← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Stigmata
Thread ID: 18277 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-05-17
2005-05-17 11:27 | User Profile
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=3][color=#666666][img]http://www.sfarchdiocese.org/images/pagetop_r03_c1.gif[/img][/color][/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=3][color=#666666]Some Reflections on Pope John Paul II and the Jews[/color][/size][/font] [font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]Most Rev. William J. Levada Archbishop of San Francisco [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]Jewish Community Relations Council April 11, 2000[/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]The recent pilgrimage journey of Pope John Paul II to Israel, Jordan and Palestine was a culminating moment for the leader of the Catholic Church, we are told --a dream come true. He had visited Israel before, when he was Archbishop of Krakow, a privilege not many of his fellow citizens in Communist Poland were permitted. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]But this was different. Now he is Pope, spiritual leader of a billion Roman Catholics throughout the world, who was chosen in 1978 to lead the Church at the end of the century that Paul Johnson calls in his book Modern Times "the bloodiest century in the history of humankind" into a new century, with its new promise -- indeed even more strikingly into a new Christian millennium [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]I was in Rome, working at the Vatican, when Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope, the first non-Italian in some 450 years. His predecessor was pope for just 33 days. Papal elections are not supposed to be regular events in the life of the Church, and the Cardinal electors believe they are instruments of the Holy Spirit, and pray to that Holy Spirit of God for guidance in their choice. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]Their choice of Karol Wojtyla was a surprise to the Church, and if we can believe the reports of oblique cardinalatial comments made since, a surprise to the electors too. Surely the premature death of Pope John Paul I set the stage for a dramatic gesture. But we were very surprised to have a pope from what was then a country behind with Iron Curtain, from Poland, a man who had begun his ecclesiastical career in an underground seminary in Nazi-occupied Krakow. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]Karol Wojtyla became a bishop in 1958, at age 38. We are told that he made significant contributions in particular to two of the documents of the Second Vatican Council in which he participated from 1962 to 1965: the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, and the Declaration on Religious Freedom. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]He has called the Second Vatican Council the beginning of the Advent time of preparation for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, the conclusion of the second millennium of Christianity, and the beginning of the third. The analogy is to the annual liturgical season of Advent, 4 weeks of preparation for the Feast of Christmas, celebrating the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Pope John Paul has further called the implementation of the Second Vatican Council the hermeneutical or interpretative "keyââ¬Å¡ to understanding his pontificate. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]His biographer George Weigel tells us that his mentor Cardinal Wyszynski, the Primate of Poland, told Wojtyla on the occasion of his election as pope: "God has chosen you to lead the Church into the new millennium." Even Mahmet Akga's bullet could not change that prophecy. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]Rabbi Kahn remarked in his letter of invitation that this is an exceptional period in the history of Catholic/Jewish relations, and suggested that I speak to you from my perspective about the recent papal apology in his homily at the beginning of Lent, and about the Pope's pilgrimage to Israel. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]To do this it occurred to me that some background might be useful to provide the context for these events. I am convinced that the Pope sees himself as a man of destiny, not as an ego trip, but as a dimension of a deep faith in the hand of God guiding our human destiny. When we refer to men (or women) of destiny, we most often think of players on the political scene, the "right" person at a crucial moment in history: the founding Fathers of this nation, for example; President Lincoln during the Civil War; Prime Minister Churchill in the Second World War. Even though he is a religious rather than a political figure, it strikes me that he is indeed a man of destiny. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]The opening paragraph of Gaudium et Spes, adopted by the Catholic bishops of the world just 2 decades after the end of the Second World War, when the hold of Communism over half the world seemed an inexorable fact of "cold-war" existence for the last half of the 20th century, gives us an insight into the perspective of one of its principal authors the then Archbishop of Krakow: [/size][/font]
[indent][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]The joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted, are the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. Nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community of people united in Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit in their pilgrimage towards the Father's kingdom, bearers of a message of salvation for all of humanity. That is why they cherish a feeling of deep solidarity with the human race and its history. (GS 1) [/size][/font]
