Vatican Announces Jews Can be 'Enlightened'

Vatican announces Jews can be ‘enlightened’

{Subscribers: Warning, the following includes provocative religious commentary}

I am quite dumbstruck by Pope Benedict XVI who announced recently that God would be asked to “enlighten (Jews’) hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men.” According to the 2/7/07 USA Today’s edition, if the Good Friday prayer is answered, “all Israel may be saved.” For reference, blog readers may wish to access the original news item by searching for “Good Friday prayer revisions spark debate.”

The word “enlighten” is an improvement from the Vatican for the word “faithless,” sometimes translated in various Catholic prayer books as “perfidious” or “treacherous.” Much of this change has to do with the Pope’s unraveling of Vatican II doctrines, which may seem to the faithful as too liberal a view of Christian-Jewish inner faith dialog. I had hoped by now the Vatican would have reviewed its long history of hatred and fear of the Jew, but I am afraid Pope Benedict is far too conservative a figure head to allow for such reasonable tolerance.

This prayer, of course, takes me back to a perspective of teaching about the Holocaust in my university classes. Students are surprised, even if they are Catholic, to learn how much poison has been used to degrade and humiliate, even to quarantine Jews from the Church’s faithful. Sooner or later, the argument always comes back to who crucified Christ. What caught my eye and ear last semester when I raised this history of the Church were a few young men, or boys, snickering on the back row. Since they had not snickered before about any topic, and did not sicker after the presentation, I had to wonder just what they were thinking. I wish I hadn’t been so tolerant of their whispers. Did they have the same lesson from their local priest? I suspect so.

On an interfaith (Catholic, Baptist and Jewish) journey/pilgrimage to eretz Israel, or for others, the Holy Land, I welcomed the opportunity with my rabbi friend and Catholic priest to join them for a Sunday service at one of the beautiful churches in Jerusalem. The fact that we were “shot at” with stick rifles by young boys in the birth village of Sirhan Sirhan was another story, perhaps another blog. What I still remember is the Phillipino priest who reminded the faithful of who, once again, murdered Christ. I bring this incident into my class when we review Catholic Church policies that, in part, shaped the Holocaust. But surely the word “enlighten” is a safe word, isn’t it?

It does assume Jews are unenlightened. What is it that Jews don’t know? Why does the Church insist, or even return to failed conversion policies? Do we need to be reminded of the Vatican’s history of kidnapping Jewish children and baptizing them in the name of the Lord? Do we need to review the history of Pope Pius XII and his much debated history of indifference to the plight of European Jews? It is well documented how many Jews he protected within the walls of the Vatican. What isn’t as clear is his outright and total rejection of the Jewish policies of the Third Reich. Is this where the word “enlighten” is taken to? What other context is there? Jews should have converted when given the opportunity in the last 20 centuries. They didn’t, or if they did, it may have been simply to save their lives.

A few months ago Pope Gregory took issue with Muslims in reciting an old text composed by a medieval Byzantine emperor residing in Constantinople. In that speech he quoted the emperor’s views on forced Muslim conversions, something he was probably concerned about as Constantinople was under threat as the old capitol of the crumbling Eastern Empire. The Pope might as well have signed one of the scandalous cartoons depicting Muhammad which enraged millions of pious Muslims. He has not exactly apologized for those remarks; rather, he clarified what he was intending to say, not what he meant to say, or how Muslims interpreted what he meant, or intended to say.

Why does the Church keep doing this? The Old Testament is not “old” to Jews. It is simply, and very clearly, The Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. Jews have no need to convert to Catholicism. Jews have no need to be enlightened about the Savior of the World. For Jews, that didn’t work. It still doesn’t. Why does an institution as stately as the Vatican keep repainting the story that Jews are the epitome of the Devil? (See Church history, Medieval Period).

When I learned today that I was going to be “enlightened” on Good Friday regarding what I should believe, and if I believed it along with all the other Jews alive, and in blessed memory, then all of the Holy Land would be saved. Is it only because of the heartfelt Rhapsody which would initiate the beginning of the End Times? Don’t we have enough work to do on the ground, without getting into Christology?
Though this short missive will not make it to the desk of the Pope, I do wish His Holiness would use some common sense, based on the terrible results of this campaign that has been diligently spent on Jews for two millennia. Jews do not need to be saved. They never have, nor will they ever be saved by the Vatican’s teaching. What will repair the damage is for the Church to not see as its main business the hysterical need to convert everyone on the globe who is not yet saved.

Pass the matzah, please.