Benedict’s timeless touch noble, but tricky
Pope Benedict XVI’s visit yesterday to Yad Vashem, Israel’s main Holocaust memorial, had been billed coming into this trip as a make-or-break moment, a key test of whether the pontiff could mend fences with Jews after several recent setbacks. This morning, the lead commentary in Haaretz, Israel’s leading daily, carried this reaction: “Benedict’s speech showed verbal indifference and banality.”
To be sure, other Jewish commentators so far have been far more positive, accenting the importance of the pope’s choice to visit Yad Vashem and his firm commitment to Holocaust remembrance. A striking number of critical voices, however, saw the visit as a missed opportunity. (Notably, those voices included the chairman of the board of directors at Yad Vashem.)Code:Safe to say, that's not exactly the headline the Vatican was hoping for.
Aside from some relatively minor points of word choice – that Benedict said Jews had been “killed,” not “murdered,” and that “millions” of Jews died rather than “six million,” even though he cited that figure in an earlier speech at the Tel Aviv airport) – the main thrust of the criticism centered on three points missing from the speech:
- Acknowledgment of the role that Christian anti-Semitism played in shaping attitudes that led to the Holocaust;
- Reference to Benedict’s own biography as a German who saw the horrors of the Nazi regime with his own eyes, and who had himself been drafted into the German army;
- Regret for the recent strain in Catholic/Jewish ties caused by the lifting of the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops, including one, Richard Williamson, who is a Holocaust denier.
For the record, Benedict did not hit any of these points today either during his visit to Jerusalem’s fabled Western Wall. In 2000, John Paul II left a note in the Western Wall asking forgiveness for “the behavior of those who have caused these children of yours to suffer.” This morning, Benedict XVI left a note asking God to “send peace upon this Holy Land, upon the Middle East, upon the entire human family.”
Since it was entirely predictable that the absence of these three points from the Yad Vashem speech would stir reaction, the $64,000 question becomes: Why didn’t Benedict say it?
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Il Papa is dishing out real food for thought (and soul) but some folks are mad that they didn’t get the sound-bites they wanted.Yet Lombardi seemed to hint at a deeper logic for the way Benedict chose his words. The theme of the speech, Lombardi insisted, was “memory,” and that’s where the pontiff placed his focus.
In fact, the most dramatic line from the speech came near the end. Meditating aloud on the sight of the reflecting pool at Yad Vashem, where the faces of Holocaust victims gaze back at visitors, Benedict said the memory of those who were lost “is a cry raised against every act of injustice and violence … a perpetual reproach against the spilling of innocent blood.”
Perhaps the key words in that line of thought are “every” and “perpetual.” At monuments to evil such as Auschwitz and Yad Vashem, Benedict seems compelled to offer reflections which are deliberately universal and timeless.
In both cases, he clearly acknowledged the specificity of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust, and resolved to ensure that such crimes are never repeated. Nonetheless, Benedict XVI seems to see such settings – not just Holocaust memorials, but also, for example, the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, which he visited last April – as eternal reminders of the seductive power of hatred. One has the impression that to him, it would fail to do justice to what these places represent if he were to turn the focus upon himself, or recent events and plans of action, or even too much on the historical particularities of the location.