At Yad Vashem, what pope doesn't say makes waves

I watched it life via satellite today. I thought it was prayerful and appropriate. Christ is risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!

I find it appalling that Benedict is so insensitive to so many groups who have suffered. This man is no shepherd. He is short sighted, narrow minded and the wrong man for this period of challenges. Hopefully, this will be the last right wing Bishop of Rome for a generation. If not, the next one will finish off the process of decay that has been in progress during the last two papacies. The Holy Spirit is allowing this process of decay because it is time for a Catholic church that reflects Christ's teachings instead of an imperial Roman court of corrupted and misdirected authority.

The pope's gestures and words were beautiful and very moving... especially the symbolic references about names...God knows our names...imagining the parents antipating the birth of a child and the excitement of choosing his/her name...then the dispair of remembering their names as victims.

The focus was entirely on the VICTIMS, not on the pope. It wasn't, nor should it be about HIM.

Understandably, the survivors of the Shoah would likely never be satisfied with what the pope could say. What words could possibly make up for their pain and loss.

I was very touched by Benedict's poetic address and his consoling manner with the survivors.

Last night when I watched the Pope talk about the names of each who died in the Holocost being remembered it brought tears to my eyes. I could see he was visibly touched. There are many painful experiences all of us never talk about. What more could he have said: I'm sorry I was required to join the Hitler youth; I am sorry my cousin was exterminated because he had Downs syndrome. I'm sorry I was forced to dig tank traps on the eastern front.

We can be rediculous sometimes. This man remembers. And as he has said: the people who did these things were all baptized Christians. That was a great sorrow to him. i think he goes very deep and I am sick of seeing him criticized for ridiculous things that the rest of us do every day. I am no right wing ideologue but I think he spoke from the heart. We expect too much.

I also watched the Yad Veshem-visit live and I agree with everyone who experienced the Pope's words as deeply moving. It struck me forcibly that he put himself in the shoes of the Shoah victims and their families. What I experienced was precisely the highest degree of empathy and sorrow. He did NOT push himself and his own feelings forward in that space which is almost hallowed for the Jews. That would be, sorry to say Mister Allen, cheap.

And why should he have harped on the fact that he is a German?? Everyone knows that. While he sat there, listening to what was said before he could speak, the words "German Nazi's" were loudly uttered again and again and again by the Jewish speakers.

The Pope's address could not be more clear. How anyone can think that he was NOT speaking about the horrors brought about by the German Nazi's, boggles the mind. And this was not the first time he spoke about it. Everyone knows that too.

However, people here, and some Jews, want still more from the Pope. Would they be satisfied if the Pope takes the entire responsibility for the Holocaust on himself? I sincerely doubt it. For some people no amount of breast beating and expressions of guilt will ever satisfy, especially if the person guilty had the bad luck to have been born a German Catholic before the Second World War.

As to the guilt of Christianity for the Shoah: did the Nazi's (Hitler especially) murder Jews because of their religion, or because of racial hatred and intolerance in the first - and probably last - instance? That so many Christians went along with that ideology will always be a blot on our religion, but I'm beginning to doubt that it was motivated at all by the so called "Christ-killers" mentality.

By the way: I am not a Catholic. I have however a deep respect for the Pope and his writings, his words, his integrity. I found it highly ironic that the first words of Mr Allen on CNN after the Pope's address at Yad Vashem, came over as criticism of Benedict XVI. "Missed opportunity", Mr Allen? I sat there shaken and profoundly moved by Benedict's delivery and the content of his address and you came and threw cold water on all that. If this is how Benedict's Catholic "friends" (??) publicly assess him, does he need enemies?

I feel sorry for the Pope. Give him a break, please! He's doing his best and he's not Pope John Paul II with the same kind of charm. Nevertheless, he's trying, and so what if he doesn't say all the right things at the right time. He's not as endearing to me as Pope John Paul II, but I respect his humility and honesty in light of a couple of mistakes.

As I said previously, 'give the Pope (Benedict) a break! I feel sorry for him. He's doing the best he can. It must be tremendously uncomfortable to be so scrutinized by the Rabbis! After all, he has spoken sympathetically about the Holocaust and also implictly contradicted the Bishop who denies that millions of Jews were killed in the gas chambers. I was there in Auschwitz and I saw first hand and personally the gas chambers and evidence of the genocide that took place there. I'm praying for the Pope.

Father Michael Burke, OP
New Orleans, LA, USA

I believe one point to keep in mind is that Yad Vashem is a memorial to Jews slaughtered by the Nazis, who were no Christians. Possibly he did not wish to run into the opposite problem by being accused of linking Christians with Nazis.

The howl of complaints is not surprising many Jews will not be satisfied until we deny Christ and that is the truth

Having Middle Eastern relatives, this time I would have to rate my observations on this topic as a step above amateur, quasi-amateur, should we say? OK here goes:

1. Blogger buddies, I would throw in the towel and say, "Yah, John Allen is right, sincerity and speaking from the heart, and telling your own PERSONAL LIVED EXPERIENCE (meaning the Pope could have recounted his own German experience as a youth in Hitler times) you just can't go wrong with that...." EXCEPT there really is a War going on over there. There is real anger, to the point of hatred, with lots of real weapons and lots of real bombs. So my guess is that the Pope thought he should use non-inflammatory speech. However, I can't honestly say that that was the best choice. It was possibly the least "riot-causing".

I wasn't able to hear/read THE ENTIRETY of any of the May 2009, Holy Land, Papal Visit SPEECHES, so my observations for now are not in complete context (and would be most ideal in the context of ALL the delivered papal speeches of this Holy Land event).

Besides the NCR online articles, which I also have only participated in PART OF, so far, I only saw one (PBS) McNeil-Leherer News Hour discussion with some footage of the Pope's visit, accompanied with (luckily) an analysis of John Allen's. (Good Job John Allen, by the way!)

Let's be more humble blogger buddies. This Peace Process stuff is complicated and hot! I've been immersed in Middle Easterners' real experiences for decades, and even with years of focused background,
just seeing&hearing the part of that one Papal speech, and the one analysis, it went by too fast for me. I would need to hear both parts of that PBS TV report two or three times, to catch everything with all the nuances; much less digest and carefully ponder it.

Believe me blogger buddies, and world family: the Middle East situation requires a lot of digging into history, to really understand the historical interweaving, and emotional ups and downs of these Palestinian people (of all THREE religious traditions) who have been trying to emotionally survive/not get killed, during DECADES OF DEADLY CONFLICT. And now to point 2:

2. As I begged in an earlier blog, two earlier NCR blogs actually, we Americans can make a difference in the terrible/horrible Middle East situation. Millions and millions of American tax DOLLARS, for years, have been sent to the Israeli Jewish government funding expensive weapons, like Israeli planes dropping bombs. PLEASE WAKE UP TO THIS FACT. We can and must as Christians, do something about the American taxpayers' contribution to decades of a desperate life from hell in the Holiest of Holy lands. We need to rattle Congress' cages, or more Christian/Jewish/Moslem children will be killed/maimed.