Benedict in Jerusalem
The Pope had a full day in Jerusalem and some of his addresses are already posted on the Vatican website. Here is some of what he said to organizations engaged in interreligious dialogue:
Abraham’s first step in faith, and our steps to or from the synagogue, church, mosque or temple, tread the path of our single human history, unfolding along the way, we might say, to the eternal Jerusalem (cf. Rev 21:23). Similarly, every culture with its inner capacity to give and receive gives expression to the one human nature. Yet, the individual is never fully expressed through his or her own culture, but transcends it in the constant search for something beyond. From this perspective, dear friends, we see the possibility of a unity which is not dependent upon uniformity. While the differences we explore in inter-religious dialogue may at times appear as barriers, they need not overshadow the common sense of awe and respect for the universal, for the absolute and for truth, which impel religious peoples to converse with one another in the first place. Indeed it is the shared conviction that these transcendent realities have their source in – and bear traces of – the Almighty that believers uphold before each other, our organizations, our society, our world. In this way not only do we enrich culture but we shape it: lives of religious fidelity echo God’s irruptive presence and so form a culture not defined by boundaries of time or place but fundamentally shaped by the principles and actions that stem from belief.
Religious belief presupposes truth. The one who believes is the one who seeks truth and lives by it. Although the medium by which we understand the discovery and communication of truth differs in part from religion to religion, we should not be deterred in our efforts to bear witness to truth’s power. Together we can proclaim that God exists and can be known, that the earth is his creation, that we are his creatures, and that he calls every man and woman to a way of life that respects his design for the world. Friends, if we believe we have a criterion of judgment and discernment which is divine in origin and intended for all humanity, then we cannot tire of bringing that knowledge to bear on civic life. Truth should be offered to all; it serves all members of society. It sheds light on the foundation of morality and ethics, and suffuses reason with the strength to reach beyond its own limitations in order to give expression to our deepest common aspirations. Far from threatening the tolerance of differences or cultural plurality, truth makes consensus possible and keeps public debate rational, honest and accountable, and opens the gateway to peace. Fostering the will to be obedient to the truth in fact broadens our concept of reason and its scope of application, and makes possible the genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.
Father,
I posted this note to Cathleen Kaveny’s latest blog. Perhaps I should have posted it here.
An open appeal to the one true You.
Dear God,
If Pope Benedict XVI and his Muslim counterparts want to cut to the chase, they need only focus their discussions on a few key questions.
Do You, the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful One have the ability to save any man of your choosing?
If You have that power, and if You are a just God, does it not seem highly unlikely that You would damn a good person to hell simply for choosing [or being born into] the wrong religion?
If all men can be saved, does that not mean your truth is somehow present in all religions in ways that You have not yet revealed to man?
If no single religion has an exclusive contract with You, does it not follow that no religion has a basis for imposing its beliefs on others – either by stifling the right of any individual to freely practice the religion of his choice, or by committing violent acts against non-believers in your name?
That pious Muslims and Christians [and Jews] behave in ways that are strikingly similar seems to support the notion that your Truth might be operative in all religions in ways that You will not fully reveal until end time [See Book of Revelations].
Choices in the one-true-God debate are ultimately limited to two: fight it out until the last religion standing can unanimously proclaim its version of the one You true [preferred by fanatics], or acknowledge that because humanity’s understanding of You has not yet been fully realized, your truth might be present in all religions in ways that can lead to salvation [preferred by nearly everyone else].
The Catholic Church is full of highly reasoned truth. But it alienates when it insists on its salvific exclusivity. Amen.
Michael Gonyea is a communication consultant, writer, and a product of good Catholic schools.
It is amazing how much Benedict can pack into a short statement; thanks for linking to it.
As the day wore on, there has been some disturbing news about the papal trip, though. One item is that the chief Ashkenazic rabbi, Israel Meir Lau, criticized the pope’s remarks at Yad Vashem. I was a reporter on John Paul II’s trip in 2000 (and co-authored a book about it with Bob Keeler) and remember well that Rabbi Lau spoke of John Paul with tremendous respect and affection – John Paul had known his grandfather from Krakow. So it is surprising and disturbing to hear that he said Benedict’s speech was `devoid of any compassion, any regret, any pain over the horrible tragedy of the six million victims.”
