The Call of Abraham: Essays on the Election of Israel in Honor of Jon D. Levenson

Chapter 15: Christ and Israel

330 c H a P T e r 1 5 R Christ and Israel An Unsolved Problem in Catholic Theology b r u c e d . m a r s h a l l In the first weeks of 2010, Pope benedict XVI made a public visit to the Great Synagogue of rome, and was there officially welcomed by the leaders of the synagogue and the Italian Jewish community . It was not the pope’s first visit to a synagogue or with Jewish leaders, but on this occasion his presence in midst of the Jewish community drew particular attention. This happened in part because the same Great Synagogue of rome was the site of John Paul II’s historic visit in 1986, purportedly the first by a bishop of rome since the time of the apostles. but it was also because the pope was criticized, openly if indirectly, by one of the Jewish leaders present. riccardo Pacifici, president of the Jewish community of rome and a direct descendant of Italian holocaust victims, told of the pain still felt by the Jews of rome over the “silence” of Pius XII, who might have spoken a public word of Christ and Israel 331 “comfort” to the Jewish people in their time of deepest need, even if he could not have stopped “the trains of death.”1 The timing of these public comments to the pope seems unlikely to have been accidental. only a month before, benedict had declared Pius XII a person of heroic virtue, and so had considerably advanced the cause of his predecessor ’s sainthood. what does it say about the attitude of Pope benedict, and of the Church, toward the Jewish people, mr. Pacifici seemed to ask, that it can regard such a person as heroically virtuous? my concern here is not with the legacy of Pius XII, but with the deeper conflict that came to the surface, in however cordial and respectful a way, in the Great Synagogue of rome. basically this same conflict has been enacted, this drama played out, between Jews and Christians countless times since the Second Vatican Council. In the Synagogue of rome, Pope benedict spoke forcefully of his own love and affection and that of the Catholic Church for the Jewish community of rome and all Jewish communities throughout the world. he begged forgiveness for any action of the children of the Church “that could in any way have contributed to the scourge of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism,” and he stressed that the dark memory of the holocaust compels the Church and the Jewish people “to strengthen the bonds that unite us so that our mutual understanding, respect and acceptance may always increase.” The pope said much else which expressed his own and the Church’s uncompromising commitment to the welfare of the Jewish people, and he was warmly welcomed for it. yet at the same time it seems clear that the Jewish community of rome is not convinced that it can trust him, and is not convinced that it can trust his Church. To many Jews the Church evidently sends a painfully mixed message: by some words and deeds, such as the pope’s visit to the Synagogue of rome, the Church seems to make plain its commitment to the well being of the Jewish people, while by others, such as the prospective sainthood of Pius XII, the Church seems to make plain its indifference, and perhaps even hostility, to the well being of the Jewish people.2 Particularly among Catholics, it is common to see the mixed message the Jewish community hears from the Church as basically a political problem or a failure of public relations. on this reading the problem can be solved by a more sensitive and adroit handling of 332 Bruce D. Marshall Vatican actions and utterances. but this response is superficial, and is more an obstacle to confronting the underlying difficulty than a way of addressing the problem. The real root of the matter is doctrinal and theological. It is theological, more precisely, in the strict sense of the term: it concerns the coherence of two claims about God. one is that the saving mission of Christ and his Church is willed by God to be universal , extending to every human being. The other is that God’s covenant with Israel, with the Jewish people according to the flesh, is irrevocable. both of these...