NEWS STORY: Pope to issue statement on Holocaust, but no encyclical

c. 1996 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY (RNS)-Pope John Paul II appears close to delivering on a 1987 pledge that the Vatican would assess Catholic treatment of Jews during the Holocaust and church teaching that some contend fostered anti-Semitism. The tract on one of the most sensitive and complicated issues confronting the church is being […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY (RNS)-Pope John Paul II appears close to delivering on a 1987 pledge that the Vatican would assess Catholic treatment of Jews during the Holocaust and church teaching that some contend fostered anti-Semitism.

The tract on one of the most sensitive and complicated issues confronting the church is being produced by the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.


While the document must ultimately be approved by the pope and carry his imprimatur, it will not be a papal encyclical, as some Jewish leaders had long hoped.”I don’t think that it is going to take very long now because it is being worked on,”said the Rev. Remi Hoeckman, chief of the commission, who confirmed that the document would be written by his panel. He added that no timetable had been set for publication.

As late as last October, the Vatican said no final decision had been made on whether a document on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism would be produced or what form it might take.”Whether there will be any further document from the Holy See has not been decided,”said Cardinal Edward Cassidy in an interview last October. Cassidy is president of the Pontifical Council on Christian Unity, which oversees the commission.

Last fall Cassidy and other officials, including papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, cited an extensive review involving strict academic standards for the long lag time in determining whether a document would be published.

The Vatican has worked with dozens of scholars on the topic in an attempt to determine what, if any, document should be produced. Polish and German theologians who have studied the roots of anti-Semitism in church teachings and church actions during the Holocaust frequently have been called upon. Jewish scholars also have been consulted.

It was unclear when the Vatican decided to proceed with the document.

Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of interfaith affairs at the Anti- Defamation League in New York who recently met with Hoeckman, said he was under the impression that a working document began to take shape about six months ago.

Hans Herman Henrix, a German theologian at the Catholic Theological Institute who has submitted several papers on the topic for the Vatican report, said the final document would”be on the church, anti-Semitism and the Shoah,”or Holocaust.”Such a document has historical insights but also theological reflections and perspectives,”he said in a telephone interview from Aachen, Germany.

Jewish leaders and scholars have been split on whether a text should be a Vatican commission document or a papal encyclical. Some argue that an encyclical, one of the highest forms of church teaching, would have the strongest possible symbolic force, requiring clergy and laity to adhere strictly to the content.


Last October, several Jewish leaders asked the pope during his visit to New York to produce an encyclical.

But others say the format is less important than the message, and argue that the most important factor is an honest and thorough appraisal of the Holocaust and church teaching.

One of the most burning questions among theologians and scholars who have studied the period is whether the church as an institution was responsible for sowing the seeds of anti-Semitism and turning its back on Jews during the Holocaust, as Henrix has asserted, or whether the blame belongs solely to some individual Catholics.

Critics point to the failure of Pope Pius XII to speak out forcefully during the war years against the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Others cite the behavior of church hierarchy in Germany, Austria and Poland for failing to speak out-and in some cases actively supporting the actions of Hitler’s Third Reich. Defenders, however, contend the church worked quietly behind the scene to help and shelter Jews and say that public denouncements of the Nazis could have worsened the persecution.

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In an apostolic letter on the upcoming third Christian millennium, published in 1994, the pope called on the church to”become more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children”who had”indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal.” But the pope did not address whether the Roman Catholic Church should be held responsible for inciting hatred toward Jews through its teachings and its failure to speak out forcefully against the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

The pope has frequently condemned the Holocaust in sermons and in his best-selling book,”Crossing the Threshold of Hope.”What’s more, he is credited with improving ties between Catholics and Jews by having established diplomatic relations with Israel and having visited Rome’s Jewish community several times.


While the 1965 Vatican encyclical Nostra Aetate reversed centuries of church teaching by declaring that the Jews were not responsible for the death of Jesus, no papal-approved document has ever examined the repercussions of such teaching during World War II.

Henrix and others said that the church’s”teaching of contempt”toward Jews prompted many priests and bishops to openly side with the Nazis. Some were informers. But other clergy and Catholic laity saved Jews from certain death and some of them risked their lives to do so.

Whatever the outcome of the document, Klenicki said,”the church has to have a reckoning of the soul. Perhaps the church will also recognize its guilt.”

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