I NEWS 1
Newspaper: Vatican
Condoned Nazi Regime
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54
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1990
Los Angeles (JTA) — The
Vatican may have tacitly
condoned the strengthening
of the Nazi regime and failed
to aid its Jewish victims, ac-
cording to an unprecedented
document released by
Catholic and Jewish leaders
in Southern California.
The document, the first of
its kind to explore the
Catholic Church's role as an
unwitting accomplice in
Adolf Hitler's consolidation
of power, is being sent to the
Vatican, the National Con-
ference of Catholic Bishops
in Washington, and to 3,000
Catholic schools, seminaries
and parishes across the
United States.
"This is in my opinion
unique and is pioneering
and ground- breaking,"
Rabbi A. James Rudin, na-
tional director of inter-
religious affairs for the
American Jewish Com-
mittee, told the Los Angeles
Times.
The recently released five-
page statement was drafted
by the Catholic-Jewish
Respect Life Committee,
consisting of 23 Southern
California religious and ed-
ucation leaders.
Leading members of the
committee are Rabbi Alfred
Wolf and Monsignor Royale
Vadakin, both veteran
leaders in Catholic-Jewish
relations here.
Relations between Jews
and Catholics in Southern
California have long been
considered as a model for the
rest of the country.
Vadakin said that while
many Catholic-Jewish com-
mittees in the U.S. have
discussed the Holocaust, the
current statement is the first
to be published and
distributed to educators.
Parishes across the country
will next decide whether to
incorporate the material
into their school curricula.
Titled "The Holocaust: At
the Edge of Comprehen-
sion," the document is based
on historical evidence,
rather than church sources.
A section on "Complicity
and Righteous Action" sug-
gests that the Vatican tacit-
ly aided Hitler, immediately
upon his assumption of
power, by signing with him
the 1933 Concordat.
Ostensibly, the Concordat
protected the church's rights
under the Nazi regime, with
the presumption that the
Vatican would not protest
the growth of German na-
tionalism under Hitler.
Hitler immediately ig-
nored the Concordat's pro-
tective clauses, paving his
way to the assumption of
total dictatorial power, says
the statement.
"In light of this, we are
now free to ask whether the
compromises made by the
Vatican with the Nazis did
not, in the long run, do more
harm than good," the state-
ment concludes.
"It would be misleading to
suggest that the Roman
Catholic Church did every-
thing in its power to come to
the aid of the Jews," it says.
Another part of the state-
ment points out that "in the
face of the growing threats
While many
Catholic-Jewish
committees in the
U.S. have
discussed the
Holocaust, the
current statement
is the first to be
published.
against the Jews, all too few
Christian groups raised
their voices to protest. Many
On the other hand, the
document says "it would
also be an inaccurate render-
ing of history to assert that
every Roman Catholic stood
by idly and watched as the
demonic strategies of the
Nazis claimed the lives of 6
million Jews."
The statement on the
Holocaust was accompanied
by a second document on
"Forgiveness/Reconciliation
," which probes how the
Catholic and Jewish faiths
address the theological ques-
tions of forgiveness and rec-
onciliation.
This document was drafted
by the Los Angeles Priest-
Rabbi Committee, which has
put forward statements on
interreligious topics for
nearly 20 years.
The Catholic-Jewish com-
mittees that prepared the
two documents said that
they had worked on the
statements for two years.
They decided to concen-
trate on the Holocaust issue
following the visit by
Austrian President Kurt
Waldheim to Pope John Paul
II in 1987. The meeting was
bitterly denounced by Jew-
ish groups across the world,
in light of the alleged actions
by Waldheim as a German