Judging from the reaction of senior officials of the
Catholic Church to criticism of Pope
Benedict's remarks in Israel, it is clear that they do not understand that
very often the strongest messages come not in what is said, but via what is not
said. Sometimes, the oversights take the form of important words left out of
speeches. For the Pope, an example was his failure to mention by name the
Nazis, to characterize their actions during the Holocaust as murder or to
satisfactorily acknowledge his own past in his speech at Yad Vashem. But
greater than this misstep, cited by Israeli critics in government and the media
and defended
by a Papal spokesperson who said "he can't mention everything every
time he speaks" is the fact that fueled the calls for a few extra words
from the Pope, the fact that haunts his Papacy, the fact that of all the people
on earth a man with his background was selected to be Pope.
As quoted in an AP story
by Victor Simpson, Israeli parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin observed, "The pope
spoke like a historian, as somebody observing from the sidelines, about things
that shouldn't happen. But what can you
do? He was part of them. With all due respect to the Holy See, we
cannot ignore the baggage he carries with him."
The Washington Post
included the following responses to the visit:
'You
were not asked to do something unprecedented or heroic. All that was required
from you was a brief, authoritative and touching sentence. All you had to do
was to express regret. That's all we wanted to hear,' wrote Hanoch Daum, a
columnist for the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.
On
Wednesday, an editorial in the widely read newspaper Ha'aretz called the visit a 'missed opportunity.'
'His
important statements condemning anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial lost their
potency because of his lukewarm remarks at Yad Vashem,' the editorial
said. 'The pope's visit shows that there is no real dialogue between
Israel and the Vatican, and that it is difficult to erase centuries-old
wounds.'"
While the Pope's past as a member of the Hitler youth and
the German army during World War II is something that has been often discussed
and its compulsory nature acknowledged, it is understandably very difficult for
some people to get beyond. For me
however, what is more difficult still is the fact that the cardinals of the
Catholic Church, meeting in sacred conclave in the Sistine Chapel, knowing
those facts and the church's dubious history during the Second World War, chose
among all the worthies in their midst to select the man who later chose to be
called Benedict. This was blindness or arrogance or worse. Certainly they knew
the choice would be unsettling to at least one group with a long and difficult
history with the church. Certainly they
knew it would be evaluated as a choice in that light. Perhaps they might even
have foreseen a moment when the new Pope would stand before a Holocaust
memorial and be seen both as a representative of his church and of his past.
Yet nonetheless, they went ahead.
This is not in any way to say that Benedict is a bad man. It
is not to minimize the fact that he ultimately deserted from the German Army or
that he has devoted his life to a course of reflection and service. He certainly
appears to be a very good man by many important measures. And frankly, his
speeches in Israel and the message of his trip to the Middle East were much
less troubling than his ill-considered comments about condom use during his
trip to Africa or his embrace of a Holocaust-denying bishop at the beginning of
this year. But what the Israel trip has done is to cast once again into stark
focus the choice the cardinals made, the message they chose to send about who
among them in their eyes best represented their church, its values and its
future...and about how little they cared about the reactions of those who might
be especially troubled by their choice.
Clearly, just because an individual has a dark chapter in his
past -- whether it was a mistake or a failure to make a choice to resist an
ultimate evil -- that does not disqualify him from having a life of value or
accomplishment. However, when elevating such men (or women) to prominent,
powerful, and richly symbolic posts, the characteristics of these individuals
in question often become secondary to the role those characteristics and the
reaction to them play in the selection process. Whether they are part of the
justification for the selection or, in this case, considered dismissible or
minimizable, how they are treated speaks to the character of the selectors and
the institution they represent even more than they speak to the character of
the person under consideration.
This is true in comparatively minor instances, such as when
a government administration with the desire to have the highest standards in
selecting officials chooses to ignore missteps by some that would disqualify
others (thus raising the question of why some make it and some do not). And it is certainly true in the case of
choosing to lead a church with the Vatican's history and responsibilities
someone from a past like that of the former Cardinal Ratzinger. In such a case,
speeches, pomp, and religious ceremony fade to the background. What troubled
observers in Israel was not what the Pope said but who he was and that he was
chosen.
He could, as observers noted, fairly easily have addressed
this at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in the state whose creation was in
part a by-product of that abomination, was the place to do it. The Vatican's argument that he had addressed
it before was uncompelling because by choosing not to in the one place where
such a statement of acknowledgement and regret would have made the most
difference he again raises questions not just about a choice but the reasons
behind it.
David Silverman/Getty Images
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