Lest We Forget 1406 UATE:6/24/87 LEST WE FORGET REHABILITATING KURT WALDHEIM unbelievably, the politicians 1n the Vatican are undertaking a reception of Kurt Waldheim, unwelcome in most civilized countries. He 1s being accorded the highest level diplomatic reception, with all the pomp and circumstance they can muster. The patent effort 1s to rehabilitate him, and Implicitly to rebuke "the Jews" for pursuing h1m so unmercifully. In emphasizing the virtue of Austria as a "Catholic nation" and Kurt waldheim as a "Catholic," the Vatican would have done well to ponder the life and death of Fr1edr1ch Jaegerstaetter. Jaegerstaetter was a simple Christian, a Roman Catholic farmer in the Tyrol, who was beheaded because ne refused to fight in Hitler's Austrian army. Or, If that moved no one 1n the bureaucracy, they might have pondered the role of Waldheim's fellow- Austrlans Adolf Hitler and Adolf Elchmann. Neither the modern saint nor the contemporary devils disturbed the planning, however. Sheer politics was to rule where Christian principle had vacated. Those of us who are repelled by the political obscenity, as 1n Its own way as shaming to Christianity as the antics of Jimmy and Tammy ttakker, are left to recall how in the distant past there were popes and bishops who rebuked emperors and excommunicated kings. Not today: the princes of the church jump Into bed with the princes and powers of this world's darkness, against whom the scriptures warned. If Pope John Paul II stood in the line of the great leaders of the church, he would do one pastoral thing before anything else: hje would advise Kurt Waldheim to resign. But this pope and his bureaucracy evidently have missed what 1s going on 1n Christian theology and In the vital centers of spiritual renewal in Christendom. They may have heard the easy words of Lest We Forget 2406 DATE:6/24/87 the worldly politicians Kohl and Reagan at Bltburg, but they missed the magnificent message of Richard von Welzsaecker who three days later put his people back on the track of repentence and recovery of Integrity. The old triumphal 1st stance of rulers 1n Christendom, with their bad religion and calculating politics 1s again affirmed for all the world to see. All the more commendable is the courage and faithfulness of a Sister Rose Therlng and her colleague from Seton Hall University. Providentially, they were leading a group 1n Jerusalem last week when the Incredible news broke. And they on the spot released a statement condemning the reception of Waldheim Dy the Vatican. Rose Therlng is a nun, a professor 1n the School of Education at Seton Hall, and an Important person In the rethinking of Christian preaching and teaching 1n the post-Auschwitz churches. Her doctoral study was devoted to an analysis of antisemitism in Catholic textbooks, and under John XXIII and his spiritual influence it led to significant change 1n Catholic materials in use in the United States. More recently she has been an officer 1n the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, and a participant In many seminars and conferences on Christ Ian/Jewish relations. Rose Therlng and Father Bossman represent post-Holocaust Christianity. The Vatican bureaucracy represents in this Waldheim affair, as jn a number of other situations, a pre-Holocaust style of politics. It was politics of that spirit that gave Adolf Hitler his first entry into social acceptability, when Pa eel 11 overrode the German Catholic bishops and signed the Concordat with Hitler behind their backs. As long as he was winning, Hitler could count upon Pace Ill's encouragement and support in his posture as the champion of Christian Europe against atheistic Bolshevism. Much of the truth of the Roman Catholic Churches role in the coming to p wer of the Nazis has been ignored in recent years. The hope of everyone Lest We Forget 3406 DATE:6/24/87 of conscience, Jews and other Christians, has been that the example and spirit of John XXIII would be carried on. And with the blossoming ecumenical dialogue no Christian from another church wanted to make a great deal of the bad record of PacelH and his Curia. But now that the old spirit and the old style 1s coming back strongly, 1t may be time to raise again some serious questions about the record. the questions that will not down, however successful the ecclesiastical politicians may be for the moment, are these: Why did the Roman Catholic leadership, and most of the German Protestant too, sympathize with Hitler? What was the role of the Vatican 1n destroying the welmar Republic? What was the precise role of the Vatican in helping hundreds of Nazi war criminals escape as the war ended? Why 1s 1t so alfficult for the Roman Catholic church leadership to face the meaning of Jewish death and survival as openly and courageously as, far example, the Protestant churchmen in the Netherlands or the Protestant church leaders 1n West