Analysis : THE PAPAL VISIT : Catholic and Jewish Ties Viewed as Strengthened

Catholic-Jewish relations, sent into a tailspin when Pope John Paul II met Austrian President Kurt Waldheim in June, may have now emerged stronger than before, judging from a dialogue Friday between the Pope and a high-ranking U.S. Jewish leader.

Both sides had bargaining chips to play before the historic meeting here, and both appeared to gain from using them: The Catholics salvaged the meeting between 200 Jewish leaders and the Pope; the Jews acquired leverage to raise Catholic consciousness about the Holocaust and press for full diplomatic recognition of Israel by the Vatican.

Some Jewish groups remained adamant that the Pope’s audience with Waldheim, who has been accused of trying to cover up his Nazi past, has only deepened a rift between the two faiths. But, they tended to be dismissed by those who attended the session here. Moreover, only a small number of protesters showed up to picket the event.

In all, it seemed to represent a major turnaround since the Waldheim meeting threatened the Miami dialogue.

At the Friday morning meeting at the Metro-Dade Cultural Center, the Pope and Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, who presented the speech on behalf of four major cooperating Jewish bodies, essentially addressed in a worldwide forum the same issues they had spoken of 10 days earlier in Italy: anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the right of the Jewish people to a homeland in Israel. Waxman is chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations.

In what was considered a significant, if small, step, the Pope for the first time formally acknowledged that the Holocaust was aimed specifically at Jews “only because they were Jews.” And while he defended Popes Pius XI and Pius XII, who reigned during World W1634869321little to halt the slaughter of Jews, he struck a deep chord with the audience by concluding with the phrase that has come to embody the Jewish determination for vigilence against anti-Semitism: “Never again!”

Representatives of both faiths seemed pleased with the session.

“It was a very positive moment,” said Rabbi Arthur Teitelbaum, Southern Area director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, after the hourlong meeting. He called the Pope’s message “a significant statement that energizes and deepens dialogue between Catholics and Jews.”

And Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, 78, president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews, called the Miami meeting “crucial”--a recognition that “world Jewry (is) 1629512805approached by us (Catholics) in a way that has never been done in the past.”

For a while, it seemed the meeting might not happen, although it had long been planned by ecumenical officials of both the U.S. Catholic Bishops and the Synagogue Council of America, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress.

When the Pope met Waldheim in a private audience at the Vatican on June 25, worldwide Jewish outrage not only threatened to derail the interfaith meeting--the first stop on the Pope’s 10-day tour of the United States--but to set back the whole cause of Catholic-Jewish relations.

Waldheim, U.N. secretary-general from 1972 to 1982, has been accused of complicity in the deportation of Jews to concentration camps while he served in the German army. Waldheim has denied the accusations, but the U.S government found the evidence strong enough to ban Waldheim from entering the country.

Before the Waldheim meeting, Catholic-Jewish relations had improved considerably since a major Second Vatican Council statement in 1965 urged dialogue with Jews and repudiated the idea of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus Christ.

Another milestone was reached in April of 1986, when John Paul visited Rome’s chief synagogue and called Jews “our beloved elder brothers.”

But the furor over the Pope’s audience with Waldheim put the Miami meeting in jeopardy, as Jewish groups threatened to withdraw unless a “substantive” meeting with the Pope was arranged beforehand to clear the air over the Waldheim audience. Sensing an opportune moment to push for other concerns, the Jewish leaders added to the agenda discussion of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and recognition of Israel.

“There was an enormous amount at stake here because we have made greater progress (in Jewish-Catholic relations) than had existed in the past two millennia,” said Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, director of international relations for the American Jewish Committee.

“I think the Vatican wanted to save (the meeting in) Miami,” Tanenbaum said of Friday’s meeting. If a major Jewish group “were to turn its back on the Pope and boycott, that would be a terrible start to the trip. The pall of that would hang over everything else he did afterwards.”

Bargaining Chip

So the Jewish leaders used their bargaining chip, and the Pope not only agreed to the historic, face-to-face meeting Sept. 1 with nine key Jewish leaders at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo--itself an unprecedented occasion. He also sent a dramatic letter to Archbishop John L. May of St. Louis, president of the U.S. bishops, concerning the Holocaust.

The Pope’s letter expressed the church’s sorrow over the extermination of Jews in the Holocaust, a theme the pontiff repeated Friday here.

It is hoped, the pontiff said here, speaking slowly and deliberately, “that common educational programs on our historical and religious relations . . . will truly promote mutual respect and teach future generations about the Holocaust so that never again will such a horror be possible.”

Then he paused and said with emphasis: “Never again!” Applause erupted throughout the auditorium.

Not all issues were neatly resolved by the exchanges, of course.

While Waxman pressed for full diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the State of Israel, the Pope said that while Jews “have a right to a homeland,” that right “also applies to the Palestinian people, so many of whom remain homeless and refugees.”

And whereas Waxman specifically singled out the Waldheim incident as a “deeply felt concern” of the Jewish community, the Pope did not mention it directly.

Earlier, however, the Pope told reporters on his plane as he headed for Miami that he had received the Austrian president because it “was necessary to show the same appreciation and esteem for every people” and that Waldheim had been “democratically elected president” of a nation.

Waxman, asked about that explanation, said it was unacceptable “because a distinction should be made for a man who had an unrepentant Nazi past. . . . If he’s a sleazy character, you don’t go all out.”

At the same time, Waxman indicated that, as a result of all the attention focused on Waldheim, “the Pope is increasingly sensitive to the Holocaust.”

Protesters in Miami

Not all Jews agree, however, and even as Waxman and the Pope were inside the cultural center in what Teitelbaum called “a conciliatory exchange,” about a dozen Jewish protesters--some in concentration camp uniforms--marched outside.

And leaders of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which claims 361,000 member families of Jews, were here to say that mainstream American Jews “do not share the euphoria expressed in the aftermath of the meeting in Rome.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center, was in Miami to try to deliver about 250,000 petitions urging the Vatican to extend diplomatic relations to Israel. However, before the Pope left Miami for Columbia, S.C., the center said, “the Vatican refused to provide a representative to accept these signed petitions.”

Gilbert Klaperman, an Orthodox rabbi who is president of the Synagogue Council of America, discounted the influence of the Wiesenthal Center, saying it “doesn’t have a constituency” and therefore did not speak for grass-roots Judaism. Klaperman had been designated to speak for the Jewish leaders at Friday’s meeting, but was forced to give way to Waxman when the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, in the wake of the Waldheim controversy, would not permit him to speak for the Synagogue Council of America. Klaperman attended as an individual.