by Edward H. Flannery

It is a coincidence, and indeed a happy one, that my work in Jewish-Christian relations began in an institution of learning named Seton Hall, and that now, as that work approaches its end, you tender me this honor in the College of Seton Hill. Obviously I have scaled the heights. If ever I should write my ecumenical autobiography, its title will of course be “The Ascent of Mount Seton,” with apologies to the great Sister Teresa and a tribute to the great Mother Seton. I am most grateful for the honor you have given me, and deeply gratified. Despite its youth, I consider the Nostra Aetate award a prestigious one, not only in itself, but also in virtue of its source, the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education of Seton Hill College, one of the all-too-few Catholic schools devoted to the study of the Holocaust, and one that has attracted well-deserved national attention. Such an endeavor as yours can be a difficult and at times a thankless one, but I am sure you realize how important what you are doing is for the health and growth of the cause in which we all engaged. May your efforts never flag, and your successes never wane!

Before I move into my discussion, I thought it best that I tell you something about some of my own endeavors, of my ascent to these heights, with which you may or may not be familiar, but which have a bearing on what I want to say.

My work in Catholic-Jewish relations splits clearly into two parts. The first began back in the fifties, when I worked with Monsigneur John Oesterreicher in the Institute of Judeo-Christian studies at Seton Hall, during which time the four volumes of The Bridge, a Yearbook of Jewish-Christian Studies, were published, volumes I still consider an important source of Catholic-Jewish scholarship. My Anguish of the Jews, which, I dote on noting, was published five months before Nostra Aetate, was planned as a sort of fifth volume of The Bridge series. This period was followed by ten years as Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of Catholic-Jewish relations of NCCB, at the end of which I was retired, by Conference rules, at the ripe old age of sixty-five, when I returned to my home diocese in Providence, there to continue my efforts in things Jewish-Christian.

My re-entry into the diocesan field of work was a rather jarring one. The national level on which he had served had been one of intense interest, high scholarship, innumerable dialogues, ecclesiastical documents, workshops, etc. Now back on what I might call the ground floor of our work was a chance to see what had been accomplished. I am not talking now of diocesan leadership, which was generally permissive and verbally encouraging, but rather of the parish clergy and the parishioners with whom I cam in close contact. Coming in on this level was somewhat like experience a time warp, as if being transported back some twenty years in time when there was no Nostra Aetate, no dialogue, no meeting s of Catholics and Jews. The clergy, especially the younger, had little to no interest in ecumenism, especially Jewish-Christian. Parishioners generally had never headed a homily or talk on Jewish-Christian relations, and on occasion they heard some with an anti-Judaic, and at times antisemitic coloring. The fault here, I realized, lay not so much with the clergy as with the seminaries they attended. Every now and then I continue to hear complaints along these lines from parishioners. I am talking of my own diocese, true, but have learned from others that it is fairly true elsewhere.

So there it was: two distinct levels of experience in Jewish-Christian ecumenism: one a rich and luxuriant field of growth, the other something of a wasteland. And never had the twain fully met.

Pondering the situation, I came to a conclusion. We have an ecumenical plumbing problem. By that I mean, what we learn in dialogue and in conferences on the upper level does not seep down to where it finally must go, the Catholic people. I, of course, am well aware of the efforts made by Dr. Fisher’s office and in the dialogue, to funnel their findings to the seminaries, classrooms, and pulpits on the diocesan level, but saw now that they had been successful only in exceptional cases. The Catholic people as a whole remained untouched, except possibly by chance articles on the subject in the press. How do we explain this? A common explanation is that it takes time for any massive social or spiritual transformation to eventuate, which is true, but is this an adequate answer? I think not. Throughout this time, some nagging questions kept coming back to me: Are we pursuing the right goal in dialogue? What constitutes the final objective, the ultimate raison d’etre, of our dialogue or coming together with Jews? As commonly defined, that goal is the mutual understanding of Christians and Jews, of Judaism and Christianity, which on the face of it tends to make the entire enterprise an intellectual or theological one. Unquestionably, such an approach is indispensable, but is it sufficient? Given the centuries-old alienation that has stained the relations of Christians and Jews, which persists in our own time, should not the ultimate goal be the reconciliation of the Christian and Jewish peoples, millions strong? If so, should not our approach be as much, if not more, pastoral than intellectual or academic, more interpersonal than theological? In this perspective, it can be asked: is not any interface of Christians and Jews that is not effectively turned toward that massive reconciliation by that same fact deficient?

