Reflections on the Vatican's 'Reflection on the Shoah.' - Roman Catholic document 'We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah'

The first two sections of We Remember reflect the tone and substance of the pope's letter, and together they spell out the document's raison d'etre. The first part describes the unique bond the church has with the Jewish people. ". . . [It] is unlike the one she shares with any other religion. However, it is not only a question of recalling the past. The common future of Jews and Christians demand that we remember, for 'there is no future without memory.' History itself is memoria futuri."

This opening section also calls for "all Christians" to recognize how the "image of the Creator" in human beings "has been offended and disfigured" by the horrors of this century. For Catholics, the "unspeakable tragedy [of the Shoah] can never be forgotten." It is necessary, the document asserts, to recall its terror. "Women and men, old and young, children and infants [were murdered]. . . . It is a major fact of the history of this century. . . . All this was done to them for the sole reason that they were Jews." This call for appropriate remembrance of the Shoah is one of the strong features of the whole document.

Although only three paragraphs in length, the opening section correctly notes that the Shoah "raises many questions." Although "much scholarly study still remains to be done . . . such an event cannot be fully measured by the ordinary criteria of historical research alone. It calls for a 'moral and religious memory' and, particularly among Christians, a very serious reflection on what gave rise to it [the Shoah]."

The Vatican statement, candidly acknowledging that "the Shoah took place in Europe . . . in countries of long standing Christian civilization," asks what influences "the attitudes down the centuries of Christians towards the Jews" might have had on Nazi German persecutions. Was the Holocaust "made easier by anti-Jewish prejudices embedded in Christian minds and hearts?" Did the centuries of Christian teaching of contempt towards Jews and Judaism make Catholics "less sensitive or even indifferent" to the Shoah? These opening sections pose many of the relevant questions, such as these, that are addressed in subsequent parts of the document.

Unfortunately, the remaining sections of We Remember are much more problematic and troubling. The authors set the proper tone and ask the correct questions at the outset, but they then provide ambivalent, ambiguous, and in some cases unsatisfactory answers. For that reason, after over a decade of anticipation, the statement is a profound disappointment to many Catholics and Jews.

The Rev. John T. Pawlikowski, Professor of Social Ethics at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, has written that We Remember ". . . is marked by some perspectives which are incomplete and sometimes even misleading." The Rev. Richard P. McBrien, Crowley-O'Brien-Walter Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, has declared: ". . . I believe the weight of the evidence is on the side of the Vatican statement's critics. . . . [B]y the standards of 1998, the Vatican commission that issued the statement did not go far enough."