Forgive Us Our Trespasses…

Early returns tend to vindicate, at least in part, the worries of cardinals and others when John Paul II announced in the 1994 document Tertio Millennio Adveniente (On the Coming of the Third Millennium) that the Catholic Church should publicly confess the sins of her children over the centuries.

The fears were several: that confession of errors past would undermine confidence in the authority of the Church; that the distinction would be blurred between the sinfulness of the Church’s members and the holiness of the Church as the mystical Body of Christ; that such a confession would reinforce the cultural presumption of the moral superiority of the present; and that the enemies of the Church would construe such a confession as an “apology” confirming their critique of Catholicism. These concerns and responses to them are masterfully treated in Father Avery Dulles’ article, “Should the Church Repent?” (December 1998).

One may reasonably assume that the Pope was well aware of the risks involved, and judged them well worth taking. Such a public confession, he believes, is a sign not of the Church’s weakness but of her self-confidence in an historical moment in which she is the world’s singular institution of moral credibility. Above all, it is a sign of confidence in the forgiving and renewing grace of God in Christ. Four hundred years after the divisions of the sixteenth century, and having survived centuries of hostile challenge by Enlightenment secularism, the Catholic Church is no longer in a defensive mode. All this is part of John Paul II’s strategic thinking in laying the groundwork for what he calls a springtime of world evangelization. As the thirty-page explanation produced by the International Theological Commission and presented by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger insists, the Church has nothing to fear from historical truth, including unpleasant truths about things done in the name of the Church.

When the Mass of Reconciliation with its ceremony of “the purification of memory” was celebrated on the First Sunday of Lent, there was intense public interest. I confess that my heart sank just a little when, in several media appearances and interviews I did, it became evident that the worst misconstruals dominated the discussion. In response to the Pope’s confession, one heard multiple variations on the themes: “It’s about time!” and “I told you so!” and “It’s too little too late!” The heart of the matter seemed to get lost amidst the chortlings and recriminations. The purification of memory focused, in order of priority, on Catholic responsibility for divisions among Christians, on the injustice of employing coercion in the service of truth, on the historically “tormented” relationship between Christians and Jews, and on “responsibility for the evils of today,” including secularism, moral relativism, atheism, and the demeaning of human life. Perhaps predictably, most media reports homed in on the Jewish connection and the Holocaust, frequently alluding to the old canards about Pius XII’s alleged silence regarding the latter. Jewish voices typically allowed that the confession was a welcome “first step” but did not go far enough. When it comes to admitting the sins of the Catholic Church, a rabbi friend has observed, “We Jews now have two slogans: ‘Never Again’ and ‘Never Enough.’“

Jewish voices continue to express irritated incredulity at the distinction made between the sinlessness of the Church and the sins of her children. The analogy does not hold all the way, but in this connection I have found it helpful to point out the distinction between the Old Testament prophets who adamantly denounce the sins of the people of Israel while, at the same time, insisting that they are the elect people of God. With respect to both Israel and the Church, the accent is on the grace and faithfulness of God who continues to affirm the dignity of the people despite their so often acting in violation of that dignity. Moreover, in connection with the Holocaust it is useful to remember the enormous storm that broke over Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1963. Arendt raised the exceedingly delicate question of the large number of Jews who not only did nothing to resist the Holocaust or to protect other Jews but who actually cooperated, out of whatever tortured motivations, in the rounding up, transport, and killing of Jews. Arendt was vociferously attacked by some Jews for “blaming the victims” and besmirching the integrity of Judaism itself.

Efforts to sort things out historically engage the much-disputed distinction between individual and collective responsibility. Regarding that distinction, the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was fond of saying, “Some are guilty; all are responsible.” Applied to the image of the Church as the Mother of the faithful, it must surely be possible to find a way to say that she accepts responsibility for the actions of her children. She, although sinless, does not disown her sinful children. To change the image, Christ in his body on the cross bears the guilt of those who are members of his body, the Church. Of course analogies limp, but these are the kinds of tangled questions that must be explored more carefully as the concept of “the purification of memory” takes root, over time, in the consciousness of Christians and others.