At the outset of our conversations, traditional Christian theology of Judaism was unquestionably in need of revision, which left no alternative but to endow theology with a central role. But was not this centrality to be a temporary one, in other words, coextensive with time required to complete the necessary revision? Moreover, expect for their agreement on the need of a revision of Christian theology, Jewish participants in the dialogue did not favor conceding theology a prominent, let alone a permanent, place on the dialogue agenda. Theology of itself, clearly, could not have been considered adequate to the achievement of the wider goals of our coming together. At any rate, the question at this point is this: has not theological revision, which has been going on from the beginning, sufficiently accomplished its task to allow a change of directions; that is to move on in pursuit of the more interpersonal and concrete aims of our collaboration? I believe that it has, and very successfully. The rejection of the deicide myth and of the supercessionist theology, the recognition of Christianity’s Judaic heritage, a Christian appreciation of post-biblical Judaism, and many other revisions again, are not well established. The Christian temptation to travel along a theological plateau that would enclose the dialogue in an endless quest of ever new theological constructions is a strong but also infertile one, if we are not to lose sight of our ultimate goal. That further work in these areas should continue, especially among professional theologians, is not in question. What is in question is whether theology should not relinquish its favored position so as to facilitate what may well be considered a belated initiative toward the achievement of a flesh and blood reconciliation of Christians and Jews.

But if theology is no longer the most effective instrument for attaining the final goal of Jewish-Christian reconciliation and is not to remain the main thrust of our efforts, what is to replace it? In my view, a major change of direction is necessary. To state it simply, I would say adopt the Jewish agenda. It has been known from the start that while Christians prefer to theologize in dialogue with Jews, Jewish participants do not, preferring as they do to study historical intergroup relationships. Should we then divide the difference? No, reciprocity is, I believe, not the answer. There should be no balancing or trading of issues. It is not to be forgotten that our coming together in friendship was realized in the wake of a centuries-old Christian and secular oppression of Jews and Judaism. Thus do Christians approach their Jewish brothers and sisters today burdened with a heavy historical debt. There should be no reciprocity of discussions until the debt is paid. It would be well therefore for Christians to adopt the Jewish agenda as is. Jews know better than Christians what the damaged are and also the best method of payment.

What is the Jewish agenda? It has mostly to do, we have said, with history and human relations. This agenda can be subdivided into three major concerns: antisemitism, the Holocaust, and the State of Israel. For Jews these are life and death issues, and many Jews and some Christians deem them, rightly I believe, to embody the principal obstacles to a full mutual Jewish-Christian understanding and reconciliation. They are problematical today because of Christian and non-Jewish malfeasance, past and present. They are issues that should weigh heavily on the Christian conscious. To make them Christian as well as Jewish concerns is not, in my view, a matter of going the “second mile,” or “noblesse oblige,” but of simple justice.

Of these three major concerns, is there one that overarches the others and merits precedence, particularly in consideration of the attainment of Jewish-Christian reconciliation? There exists no consensus on this, at least on the Christian side of the dialogue. It will be my contention that the priority and precedence belongs to antisemitism. No matter, let us discuss the three in light of that evaluation.

