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Jewish-Christian Ceasefire - The Dialogue Is Over
Malachi B. Martin
The recent Middle East armed conflict has been a paramount occasion for many American Catholics and Jews to realize that their dialogue, begun in the early sixties, was at an end. That conflict did not end the dialogue; but the dialogue, such as it was envisaged by its initiators, had in fact ended sometime between the June, 1967, Six-Day War and the November, 1973, ceasefire.
The reasons for its end now appear obvious: the primary aims entertained by both Catholics and Jews were achieved; and, quite importantly, the chief participants in that dialogue — Catholics, their Church, American Jews and Israel — all had undergone an evolution. They are no longer what they were in 1960.
The dialogue in question began with the 1960 visit of Professor Jules Isaac to Pope John XXIII. Isaac's purpose was simple: to ask that the Ecumenical Council about to open in Rome should condemn two long-held Christian ideas: that the Jews as a race and as individuals were deicides—Christ-killers—and that the Jewish race bore a special curse for not having become Christian. As a result of this interview, a special subcommission was formed under Cardinal Bea's direction, with the task of preparing proposals for the Council to adopt.
In the early 1960's (when the Council opened) the parties most concerned in this dialogue had, each in its own way, particular interests. Many Catholics — both lay and clerical — had profound guilt feelings about past anti-Semitism and its excesses in the Church. Most American Jews felt that the Roman Catholic Church, as the preponderant part of Christianity, should not only officially condemn its own anti-Semitism, but should also give an example to other Christians and all men. Israeli authorities felt that such an action on the part of the Vatican, as John and Isaac were opening the possibility for the first time in two thousand years, would not only help their national cause, but that it could lead to Vatican de jure recognition of Israel — an inestimable plus in Israeli eyes during the 1960's.
American Catholics took the dialogue as part of their continuing Americanization, as part of the homogenizing of their Catholic identity into the pluralistic character of the USA as a nation. A tiny group of Catholics and Jews nourished for a few precious moments the hope that the dialogue heralded the burst of a new unheard-of dawn, a fresh light in which Jews and Christians would discover or rediscover a mutual identity lost somewhere in the clouds and storms and contentions of the first Christian centuries. But, very early on in the dialogue, that hope died stillborn.
However, between 1962 and 1965 the Council did legislate for all Roman Catholics in Isaac's sense. And much more resulted. Due to the Council decisions, an entire process was initiated in Catholic dioceses, parishes and universities throughout the world. Catholic-Jewish organizations were formed. Catechisms and theology manuals were purged. Sermons and lectures took up the theme of the Council's stand on anti-Semitism. Discussion groups were formed. Articles and books were published. Christian ecumenism was broadened to include Christian-Jewish relations.
The dialogue was a vast educational effort that achieved something hopeful and new in terms of outlook on Jews by Roman Catholics. Some -Catholics, mindful of those parts of the Talmud and Mishnah virulently defamatory of Jesus, would have regarded it all as more truly a dialogue if Jews had been willing to renounce such references as Catholics renounced their own mistaken ideas, writings and actions about Jews. But, all in all, the final results were good. Although no one maintains that all anti-Semitism had been liquidated (it has many different roots), all official and religious basis for anti-Semitism had been removed. Pogroms, Good Friday massacres, dispossession, exile, social discrimination, hate-sermons and all traits of past official Christian and Catholic anti-Semitism, all these are now impossible. The primary aims of the dialogue, therefore (not all the special interests, however), were achieved.
Since then, radical changes have affected all the participants. Israel's position, first of all. Between 1967 and 1973 Israel came into possession of an extra 25,000 square miles of Arab territory together with 1.5 million Muslim Palestinians. As she became more secure militarily, she ceased to need or to want Vatican recognition. As she became increasingly independent in her punitive actions, the opposition to her grew more intense among the 2.5 million Palestinians throughout the Middle East and throughout the Arab nations that played host to Palestinians.
