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Words of welcome
Edward I. Cardinal Cassidy
After greeting the organizers and the participants Cardinal Edward Cassidy expressed his gratitude that this Symposium was taking place. Recently, as on many previous occasions, he encouraged Catholics and Jews to enter into reflection and dialogue on the need for our two faith communities to consider how to give witness to biblical values in a world which is ignoring the very existence of a transcendent being. He indicated that after Auschwitz each faith community must pose to itself, with a new seriousness and intensity, questions relating to this concern: What is good? What is evil? Why suffering?
For everyone born into this world, the question of good and evil presents itself as a continuous challenge. What is good? What is evil? Why is this good and that evil? What is the relationship between the creator, who found all that he had made was indeed good (Gen 1:31), and evil which is so much part of the life of every creature? How does a God who is goodness itself permit such abuse of the beauty that he has made, such defiance of the laws that he has given, such intolerance and violence between the children that he has made in his own image and likeness (Gen 1:27)? We come face to face with the paradox: the presence of evil is the consequence of that very freedom which God has given to us by which we are able to choose good! Each of us is confronted by the challenge that God placed before his people, through the prophet Moses:
“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity...Choose life so that you and your descendents may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him” (Deut 30:15,19).
Closely associated with these questions and having a particular interest for the present Symposium is the great mystery of suffering. From this reality there is no dispensation for Jew or Christian or follower of other religions or of non-believer. Often suffering is seen as evil. But is it really so? As Christians and Jews gather here, must we not state that suffering has been from the beginning of our special relationship with God a constant companion? What does that signify for our understanding of our vocation and of our suffering?
How often in our two histories has the question been presented vividly: where was God at that particular time? It is easy to reply that he was not there - but we know that he is always present, that he is the Lord of history, that he is kind and merciful, full of love and compassion for us his children. We will be reminded during our Symposium of that section of the Book of Isaiah about the suffering servant of God (Isaiah 49:57). Suffering therefore must have some deeper meaning in the eyes of God with respect to our communities and to each one of us, and we await anxiously to find new light on all this in the programme that has been prepared for our Symposium.
The theme for this Symposium asks us to look at these problems “after Auschwitz.” It is sad to have to admit that much of the progress in Catholic-Jewish relations has come “after Auschwitz” and because of Auschwitz. The great tragedy of Auschwitz has forced men and women to seek new philosophical, anthropological, ethical and theological directions to be followed; it has made us all realise the evil that can follow the denial of the dignity of each and every person, of each and every child of the one God born into this world.
Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy is President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.