First, the State of Israel. At present, it is the foremost concern of Jews, in or out of dialogue, which in itself should make it a serious contender for prime consideration. Paradoxically, it is the issue that receives least attention in dialogue. Why? For at least two reasons. Christians generally misunderstand he place Eretz Yisrael holds in Jewish history and Jewish faith-tradition. A sufficient knowledge of these will reveal that, at least in the wide sense, Jewish faith and tradition are essentially Zionist. Christians, however, view Israel mostly as a political matter and hence, if not actually disqualified for a place on the agenda, as a peripheral issue. In the “Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing Nostra Aetate” of 1975, we were encouraged to “learn by what essential traits Jews define themselves according to their own religious experience.” Since they, and not they alone, see concern for Israel as inseparable from their Jewishness, this entitles it to full consideration in our conversations. There is also a certain politicization of the subject which allows only for its discussion as a sort of corollary of the Palestinian problem. This persistent slanting of the discussion points to another mindset that muddies the entire subject, anti-Zionism. It can be found almost anywhere, from the United Nations to your next-door neighbor. I do not have the time to educe the antisemitic connection of this problem, which is usually not difficult to discern. Let me take the risk of simply saying that there exists an anti-Zionism sans antisemitism, but, according to my experience, it is a rare species. I conclude by saying that Israel is entitled not to first priority on the agenda but to much more concern in our meetings than it receives.

The Holocaust, the Shoah, is it the most important and pressing subject for our study today? I would say yes, if it is seen as what it basically is, an act of antisemitism, the quintessential act of antisemitism. The inclination is strong to see it as an isolated episode of history, an aberration, the work of a madman, or a divine lapse; in other words, an atrocity perpetrated by others, This reduction of this epochal event to that of a circumscribed event of the present tends willy-nilly to dissociate it from its long roots in the past and the support received in the present without which it could not have occurred.

Adolph Hitler’s maniacal antisemitism, and the Shoah, could not have been perpetrated unless there had been a German people that permitted him to happen; that kind of Germany could not have come about had there not been a Europe that had allowed and even assisted it to do so and that Europe could not have existed unless there was a Western hemisphere of nations that made it possible. I am not talking of military might or politics but of an atmosphere, a psychosocial atmosphere of hostility toward Jews that had become a staple of Western culture. In this context, it is possible to conclude, for example, that anyone in this country before or during World War II who harbored or evidenced anti-Jewish sentiments, were it as minuscule as to indulge in an antisemitic joke, made his or her contribution, however infinitesimal, to the Shoah. Such infinitesimal contributions multiplied by millions can accumulate into a psychological force of fearsome dimensions. Thinner in this country, this collective emotional force waxed thicker in Europe, grew to a white heat in a racist, Judeo-phobic Germany there to form a vortex in Hitler’s mania. The Shoah was, in fine, a creation of a collective subliminal force of long duration in the Western world as well as of the psychopathy of Adolph Hitler. Some may see all this as too mystical for credence. Not so Carl Jung, the expert in these matters, who investigated it as an empirical reality. Be that as it may, it is a perspective that is helpful in gaining an understanding of the durability and pervasiveness of the antisemitic animus and of our possible complicity in enormities we presume to be beyond our comprehension.

Another approach to the Shoah that deflects it from its antisemitic provenance is that of theologians who focus their concern exclusively on God’s putative role in the tragedy, and thus, as Yehuda Bauer terms it, mystify the subject. Back in the forties, Hochhut posed the question in his play “The Deputy”: “Where were you, Oh God?” Finding an answer to the question seemed to obsess theologians for a while. Every kind of answer was given. God was “absent,” “in eclipse,” “out to lunch” as one irreverently put it. Another saw it quite differently: “He was at Auschwitz suffering with His people,” - which encapsulates my own version of it. Their answers may well be seen as scapegoating of the Almighty, unless, of course, the God of your theology does it all, a dues ex machine, an Almighty Puppeteer, who has us all on the end of an invisible string so as to spare us from the fruits of our folly by removing the Hitlers, the Stalins, the Saddam Husseins from the scene on time. A truer theology, in which humans are in some sense co-creators with God, will not define the Shoah as an act of God or a God-absent action, but as what it really is, a collective act of antisemitism. The flaw in this debate was with the question more than with the answer. The right and, I should think, obvious question is: “Where were you, oh man?” The Shoah, as antisemitism, was an absence of humanity.

