Jewish Leaders Hope Meeting With Pope Will Improve Relations

Jewish leaders from the United States, Switzerland and Israel are gathering in Rome this weekend for unprecedented discussions with Pope John Paul II that they hope will help repair the damage to Catholic-Jewish relations caused by the pontiff’s controversial meeting with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim at the Vatican in June.

Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, director of international relations for the American Jewish Committee, said: “We hope that our meeting in mutual respect with the Pope will contain some of that damage. At the very least, it will have an important symbolic function to demonstrate a continuing respect and even affection and a desire to cooperate in areas of mutual interest.”

Jews throughout the world reacted with shock and indignation when on June 25 John Paul received Waldheim, who has been accused of Nazi war crimes and as a result has been barred from entering the United States.

Boycott Threatened

Most major American Jewish groups threatened to boycott the Pope’s long-planned meeting with them in Miami on Sept. 11 at the outset of his second pastoral visit to the United States and to withdraw from interfaith activities scheduled during his nine-city tour.

They were somewhat mollified by what Tanenbaum called “an unusually feeling letter” concerning the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust that John Paul sent to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops early this month.

The Pope’s invitation to meet for 90 minutes Tuesday with representatives of the Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, an umbrella group of mostly American Jewish organizations, further eased the tension, Tanenbaum said.

Although the pontiff has met often with Jewish groups around the world, the Tuesday meeting is unprecedented both because of its scheduled length--far more time than he has spent with Waldheim or any other political leader--and because of his request that it be a free discussion without formalities or prepared speeches.

Tanenbaum said that at the Vatican’s request the Jewish leadership group sent a four-point agenda of the issues that it plans to raise with the Pope, and he noted that all are much broader than the controversial issue of the Waldheim visit.

“At the top of the agenda is the respective Vatican and Jewish understandings of the Nazi Holocaust and the uniqueness of Jewish victimization,” he said. “Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.”

Citing the Waldheim incident as an example, Tanenbaum said, “There seems to be some periodic lapse of understanding of this Jewish victimization on the part of the Vatican.”

Dismay at Beatification

In this regard, Jewish leaders also expressed dismay in May when the Vatican beatified Edith Stein, a Carmelite nun of German Jewish birth, as a Catholic martyr who died at the hands of the Nazis and at the establishment of a Carmelite convent near the grounds of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland where Stein was killed.

Waldheim’s past will also figure in the second issue to be discussed, which is contemporary anti-Semitism, particularly in Austria. According to polls cited by Tanenbaum, there has been a two-fold increase in anti-Semitic attitudes in Austria since 1985, apparently spurred by the accusations of war crimes against the former U.N. secretary general when he ran for the Austrian presidency.

“This shows how this pathology continues to hover in the consciousness of Austrian society and other societies,” Tanenbaum said.

A third item under discussion will be what Tanenbaum called “recent contradictory teachings and pronouncements about Jews and Judaism” by church figures. He said there have been significant lapses by some elements of the Catholic Church in repeating anti-Jewish canards such as the term “Christ killers” that were condemned by Vatican Council II in 1965.

As an example, Tanenbaum cited “a violently anti-Semitic speech a few months ago by Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo” of Managua, Nicaragua.

“We want to talk about this before it gets out of hand,” he said.

The fourth issue on the agenda, he said, will concern the Vatican’s refusal to approve full diplomatic relations with the state of Israel, a long-standing sore point in Jewish-Catholic relations.

“We haven’t come to press for diplomatic relations,” Tanenbaum said. “That period is over--the period of world Jewry coming to the Vatican to ask a favor. What we are asking is ‘What are the obstacles that stand in the way of full diplomatic relations?’ ”

Fear of Reprisals Cited

Tanenbaum said he and many other Jewish leaders believe that the Vatican has mainly been motivated by fear of Arab-Muslim reprisals against Christians if it recognizes Israel.

“I think that’s a legitimate issue to talk about,” he said. “I think the Vatican has allowed itself to be blackmailed without cause.”

He said Spain, which recognized Israel over bitter objections from the Arab states, has suffered no reprisals for doing so.

The Vatican has never officially explained its failure to recognize Israel, but officials have said privately that recognition will not come until Israel’s borders are internationally recognized and the religious sites of Jerusalem are placed under some form of international control.

In addition to the four main issues, Tanenbaum said, the Jewish leaders hope to talk with the pontiff about mutual human rights concerns, including the oppression against Jews and Catholics in the Soviet Union.