Behind the Headlines: Pope Capitulated Too Much in Meeting with Waldheim

If one were pressed to summarize the entire furor over the incredible meeting between Pope John Paul II and Dr. Kurt Waldheim into a single phrase, I suggest the following would be close to the mark:

Kurt Waldheim, the unrepentant Nazi officer, hijacked the Pope and the Vatican for his own whitewashing purposes.

When Waldheim left Rome last Friday after his audience with Pope John Paul II, he is quoted as saying to the press that his meeting with the Pontiff was “a much greater success than he had expected.”

Waldheim had good reason for feeling jubilant. Despite the year-long controversy over the Austrian president’s Nazi past — and his lying about and denying that past for some 40 years — the Pope chose not to make a single public reference to those grim facts. Instead, the Pontiff spoke of Waldheim in idealized terms of being “a diplomat and foreign minister as well as your activity in the United Nations…always dedicated to the securing of peace among all countries.”

Responding, Waldheim referred to Pope John Paul II as “the conscience of mankind” as if to suggest that the Papal embodiment of the world’s conscience had completely exonerated him. Thus, the worst fears of the Jewish people about this audience were realized — Waldheim appears to have obtained instant absolution of his sins, without ever acknowledging his activities in Greece and Yugoslavia as an officer in the ruthless Nazi Army Group E.

CRIES FOR EXAMINATION

Many implications flow from this incomprehensible episode that call for the most serious and responsible examination by Catholics and Jews, especially by the Vatican authorities who orchestrated this morally bizarre event.

First is the moral damage that this audience may well cause to international law and order. In effect, the worldwide publicity given to this Papal reception to Waldheim exudes the message that every former Nazi, every murderer, criminal, and terrorist need never feel any guilt or remorse over their evil deeds. If they manage to lie about their anti-human actions successfully, and hang around long enough, they might even obtain instant absolution through an audience with the Pope or his surrogates. Waldheim did just that.

Second is the issue of the Vatican policy of indiscriminate invitations to every head of state, regardless of personal history or moral character. If a head of state who is a Catholic wishes to enter a Papal confessional booth and repent his or her sins and ask for forgiveness, that is an entirely private matter between the Pope as universal pastor and the Catholic believer. Jews and other non-Catholics have no standing to raise questions about such religious matters, no matter how good or bad the moral character of the penitent.

It might be instructive for Jews to articulate the Jewish doctrine of “teshuvah” (“repentance”) which is completely relevant to the Waldheim situation. Judaism requires four actions of a would-be penitent (according to Maimonides): a penitent must confess explicitly one’s sins; he or she must have an overwhelming sense of shame for one’s evil deeds; he or she must make a firm determination to turn away from such wrongdoing; and, the crucial test, the penitent must demonstrate changed behavior. Waldheim has met none of these penitential requirements.

RAISES ETHICAL QUESTIONS

The Pope-Waldheim audience also raises the questions for moral accountability for what use the head of state makes of that audience. When PLO chieftain Yasir Arafat manipulated an audience with Pope John Paul II (not a private audience, as generally believed), his henchmen plastered the photograph of the Pope with this master terrorist all over the Arab, Muslim, and Third World press. The caption, invariably, was a version of “Pope Blesses PLO Policies.”

The Vatican issued a muted clarifying statement subsequently, but it never caught up with the exploitation of that “photo opportunity” by Arafat and his terrorist band.

President Idi Amin of Uganda did exactly the same thing with a photo he took with the late Pope Paul VI. Amin, whose PLO guards and Muslim tribesmen massacred nearly 500,000 Black Christians (half of them Roman Catholic), exploited that audience by having his Papal picture splashed all over the African and Muslim press with a similar caption, suggesting that the Pope and the Vatican “blesses” his murderous policies and actions.

The moral question seems self-evident: If one opens the door of your apartment house to a confessed burglar or rapist, and he proceeds to rob every apartment in the building or rape its women inhabitants, is it morally responsible to say only, “All I did was to let him in the front door. Freedom of access, you know.”

LOOK AT AUSTRIA’S POLITICS

But the real and ultimate question is: Why did the Vatican Secretariat of State agree to this audience which it certainly knew would be controversial and possibly damaging? And the answer to that crucial question, I believe, lies buried deep in the internal politics of Austria.

Waldheim has been a major embarrassment to Austria. The Social Democrats have become increasingly vocal in attacking the People’s Party, which nominated Waldheim for the presidency, for bringing shame and political isolation to Austria. After the United States put Waldheim on “the watch list,” barring his entry, the People’s Party began a desperate effort to break out of the growing vise of Austrian isolation and rejection by the U.S. and Western Europe.

The Vatican became the pole vault out of that isolation and humiliation. Since Austria’s population is about 87 percent Roman Catholic, and since there is a real danger of political turmoil in Austria if the Waldheim boil is not lanced, the Pope and the Vatican, responding to the People’s Party entreaties, decided to help bail them out through this audience.

But the haunting question that won’t go away is: Why did Pope John Paul II have to capitulate so completely on Waldheim’s terms?

(Editor’s note: Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, director of international relations for the American Jewish Committee, was the only rabbi present as guest observer at Vatican Council II.)