Any time a new Pope is named, the Jewish community regards him with skepticism. After all, Catholic-Jewish relations—medieval, modern, and in-between—have not been particularly amicable. When, in 2005, the new Pope was announced to be then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, some saw cause for further alarm: Pope John Paul II's longtime right-hand man on doctrinal issues, Benedict was known to shade conservative. There was also the unfortunate fact that, as a young boy in Germany in the 1940s, Ratzinger had been a member of Hitler Youth and later the army (though this was widely seen as an unavoidable product of circumstances). Still, the Anti-Defamation League managed to project cautious optimism over his appointment.
Nearly eight years later, as Pope Benedict XVI, 85, prepares to become the first pontiff in centuries to retire voluntarily, that optimism had proven to be well founded. "He visits the synagogues and reaches out to the Jewish communities," Abraham Foxman, the ADL's national director,1 told me. "He reiterated the historic changes of the Church vis-à-vis the Jewish people. He went to Israel. He spoke out against anti-Semitism. Did he live up to our hopes? Yes."
wow they didn't wait for him to die or something before give up the 411 on Pope leaving 2-28-13.
i thought that it was a directive to go out and try to covert others i hear a little separatism in the inference.There were a handful of controversies, most notably Benedict's de-excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop and the Pope's support for wartime Pope Pius XII's sainthood. But it could've been worse—and there's reason to believe that under the next Pope, it will be worse.So where did Il Papa come down on the major issues facing Jews?There were a handful of controversies, most notably Benedict's de-excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop and the Pope's support for wartime Pope Pius XII's sainthood. But it could've been worse—and there's reason to believe that under the next Pope, it will be worse.So where did Il Papa come down on the major issues facing Jews?The basics. "Slowly and steadily, Benedict made it clear that he continued to uphold the teaching of the Church: that anti-Semitism is incompatible with Christianity, and that the State of Israel has legitimacy in the world community," said Xavier University's Dr. Peter A. Huff, an expert in Catholic studies. Although Benedict did not necessarily allow that Jews would ultimately be saved, he insisted that it was not Catholics' mission to convert them. Deborah Dwork, a professor of Holocaust history at Clark University, was a little more lukewarm. "There are a number of Jewish communities that feel that he has reached out to them and has sought to maintain the tradition of a special relationship between Judaism and Catholicism—‘you are the root, we are the branch,'" she said. "I am not part of that group. As a historian, my own analysis is that it is a far more complicated and fraught legacy."
