Big and small differences

TWO titans of religious life in the late 20th century are being canonised—recognised as saints—at a grand ceremony in Rome this weekend. Popes John XXIII (1958-63) and John Paul II (1978-2005) were both charismatic figures who, in multiple ways, transformed the world's largest spiritual institution. Yet, whether or not this reflects reality, their images are very different. Among liberal-minded Catholics, Pope John is a particular hero: the only pontiff of modern times, saving perhaps the present one, whom they unconditionally admire. His great achievement, in the view of most Catholics, was initiating the second Vatican council of 1962-65, a deliberation which reconciled the church with the modern world and ushered in a new spirit of consultation and consensus in the governance of the church. As some liberals see things, the church's old hierarchical structure has been sabotaging the legacy of "Vatican II" ever since.

Pope John Paul II (pictured) brought the church to the world in a different way, as a star of the electronic age who relentlessly travelled the globe, even when he was physically enfeebled. By using his moral authority to help dismantle communism in his native Poland, he gave a devastating answer to Stalin's cynical question: "How many divisions has the Pope?" Both John Paul himself and most of his admirers would insist that he was fully in step with the pronouncements of Vatican II; but his critics saw him as rolling back liberal reforms by tightening church discipline and silencing some innovative theologians.

Different ends of the spectrum, then? Some Vatican-watchers see the double sainthood as an artful sop to all shades of church opinion. Given that the campaign for an early canonisation of John Paul had gathered unstoppable momentum, yoking him with Pope John was a way to reassure the progressive camp. But in one very important way, the two popes being honoured have a similar legacy. Both are credited with bringing much closer an historic reconciliation between Christians and Jews, in their own lives and their public teaching.

Under his given name of Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John served as the Vatican envoy to Turkey from 1935 to 1944. He saved the lives of thousands of Jews, particularly in Hungary, by issuing them with false baptismal certificates. As pontiff he is credited with starting the process that led to Nostra Aetate, a landmark document which renounced Christian anti-Semitism and the idea that Jews bore any collective responsibility for the death of Jesus Christ. As for the Polish pope, he broke new ground by establishing full diplomatic ties with Israel and, in 2000, visiting Jerusalem, where he deplored the Christian persecution of Jews over the centuries and prayed at the Western Wall. Some credited him with a personal philo-Semitism rooted in a childhood friendship with a Jewish boy, Jerzy Kluger, which was revived during his papacy. 

No wonder then that the double canonisation has been quite broadly welcomed by Jewish commentators and organisations devoted to inter-faith relations. It could be said of both popes, according to Patrick Morrow of the Council of Christians and Jews in London, that "they were never more radical than in their work to improve Christian-Jewish relations."

Amidst all this warmth, perhaps two notes of caution need to be sounded. Relations between Christian and Jewish people are not doomed to be hate-filled or murderous, but relations between their respective religious teachers always will be, to a certain extent, fragile and in need of careful nurturing; that follows from the very fact that they interpret texts and prophecies, to which both ascribe primordial importance, in different ways. The recent popes' description of the Jews as "elder brothers" sounds emollient to the world, but some Jews don't like it; they say it stresses the difference in the way the two faiths have understood the legacy of Abraham.       

Secondly, however morally powerful and overdue their words and gestures may have been, it may not be helpful to speak, as some people do, of popes "repenting" for Christian anti-Semitism down the ages. Surely it is only possible to repent, in a deep way, for one's own failings and misdeeds; to speak of "repenting" for the crimes of the past runs the risk of relativising those crimes, and the meaning of repentance.