Antisemitism Studies

Introduction

In his article "Has Antisemitism been Uprooted from Christianity? A Catholic Response," John Pawlikowski raises an issue that is central to our understanding of the Catholic Church today. In the process, Pawlikowski addresses key theological themes with enormous repercussions for Catholicism in its self-understanding, its relations with Judaism, its relations with other Christian churches and traditions, and in its role as a global Christian community in the contemporary world.

There are, in my opinion, three major issues that underline the importance of Pawlikowski's argument. They concern different aspects of the theology of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and its challenging reception in post-Vatican II Catholicism in the twenty-first century. The first issue is the problem of looking at the past teachings and behavior of the Church and of Christianity in light of the new moral structure provided by the contemporary public conversation about religion and politics of which Catholicism is part; the second is the issue of the Land as paradigmatic of the [End Page 354] difficulty of interpreting, in the current crisis of the international order, Nostra Aetate and its silences; and third is the transition from a European matrix of Catholic theology and magisterium to a "global Catholic" Church that is much more diverse and pluralistic in terms of its historical background compared to the Church at the time of Vatican II and the early stages of its interpretation.

The Catholic Church: Looking at its Past Through a Contemporary Lens

John Pawlikowski makes a strong case for the need to update and correct the historical record, silences, and false statements found in the 1998 Vatican document We Remember: "Despite the strong indictment of the antisemitic mindset in We Remember, the 1998 Vatican statement on the Holocaust, Catholicism has tended to argue that antisemitisim came only from fringe elements in the Church who were bullied by wayward preachers and teachers.¹ Such a view is patently false and needs to be totally removed from Catholic teaching if antisemitism is to be eliminated once and for all from the heart of Catholic identity."

Here, Pawlikowski makes an appeal that goes against the current of recent intra-Catholic debates. Dealing with the most painful chapters of the past in the Catholic Church has always been a very delicate issue, but it has become even more complicated lately, and not just from an institutional point of view, concerned with the reputation of Catholic authorities, but also from the point of view of religion as a marker of political identity in the present stage of the "culture wars." In conservative Catholic circles there has always been a refusal or a reluctance to address the past of the Catholic Church critically, in terms that are not apologetical or providential. However, in recent times there has been a visible shift from an attitude of apologetics (typical of a classically conservative and clerical Catholic culture) to something that is closer to a denial of history—an attitude that owes more to a "post-truth" position than to old-school theological conservatism. [End Page 355]

From the point of view of the history of Catholic tradition, it has always been clear that some theological reforms require a certain discontinuity in the teaching of the Church. Nostra Aetate is one of the conciliar documents that represent a change in the sense of continuity and reform, carrying important elements of discontinuity, particularly in the teaching on the Jews in paragraph four. In the history of the post-Vatican II Church, and especially during the pontificate of John Paul II (1978–2005), Nostra Aetate was received and further developed significantly more than many other documents produced by Vatican II.²

But in the early 2000s and with the passage of pontificate from John Paul II to Benedict XVI (2005–2013) something happened—an intensification of the refusal to deal with the past as part of the battle over the meaning of Vatican II. In the recent history of the interpretation of Vatican II, we have...