Unacceptable revisionism

Europe and the Christian world will never be able to view the Shoah like another historical event. The Shoah was conceived, planned and carried out in a Country and in a Continent with Christian roots, that was believed to be Christian, within the heart of its historical development. Europe and the Christian world will never forget. As Pope John Paul II declared during the 60th anniversary of the liberation from Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps, no one is permitted to pass by this tragedy since that attempted systematic annihilation of the Jewish people “is a crime that will forever darken the history of humanity”. The Pope had urged the the Church to question not so much the nature of the Shoah as the fact that it had happened in Europe. In this framework, the Church cannot escape a painful but necessary examination of conscience regarding the relationship between the Nazi genocide and the Christians’ century-long attitude towards the Jewish people. The Pope pled forgiveness to God and the Jews of Jerusalem in the year 2000 while repentance became a central element of the Jubilee Year. The Church thus crossed the threshold of the new Millennium, purged of its mistakes and sins. The sin of anti-Semitism, the pope said, had to be uprooted. Repentance helped place the Shoah at the heart of contemporary history, and made the Jews feel they were being respected in their faith, in their culture, in their attachment to Israel. It reassured them of the Catholic Church’ will – reaffirmed by the Pope and by numerous bishops – to fight all forms of anti-Semitism, anti-Judaism or Shoah revisionism. After John Paul II, Benedict XVI never ceased conveying his solidarity to the Jews in the memory of this dark event. His Holiness sees in the memory of the Shoah the occasion for a reflection on “the power of evil when it conquers man’s heart”. In order to adopt the pontifical message, the Church undertook a long and difficult path which begun in the aftermath of the disagreements with a number of Catholic (Jacques Maritain, Paul Claudel, François Mauriac) and Jewish scholars (Jules Isaac) who raised questions on the Church’s responsibilities in the teaching of contempt that led to the genocide. The Declaration Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council paved the way to the radical initiatives carried out by John Paul II, and by a number of European episcopacies. Numerous initiatives in this direction seemed to have confined anti-Semitism to the past, since its resurgence was deemed impossible. However, recent statements by an integrist bishop brought to the fore militant – albeit extremist – anti-Semitic sentiments within the Catholic world. This militant anti-Semitic faction revives revisionist lies, displaying utmost contempt for all testimonies and historical researches whereby today we have a profound knowledge of the Shoah. It’s a hard blow, since it was believed that “the assassins of memory” – according to the words of a French scholar – were present in solely marginal fringes, linked to extreme factions (left and right winged). It was a hard blow because it compels us to acknowledge that anti-Semitism is present also within some areas of Christianity, and that it persists and spreads like weed. Bending to lies is incompatible with the very nature of the Church, with the memory of the Shoah and with the heritage of the Council and the pontificate of John Paul II.