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March 17, 2000/10 Adar II, Vol. 52, No.28
Names and noiseEditorialOn the eve of the Lenten season, just a week shy of Purim, Pope John Paul II offered a sincere mea culpa for the sins of the fathers.It was not the direct apology that Jews had hoped the ailing papal father would offer for the atrocities witnessed by this generation, but rather a broad statement of contrition for more than 20 centuries of wrongdoing. The Pope alluded to the dangers of unbounded religious fervor as seen during the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, and the human propensity for hatred and intolerance, no more obvious than in the Purim story. There, the evil Haman plots the destruction of the Jewish people, who ultimately are saved by the beautiful Queen Esther and her wise brother, Mordechai. The tale's retelling is essential to holiday observance, often a raucous occasion with listeners drowning out each mention of Haman's name with noisemakers and jeers. The papal apology, by contrast, delivered as part of a ceremonial mass, was devoid of names. It conspicuously avoided mention of the Holocaust, its victims and its perpetrators. While asking for expiation, it mentioned no one sinner, faulted no one church leader. While admitting past transgressions of the Catholic Church, it could not challenge the essential doctrine of papal infallibility. And it made clear the past must be viewed within historical context, even as the pope admitted that "some of our brothers have been unfaithful to the gospel." In the 1998 papal document that dealt directly with the Shoah, also criticized as too broad an apologia, John Paul told how memory shapes the future. Yet, as a cleric whose own life was touched by the Holocaust, his memory seems disappointingly short. The 79-year-old former Cardinal of Krakow was born and raised in Wadowice, Poland, a town whose substantial Jewish population was decimated by the Third Reich. Next week, coinciding with Purim, the Pope travels to Israel and will visit Yad Vashem. Confronted by names, and faces, perhaps he then will be compelled to remember his past, raise his voice and seek to honor the memories of those who perished. |
