When Pope Paul came to New York last October and said Mass in Yankee Stadium, before a congregation of 40,000 and a hidden audience of untold million television-viewers, he made a special point, no doubt because he was in the world’s most Jewish city, of extending his blessing to ‘the sons of Abraham’. The Mass he said was the Votive Mass for Peace, which has a Gospel beginning: ‘Late in the evening that same day, the first day of the week, although the doors of the place where the disciples had gathered were bolted for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood before them and said: “Peace be to you!” (John 20.19-20). For days afterwards one could meet Jews saying: ‘So that’s what we mean, that’s exactly what we mean’. Quite a few Catholics were bothered about it too (e.g. an angry Jesuit letter to The National Catholic Reporter: ‘unthinking acceptance of scriptural readings chosen long ago by unskilled hands’). The incident with all its sensitiveness and misunderstandings on both sides, was typical enough of the atmosphere in which the ‘Schema on the Jews’ was received in the U.S.A.

Ever since the close of the second session the American Jewish press had given prominent space to articles and news reports echoing widely current rumours about the strength of the forces in or near the Vatican opposing a definitive statement on anti-Semitism.

It is not often in this country that the official or semi-official Catholic line on controversial questions receives the close attention devoted to it in Mr Walter Stein’s formidable article in the November Blackfriars. Its subject (the reader will recall) was nuclear weapons and the morality of their possession and use. There-may-well-exist-possible-lawful-targets; We-should-leave-it-to-our-governments-and-experts: H-bombs-are-just-the-counters-of-diplomacy; Possessing-them–is–only–an–occasion–of–sin–which–a–good–intention–could–render-remote; Do-not-we-need-an-up-to-date-ethics-of-bluffing ?

Any-how-was-Hiroshima-so-very-different-from-Dresden? All these recent instances of casuistry (when the need was for witness) inside and outside of the Council, on the part of prelates, theologians and editors, were patiently examined by Mr Stein; and he had no difficulty in showing their ‘appalling irrelevance’ in face of the ‘massively murderous commitments here and now’, the existence of which all the Catholic nuclear apologists admit though boggling at the idea that Christians should do anything practical about the situation beyond favouring disarmament by general consent. It is all very criminal and crazy (say our official Catholic representatives in effect) but there is nothing that a Christian can do about it beyond what any atheist or communist can do and is indeed doing already.

If that is the situation at least for us in Britain and U.S.A., the question arises urgently: why the boggling? Why have Catholics become so helplessly habituated to what our critic calls a falsely-prudent ‘legalist lifemanship’, a ‘diet of casuistic pusillanimities’? One tempting explanation might be a kind of irresponsibility; a serious layman might imagine he saw in the clergy (high or low) an inability to face realities, an almost charming immaturity as of schoolboys who do not grow up, for whom loyalties mean more than truth or justice.

The fourth and finalSession of the Vatican Council hascometoanend. The mind of the Council, and therefore of the Church as a whole, is now expressed in the sixteen official documents personally promulgated by the Pope in its name, four in the third Session and the remainder in the fourth. Most of these documents include, in a greater or lesser degree, outstanding new or revived insights into the nature of the Church and its place in the world. Many of them reflect the differing outlooks, in their various phases, of the bishops of the world and of the People of God they represent. Yet, on the whole, we may be deeply grateful for what the Council has given to the Church and to Christianity, as we stand at the beginning of what must be the momentous post-conciliar era. For in a very real sense the documents are seminal, seed planted in the soil of the life of the People of God. A long period of careful cultivation, within the sensus fidelium, now awaits them, before the fruits they may produce can be fully estimated and judged.

What will be the outcome? Will there be a real renewal, the emergence of a far more distinctive Christian character and attitude, manifesting more clearly the radical nature of the Church’s impact on contemporary life, in our own nation and in the world beyond it? Or will the work of the Council remain largely on paper, in its Decrees and Constitutions? That depends on the Holy Spirit, who will not fail, and on a resultant response to spiritual leadership among clergy and laity, which could. At present, at diocesan and parochial level, among priests and people, little of what the Council’s measures might involve is thought out, or the necessary steps to implement them realised.

In the month of April, 1957, I was in Israel and thanks to a letter of introduction from a Dublin Jewish friend, spent part of an evening with the Chief Rabbi, an old Dubliner, Dr Herzog. I told him that I would be passing through Rome the following week and hoped to have a brief audience with Pius XII. I explained that the purpose of this interview was to present to the Pope a book I had written on St Joseph ten years previously, but which was dedicated to His Holiness ‘to commemorate his charity to the stricken Jews of Europe’. Dr Herzog became quite enthusiastic about Pius XII. He was very proud to have been received in audience by him, rather exceptionally on a Sunday morning, and told me that the audience lasted a full half hour. ‘Take my blessing to him’ the old patriarchal Jew repeated and this I promised to do. When I did so a week later I recalled the fact that Jews the world over seemed very grateful to the Pope for the help he had given them. We were speaking in French and the Pope ended the brief interview with words I translate as I wish I could have done more’.

I had been a member of a Dublin Christian-Jewish society at the time of the ‘Final Solution’ and had kept a fairly constant curiosity about the attitude of Jews to Pius XII since that time. With the exception of occasional remarks in the Israeli press and a rather silly comment in Gerald Reitlinger’s otherwise dignified and scholarly work, this attitude was more sympathetic than that of Jews to any previous Pope.

‘… the trend of this thought in political action is well shown by recent events in Rhodesia. To sum up the story briefly, first, deliberate war was forced on the Matabele in 1893 by Dr Starr Jameson, who promised to each of the six hundred filibusters who rode against the natives, 6,000 acres of native land conditionally redeemable at £9,000. Secondly, in 1896, the Mashona, oppressed and subject to Forced Labour, heard of the collapse of the Jameson raid and rose against their oppressors.