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March 5th.
Israel Expert Scores Jews'
Overtures To Pope
JAMES D. BESSER
Washington Correspondent
A
leading Israeli expert
on the Vatican last
week criticized recent
efforts by U.S. Jewish leaders
to negotiate directly with top
papal representatives.
Itzhak Minerbi, assistant
director of economic affairs
for the Israeli Foreign
Ministry, emphasized he was
speaking as an individual, not
as a representative of his
government. Despite this
disclaimer, Minerbi made
clear that his comments
reflected a sentiment popular
in Israel, where dealings with
Catholics are not tinged by
the shared minority status
that affects relations between
American Jews and Catho-
lics.
Minerbi agreed a major
source of the tension between
Jews and Catholics is the
Vatican's persistent refusal to
recognize Israel. He criticized
the argument — advanced by
some U.S. Jewish leaders —
that this diplomatic obstacle
is offset by a kind of de-facto
recognition.
"This reasoning is an exer-
cise in futility," Minerbi said.
"The fact remains that for its
own reasons — political or
theological — the Vatican
does not see fit to have nor-
mal diplomatic relations with
Israel. In fact, the political
and the theological, they are
two faces of the same medal.
I'd be happy if the basis for
these problems was political;
if it's theological, we have cen-
turies to go before we have
normal relations."
He downplayed recent Vati-
can statements suggesting
there are no longer doctrinal
reasons for not recognizing
Israel.
The relationship between
Jews and the Church, he
stressed, is an asymmetrical
one. "Jews can remain Jews
without reference to any
other religion. But Christiani-
ty is built as the only
legitimate heir to Judaism.
So there is no more role for
the Jew himself. The Catholic
Church has a constant need of
clarifying its relationship to
Judaism."
Minerbi pointed to the re-
cent interest in documenting
the Jewish roots of Chris-
tianity.
"This is becoming very
fashionable," he said.
"Recently, I noticed that
Vatican bookstores are full of
new Italian translations of
the Tanach with their own
commentaries. This is an ap-
propriation of Judaism I have
never seen before, and it
reveals another side of the
Vatican's problem: How to
use Jewish roots, and still dif-
ferentiate themselves from
Jews."
Another reason for the in-
creased dialog with Jewish
leaders, according to Minerbi,
is the tenuous relationship
between the pope and his U.S.
flock. Church leaders in this
country oppose the Vatican
on a number of basic issues
like family planning, divorce
and abortion. However, one
area where Rome may be able
to please Catholic leaders
here is in improved relations
with the Jewish community.
Inevitably,- Minerbi touch-
ed on two of the rawest nerves
in Jewish-Vatican relations —
the Kurt Waldheim contro-
versy, and the Church's grow-
ing interest in the Holocaust.
In meeting with Waldheim,
Minerbi suggested, Pope
John Paul ll's real motivation
may have been the pontiff's
determination to reach out to
the Catholics of the Soviet
Union.
"My impression is that the
only reason the pope met
Waldheim was to buy himself
a ticket to Moscow. The
reason for this is the
Catholics of Lithuania. In
other words, he was trying to
develop indirect ways to get
Moscow's attention. It could
be — and this is just specula-
tion, with no proof — that the
pope considered Waldheim a
go-between to the Soviets."
Minerbi also had harsh
words about the recent
beatification of Edith Stein,
the Jewish convert to Cathol-
icism who was killed by the
Nazis, and the creation of a
Carmelite convent on the site
of the Auschwitz extermina-
tion camp.
"These are just more cases
of robbing Jews of their own
symbols and turning them in-
to Christian symbols. The
whole relation of the Vatican
to the Holocaust is to
dispossess Jews of their
memories of the Holocaust.
At the same time, the pro-
blem of the silence of Pious
XX11 finds new expression. In
this scheme, Pious XX11
becomes the chief martyr of
a martyred church."
Minerbi criticized the ef-
forts of some U.S. Jewish
leaders to help forge an of-
ficial Vatican statement on
the Holocaust.