Israel’s Chief Rabbinate severed ties with the Vatican this week to protest a papal decision to reinstate a bishop who publicly denied that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.
The Jewish state’s highest religious authority sent a letter to the Holy See on Jan. 28 expressing “sorrow and pain” at the papal decision. “It will be very difficult for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to continue its dialogue with the Vatican as before,” the letter said. Both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic chief rabbis were parties to the letter.
The rabbinate also canceled a meeting with the Vatican set for March. The rabbinate and the state of Israel have separate ties with the Vatican, and the chief rabbis’ letter does not affect state relations.
Pope Benedict XVI, faced with an uproar over the bishop, said the same day that he feels “full and indisputable solidarity” with Jews and warned against any denial of the full horror of the Nazi genocide.
The remarks were his first public comments on the issue since the controversy erupted last weekend.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican hoped that in light of the pope’s words, “the difficulties expressed by the Israeli Rabbinate can be subjected to further and deeper reflection.”
Lombardi expressed hope that dialogue between the two parties can continue “fruitfully and serenely.”
Oded Weiner, the director general of the Chief Rabbinate’s office, welcomed the pope’s remarks, calling them “a big step toward reconciliation.”
With his comments, the pope reached out to Jews angered by his decision to reinstate Bishop Richard Williamson, who questioned whether 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust during an interview with Swedish TV broadcast about a week and a half ago.
“I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler,” Williamson said. He sad that according to the best research he’s seen, 200,000 to 300,000 Jews may have died in Nazi concentration camps, and none in gas chambers.
Jewish groups this week denounced the Vatican for bringing a Holocaust denier back into the fold. The Jewish groups generally acknowledged that the status of the bishops, members of the Society of St. Pius X, is essentially an internal Catholic matter. Their criticisms have focused mainly on Williamson and his comments about the Holocaust.
Those groups included the American Jewish Committee, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Agency in Israel, B’nai B’rith International and the International Jewish Commission on Interreligious Consult-ations, or IJCIC, the Jewish community’s main body for interfaith dialogue.
The Vatican quickly distanced itself from Williamson’s comments and said removing the excommunication by no means implied the Vatican shared his views.
Williamson and three other bishops were excommunicated 20 years ago after they were consecrated by an ultraconservative archbishop without papal consent — a move the Vatican at the time called an act of schism.
The four bishops are followers of a Catholic faction that rejected the Nostra Aetate, which introduced reforms paving the way for improved relations with the Jewish people. Benedict lifted their excommunication in an attempt to bring the bishops back into the Catholic fold, a development that would still be conditional on their acceptance of the authority of church teachings.
Benedict said Jan. 28 that he had lifted the excommunication because the bishops had “repeatedly shown their deep suffering over the situation.”
The German-born Benedict expressed his “full and indisputable solidarity” with Jews.
He recalled his visits to the Auschwitz death camp — including as pope in May 2006 — and the “brutal massacre of millions of Jews, innocent victims of blind racial and religious hatred.”
The Vatican and the rabbinate launched formal relations in 2000 when Pope John Paul II visited Jerusalem. Since then, delegates from the Holy See and the rabbinate have met twice a year to discuss religious issues. This is the first time ties have been severed.
The Vatican and the State of Israel have had their own relationship since establishing diplomatic ties in 1993.
The current flap echoes the concern aroused in the Jewish community in 2007 when Benedict allowed the recitation of the Latin, or Tridentine, Mass, whose Good Friday liturgy includes a prayer for Jewish conversion. Then, as now, the pope’s decision was understood as an effort to reach out to the same group of traditionalists who rejected the council’s reforms.
In 2007, Benedict described the Latin Mass decision as an effort to achieve “an interior reconciliation” within the church.
Rabbi David Rosen, the AJC’s director of interreligious affairs and the chairman of IJCIC, told JTA that it is unclear whether the pope has determined that he is willing to pay a price in Jewish-Catholic harmony to achieve his unification objectives, or whether he simply has a penchant for unilateralism.
“I believe it is the second, both because some would accuse me of wishful thinking, but here there has really been a pattern of a lack of consultation,” Rosen said. “He appears to do things without understanding their full implications.”
In a letter to Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s point person on relations with the Jewish people, Rosen requested that Williamson be asked to retract his position and apologize.
Kasper has said publicly that Williamson’s comments are “unacceptable” and Bishop Bernard Fellay, the leader of the society, said his group does not share Williamson’s view, AP reported.
Alessandra Rizzo of the AP in Vatican City and Ben Harris of JTA contributed to this report.