|
|
|
|
COMMENTARY
Benedict's two great
challenges
By Rabbi Moshe Reiss
If there had been a Cardinal-Patriarch of
Jerusalem and if I had been given his vote on John
Paul II's successor, I would have chosen Cardinal
Francis Arinze of Nigeria as the first black pope
in a millennium and a half. His country is
composed of significant numbers of Muslims and of
Christians; he is head of the Pontifical Council
for Inter-Religious Dialogue and of the
Congregation for Divine Worship. I expect he would
appreciate that Muslims are not the "Other" but
Jews' and Christians' (younger) siblings. And as
the highest prelate in a continent where AIDS is
decimating the population, he would, I hope,
recognize that early death, poverty and orphanhood
are not requested by our merciful God, who is also
his Lord and the Muslim's Allah.
But
Cardinal Arinze is not the new pope, and I am not
the Cardinal-Patriarch of Jerusalem, but an
Orthodox Jewish rabbi residing in Israel. How,
then, am I to react to the death of the first ever
Polish pope, who reigned for 27 years, or ponder
the challenges facing his successor, Pope Benedict
XVI?
The first time I saw John Paul II
robed as pope he appeared as I had always imagined
the ancient High Priest. "With a robe of
blue-purple and red and crimson and with bells
twined of pure gold ... a miter covered by a
turban of fine blue linen" (Exodus 39:22, 24, 28).
Later he went to the "Wall", which signifies the
Temple, which he would have officiated over had he
been the High Priest. He then communicated with
God as Jews have done since the Temple's
destruction, by placing a note - in this case of
remorse - in the crevices of the Wall, apologizing
for what the Christians had done to the People of
Israel since its destruction.
During his
visit to Israel in 2000 he went to Yad Vashem, the
museum dedicated to the Shoah (Holocaust). He
spoke to the chief rabbi of Israel about their
common birthplace. He remembered watching the
rabbi's grandfather taking his grandchildren to
synagogue on Sabbath mornings and asked how many
grandchildren his grandfather had. Rabbi Lau said
47; seven survived. The pope then prayed in this
place that memorializes the deaths of one and a
half million Jewish children, for the rabbi's dead
cousins and other Jewish martyrs. He also
remembered playing soccer with some of the rabbi's
cousins and singing with other Jewish boys.
Perhaps because he grew up in a village where 20%
of the population was Jewish he saw them as human
beings rather than as the "Other". At Vatican II
during the reign of John XXIII he spoke for the
Jews and a priest heard him speak "as a prophet
from experience" (James Carroll, Constantine's
Sword). In his last will and testament he
mentioned only two people, his long-serving
personal secretary and the chief rabbi in Rome; he
was the first pope to visit either a mosque or a
synagogue - the latter since the founder of his
religion.
Pope John Paul II more than any
other previous pontiff represents to Jews the man
who changed Christian anti-Semitic theology of the
"left hand of Christology" from enmity of the
"Other" to the love of men proclaimed by the
Jewish Jesus and his disciples who founded his
Church.
I watched the pope's death, his
obvious old age, physical decay, his slurred
speech, contorted face and suffering on Easter,
the commemoration of Jesus' suffering and death,
and he became his theology: the affirmation of
life.
I saw these events while in Britain
and also visiting Normandy with my grandson and
helping him remember his own grandfather and
great-uncles landing six decades ago on Omaha and
Juno beaches.
While I visited Britain, the
heir to that country's throne, Prince Charles, who
upon his investiture as king will become the
"Defender of the Faith" in the Anglican Communion,
celebrated his second marriage. He postponed this
marriage by one day because of the pope's funeral.
In the blessing of the marriage vows under the
eyes of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Prince
and his new wife, the Duchess of Cornwall,
repented their sins of adultery while each was
married to another spouse over many years. One
supposes that this simply proves what we all knew
- that unethical behavior may be committed even by
nobility and by the defenders of religion.