Finally, antisemitism, in and per se, as candidate for first position on the agenda. Should it be such? The longest, and probably greatest, hatred in human history, the principal barrier separating Jews and Christians throughout centuries and yet today, the pivotal problem in which almost all Christian-Jewish issues intersect - even those with no ostensible relation to it - one would think on the face of it that if such a monstrosity still exists no other issue or concern could possibly compete with it. More again, contemplating it against the backdrop of our present hope of reconciling the Jewish and Christian peoples, how can it be denied as the overarching problem to be faced? Programmatically also, one would think, it merits first place on the agenda. And yet as a directly faced agendum it is awarded little time or attention in our conversations. What is behind this scotoma, this avoidance? Is it simply because the practiced participants of the Jewish-Christian encounter have purged themselves of it, and are hence inclined, quite solipsistically, to believe that the problem is behind us and so should give way to other important but less painful and embarrassing issues? Or is it thought that it can be eliminated by theological revision alone, by arranging get-togethers of select Jews and Christians, or by joint social or political projects?

Is the problem behind us? How prevalent is this age-old plague among Christians of today? In the sixteenth century, Erasmus stated: “If to hate Jews is to be a good Christian, we are all good Christians.” Can that be said of today? I think it can, provided we add: “to some degree” and “at least unconsciously.” A minority, I believe, are consciously antisemitic, while the larger number do not have that awareness. They usually conceal it, if challenged, behind some resentment of publicized Jewish positions on sundry political, social, or religious issues or some form of anti-Zionism, often bolstered by a plea for justice for the Palestinians. Among others again, and to some degree in all these groupings, there exists an indifference to all things Jewish. This state of mind, by virtue of its paralyzing effects, is possibly more serious than other more overt manifestations. I am reminded of the truism that warns us that indifference is hatred turned inside out, a hot anger turned cold. Which makes it more damaging because it conceals itself better and lasts longer.

All of the foregoing should not surprise us. It is not said in judgment. And it is certainly in defense of the anti-Semites, but for better comprehension, that I pose this question: Is it realistic to expect that any individual heir to a Western culture and a religious tradition affected for centuries with the antisemitic virus be free of the infection? Only those who take measures to purge themselves of the ailment become free of it.

There is another difficulty. Few are the Christians who would understand or assent to all I have said here, for the simple reason that they know of no grounds to do so. Otherwise put, Christians as a whole suffer a total ignorance of the endless suffering of Jews in Christian history and of the complicity of the Church therein. Why so? Because the tragic and scandalous tale has yet to be told to the Christian people at large. I have said before that it is a “page torn out of our history books,” but John Oesterreicher has corrected me on this. “It is a page,” he said, “that was never put in.” In either case, I do not know what interest I would now have in Jewish-Christian rapprochement if I had not been drawn perchance into a study of the missing page. The unexpected effectiveness of that transforming personal experience, moreover, was confirmed for me many times since, as Christian participants in Jewish-Christian friendship confided to me that a similar experience was their rite of passage into the many-storied edifice of the Jewish-Christian enterprise. It was these experiences that convinced me that a thorough familiarity with the record of Christian mistreatment of Jews and the subsequent secular oppression built upon it, especially the Holocaust, is the most effective and promising path toward the ultimate reconciliation of Jews and Christians.

This common ignorance of our mutual past is fraught with many baneful consequences. It is page of history that Jews have had seared into their memories, which of itself creates an unhealthy imbalance n the overall Jewish-Christian relationship. The average Christian looks askance at what he erroneously considers the excessive Jewish concentration on their troubles, while the average Jew, assumably unaware of the Christian nescience, is taken aback by this ostensible indifference to those sufferings. Furthermore, bereft of this knowledge of history, the Christian finds no basis upon which to place any regrets or remorse, any need to undo wounds that history has inflicted upon us, any resolve to make amends. Is not this ignorance also the source of the indifference to the cause of Jewish-Christian friendship and also the anti-Zionism we have spoken about? Is not, in fine, this cathartic knowledge an indispensable motivator for enlistment in the cause of Jewish-Christian understanding and reconciliation?

