Word: benediction
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...Still, the momentous visit 24 years ago, during which John Paul referred to Jews as Christians' "older brothers," could never fully erase that history. And indeed, when John Paul's successor, Benedict XVI, crosses the Tiber River on Sunday to visit that same synagogue, he will be dogged by a new dispute about the past: the controversy over the Vatican's decision last month to push for possible sainthood for World War II-era Pope Pius XII, whom some Jewish groups and scholars blame for not doing enough to try to halt the Holocaust. Because of this and other tensions...
...Italy's leading rabbis, Giuseppe Laras, said he would boycott the service, citing a number of sore points with the Pope, most notably his decision to reactivate Pius XII's sainthood dossier, which Benedict himself had put on hold three years ago to await more historical study. "The Pope's visit to the Rome synagogue is a negative fact," Laras, head of the Italian Rabbinic Assembly, told the German-Jewish community newspaper Juedische Allgemeine Zeitung. "[The visit] won't bring anything worthwhile, but will only serve the most reactionary sectors of the Catholic Church...
...papal denunciation, which could have just accelerated the killings. "We also need to try to see those events as they were being lived at the time, and be much more understanding about the value in the prudence that was exercised," he said. "History is not that tidy." (Read: "Pope Benedict on the Question of Judaism...
...Some Jewish leaders, however, are not as upset about Benedict's synagogue visit. Riccardo Di Segni, who took over as Rome's chief rabbi in 2001, has not always seen eye to eye with Benedict. He cancelled a Catholic-Jewish meeting last year after the Pope's decision to allow wider use of the traditional Latin liturgy, which includes a Good Friday prayer calling for the conversion of the Jews. But he and other Jews felt it was better to move ahead with the synagogue visit as planned...
...turned out to be the year of the antihero. It is the year in which Joe Lieberman gets my nod--cynical though it is--as 'American of the Year.' A Democrat of convenience, Lieberman has succeeded in doing what Benedict Arnold couldn't. In a masterful act of treachery, he retains a position of trust among the very people he betrayed...