Owning Up to the Past

The Church has yet to own up to its extensive contributions to, and direct part in, the eliminationist persecution of the Jews. It must stop its denials, obfuscations, prevarications, and self-exculpations-to itself and its faithful, to Jews and to the world. It should finally admit, publicly, its offenses and culpability in full.

The Catholic Church and its many national churches have yet to tell the truth. They have yet to tell the truth about the nature and full extent of their contributions to the eliminationist persecution of the Jews. Among other things, this would require the kinds of concerted historical investigations, as yet unexecuted, into the internal workings of the Vatican and into the attitudes and actions of national Catholic churches and their clergy during the Nazi period that I call for in part one [of "A Moral Reckoning"]. It would also require the Church to conduct serious moral thinking, to a greater degree than it appears to have done, about the variety of offenses that it and its clergy committed.

In part two I propose a moral road map, which is not to say that it is the only possible, legitimate one. But something along its lines-an emphasis on moral agency and individual responsibility, and general and principled evaluative categories of types of offenses and types of culpability, impartially applied-is necessary so that the analytical confusion that besets moral discussions of the Holocaust does not encumber or derail the Church's needed moral self-scrutiny.

This is not to say that, coming from the Church, there would not be a greater doctrinal component to such an evaluation. Of course, there would be-and it would be welcome. Basic Catholic moral principles are worthy of emulation. I refer to them repeatedly, showing how they powerfully support the foundation and reasoning of this moral reckoning. But the Church must recognize that when confronting its offenses against Jews, the political transgressions among them by definition being a public, non-exclusively Catholic matter-Catholic doctrine and theology are neither necessary nor sufficient to draw the conclusion that a well-considered moral reckoning produces. It is precisely because the Church has been and continues to be a political institution that it is subject to the general principles that ought to govern any public institution and public actors. Catholic doctrine and theology also do not trump the principles and views of other involved peoples, especially of Jews. In the end, the Catholic Church would have to say, without equivocation and not just for one or another of its many offenses, but for all of them: mea culpa.

Continued on page 2: »