Up to this point the impression may have been given that the new direction suggested is of an entirely pragmatic or activist nature. That would be unfortunate. Scholarly studies of the nature, development, and consequences of antisemitism as well as those on the Holocaust and the significance of Israel in a Jewish-Christian perspective are a prime requisite. Unfortunately, few Christian scholars have entered this area of research, again with the notable exception of those who have investigated the psychological and historical precedents of the Holocaust. It is time, I should think, for a call to Christian scholars to take up these issues, especially those interested or working in disciplines to which these areas of research are related.

The first and perhaps most important problematic to be taken up pertains to the relation on Christian to modern secular antisemitism. By secular antisemitism I understand that social, ethnic, or racist hatred of Jews that is devoid of Christian or religious content or influence. It is the prevailing kind of today. For several decades Christian antisemitism has been slowly in decline, often living on in a semi-conscious state, while its secular cousin has lost none of its vitality. Antisemitism no longer passes as in times past from the Christian classroom and pulpit to the people, but comes into the Church and the faithful from the secularized cultural milieu, the media, the home, the street. Antisemitism, in which, I am convinced, the secular component predominates. If, then, this antisemitism is secular in its origination in the Church and in the Christian’s own antisemitism, does this discount it as a Christian problem? By no means! It remains a Christian problem and not just a problem of Christians. And this, not only as an obligation in charity to oppose an affront to a kindred faith-tradition, but as a duty to combat an evil in whose historical development Christianity played an important part. It is an obligation in justice.

The answer, given the question of the Christian/secular antisemitic relationship, depends on how antisemitism is defined. The usual criteria generally accepted require that the concept include both a measure of hatred or contempt of Jews and a stereotyping of the Jewish people as such. This distinguishes it from anti-Judaism, which is defined as a theological opposition. Though not antisemitic in itself, anti-Judaism can, it is understood, commingle with, lead to, and become antisemitism. Put in its most pointed form, the question becomes: Is the Holocaust the final product of Christian anti-Judaism, or is it a purely secular and pagan growth? The question is controverted. Answers multiply. Some scholars respond in the affirmative. Eschewing the distinction between anti-Judaism and antisemitism, they find antisemitism in the New Testament and Christian theology. Others reverse this and, ignoring the anti-Judaic contribution of the Church and betraying an ignorance of the history of the subject, see “Christian antisemitism” as an oxymoron and solely a lapse from Christianity. Others distinguish, subdividing the question in order to ascertain whether the question is that about similar identities or of historical complicity and collaboration. This position, which is also my own, posits an essential, an ontic, difference separating, and a strong historical link connecting, the two. Nazi antisemitism, thus considered, represents an inherently anti-Christian paganism. The conclusion is drawn: opposites cannot beget one another. The historical connection, on the other hand, is not to be minimized. Suffices it to say that without the centuries-long preparation Nazi antisemitism received from Christian antisemitism, the Holocaust could not have happened. Hitler had to invent nothing new for his assault. But with one exception: the Final Solution. This is the single dividing line, but it is a momentous one. On one side of it no Jew is to be killed, on the other, all Jews must die.

Almost all of these positions we have mentioned have been challenged by Prof. Gavin Langmuir of Stanford University, a historiographer of international repute, who over the last two decades has submitted the problem of defining antisemitism to a long and serried analysis. (His work on the subject, spread over two decades, was published in 1990 in two volumes, totaling some 800 pages.) Though admittedly revolutionary, his views serve as a challenge to students in this field of enquiry to defend or change their positions.

