divine grace.” To doubt the soundness of the your proposition, viz., that Christian orthodoxy teaches that we are saved by faith and not by works, does not seem to me to suggest that we can be saved without grace or that we can by works somehow merit grace. But others may judge for themselves.
Thanks G5pod for an insightful comment. Let me divert my comments at first to it. Freud’s saying ‘the reaction to death is always oral’ is handed down in tradtion. Here, Pope Benedict is incorporating the Jewish perspective in his theology, surely the most considerate evidence that he identifies with the victims. It seems to me he does add his perspective as a German Catholic as well. It was the Lutheran precincts of Germany, not the Catholic, that gave electoral strength to the Nazis, cf. “Leftism’ by Kuehnelt -Leddin, and recall that the ‘Concordat’ beween Pius XII and Germany was sought by Hitler to dissolve the Christian Democratic Party, a Catholic party and rival to the Nazis. It was Martin Luther, not any Catholic prelate, who had historically spoken so viciously against the Jews. The Concordat established perhaps some of Hitler’s ‘false promises’ that the pope spoke of. I once saw from an emigrant friend a traditional Catholic funeral card with the Crucifxion and Mary, the few others on one side, and the picture of a Nazi soldier on the other. This was her father, killed early on the Russian front. And of course, the Holocaust was started under cover of war. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote “Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977″ which mentions an episode in which his schoolmates were given a choice of humiliation or joining an elite Nazi unit; he was excused or kicked out by announcing that he was going to be a priest. So the idea of Germans being ‘used and abused’ would seem to reflect his true feelings whether it is pc or not.