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Cardinal says attacks on Vatican endanger efforts
to improve relations with Jews.
39 MONTH
NEIL RUBIN
Senior Editor
Baltimore
A
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24 Detroit Jewish News
senior Vatican official
warned here last week that
harsh criticisms by some
Jewish groups of the Holy
See's exploration of its World War II
actions could unintentionally bog
down efforts at rapprochement
between Catholics and Jews.
Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy,
president of the Commission for
Religious Relations, warned that
attempts to influence the internal
process of the Catholic Church are
deeply resented," adding that "persons
very dear to the Catholic faithful are
condemned without proof."
Some Jewish groups — particularly
the World Jewish Congress — have
said that the Vatican document released
last spring unsatisfactorily addressed the
church's World War II role. They are
aggressively pressing for access to the
church's war-time archives.
Cassidy said the criticism was creating
"dismay" among Catholics who have
worked to improve relations between the
church and Judaism. His remarks came
in a paper prepared for a conference
here on teaching about the Holocaust;
the paper was read on his behalf when
illness forced him to remain in Rome.
Vatican leaders have raised privately
with Jewish leaders the issue of how
the criticism affects the church inter-
nally. The cardinal's comments mark a
rare step in making the dispute public.
In an interview, Dr. Eugene Fisher,
a senior official with the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops, said
the private efforts to still the criticism
have had little effect.
Jews should realize, he added, that
the cardinal's advocacy within the
Vatican for strong Jewish ties is "seri-
ously eroded with each public attack,
particularly when the World Jewish
Congress says things like the Vatican
helps Nazis flee, and really off the wall
stuff. People see that and say, 'We want
to do good and why are we doing it?'
We are a hierarchical structure and if
we slow down the process from the top
level it will eventually trickle down."
It's an issue of tactics over topics,
Fisher said. "It's gone beyond civil dis-
"
course and to personal attacks, accus-
ing the pope of trying to whitewash
the Holocaust, which is absurd, and to
whitewash Auschwitz, which is
absurd," he said.
Not surprisingly, the World Jewish
Congress sees things differently.
"Mr. Fisher and some others in the
Vatican believe that for the sake of good
relations, the truth has to be sacrificed,"
said Elan Steinberg, the group's execu-
tive director. He added that Catholic-
Jewish relations remain positive overall
and that "I don't doubt that Cardinal
Cassidy is under enormous pressure and
that he is doing everything he can to
improve Catholic-Jewish relations."
Nonetheless, the cardinal's com-
ments should be met with equal vigor,
said Steinberg, whose group has taken
the lead in the Swiss bank controversy.
He and others have criticized Vatican
claims that Pope Pius XII helped saved
large numbers of Jews from the Nazis.
In response to Cardinal Cassidy,
Rabbi James Rudin, National
Interreligious Affairs Director of the
American Jewish Committee, sought
to put the Cardinal's words into the
context of the overall picture of
Catholic-Jewish dialogue.
"It's not small when two of the
world's great faith communities sys-
tematically and creatively set out to
repair the enormous damage that has
taken place over the centuries," he
said. "What is needed now is an inten-
sification of the exploration, and the
Vatican has provided the mandate.
A fundamental change in Catholic-
Jewish relations began in 1965, when
the church declared that Jews are not
collectively responsible for the death
of Jesus and that Catholics should
spiritually draw closer to Jews.
Since then, an increasing array of
Holocaust Memorial Day ceremonies
in churches, teacher exchanges in pri-
vate schools, and academic conferences,
such as the one coordinated here by the
American Jewish Committee and the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops, have become common.
All the activity is spurred by Pope
John Paul II's emphasis on overcoming
centuries of animosity between the
MO religions as a defining characteris-
tic of his papacy. 11.