Central to the misconstrual of what the Pope did is the assumption that he was issuing an apology. Apology is definitely not the right word, although it was persistently used in almost all the media reports and commentary. A late-night television show that would have been blasphemous were it not so juvenile ran footage of the Pope speaking with the voice-over, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, and I promise not to do it again.” That was followed by the Jewish host saying that maybe Jews should apologize too. “We brought you some yentas [irritating women], but we also produced the bagel, which is pretty good, right?” There were only a few hesitant laughs from the audience, which otherwise seemed to have a bottomless appetite for vulgarities. The host, a very funny man, looked puzzled and wondered out loud if there were no Jews in the audience.

In fact, John Paul was not issuing an apology but was confessing to God, and on behalf of the sons and daughters of the Church, our failure to live lives worthy of the truth authoritatively taught by the Church. Far from throwing that teaching into doubt, he underscored that we are all held accountable to it. In all this he was setting an example and inviting others to engage in a comparable act of self-examination, confession, and repentance, acknowledging that all of us have in myriad ways betrayed the moral truths that we profess. Representative of the media’s reaction, however, was the lead editorial of the New York Times, “The Pope’s Apology.” It was substantively the reaction of the television comedian, albeit with a long face. The editors smugly commend the Pope for an apology that will make it easier for the Church to “heal its relations with other faiths.” They then quickly move on to complain about what he did not say.

The apology, they say, “was offered on behalf of the Church’s ‘sons and daughters,’ but not the Church itself, which is considered holy.” One might think the editors are raising a theological challenge to Catholic ecclesiology, but of course they are only scoring partisan points. “Nor,” the complaint continues, “did John Paul directly address the sensitive issue of whether past popes, cardinals, and clergy—not just parishioners—also erred.” That is, of course, patent nonsense. Bishops, cardinals, and popes are also “children of the Church” who have sinned. Why, do the editors suppose, does the Pope go to confession every week? Then there is this: “The Pope’s apology for discrimination against women is welcome but difficult to square with his continued opposition to abortion and birth control, and to women in the priesthood. Regrettably, he made no mention of discrimination against homosexuals.”

But of course John Paul did directly address abortion, birth control, and morally disordered sexuality when he spoke of “our responsibility for the evils of today.” What the editors mean to say is that the Church’s understanding of good and evil is “difficult to square” with their understanding of good and evil. As for the ordination of women, one eagerly awaits from Howell Raines and his editorial colleagues their theological study explaining why the biblical, patristic, and magisterial sources authorize the Catholic Church to approve of such an innovation in its sacramental order. The nub of the misconstrual by the editors—and one says this in fear of offending against a self-importance of narcissistic proportions—is their apparent inability to understand that the Pope was not apologizing to the New York Times. The editors assume the posture of being the infallible tribunal before which the Pope must make his case. They are prosecutor, jury, and judge, and they will decide when the Catholic Church’s act of contrition is sufficient to warrant pardon, or at least a measure of clemency. Such towering arrogance would be amusing were it not so pathetic.

The Pope is keenly aware of the risks involved in the “purification of memory.” Despite all, I believe he was right to take those risks. In sharpest contrast to the dominant evasions and mendacities of our time, evident not least of all in the media, the Pope has dramatically demonstrated how we are honestly to confess our sins, in the confidence of God’s forgiveness and of grace for the amendment of life. In time, those who initially and self-righteously thought they were being offered an apology which they were in a moral position to either accept or reject might begin to understand and follow the example of courage and honesty that John Paul has set. Or they may continue to use it as yet another stick with which to flail their perceived opponents. The Church has survived much worse. The “purification of memory” is, first of all, about the integrity of the Church, and, despite initial misunderstandings and misconstruals, she is strengthened by acknowledging the truth about both the light and the shadows along the way of her earthly pilgrimage.

“Forgive us our trespasses . . . “ Against the misconstruals of the Mass of Reconciliation on the First Sunday of Lent, one notes with deep gratification the very different response to the Pope’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as reported in this issue by George Weigel. In fact it is against the background of such misconstruals, especially with reference to Jewish-Christian relations, that the achievement of the pilgrimage becomes so luminously clear. It is by such moments that the much overused word “historic” is properly defined.