Langmuir’s complaint against historians of antisemitism is twofold. First, the word itself, he holds, is used in the same racist sense given it in the nineteenth century. That is, to denote hostility toward Jews of any kind or epoch, and is therefore too inclusive. Second, it is generally assumed without any empirical proof that antisemitism has some special about it that other hatreds lack. His aim is to discover this special characteristic, if it exists, and redefine the word accordingly. The methodology used for this research is to seek complete objectivity by adherence to rational and empirical methods free of all non rational or religious influences. Working through the annals of Jewish-Christian relations he finds the genesis of genuine antisemitism in the eleventh century in emergence of irrational accusations against Jews which took the form of chimerical fantasies. By these he understands grotesque and unfounded accusations, such as, that Jews cannibalize and crucify Christian children, desecrate sacred hosts, and poison wells, and accusations that were frequently prelude to massacres throughout the Middle Ages. These fantasies he saw as a reaction to religious doubts aroused by Jews and Judaism, looked upon as a threat to Christian faith. Langmuir claims that Christian anti-Judaism, which he saw as a defense against these doubts, proved insufficient at this stage of history as new doubts came in. The anti-Judaic defenses were then reinforced by imagining Jews to be not only enemies of Christianity, but as convinced themselves of its truth and at the same time its saboteurs. These chimerical fantasies, he concludes, were the beginning of Christian antisemitism and also its link over six centuries with modern racist antisemitism of the Nazis, who created such fantasies of their own. He also concluded that no antisemitism existed in the Greco-Roman world or in early Christianity, both of which indulged in different forms of anti-Judaism.

What to think of all this? Unquestionably, Langmuir’s work is an imposing statement and issues a serious challenge to views long held by many as assured. Many valuable insights and refinements can be drawn from this work. But on the whole, a critique is necessary. His dating, for example, the first appearance of Christian antisemitism in the eleventh century, his linking Christian antisemitism to modern racist antisemitism on the basis of chimerical fantasies, his denuding anti-Judaism of all antisemitic attributes, his endowing religious doubts as a major factor in popular antisemitism are not, to my mind, convincing, except within the boundaries of his methodology and presuppositions. The uniqueness of antisemitism and the use of the term are adequately accounted for, I believe, by its universality, durability, and cruelty, without resort to theories of chimerical fantasizing. Besides, examples of what should be described as antisemitic and not simply anti-Judaic can be found as early as the fourth century of the Common Era in Chrysostom’s fury, the denigration of Jews as a carnal people, as perverse by nature, and perpetual wanderers. Nazi antisemitism, similarly, cannot be merged with the Christian predecessor simply on the basis of a similarity of chimerical fantasizing about Jews, since these are to be found also in Greco-Roman writers and in early Christian anti-Judaism. They were used again by the pagan writers against the early Church. Particularly weak, I think, is his theory of religious doubt. There is no question but that it is always a factor in religious fanaticism, but to accredit it with a potential for instigating medieval mob attacks and massacres is, to say the least, overdrawn. It may explain the ire of the literati but not of the peasantry.

Langmuir’s postulating a necessary conflict between rational/empirical method and nonrational or religious considerations deserves further study. The term “rational” here should not be transmuted into “rationalist,” as in Langmuir’s use of it. Nonrational or religious constructs and their consequences can coexist with a rational empirical methodology, if both remain within their proper limits. Nonrational operations are not entirely bereft of objectivity, as Jung has demonstrated. And they yield objective effects which may be studied rationally and empirically without divesting them of all religious or symbolic significance.

There is a valuable side-effect in Langmuir’s writings. They point toward the new directions we have been discussing. They are a forceful remainder of the importance and the gravity of graining a full understanding of the interpersonal aspects of the Jewish-Christian relationship.

To bring these reflections to a close, let me give them a forthright pragmatic turn. Pope John Paul recently pointed out the need to take what we have learned in our dialogues and meetings to the parishes. In other words, it is time to include in our sights the occupants of our church pews and parish halls, in short, the Christian people. They, unlike our studies, are not a means toward the goal, but the very end of all our initiatives. Not, I must repeat again, that academics should leave academia or students their books, by no means, but that a much greater emphasis be placed on seminaries, pulpits, classrooms, CCD programs, and other devices again, such has living-room dialogues, Interfaith Circles programs, Church-Temple exchange visits, Seders, Holocaust memorial services, joint adult education projects, parish-synagogue socials, and the like.

Throughout the last thirty or more years, we Christians and Jews have approached each other in mind to mind embrace of mutual understanding, and, looking back, the results are epoch making. That is the good news. The not-so-good news is that today, looking ahead, our two peoples are far from fully reconciled. But, finally, the best news is: we are intent on becoming so.