This archbishop, whose Church is the
closest to the Roman Catholic Church, has female
priests; it is in fact one of their key
theological differences (transubstantiation - the
meaning of the body of Christ in the Eucharist -
being another). To affirm life and not recognize
that the feminine is brought through the respect
and equality of women is a non sequitur.
The changing of the role of women in the
Church and in life will, in this rabbi's opinion,
be required if Pope Benedict XVI is to be
successful. The other issue to be resolved is the
relationship to Islam, as the other religion based
on the Abrahamic descendancy; more on the latter
in a moment.
Each of the Abrahamic
religions is patriarchal; the Book of Genesis is
based on the "Fathers", not the "Mothers". Each of
the "Mothers" was barren of children until God the
Father chose to give them children. They all
recognized that, being bereft of children, they
were in the first of God's books lacking in a
certain kind of value ("Give me children, or I
shall die," cried Rachel (Genesis 30:1). This
despite Rebekah, Isaac's wife, being the one God
chose to speak to her about the problematic
blessing of their two children. She and perhaps
God chose Jacob, Isaac chose Esau. (See the
author's article "The God of Abraham, Rebekah and
Jacob" in the Jewish Bible Quarterly, April-June
2004). Both Abraham and his shadow son Isaac were
willing to give their wives to Abimelech ("father
of the king") to save their own lives (Genesis
20:3; 26:8). Abraham, a powerful and loving
father, was even willing in an act of obedience to
sacrifice his son (Isaac, in Genesis 22:2, and
Ishmael in the Koranic commentary). Abraham did
not request the mother's permission, nor as Jewish
commentators note would that have been granted.
Mothers do not sacrifice their children. As a
result of the strange and strained relationships
between the mothers and fathers, the children of
these Patriarchs and Matriarchs can only be
defined as dysfunctional.
The family
radically changes in God's second book, Exodus.
The Mosaic family is based on love - both the
parents, Amram and Yochebed, and the three
children, Aaron, Miriam and Moses. The first child
becomes the archetype and first High Priest and
the younger two, man and woman, become prophets.
Moses is surrounded by women who preserve and save
his life. Moses is first noted as being born when
a man and a woman from the tribe of Levi are
married and he is born to them (Exodus 2:1-2).
Only later in the passage do we realize Moses
already had an older brother and sister. Although
he appears as a firstborn he is not. Oldest
brothers are not the most righteous in Genesis.
(One wonders whether John Paul II was aware of
this Jewish commentary when he called the Jews his
elder brothers.) His predecessor but one, John
XXIII, stepped off his throne and, sitting among
them, said to the first Jewish community he met
after being installed as pope, "I am Joseph
[Giuseppe] your brother" (his baptized name).
Joseph, while imperial, was not an oldest brother
and sat among his brothers (Genesis 43:33).
Jewish commentators tell us that Miriam
noted to her father that the Pharaoh had ordered
all male children of the Hebrews to die. Her
father, the leader of the people, proclaimed that
all the Hebrews should divorce their wives so as
not to procreate, thus dooming the females as
well. Persuaded by his daughter's reasoning, Amram
remarried Yochebed, and Moses was the child of
this remarriage. The Pharaoh's plan to drown all
the male children was then frustrated by two
midwives, whose religion is unknown to us, Shifrah
and Puah (Exodus 1:15-19), who would not obey his
orders. After a time, Yochebed put Moses in an ark
and set it upon the waters of the Nile. There he
was found by an Egyptian princess who is named
Batya (I Chronicles 4:18), meaning "daughter of
God". She (perhaps another barren women),
recognizing him as a Hebrew, chose to adopt him,
frustrating her own father. Miriam, hiding in the
bushes, offered to find a wet-nurse for the
foundling. So Yochebed nursed her own son, paid by
the Egyptian treasury. Batya in fact named Moses
with a princely name (Ra-Moses would mean "the god
Ra"); his Hebrew name is unknown to us.