[/indent][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]From that perspective, then, mutual understanding among the followers of the great religious traditions is an imperative in order to pursue the goals of peace, economic and social justice. Mutual respect for the human dignity of every person has been the resounding theme of encyclical after encyclical of Pope John Paul, whether the question has been primarily religious, social or economic. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]After the 20th century's experience of the Holocaust, the Shoah, how could this man of destiny, with his own background and experience, not see the need to place the promise of the Vatican Council's Declaration Nostra Aetate on relations with the Jews as an integral part of the agenda of the Church leading to the historical rendezvous with a new millennium. This rendezvous finds a unique and crowning moment in the Jubilee Year 2000. This Jewish tradition of the jubilee -- to mark the completion of a "sabbath" of "sabbath years" -- the 50th year, after 7 sets of 7 years -- is one that the Catholic Church took over about 1300, to be a time of renewal, pilgrimage, forgiveness of debts both temporal and spiritual. Both the papal prayer for pardon -- an apology, as it is called -- and the pilgrimage to Israel, are intrinsically linked to this Jubilee Year celebration. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]To go on pilgrimage to Israel is to be blessed by being present at the places, on the land, where Abraham, whom we call in the Mass "our father in faith," received the covenant, where Moses gazed across the Jordan from Mount Nebo, where King David asked for mercy and pardon in the psalms we pray daily, and where Jesus, whom we believe to be the Christ, the Anointed One, the incarnate Son of God, indelibly made our human history and destiny God's own.[/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]But to celebrate a Jubilee of joy and thanksgiving for such gifts of a gracious God without first confessing our sins and asking pardon? This is the key to the papal apology; it has set an example not only for us Catholics, which it surely has, but also for the world at large. It represents a man of destiny, in whom courage has overcome fear, saying that mutual understanding and reconciliation are possible only when we speak the truth in love. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]In his Flannery-Hyatt Institute talk at the University of San Francisco last week, Rabbi Solomon reminded us that Israel was not even referred to in the declaration Nostra Aetate at Vatican II. And he said perhaps that was a good thing, that the time was not mature. What is remarkable is how we have seen that time mature during our own lifetime; and it brings tears of joy to not a few eyes. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]Pope John Paul was the first pope to visit a synagogue, Rome's stately building on the bank of the Tiber where Jews used to live in a walled ghetto. Following his good example, I accepted Rabbi Rose's invitation to preach at the Friday evening sabbath service in Portland's Temple Beth Israel. He told me I was the first such bishop ever to have done so in the United States. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]Pope John Paul further oversaw the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel. He directed the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, whose president Cardinal Cassidy also spoke here last week, to draft the document "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah," which offers a lasting challenge to the voices of historical revisionism and denial of the holocaust. The words of this document represent an important teaching moment within the Catholic Church, and they are the immediate background for the Pope's prayer for pardon and forgiveness, and for his action at the Western Wall in Jerusalem: "At the end of this Millennium the Catholic Church desires to express her deep sorrow for the failures of her sons and daughters in every age. This is an act of repentance (teshuva), since, as members of the Church, we are linked to the sins as well as to the merits of all her children." [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]Both Cardinal Cassidy and Rabbi Solomon encouraged us in dialogue for greater mutual understanding; it was of particular interest to me that both of them believe that the moment has come for theological, religious dialogue between Jews and Catholics. I am grateful for the opportunity provided for our community by the lectures of Cardinal Cassidy and Rabbi Solomon, under the auspices of the Swig Judaic Studies program at USF. And I am grateful for the chance to visit with you here at the Jewish Community Relations Council, in the hope that we can build upon the recommendations of last week to continue to enhance the mutual esteem between our religious communities, and to pursue with greater hope than ever the fruits of sincere and frank dialogue.[/size][/font]
[url="http://www.sfarchdiocese.org/homilies/johnpaul-jews.html"]http://www.sfarchdiocese.org/homilies/johnpaul-jews.html[/url]
American Said To Be Tapped as Vatican's Doctrinal Enforcer
San Francisco's Archbishop Levada is the likely candidate to take over Pope Benedict XVI's old job
[url="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1059842,00.html"]http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1059842,00.html[/url]