Word: benediction
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...January, when Pope Benedict XVI reversed the 1988 excommunication of four bishops of an ultra-traditionalist Catholic group called the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), he probably knew it would ignite a firestorm. The church has significant unresolved problems with the society, among them its gross disobedience to the previous Pope. Benedict was determined to try to end a schism with a movement that exhibits a fervent piety he shares and is trying to encourage in Europe, where SSPX is strongest. But almost simultaneous with the Pope's announcement, a Swedish-TV interview surfaced in which SSPX bishop Richard...
...Benedict arrives in Israel during an eight-day visit to the Holy Land, his first since becoming Pontiff. The trip is a near carbon copy of one made by his predecessor John Paul II in 2000. The Vatican hopes to use the trip to build on its 44-year rapprochement with the world's Jews after centuries of conflict and persecution. During his papacy, John Paul became the first modern Pope to visit a synagogue, recognize the state of Israel and apologize for the role Christians played in the Holocaust...
...since Benedict's election, his relations with Jews--although similar in broad outline to John Paul's--have been plagued by mixed messages that have caused critics to wonder whether he has botched the opportunity to 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...
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...
Rabbi James Rudin, senior interreligious adviser for the American Jewish Committee, notes that while "flash points happened with John Paul II as well, you always knew the Pope was committed to solving them. With Benedict, there's a sense of concerned bewilderment." Even after Benedict returns to the Vatican from the Holy Land, it's likely that he will still have to address skepticism about whether he shares John Paul's commitment to strengthening ties between Catholicism and Judaism--or whether he is willing to let his papacy be a tepid transition into a period of interfaith neglect...