The Vatican and Israel1The Daily Telegraph, 31 December 1993.
By any standards, the agreement made between Israel and the Vatican on 30 December 1993 to move towards full diplomatic links was an historic turning point in the relationship between two of the world’s great faiths. It lacked the obvious drama of the handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn. But when set against almost two thousand years of tragedy between Synagogue and Church it counts as one of the great interfaith achievements of the century.
On the surface, the agreement is no more than another episode in the series of events set in motion by the Gulf War and the subsequent peace process. Since 1991 nearly thirty countries, including China, India and the republics of the former Soviet Union, have established or renewed diplomatic links with Israel. The Vatican could be seen as a belated participant in this re-alignment. But that would be to ignore the unique and troubled relationship between Christianity and Judaism.
From at least the third century their encounter had been set on a tragic course by what the historian Jules Isaac called the “teachings of contempt” of the Church for the Jews. For these were not two unrelated religions. Christianity had originally been a Jewish sect. It laid claim to the Hebrew Scriptures and to the covenant with Israel. The fact that the majority of Jews did not become Christians was a source of continuing perplexity.
It was resolved by a series of stereotypes that were to have a tenacious hold on the Christian imagination. Jews had rejected salvation. They were an obstinate, accursed people. Their defeat by Rome was to be seen as divine punishment. Far from being a challenge to Christianity, the Jews – dispersed and powerless as they were – were its living proof.
These attitudes persisted long into the modern world, and reached their denouement in what was widely perceived as the silence of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi Holocaust. Might anti-Judaism have given passive assent to antisemitism? That disturbing thought prepared the way for Nostra Aetate (1965), which sought to remove official teaching that the Jews were a people “rejected or accursed by God.”
Many saw the declaration as the beginning of a new era. But they became frustrated when it led no further. The most significant development in Jewish life since the Holocaust was the creation of the State of Israel. For Jews, it meant return to their historical birthplace and an affirmation of life against the decree of death. But Nostra Aetate contained no statement about Israel, and the Vatican continued to withhold diplomatic recognition.
Explanations were offered. Rome was concerned about Israel’s disputed boundaries, the status of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and the position of the Church in Arab lands. But to Jewish and even some Catholic observers, the Vatican’s reticence contained traces of ancient theological prejudice. Homelessness – the Church had taught – was the divine judgement against Jews for not becoming Christians. Therefore a Jewish homecoming was impossible.
Shortly before his death in 1904, Theodor Herzl met Pope Pius X and explained his dream of a Jewish state. The Pope replied, “The Jews have not recognised our Lord, therefore we cannot recognise the Jewish people.” Such sentiments were surely untenable after Auschwitz. How could the Vatican recognise Jewry without including its most powerful collective expression, its State?
So the agreement fulfils a process begun twenty-eight years ago in Vatican II, and will help to heal a wound that has festered for centuries. There can be no doubting the courage with which the Catholic Church has wrestled with its texts and teachings, and for this there can only be Jewish admiration.
On Israel’s side too, there has been powerful resistance to overcome. Many Jews, religious and secular, argue that there are injuries too deep to be forgotten. The history of Jewish suffering in the Crusades, blood libels, inquisitions, ghettoes, and expulsions cannot be unwritten. There are, they say, relationships that cannot be normalised. The Vatican and the Jewish people cannot meet in friendship: not yet, perhaps not ever.
Understandable though they are, I believe these views are mistaken. If faith is to meet the challenge of this destructive century it must be prepared to move beyond the antagonisms of the past. Jews cannot ignore a Church with 900 million members and immense influence throughout the world. The Vatican cannot ignore the political rebirth of the Jewish people after two thousand years of powerlessness and dispersion. Above all, neither can forego the imperative of reconciliation after witnessing the full cost of religious conflict.
The story of the covenant begins with two sibling rivalries, between Isaac and Ishmael, and Jacob and Esau. Jewish tradition traced Ishmael to Islam and Esau to Rome. The year 1993 will be seen in retrospect as the year in which Israel exchanged a handshake with its own Ishmael and Esau, the Palestinians and the Catholic Church.
These were secular, political events. But behind them on both sides are centuries of religious tension. At a time when old ethnic sores have been re-opened, these two gestures are momentous signals of hope. Ancient hostilities do not die overnight. But neither are we condemned to replay them for ever. The year 1993 may yet be seen as the year in which Jerusalem sent a message of peace to the world.