I INSIGHT
I
t was like the first touch of a den-
tist's tool on an abscessed tooth:
the Pope's recent meeting with
Kurt Waldheim, president of
Austria and accused ex-Nazi,
scraped against raw nerves in Jewish
communities throughout the world.
But the surprise and agony have
obscured some basic points about
Vatican-Jewish relations, according to
Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, interna-
tional affairs director for the
American Jewish Committee and a
man whose professional life has
revolved around the complex hub of
Catholic-Jewish relations. Tanen-
baum, who played a key role in the
Vatican II council that changed the
face of modern Catholicism and
rebuilt the foundations of Catholic-
Jewish relations, is now point man in
the effort to repair the damage done
by the pontiff's symbolic embracing of
the Austrian leader.
In discussions currently under-
way among the American Jewish
leadership, Tanenbaum is helping
thrash out a consensus about who
should attend the recently announc-
ed meeting with the pope, what the
agenda should be, and how Jewish
groups should respond to the pontiff's
upcoming visit to the United States.
In daily calls to the pope's key ad-
visors in Rome, he is trying to repre-
sent an American Jewish communi-
ty that is far from united on the com-
plex issues radiating from the
Waldheim affair.
Some days, Tanenbaum goes to
work at his E. 56th Street office in
Manhattan without knowing if he'll
be eating dinner in New York or in
Rome.
As the pace of negotiations picks
up, Tanenbaum has an unshakable
conviction that the Waldheim fiasco
can turn out to be a positive develop-
ment in Jewish-Catholic relations.
The new level of dialogue that has
developed in the past month, he says,
can reinforce positive changes that
have taken place in Catholic theology
and its practice in the past twenty
years.
At the same time, he argues, the
current discussions can be an impor-
tant element in derailing a more
ominous trend in Church thinking.
"We are seeing the beginnings of a
trend towards revisionism within the
Church with respect to its role in the
Holocaust," he says. "It is important
that we use these discussions to fight
back this trend. That's why what we
do in the next few weeks is so crucial."
Last week the Vatican made
public a letter from the pope express-
ing sympathy with Jews over the
Holocaust, which was seen as an ef-
fort to defuse the upcoming meeting
with Jewish leaders. But Tanenbaum
and others want more substance.
Clearly, the current crisis is the
greatest challenge in Tanenbaum's
19b A
rOtrAAV •Alin• 00 1007
• '
PREPARING
FOR THE POP
Marc Tanenbaum
and U.S. Jewish leaders
are agonizing over
their agenda for meeting
Pope John Paul II
JAMES DAVID BESSER
Special to The Jewish News
career. Critics of his interfaith efforts
point to the pope's meeting with
Waldheim as proof that such dialogue
is in vain, but he is insistent that
substantive good can be
accomplished.
There is not much debate that the
Catholic Church has made some
dramatic changes in its relationship
to Jews. But it is also true that the
church of 1987 is operating in a vast-
ly altered political and social
landscape.
For one thing, there have been
several popes since the death of John
XXIII, and the current occupant of
the Throne of St. Peter is a Pole.
Although Tanenbaum insists that
John Paul II's background is not
necessarily related to disturbing
trends in the church, he agrees that
the pontiff carries a different kind of
emotional baggage into his job.
Also, the top Church hierarchy
has drifted towards a new kind of
theological conservatism. And it is
operating in a changing world. The
Church is enjoying its greatest growth
in Africa and South America, areas
that have moved towards a political
alignment that most Jewish leaders
considerable unfavorable.
It is in this context that the pope's
decision to meet with Kurt Waldheim,
whose Nazi past was being uncovered
by Jewish organizations and several
European publications, exploded like
a terrorist's bomb.
"The pope's meeting was a sur-
prise to everybody, including the
members of the Curia in Rome:"
Tanenbaum says. "I talked to a half-
dozen cardinals when I was there in
July, and they hadn't known about it
in advance. It was sprung on them,
too — mainly because the top people
wanted to contain the fallout. They
knew, apparently, they were going to
have all these problems — but the
meeting with Waldheim was conceiv-
ed in terms of their foreign policy rela-
tionships with Austria. Clearly, they
felt that those considerations
outweighed the reaction that could be
expected. This may not have been an
accurate calculation."
When the magnitude of the
worldwide reaction became clear —
and when Jewish groups in America
angrily canceled plans for a symbolic
meeting with the pope during his
September trip to Miami — the
Vatican began seeking ways to repair
the damage, an effort that Tanen-
baum sees as highly significant.
Initially, there was talk of a
private audience for Jewish leaders at
the beginning of the Miami visit.
Tanenbaum pressed for a papal visit
to New York for substantive talks—
an option that the Vatican saw as a
security nightmare. Another option
was a statement from the pope that
would somehow lay out the Church's
aversion to the entire Nazi ideology.
After a furious round of negotia-
tions, the Vatican finally agreed to a
lengthy meeting in Rome between the
pope and a delegation of Jewish
leaders.
"If Catholic-Jewish relations
weren't important to them;' he says,
"they would have finessed this; they
are geniuses at finessing these kinds
of things. Instead, they are working
very hard to heal the wounds. One of
the most dramatic indications of this
is the fact that we are now scheduled
to have a 90 minute meeting with the
Pope on September 1 at Castle Gan-
dolfo. This is unprecedented; there
has never been a 90 minute meeting
planned between the Jewish com-
munity and the pope — a genuine,
man-to-man meeting around a table.
It's usually a canned speech by him,
a canned speech by the Jewish com-
munity, and that's that. In the past,
it's always been two separate
monologues, not a dialogue."
Although he declines to speculate
about the possible outcomes of the
meeting, Tanenbaum does suggest
that some kind of public statement
correcting this impression of a papal
blessing on Waldheim will be a priori-
ty.
Such a statement, he suggests,
could contribute to a broader goal. "I