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Memory and Reconciliation - Anti-Semitism - 'Never Again'Pope John Paul II's jubilee-year pilgrimage to the Holy Land reached a defining moment at the visit to Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. There, on March 23, 2000, the Holy Father's words pierced the silence evoked by the memory of the heinous evil of the Holocaust. That profound silence echoes "the heart-rending lament of so many ... Men, women, and children "cry out to us from the depths of the horror that they knew." The pope's initial words articulated a plea --- "How can we fail to hear their cry? No one can forget or ignore what happened." The presence of Pope John Paul II at the Holocaust memorial was a dramatic gesture prefigured in the "Day of Pardon" liturgy on March 12, the First Sunday of Lent, in St. Peter's Basilica. One of the seven areas of concern drew forth a "confession of sins against the people of Israel." The preparatory phases for the celebration of the Great Jubilee led to the formation of a historico-theological commission whose tasks focused on the theme of repentance and conversion. The commission's first studied the issues of anti-Semitism and the Inquisition. It had convened a 1997 international symposium exploring "The Roots of Anti-Judaism in the Christian Milieu." A Year later, in 1998, the Vatican's Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews issued We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah. We Remember specifically treated the Holocaust, an "unspeakable tragedy which can never be forgotten," In calling for repentance for the sins and failures on the part of Catholics. Catholics were challenged to confront the implications of the Shoah. On March 7, 2000, the International Theological Commission published “Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past.” This document forges a theological rationale for the "purification of memory," one of the key signs for living the grace of the Jubilee. In The Mystery of the Incarnation Pope John Paul II described the purification of memory as an act of courage and humility acknowledging "the wrongs done by those who have borne or bear the name of Christian." (IM n.11) The Holy Year marks a privileged time to hear the call to conversion --- "Repent and believe the Good News" (Mk. 1:15) Memory and Reconciliation singles out the "tormented" historical relationship between Christians and Jews as demanding "a special examination of conscience." (MR n.5.4) This section dealing with "Christians and Jews" stands out in the catalog of situations where Christians "seem to have contradicted the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a significant way." The Shoah has become and will remain the consummate symbol of stark evil in human history. Memory and Reconciliation distinguishes the pagan ideology of Nazism from Christian anti-Semitism. It notes the courage of Christians who at the risk of life heroically aided their Jewish neighbors. But, quoting We Remember, the Theological Commission's text reads --- "alongside such courageous men and women, the spiritual resistance and concrete action of other Christians was not that which might have been expected from Christ's followers." Memory and Reconciliation repeats the call to "the consciences of all Christians today for 'an act of repentance (teshuva)' leading to the transformation of conversion and awareness by a 'moral and religious memory' of the injury inflicted on the Jews." At the visit to the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Pope John Paul II prayed that the sorrow "for the tragedy which the Jewish people suffered in the 20th century will lead to a new relationship between Christians and Jews." We Remember expressed the hope that consciousness of past Sins would effect "a firm resolve to build a new future in which there will be no more anti-Judaism among Christians or anti-Christian sentiment among Jews, but rather a shared mutual respect as befits those who adore the one Creator and Lord and have a common father in faith, Abraham." The opening lines of We Remember noted that the church's relationship to the Jewish people is "unlike the one she shares with any other religion." The horrible genocide of the Holocaust cannot be a matter of indifference. Nor can it be simply a matter of recalling the past. Rather, "(t)he common future of Jews and Christians demands that we remember, for ‘there is no future without memory.’ History itself is memorial future." John Paul II's discernment - "there is no future without memory" - had resounded in his letter introducing We Remember. He wrote: "May it enable memory to play its necessary part in the process of shaping a future in which the unspeakable iniquity of the Shoah will never again be possible."
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