Commonweal editorializes. Money quote:
In his public meditation at Auschwitz, Benedict put forward a perplexing and unsatisfactory explanation of the Holocaust. He informed the world that the Nazi aim ‘deep down’ was not to exterminate the Jews, but to kill God. ‘By destroying Israel,’ the pope said, ‘[the Nazis] ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful.’
Ostensibly designed to draw attention to the church’s Jewish origins, and to embrace the two faiths’ shared love for God, Benedict’s remarks may have the opposite effect. It seems unlikely that many Jews will take consolation from the theological assertion that the systematic murder of 6 million ‚Äî murders carried out in nearly every instance by baptized, and in many cases even believing, Christians ‚Äî was ‘ultimately’ an assault on Christian faith. The Holocaust was a desecration of many things, surely; but first and last it was about the slaughter of the Jews.
Maybe it’s hard for a Bavarian pope to see that.
(Photo: Gianni Giansanti/Polaris.)
The Dish 