Word: anti
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...redress past shortcomings and strengthen the church's ties to the Jewish people. Like John Paul, Benedict came of age in one of the Holocaust's European slaughterhouses, and many expected that the Bavarian, like the Pole, could turn his somber history into a special authority for combatting anti-Semitism and pursuing the pro-Jewish reforms the church enacted at the Second Vatican Council in 1965. But he hasn't done so. Instead, says David Gibson, the (Catholic) author of The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World, "here's a Pope who grew...
Nobody thinks Benedict is an anti-Semite, and those close to him assert that aspersions on his enthusiasm are ridiculous. "He has written on the meaning of Judaism for Christianity," says Cardinal William Levada, his successor as Vatican doctrinal chief. "And he has also shown a fundamental sympathy that not even written words can have." But the Williamson affair was only the most recent episode in a series of gaffes and sour notes by the Pope. He seems simply to have forgotten Jewish concerns on a range of decisions regarding liturgy, sainthood and historical interpretation. In the case of SSPX...
Concern about the muddiness of Benedict's message first surfaced when he visited Auschwitz in 2006. Those attending the event were moved by his obvious emotion at the former death camp. But his address that day was marked by some highly peculiar ellipses. He failed to mention anti-Semitism, instead contending that "ultimately" the Nazis' motive in killing Jews was to "tear up the taproot of the Christian faith." And although he claimed to speak as a "son of the German people," Benedict seemed to downplay any ordinary-German implication in the Holocaust. Instead, he placed blame on a "ring...
...suspect. Although the German people as a group were not guilty of mass murder, neither were they innocent dupes throughout the process. And the idea that Hitler killed 6 million Jews to get at Christianity approaches the perverse. When Jewish groups complained, Benedict devoted a general audience to condemning anti-Semitism--although he revisited neither his church's nor his homeland's role in the Holocaust...
...raised eyebrows again, this time in widening the usage of the Tridentine Mass, commonly known as the Latin Mass. Jewish concern focused on the Tridentine prayer "for the conversion of the Jews," which is spoken on Good Friday, the anniversary of Christ's Crucifixion and historically an occasion for anti-Jewish riots. Benedict made some conciliatory changes in the prayer's content but refused to drop the stated objective of "conversion," infuriating some Jewish leaders, who saw it as an unnecessary provocation...