Moses learned of justice from one or both
of his mothers, and reacted against injustice,
first against an Egyptian (Exodus 2:12) then
against a Hebrew (2:13) and then to protect the
seven daughters of the priest Reuel (also called
Jethro). The priest offered one his daughters,
Zipporah, as a wife to Moses. God called Moses, a
man at times with slurred speech (Exodus 4:10), a
"god" twice (4:16, 7:1) as He gave him the mission
to free His enslaved people. Zipporah saved his
life by circumcising their son (Exodus 4:24-26)
and thus additionally saving this mission. As a
result, when Moses was faced with the problem of
women and inheritance, he chose to ask God, the
only time he did not decide the Law (he knew from
God) on his own, perhaps because he understood his
male audience would need God to tell them of
female equality (Numbers 27:1-4; see also the
author's article "The Women Around Moses" in the
Jewish Bible Quarterly April-June 2005). Each
member of the Mosaic family was married with
children.
Jesus was also surrounded by
women who revered him, anointed him (Matthew
26:7-12), watched him die (Matthew 27:55-56),
helped bury him (Matthew 27:61; 28:1), acted very
much like his disciples (Matthew 28:5) and, most
important, never betrayed him (Matthew 26:33-34;
70; 73; 75). As a result they were the first to
see him resurrected (Matthew 28:9-10).
To
revert to the other key problem noted earlier, the
"clash of civilizations" between the North with
its Christian ideology and the South and its
Islamic ideology: The Catholic and Christian world
have failed in modern-day Europe (despite the
young faces at John Paul II's funeral) but seem to
be succeeding in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
In the latter two, Islam is the real religious
competitor; in all of these areas poverty is the
real problem. Pope John Paul II proved that the
theological conflict between the Jews and the
Christians could be changed; can Pope Benedict XVI
do the same for Christian-Muslim relations?
Cardinal Nicholas Cusa wrote in 1458 as
the Inquisition reigned and as Galileo Galilei was
condemned, suggesting that since the only thing we
can know about God is that He is unknown, perhaps
truth can also be found in other faiths, even
non-Abrahamic faiths. Cardinal Cusa stated that
there are numerous sources of truth - including
paganism. Can they all be covenants of truth and
therefore require tolerance? Greek thought
considered the infinite immutable; Cusa thought of
God's infinity as a line pointing forward and
backward and perhaps diagonally. Pope Benedict XVI
himself, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
(Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, formerly known as the "Holy
Inquisition"), recently suggested that the Jewish
Law "is the visibility of the Truth" (Many
Religions - One Covenant); Cusa would probably
have agreed. While Cusa's theology was not
accepted, in the days of the autos-da-fa he
was not burned at the stake. John Paul II
recognized the truth to be found in Galileo and in
the other of the world's religions.
There
is a connection between these two key theological
problems. They revolve about the theology of life
versus death. Pope John Paul II, while affirming
life, did not recognize what most of his own
people have, that life must be ordered to be lived
well (personally, globally and in his own Church).
There is such a concept as improving the quality
of life. I am obviously not advocating a "culture
of death"; I have already written against that
(see Suicide bombing and the culture of
death, October 22, 2004). But in both Africa
and Asia, AIDS may be the largest cause of death.
To the Jewish and Christian prophets of the Old
Testament, life affirmation was against sacrifice.
Abraham in the final analysis did not sacrifice
his son.
Now, of course, I recognize that
a Jewish High Priest is not a Vicarius
Christi, a Vicar of Christ; a term related not
to resurrection but to the crucifixion, the Roman
Cross as the symbol of death, declared so by the
first self-appointed Vicar-Emperor Constantine as
he decided on the Nicaean Creed. The pope is no
longer simply the successor to Peter but, while
lower than Jesus, is as Vicarius Christi
higher than man and, since the late 19th
century, can speak infallibly. That is what caused
the Catholic Lord Acton to speculate that "power
corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
John XXIII stated, "I will never speak ex
cathedra," that is, infallibly. Perhaps a
Vatican III can correct the ex cathedra
speaking and even add what the bishops agreed to,
but Pope Paul VI did not, that artificial
contraception was not a mortal sin.
