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After-word
Michael Mcgarry
“We have lived four days of exposure to, and confrontation with, the obscurity of evil and the invisibility of what we call good and whom we call good. It was as a return to the river Yabbok (Gen. 32: the wrestling of our father Jacob with the One who did not reveal his name but gave a new name to Jacob: Israel ‘for you have striven with God and with men, and you have prevailed’ [v.29]). The Shoah, even at the distance of more than half a century, provokes denial and incomprehension. We would like to forget it and do not have comprehensible categories to name it.” Thus did Prof. Arij A. Roest Crollius, SJ, accurately observe in his closing remarks to the international symposium: GOOD AND EVIL AFTER AUSCHWITZ: ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAY.
The sponsors of the Symposium have performed an important service for the Church in its wrestling with the terrible years of the Shoah. In the meeting, veterans of such Symposia as well as younger scholars who have only recently been introduced to the Darkness mingled and spoke of what the years of the Shoah meant and might mean for today. Some felt that words cannot embrace the reality and could only illumine a small corner of the reality. Others suggested that the reality shattered ordinary and even scholarly conversation. The “flavor” of the gathering, if one may use such a term, was one of sober and seasoned reflection. What, in the end, did this gathering of persons mean?
The presentations of high quality and deep insight, many of which are reflected in this issue of SIDIC, have left me with four thoughts about where we are now after the Symposium.
First, it would be asking too much of this Symposium - not unlike other symposia held regularly around the world (one thinks, for instance, of the Annual Scholars International Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches) - to take us to a new place, to shift the parameters of the question dramatically. Nonetheless, that the Symposium was held in Rome - the centre of one major Christian community, the place of the oldest Diaspora Jewish community in the world, and the largest mosque outside the Arab world - was significant. Furthermore, close on the heels of this Roman symposium was another: THE ROOTS OF ANTI-JUDAISM IN THE CHRISTIAN CONTEXT which was sponsored by and held at the Vatican as part of the Roman Catholic Church’s ongoing examination of its own teachings with regard to anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. More than a change, our Symposium continued to cement the connection between the tradition of Christian preaching and practice.
Second, and related to the first, the Symposium was an exercise in what Fr. Crollius and Fr. Metz both saw as one overriding ethical imperative: to remember. Readers of this journal do not have to be reminded that vast elements of our Christian Churches do not even reflect on the Shoah as part of our Christian heritage. But, as often we must be reminded, the perpetrators and the bystanders, were almost all Christians. Remembering who they were can only be a sobering part of our Christian self-identity.
Thirdly, after even the most abstract presentations, one wondered: “Yes, but what are we then to do?” For most, despair and paralysis are not valid options. Other actions must proceed from the depressing but necessary reflection on the Shoah. Again, drawing from Fr. Crollius, three implications might be underscored: “to remember”, “to be in compassionate solidarity” with our Jewish brothers and sisters who were persecuted, and to be “vigilant”, to be on the watch for any signal that anything like the Shoah might be on the horizon. The bridge between good, insightful scholarship and action implied in the issues we talked about remains unclear. It is indeed simplistic to suggest that the participants and organizers of the Symposium were indifferent to the kind of action which may evolve from such reflection, but one does wonder what happened to the participants after they departed from Rome. What happens to any of us after we have descended into the darkness of the Shoah: can we not help but clamor for fresh air, for new elbowroom, for an escape? But then, what are the implications, not only for our reflection on Auschwitz, but on our experience of the Symposium?
Finally, were new questions raised and new conclusions reached? No, no such revelations occurred. But, as Catholics, Protestants and Jews we pored again over this incredible chasm in our century to seek answers, to seek new ways of framing old questions, and to make sure that we do not forget, that we do not let the next generation move on as if the Shoah never occurred. Together we sifted through the ashes and rubble of the years of destruction. We sought to get an insight here, a nugget of wisdom there, but we returned to our places of learning, of worship, of assembly, of writing - moved, puzzled, with a few things clarified, but with resolve that we will not let it happen again. And even the seemingly insignificant moments of anti-Semitism or other prejudice we encounter will be less tolerated because we saw, we thought, we contemplated what happened the last time. And this ethical implication, if not enough, may nonetheless be the indispensable starting point for the next generation.
Michael McGarry, C.S.P., pastor of Newman Hall and Holy Spirit Parish in Berkeley, CA, presented the paper “Courage after the Shoah: Explorations of a Christian Virtue” at the Symposium.
