Jews still waiting for Pope to issue Holocaust document

NEW YORK, Nov. 5 (JTA) – The Vatican’s latest condemnation of anti-Semitism as an offense against “God and the church itself” has been welcomed by Jewish experts. But they say they are still waiting for a long-anticipated papal document that is expected to be a full inventory of the Roman Catholic Church’s relationship to the Holocaust. The Vatican’s most recent remarks came out of a three-day, closed- door conference of 50 Catholic biblical and theological scholars. No Jewish scholars were invited to participate. Pope John Paul II, in his remarks at the conference, blamed centuries of anti-Jewish prejudice for “deadening” Christian resistance to the Nazi persecution of Jews, but steered clear of blaming the church itself. The symposium in Vatican City focused on examining interpretations of the Christian Bible that the church said produced anti-Semitic tendencies. The scholars produced “a dossier” on the subject for the benefit of the pope, according to the closing statement made public by the participants. That work might be used as part of what Jewish observers hope will be the major statement that the Vatican promised a decade ago. What came out of the conference is “not a breakthrough, but building blocks, and very important ones,” said Rabbi A. James Rudin, director of interfaith affairs at the American Jewish Committee. The intent of the conference was to make positive Catholic-Jewish relations part of the church’s mainstream agenda, and under this pope it has, he said. One example, Rudin said, was the recent action taken against a well- known Polish priest, the Rev. Henryk Jankowski of Gdansk, after he said there is no room in Poland’s government for a Jew. A Polish Jew, Bronislaw Geremek, was named foreign minister to the recently elected Polish government. Jankowski’s bishop suspended him from giving sermons for at least a year, though the priest is still permitted to celebrate mass and hear confessions. The recent conference was “a serious attempt to deal with the question of the anti-Judaism that can be produced by the use and abuse of [Christian biblical] text,” said Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of interreligious affairs for the Anti-Defamation League. “The pope was very clear in that, and his statement opens the possibilities for joint work between Christians and Jews on study of the so-called first century, the relations of early Christianity and Judaism,” he said. The ADL, together with a Christian publishing house, is developing a series of 16 volumes, each examining the attitudes toward Judaism in one of the books of the Christian Bible. Many of the passages in the Christian Bible that condemn Judaism have been long used to justify hatred of, and violence against, Jews. Klenicki said the volumes, written by Jewish, Catholic and Protestant scholars, will be used by priests and preachers who will read passages out loud before they read the biblical text itself and, it is hoped, avoid anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic interpretations. He anticipates that the first of the volumes will be published in about six months.