Jeremiah, himself a priest, proclaimed
against the priesthood ideal of sacrifice in front
of the Temple; he stated that God was more
concerned about people being protected against the
injustice of poverty (Jeremiah 7:5-11). He stated
this in almost the same words that Jesus would use
several centuries later in front of the same
Temple. Jeremiah is the only celibate Prophet - he
was so ordered by God (Jeremiah 16:2), not for its
own sake - celibacy is not a Jewish virtue - but
to proclaim life as against death. "They [the
children] will die of deadly diseases, unlamented
and unburied" (Jeremiah 16:4). Karol Wojtyla, who
would become pope John Paul II, grew up in a poor
home and his mother died before his 10th birthday.
His father and mother had already buried an infant
girl and, shortly after burying the wife, Karol
and his father buried an older brother. John
Paul's growing up differs significantly from Moses
with two mothers and a wife and Jesus with his
many adoring women.
Perhaps the God of
Jeremiah was telling us of the connection between
sexual ethics and social justice.
Many
Orthodox Jewish rabbis have recognized that
contraception is acceptable where the life of the
mother, including the quality of her and the
family's life, is downgraded by more children.
Pope John Paul II's recognition of how poverty is
an injustice was seemingly contradicted by his
negating of "liberation theology" (despite its
seeming relationship to Jesus), as noted by his
harassment of the Brazilian Franciscan Leonardo
Boff. Latin America, where "liberation theology"
flourished, is the home of almost one-half of the
world's Catholics and a very significant number of
its poor. It is also were many different kinds of
Christianity thrive, as in the decades immediately
following Jesus' death and of those who envisaged
his resurrection.
While I am not a
Christian theologian and not well versed in Canon
Law, I know enough about theological arguments to
suggest that the Catholic hierarchy can still
affirm life - even if salvation comes from the
Cross of Golgotha - while improving the quality of
those lives. An example is the controversial
medical work on stem-cell research. Orthodox
rabbis have defined the sacredness of life as
beginning 40 days after conception, Islamic
clerics as beginning after 120 days and Catholic
theologians as beginning after conception; none is
defined in the appropriate scriptural texts.
While sexual relations outside of marriage
and female priests are punished by
excommunication, the use of contraception is not;
some sins are doctrinal, some theological. (These
definitions of excommunication were so declared by
pope John Paul II in 1998, the same year he issued
We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah
condemning the deaths at Auschwitz.) Sacredness
should include not only the dead but the ill-born.
Just as Moses' and Jesus' lives surrounded
by women allowed them to understand women's needs,
so Catholic priests would improve their own
understanding of the feminine side of God (called
in Jewish theology the Shekhina - the Holy Spirit)
by marrying; perhaps at a later date even allowing
for female Catholic priests; Jewish female rabbis
would also improve the rabbinate. The shortage of
priests worldwide is a serious problem. The
beginning of that solution would be married
priests; there are already such priests, those who
convert to Catholicism from other Christian sects
(both Orthodox and Protestant) and retain their
marriage vows. Was Cardinal Godfried Danneels of
Belgium (at a recent press conference), when
noting that women's role in the Church needed to
be expanded but were not likely to be ordained, in
fact suggesting that married priests were a more
likely possibility? Women were deacons in ancient
days and, while less than priests, were managers
of money and educators. The Catholic definition of
"deacons" includes "ministers or servants" and
"husbands of one wife" (I Timothy 3:8-12).
Rabbi Moshe Reiss is a graduate
of Oxford University and was assistant rabbi at
Yale University. He was the first rabbi invited to
teach in the Department of Theology at the
Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium (founded
1425), and has lectured in various countries. He
has posted three books on his website on Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. His book on Judaism is
being published by sections in the Jewish Bible
Quarterly. He now lives in Israel.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
|
|
|