The other item is that a prominent sheikh sidetracked an interreligious ceremony at Notre Dame Center, the church-run hotel just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, with a speech against Israel. This is more like John Paul’s trip. If I’m not mistaken, it was the same sheikh, Taysir al-Tamimi, who walked out on a ceremony in 2000 in which Christian, Muslim and Jewish children were to sing together while the pope, Tamimi and Lau planted olive trees in the Notre Dame Center. Just wondering how, with all the planning that goes into these trips, this could have happened twice.
See: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/story/1043573.html
Benedict adopts a very attractive tone here, on the basis of faith in the Creator, the common basis of the three biblical religions. His experience may be giving a more human and dialogal cast to this thinking, and certainly to his rhetoric, than was apparent in documents like Dominus Iesus (2000). He should stay pitched to this level of address, accentuating the positive rather than alleged theological dangers.
Michael,
thank you for your thoughtful reflection. I think it makes a good starting point for respectful discussion.
Joseph,
as you know in your preaching, so much depends on the audience being addressed. I think one can find a similar “dialogal cast” to any number of the Pope’s addresses and homilies. But I am glad that you too are “accentuating the positive.”
Paul,
I pray (as I’m sure you do) for the Pope in this mid-East cauldron where his every word, tear, and tremor is under intense scrutiny.
I am reminded of an experience as a very young priest conducting “renewal weekends” after Vatican II. I was working with a community of women religious, and was saying to the “mother superior” (you see how I date myself) that it was important to attend to the needs of the young sisters. The wise old woman replied: “yes, father, but some people’s needs are insatiable.”
” So it is surprising and disturbing to hear that he said Benedict’s speech was `devoid of any compassion, any regret, any pain over the horrible tragedy of the six million victims.””
Paul: Rabbi Lau’s words as cited in the NYT and the WSJ were a little more specific. Above all, though, think Lau expected Bendict to speak as a German who had been on the ground when the six million were being murdered.
Here’s a link to the NY Times story, with the comments of the Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate and Rabbi Lau. And here is the key passage:
After the event, the chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, Avner Shalev, said the pope’s visit had been “important.” But he said he was sorry that Benedict had not spoken about anti-Semitism or mentioned “the nature of the murderers, the perpetrators,” as “Nazis” or “Germans,” instead offering a more theoretical discourse.
Rabbi Lau, now the chairman of Yad Vashem’s board of directors, also found fault with Benedict’s speech.
“There is a clear difference between ‘killed’ and ‘murdered,’ ” Rabbi Lau, a Holocaust survivor, told Israel TV, The Associated Press reported. “There is a difference between saying millions in the Holocaust and saying six million. The word six was not said.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/world/middleeast/12pope.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
Here is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal’s account, including the Vatican response to the criticisms of Benedict’s remarks:
Many Israelis, however, are still focusing on the pope’s speech Monday night. And the criticism is not only coming from Israel’s hard-line fringe. The Director of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev, and the board chairman Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, himself a Holocaust survivor, both issued rare public rebukes of the pope after his speech, as did parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin.
“He himself comes and speaks to us like a historian, as an observer, as a man who expresses his opinion about things that should never happen, and he was — what can you do? — a part of them,” Mr. Rivlin said during an interview on Israel Radio on Tuesday.
Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi came out forcefully against the criticisms Tuesday.
He argued that many of the omissions the pope was criticized for in Monday’s speech, such as failing to specify the number of Jews that perished in the Holocaust, not singling out the Germans or Nazis as the culpable party, and failing to issue an explicit apology, the pope has said publicly in the past. Just hours earlier on Monday, for example, upon arriving to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, the pope spoke of the “six million victims of the Shoah.”
“He can’t mention everything every time he speaks,” Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said on Monday.
Rev. Lombardi also denied Monday widespread reports that the pope had been a member of the Hitler Youth Corps as a teenager in Germany. The denial appeared to contradict quotes from the pope himself in his 1996 autobiography.
“The pope was never in the Hitler Youth, never, never, never,” Rev. Lombardi said at a press conference. It was unclear why the Vatican had never issued a denial before, even though Pope Benedict’s past involvement with the Hitler Youth has been widely reported since before he became pope in 2005.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124212226456010203.html