Meghan Cox Gurdon
A penitent Pope maligned in the Middle East
By: Meghan Cox Gurdon
Examiner Columnist
May 14, 2009
It is pretty unedifying to see how quick non-Catholics are to demand infallibility from the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church. It's frankly appalling how quickly non-Catholics become acid critics when the Pope deviates from whatever script some outsider wants him to follow.
The prominent Israelis who seized on Benedict XVI's supposed inadequacies when the he spoke on Monday at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, should be ashamed of themselves. And they might, now that their ugly words have reverberated across the world and back again, want to reflect on the shortsightedness of their intemperance.
When the Holy Father arrived in Israel, he immediately deplored the persistence of anti-Semitism in the world. And he said: “I have come to stand in silence before the monument erected to honor the millions of Jews killed in the horrific tragedy of the Shoah.”
Benedict did more than stand silently. He laid a wreath over a stone crypt containing the ashes of Holocaust victims and spoke of those who were killed: “Their cry still echoes in our hearts. It is a cry raised against every act of injustice and violence. It is a perpetual reproach against the spilling of innocent blood.”
Yet to some Israelis, this was unforgivable “verbal stinginess.” The Pope was instantly denounced for failing explicitly to mention Germany, the Nazi Party, or the number “6 million.” He was criticized for appearing “detached” and “restrained, almost cold.”
Speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin excoriated the pontiff: “He is also a German, whose country and people have asked forgiveness. But he himself comes and speaks to us like a historian, as an observer, as a man who expresses his opinion about things that should never happen and he was - what can you do? - a part of them.”
Rivlin clearly expected a personal apology from the 82-year-old pilgrim. “With all due respect to the Holy See, we cannot ignore the burden he bears,” Rivlin said, “as a person who joined Hitler's army, which was an instrument in the extermination.” That the teenaged Benedict was drafted into the Luftwaffe's youth arm - and deserted it - seems not to figure in Rivlin's thinking: Apparently, once a German, always a Nazi.
So the man visits the Holy Land, deplores current and historical violence and bigotry against Jews, and is rudely slapped in the media for not saying it in exactly the way, and at the precise time, that some demand.
Another event during Pope Benedict's visit to the Middle East was hijacked in a different way. Benedict was hosting a peaceful interfaith session at a Catholic center, when a furious Islamic cleric grabbed the microphone and began sounding off in Arabic. The Pope sat dismayed, with no translation, and eventually left the room as Sheikh Taysir Mamimi called angrily for an “Islamic-Christian rebellion” against Israel.
Pope Benedict deserves better than this. He is not merely a man, and not some kind of jumped-up politician in fancy robes, but the beloved leader of 1.3 billion Catholics. For them he is Christ's vicar on earth. It is to Christians and to God that any pope owes his primary attention, and in a time of spreading secularism Benedict might be forgiven for wishing to concentrate solely on building up the Roman Catholic Church.
Yet in his papacy he has bravely continued the work of his charismatic predecessor John Paul II in seeking still-closer rapprochement of the world's three chief monotheistic religions. The events this week hint at what a thankless task it seems - actually, what a thankless task it is -- but (thankfully) Benedict XVI answers to a higher authority.
The prominent Israelis who seized on Benedict XVI's supposed inadequacies when the he spoke on Monday at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, should be ashamed of themselves. And they might, now that their ugly words have reverberated across the world and back again, want to reflect on the shortsightedness of their intemperance.
When the Holy Father arrived in Israel, he immediately deplored the persistence of anti-Semitism in the world. And he said: “I have come to stand in silence before the monument erected to honor the millions of Jews killed in the horrific tragedy of the Shoah.”
Benedict did more than stand silently. He laid a wreath over a stone crypt containing the ashes of Holocaust victims and spoke of those who were killed: “Their cry still echoes in our hearts. It is a cry raised against every act of injustice and violence. It is a perpetual reproach against the spilling of innocent blood.”
Yet to some Israelis, this was unforgivable “verbal stinginess.” The Pope was instantly denounced for failing explicitly to mention Germany, the Nazi Party, or the number “6 million.” He was criticized for appearing “detached” and “restrained, almost cold.”
Speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin excoriated the pontiff: “He is also a German, whose country and people have asked forgiveness. But he himself comes and speaks to us like a historian, as an observer, as a man who expresses his opinion about things that should never happen and he was - what can you do? - a part of them.”
Rivlin clearly expected a personal apology from the 82-year-old pilgrim. “With all due respect to the Holy See, we cannot ignore the burden he bears,” Rivlin said, “as a person who joined Hitler's army, which was an instrument in the extermination.” That the teenaged Benedict was drafted into the Luftwaffe's youth arm - and deserted it - seems not to figure in Rivlin's thinking: Apparently, once a German, always a Nazi.
So the man visits the Holy Land, deplores current and historical violence and bigotry against Jews, and is rudely slapped in the media for not saying it in exactly the way, and at the precise time, that some demand.
Another event during Pope Benedict's visit to the Middle East was hijacked in a different way. Benedict was hosting a peaceful interfaith session at a Catholic center, when a furious Islamic cleric grabbed the microphone and began sounding off in Arabic. The Pope sat dismayed, with no translation, and eventually left the room as Sheikh Taysir Mamimi called angrily for an “Islamic-Christian rebellion” against Israel.
Pope Benedict deserves better than this. He is not merely a man, and not some kind of jumped-up politician in fancy robes, but the beloved leader of 1.3 billion Catholics. For them he is Christ's vicar on earth. It is to Christians and to God that any pope owes his primary attention, and in a time of spreading secularism Benedict might be forgiven for wishing to concentrate solely on building up the Roman Catholic Church.
Yet in his papacy he has bravely continued the work of his charismatic predecessor John Paul II in seeking still-closer rapprochement of the world's three chief monotheistic religions. The events this week hint at what a thankless task it seems - actually, what a thankless task it is -- but (thankfully) Benedict XVI answers to a higher authority.
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of The Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
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