Israel's efflorescence after the victories of the Six-Day War embosomed a new and justified pride in Israel for Jews everywhere. But, at the same time, it reflected the necessary irredentism of Israel's position. She felt more secure, pumped oil and mined ores in Sinai, undertook massive Jewish colonization of Old Jerusalem, created fresh enclaves of security by eliminating a whole series of ancient Muslim towns and villages, andin general benefited from the acquisition of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights as sources of revenue and manpower.
A corresponding development affected American Jewry. American Judaism got a new coloration: a consciousness of Jewish nationalism embodied in, and somehow palpably shared with, Israel. There was a fresh politicization of Judaism in many Jews. Nothing that good organizing could do was left undone in the USA by an intelligent, immensely well-off, generous, efficiently organized and dedicated Jewry to ensure the pro-Israeli policy of the American Administration and popular sympathy with the position of Israel. No one can with impunity attack or criticize Israel in the media or object to any bill in Congress introduced on Israel's behalf.
Israel, after the Six-Day War, was pitted not as a weakling nation with constricted borders against crushing odds of Arabs, but as an occupying power against one nation (the Palestinians) supported by other (Arab) nations. American Jewry's efforts had to be organized in support of Israel's new position. But this was no longer one of threatened weakness. Israel dominated Middle East skies; her commandos landed where they chose, taking toll of life and property as they chose; relations with black Africa and Europe flourished; tourism abounded. To be critical of Israel's policies was taken by American Jews as a sure sign of anti-Semitism. But obviously this « anti-Semitism » was a far cry from that which the Ecumenical Council had excoriated. There had been a new and rather subtle development. Not only the American Jew's sense of his Jewishness, but the Catholic-Jewish dialogue itself, had been politicized.
Neither Catholics in their bulk nor the Vatican as a chancellery would accept that politicization. The Vatican felt no imperative to take sides in a territorial dispute between nations; Catholics had been interested originally only in the eradication of religious anti-Semitism. Among American Catholic activists there was born, as part of their radicalization over Vietnam and Pakistan, a sympathy for the Palestinians as part of the Third World fighting for economic and political libe- ration. And American Jewry never made the distinction between the misfortune of Jews because of their Jewish faith and the difficulties of Israel due to her politico-economic posture or her exploitation of the lands she occupied militarily.
Third World opposition to Israel was not the only factor which politicized the dialogue. There was and is the « energy crisis » and the continuing power struggle of the USA and the USSR into which Israel, as the Middle East seesaw, is inevitably drawn. Europe and Japan stand in absolute need of Middle East oil. Americans are by all odds going to have a similarly absolute need in the short term of the next ten years. The crisis reaches into American homes and industry. The Arab use of oil as a weapon to modify Israel's stance is only beginning. With all the issues fading into new perspectives in the press and the media, it now seems that a majority of Americans — including Catholics — are coming to realize that the present Middle East situation has nothing to do with anti-Semitism; but that, as an economic and social and political question with international ramifications, it has everything to do with cooking, lighting, warmth, travel, production, the stock market and many convenience goods produced by the petrochemical industry.
Catholics can find little in their own practical experience to parallel the new Jewish dilemma. For Catholics have ceased for at least a hundred years to have their faith inextricably bound up with a purely political situation (the last time was the Piedmontese seizure of the Papal States in 1870) or their national allegiance complicated by a religious affiliation which involves a second national allegiance. Meanwhile, Israel must face the responsibilities incurred by past successes and an irreversible trend in world affairs today which dictates that Middle East oil is necessary for world peace and prosperity.
A fresh Catholic-Jewish dialogue is always possible and desirable. But it cannot be attempted or begun until a new realization on the part of some is more fully weighed by many: that the substantive basis for the former dialogue has evaporated. And such a fresh dialogue cannot concern the political fortunes of any power or equate those fortunes with the deepest concerns reflected in that fateful meeting of John XXIII and Jules Isaac. It can concern only the perennial bone of contention between these two ancient protagonists since the first century: What, if any, is the relation of Christian and Jew within the optic of a saving god, in a world to be redeemed, and as part of a mankind desperately in need of fresh insights into the moral why and wherefore of human behavior? For this underlies all our difficulties today.
Malachi B. Martin, a former Jesuit professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, is author of the just-published Jesus Now.
