At PoliticsDaily.com, Elizabeth Lev (the daughter of Mary Ann Glendon) titles her analysis "How Israel Could Have Been a Better Host to Benedict," and as the title suggests, takes aim at Israel and some Jewish leaders for undermining that leg of the pilgrimage. Her walkaway:
"But in Jerusalem, despite the gaily colored papal flags alternating with the blue Star of David, the impression seemed to be that receiving the pope was more of a burden than an honor. Compared with the pope's gentlemanly overtures of peace, his hosts seemed like petulant schoolchildren. It was a sad showing for the Israelis. What could have been a historic encounter was soured by grumbling from the sidelines."
The other entry is from Yours Truly and is called "How the Pope Fell Short as a Guest." And as that title suggests, I'd give il papa a mixed grade at best--above all for a "missed opportunity" with the Jewish community that can never be recovered.
The other difference between the two verdicts is that I am right, of course. Right?
BTW, I would take issue with just two of Lev's assertions:
One, she says that after the Regensburg blowup, "Benedict issued a clarification and invited Muslim leaders to dialogue, garnering a positive response from 138 Islamic scholars." Actually, the Muslim scholars initiated the dialogue request, and after some delay the Vatican accepted.
Two, Lev says that "The opposition of the Ratzinger family to Hitler's regime is a matter of public record." In fact, there is no such record I know of, and Joseph Ratzinger himself has said that while his family had no love for Hitler, they never made any public statement or action because that would have endangered them. Many others did object or resist, and suffered the consequences, though Ratzinger does not make mention of them in his writings.
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I wish he had not simply condemned the security wall in se which is reminiscent of John Paul calling the death penalty "cruel" in 1999 in St.Louis. We dabble now. Our Popes dabble in penology and terrorism security and develop no total thorough policy in either area....and then they fly off to other things. We are thus using the sound bite attention span of modern man to image...not to really enlighten about security...but to image in a competitive world of imaging.
Bill - With all due respect, that wall is not "about security."
While the original idea may have been spawned as a way to cut down terrorist intrusion, it is no longer being built for that reason. It is a way of including land in Israeli territory and disenfranchising Palestinians. The wall does not run along the lines of the 1948 borders but at times is almost 30 kilometers away ... and not on the Israeli side.
The Pope is making the right statement, because walling people out and erecting barriers is definitely NOT the Christian way, and it is not conducive to the peace so necessary for the area.
It's not about walls. You may find it interesting to listen to this essay by David Hare http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kjb73
"Many others did object or resist, and suffered the consequences"
Which is why the Israelis act like petulant school children. Any Catholic of note from that time, living in that place who outlived the war is obviously guilty of not doing enough, not saying enough, as evidenced by their very presence today.
It's easy to recognize a free agent like Schindler. It's hard to give credit to Popes and other ranking officials at the level of the Vatican Secretariat. That might put the lie to the Jewish propaganda that we're inherently anti-Semitic. That might cause an outbreak of responsibility in diplomatic and ecumenical governance, which has as its driving force the guilt-manipulation of Jewish Victimhood.
If the blood of Catholic martyrs during WWII and the eyewitness testimony of the Jews and periodicals of that time (don't panic David, I won't threaten your spin by reprinting it here again) isn't enough, if Nostra Aetate isn't enough, if John Paul II wasn't enough, if Benedict showing up wasn't enough, then maybe its the Jews who are afraid to let go of the certitude of past hurts for the uncertainty of ecumenical brotherhood.
To what lengths have they extended themselves since WWII in the ecumenical arena? Being on the receiving end of our outreach doesn't count. Where is the reciprocation of equal magnitude?
How about starting by recognizing the voice of the WWII Jews and taking Pope Pius XII out of Yad Vashem's Hall of Shame?
Cindy
I grew up in an area wherein two people I know were murdered within a block of my house in entirely different years. I had large muggers challenge me to fist fights on the NY waterfront as I worked for college money in Sadlier Book Publishers (catholic) of all places. I lived for years intimate with danger. I believe the people who are to decide about such things as walls after terrorism has been visited on them is the potential victims not an itinerant visitor who has the Swiss Guard guarding him wheneven he wishes.
You wrote: " erecting barriers is definitely NOT the Christian way". Actually...it is varying with the threat... consult the Christian scriptures not christian writers on exclusionary choices. Christ noting that after one has reproved another in private and then with 2 or 3 witnesses and then with the Church...and he still does not hear you... "let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican". That's Christ telling you to erect a barrier between you and that person henceforth. Paul when apprised of the man caught in incest wrote to the Christian community: "Expel the wicked man from your midst." Now imagine if Ratzinger and John Paul had obeyed the example of Paul in that incident but with our sex abuse priests who had the same numbers in John Paul's first ten years as they had in the ten years before him. They should have been exclusionary and at that, they should have been exclusionary quickly.
The Jews know that...ie the papal expertise in the sex abuse crisis...and it's speed. They'd be foolish to see us as experts in security.
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