Reconciliation Idealism Pope John Paul2 Kluger

The Pope and I: How the Lifelong Friendship Between a Polish Jew and Pope John Paul II Advanced the Cause of Jewish-Christian Relations, by Jerzy Kluger. 2012

The Deep Idealism of Pope John Paul II and—Unfortunately—Its Clash With the Realities of Polish-Jewish Relations

Owing to the fact that there are already many descriptive reviews of this uplifting book, and the fact that 13 years have now passed since the death of Saint Pope John Paul II, the focus of my review is some themes unmentioned or undeveloped by other reviewers. I also touch on some of the deeper issues involved.

ARE JEWS AND POLES CHILDREN OF THE “SAME GOD”?

As a boy, Jerzy Kluger visited Mass. A woman recognized him, and told him that a Jewish child should not be in a church. (p. 11). Lolek Wojtyla, the eventual Pope John Paul II, scolded the woman, telling her that Jews and Catholics descend from one God, and told Jerzy that he is welcome at any time. (p. 12). It all sounds nice, but what if the woman was right? What if the Jewish parents of Jerzy later made a big incident of the “fact” that the Catholic Church was taking advantage of the curiosity of a Jewish child, and trying to convert him to Christianity?

To even say that Jews and Catholics are children of the “same God” is a bit disingenuous. According to Jewish belief, the Triune God of Christianity is dubiously or barely compatible with monotheism, and the Deity of Jesus Christ even more so. Please see: Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue: Essays in Jewish-Christian Relations (Judaism and Jewish Life). Of course, most Jews are atheists, and, to them, there is no God to Whom Jews or Poles could be children.

Of course, the “children of the same God” statement is not intended as a theological one. Rather, it is designed to cajole Poles into treating Jews a certain way. However, if Jews and Poles are both children of the “same God”, even metaphorically, shouldn’t Polish deaths under the Germans (Nazis) be equal, in terms of attention and moral gravity, to the Jewish deaths under the Germans (Nazis)? Yet we have Holocaust preeminence and Holocaust supremacism.

A STILTED VIEW OF THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE IN PRE-WWII POLAND

The author repeats the canned complaint about discrimination against Jews in pre-WWII Poland. (p. 15). What he does not mention is the fact that these policies did not eliminate Jews from high positions: They only reduced their overabundance to closer to the share of Jews in Poland’s population (10%). Remember, one’s group’s discrimination-against (Jews) is another group’s affirmative action (Poles). Without these discriminatory policies, for example, easily 80% of Poland’s lawyers and doctors would be Jewish. Now, this would have been great for the Jews, but where would it leave the Poles? Or perhaps Poles have no right to say what happens to their own nation, and are obligated to give the Jews everything that they want.

UNFORTUNATELY, A RATHER ONE-SIDED JEWISH-POLISH “DIALOGUE”

The Pope had good intentions, and his teachings on Jews were in the spirit of goodwill and ecumenism. However, they amounted to a set of unilateral concessions to Jews. Unfortunately, some Jews have misused the teachings of Pope John Paul II in order to promote their agendas at the expense of Poles and Christians. They say that, since we are now in a “new era” of Polish-Jewish and Christian-Jewish relations, the traditional unflattering views of Jews should no longer be voiced. However, this is all one-sided. Anti-Christian and anti-Polish materials continue to be freely proliferated by Jewish authors, just as if Pope John Paul II had never existed.

This work itself is almost entirely Judeocentric. That is, Poles and Christians are defined in terms of Jews; never the reverse. Poles and Christians are implicitly challenged to change their attitudes towards Jews, but nothing is asked of Jews in return. Poles and Christians are subject to criticism, while Jews are exempt from criticism. And so on. [For the seldom-mentioned “other side” of Jewish-Christian relations, please see the first Comment under this review.]

JEWS RAISE A FUSS OVER A CONVENT AT AUSCHWITZ, YET OVER 100,000 POLES DIED AT AUSCHWITZ!

Consider author Jerzy Kluger’s analysis of the Auschwitz Carmelite convent controversy. (p. 164, 188). He repeats the Jewish demand that a place of Jewish deaths should not be a place of prayer, and the Pope just gives in. Now, nobody is forced to pray at Auschwitz, so what is supposed to give Jewish atheists the right to impose their “perpetually empty sky over Auschwitz” opinion on others? What is supposed to give the Jews, in general, the unilateral and unlimited right to impose their views on Poles, is not explained either. Why do Jewish deaths matter, while Polish and Catholic deaths do not?

Imagine an airplane crash in which 90% of the victims were Christians, and various Christian leaders declared that non-Christians have no right to pray at the site of the crash. How would that fly? (pardon the pun)

DEICIDE? CHRISTIANITY ULTIMATELY BLAMED FOR THE HOLOCAUST

Attention is now focused on PRO PERFIDIS JUDAEIS, including the removal of the word PERFIDIS (faithless), by Pope John XXIII, in 1959. (p. 79). This book, subtly but surely, drifts into the standard Judeocentric meme that Christian anti-Semitism gave rise to Nazi anti-Semitism. (pp. 206-207). However, since history cannot be replayed, this time without Christian anti-Semitism, to determine if Nazism and the Holocaust would have happened anyway, it is an unverifiable calumny against Christianity. Nazism is not Christian: Nazism is anti-Christian. Anti-Semitism does not depend upon Christianity: It predated Christianity. Over the centuries, Jews had been widely hated for many reasons other than PRO PERFIDIS JUDAEIS. Finally, the canned argument that Nazi anti-Semitism could not have developed without the precedence of Christian anti-Semitism is refuted by an elementary fact: The Nazis proved perfectly capable of demonizing and targeting identifiable groups (Gypsies, handicapped, etc.) that NEVER had Christian teachings directed against them.

SAINT MAXIMILIAN KOLBE: THE CATHOLIC PRIEST AT AUSCHWITZ WHO SACRIFICED HIS LIFE FOR ANOTHER PERSON

This book is also, unfortunately, quite shallow in the issues it raises. For instance, it uncritically repeats the charge that Father Maximilian Kolbe had been an anti-Semite. (p. 125). In actuality, Kolbe made both positive and negative statements about Jews, and did the same for Protestants and other non-Catholics. So the charge of anti-Semitism is an act of selective indignation, and the taking of an act out of its proper situational and pre-ecumenical historical context. For details, see: Mary’s Knight: The Mission and Martyrdom of Saint Maksymilian Maria Kolbe.

CHARACTERIZING THIS BOOK

In conclusion, this book is more of a pro-Jewish touchy-feely narrative than a substantive, and objective, examination of the issues uniting and dividing Jews and Catholics. These issues have more than just the Jewish side.