Mixed Reactions from Jewish Spokesmen on U.s.-vatican Ties

Jewish spokesmen who have been involved in Vatican-Jewish relations offered different views today over the announcement yesterday in Washington and at the Vatican that full diplomatic relations were established between the U.S. and the Vatican for the first time in 117 years.

Henry Siegman, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, said the action violated the constitutional principle of separation between church and state. But Dr. Marc Tanenbaum, director of the international relations department of the American Jewish Committee, and Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, hailed the U.S. action.

Siegman said that while the AJCongress shared the Reagan Administration’s respect for the espousal by Pope John Paul II of human rights and social justice, “It is our position that formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican violates that (church-state separation) constitutional principle.”

SEES NO VIOLATION OF FIRST AMENDMENT

Tanenbaum, former director of the AJCommittee’s interreligious affairs department, a postin which he was deeply associated with Vatican-Jewish relations, declared that from the viewpoint of church-state separation, “many Protestants joined by the American Jewish Congress view the Holy See as an integral part of the Roman Catholic Church” and “thus the United States diplomatic recognition of the Vatican is perceived as a violation of the First Amendment.”

However, Tanenbaum added, “there is a substantial body of scholarship” which makes a case “that both historically and theologically, the Holy See is a ‘secular’ arm of the Vatican conceived as a sovereign state.”

After the announcement of U.S.-Vatican relations, both White House spokesman Larry Speakes and State Department spokesman John Hughes said there was no violation of church-state separation because the U.S. is recognizing the Holy See, rather than the Catholic Church itself. Administration officials, in defending the action noted that 106 other countries have full diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

Tanenbaum also said that another factor in favor of the new ties “is the decline of anti-Catholicism in America, especially since Vatican Council II which strongly committed world Catholics to religious liberty and improved Catholic-Jewish relations.”

Tanenbaum used the news of the event to declare that “with this breakthrough” Jews have the right “to expect now another breakthrough — the Vatican’s establishing of diplomatic relations with the sovereign state of Israel.”

Schneier called the agreement “a welcome and positive step.” He said the exchange of Ambassadors between the U.S. and the Vatican “carries with it the potential for more effective cooperation on issues of deep concern to the American people and to all mankind — issues of poverty, hunger, interfaith harmony, religious freedom and world peace.”