Germany? When will the church move beyond the formal elimination of explicitly antisemitic teaching to the constructive building of respect and cooperation with Jewish community leaders? In America we are already, Catholics and Protestants and Jews - and especially at the local level - practicing a cooperation that the bureau­ crats now trying to salvage Kurt Waldheim have never seen and do not under­ stand. And it 1s precisely that understanding and cooperation that makes us Americans know that the Waldheim affair 1s not a "Jewish issue," as the Vatican Is trying to make 1t. It Is even more acutely a Christian affair, Tor 1n Its resolution lies an answer to the question whether the Christian leaders, have learned the lessons of the Holocaust and of their own martyrs. during the Third Reich. Lest We Forget 4406 DATE:6/24/87 Moved by these questions, a group of Protestant churchmen released a statement some days before the Pope received Waldheim with such a demonstration of support. We could have had dozens of signatures, had there been no urgency. As 1t was, seven churchmen - all clergy, and from seven denominations - joined with me. They were George Williams of Harvard (United Church), William Harter of the United Presbyterians, Hubert Locke of the University of Washington (Christian Churches), James Wood of Baylor university (Southern Baptist), David Lewis of the Assemblies of God, Roy Eckardt of Lehigh University (also United Methodist) and Burton Nelson of North Park Seminary (Evangelical Covenant). That was a group sufficiently representative to release to the media the following message: THE PAPAL INVITATION TO KURT WALDHEIM IS PRIMARILY A ROMAN CATHOLIC PROBLEM. HOWEVER AS PROTESTANTS WE WANT TO MAKE OUR DISTRESS KNOWN. THE INVITATION DISGRACES IHE MEMORY OF CHRISTIAN MARTYRS WHO OPPOSED NAZI IDOLATRY. THE INVITATION DISHONORS THE MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS OF THE NAZI HOLOCAUST. THE WOUNDS OF THE LORD'S PEOPLE CANNOT BE HEALED SO LI6HTLY (JEREMIAH 6:14). Amen! And let those hear who have ears to hear, and let them see who have eyes to see the Truth. Franklin H Littell, Anne Frank Institute of Philadelphia "*" ^J*-trt-. Lest We Forget #425 DATE:12/9/87 SUMMITRY AND SYMMETRY One of the interesting developments in connection with the Summit is the rumor that the Soviets plan to abandon the "Anti- Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public." According to the report, the Committee has failed in its campaign to create the opinion that Zionism equals racism. An anonymous official in Washington has attributed the source of the story to Samuil Zivs, Deputy Chairman of the Committee, who is a member of Mikhail Gorbachev's entourage at the Summit. This report interests me for several reasons. On the face of it we may gather that world opinion has failed to go along with the obscene UN resolution equating Zionism with racism, and has been immune to the propaganda made of the resolution by Israel's enemies. The resolution was rammed through the UN Assembly in the first place by an alliance of Arab League and Communist blocs, abetted by the cowardly appeasement of a number of free world representatives. The "Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public" was set up to influence public opinion in the free world, not in the Soviet Union or its satellites. There is no "public opinion" under the Arab and Communist regimes: the open discussion which produces full, free, and informed opinion is not allowed. No, the "Anti- Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public" was a fraud from the start. First, it was set up as a front to push the dictatorship's policy outside Soviet Russia. Second, the "Soviet © public" does not exist as an opinion-initiating or opinion- articulating entity. Newspapers in the free world from time to time report debates and ferment in Russia and the satellites in a way that may confuse readers. When there are debates, they come within the limits of the Party, the bureaucracy, or the military establishment. Of "civic initiative" there is not - and cannot be - any evidence. No one - no one - can truthfully say that he knows the direction or intensity of popular ideas under a despotism or a dictatorship. At the time of the German Nazi dictatorship, outside observers would frequently make the casual assessment that the German people were overwhelmingly and enthusiastically behind the Hitler programs. In fact, however, even before the assault on the German Jews over one million Germans - liberals, socialists, trade unionists, "pacifists" and "cosmopolitans," Masons, in short what Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon called "consymps" - had been thrown into concentration camps. Tens of thousands of others were murdered - even before the Nuremberg Laws disfranchised German Jews, even before Kristallnacht- even before the launching of the Holocaust.