{"id":229,"date":"2009-01-26T11:38:06","date_gmt":"2009-01-26T11:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-vatican-must-exami.html"},"modified":"2009-01-26T11:38:06","modified_gmt":"2009-01-26T11:38:06","slug":"chief-rabbi-vatican-must-exami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-vatican-must-exami.html","title":{"rendered":"Chief Rabbi: Vatican must examine its conscience"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sharp call from head of the first Orthodox center to engage in religious dialogue with Rome: Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, reacting to the uproar over Pope Benedict’s reinstatement of four right-wing schismatic bishops<\/a>, one of whom is a Holocaust-denier, took the battle to the pope’s own turf–Catholic sacramentality:
\n<\/p>\n

“…The Pope has muddied the waters of truth and compromised his own religion, specifically the Gospel of John 8:32, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” Riskin, Chief Rabbi of Efrat in Israel, said in a statement released today. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/strong>
\nRiskin recently founded Ohr Torah Stone: Center for Jewish Christian Understanding & Cooperation<\/a>, described as “the first Orthodox Jewish center to religiously dialogue with Christians,” something Orthodox Judaism has always forbidden. Some welcome he gets–and it’s not just Bishop Williamson, the outright Holocaust denier, but the strain (and stain) of anti-Semitism running through the movement.
\nAs Riskin says, “this was more than a near fatal blow to the advancement of Jewish-Catholic relations; it’s staining the essence of sacrament within the church.” Powerful words, sure to elicit response. The rabbi continues, listing just a few of the other problematic actions the pontiff has taken:
\n<\/p>\n

“With the re-introduction of the Latin Mass last year calling for the conversion of Jews, senior Vatican official Cardinal Renato Martino of the Peace & Justice Commission sharply criticizing Israel’s actions and likening the Gaza Strip to a concentration camp, and now the Pope admitting a Holocaust denier into the hierarchy of the Catholic Church should concern Jews worldwide.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/strong>
\nThe pope plans to visit Israel and the Holocaust memorial there, in May–or he did until this latest flare-up:
\n<\/p>\n

“…How will he walk into Yad Vashem and plant a wreath for the six million, when he just reinstated a bishop who denies that very historical fact within the greater truth of the Shoah? It is time for the Vatican to examine its conscience.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}