The tenuous relationship between Israel and the Vatican

I don’t want this post to be about bashing Catholics. My Father’s side of the family are Irish Catholic (Mum’s Jewish). They have their own rich history of traditions. And for me, as a lover of Irish songs, verse and literature (which is woven with Catholic motifs) I would be inclined to view this religion as contributing to my cultural heritage. What I do want to home in on, is the Vatican’s rather strange attitude towards Israel. It’s almost like they don’t know what to do with the Jewish State. Israel presents a unique challenge to the Papacy, unlike any other country. First, let’s delve into a little history of how we got here.

Catholicism from the beginning had a complicated, contentious and altogether awkward relationship with the Jews and their religion. Some scholars explain its genesis by likening it to a sort of rivalry between the younger sibling (Catholicism) asserting its own direction in opposition to its elder sibling (Judaism).

Judaism has its own origin story to explain the strife. Essau the rival of Jacob is associated with Rome in Jewish Midrashic literature. We say Esau hates Jacob.

Ironically Christ lived and performed His Ministry in the Land of Israel, yet the Church chose to establish its center in Rome. In so doing, it eventually inherited the institutions of the Roman Empire. There was later a drive to reclaim sovereignty in Israel for the Church during the Crusades. But the locus of Catholicism remained firmly rooted in Rome. Which begs the question why? Why, even when the Crusaders controlled the Land of Israel for an extended length of time did the Vatican not move to Holy Jerusalem and set up shop there? Were they intent on having their cake and eating it too?

Regarding the Jews, the Church historically imparted two accusatory refrains to their laity.

In the traditional Catholic liturgy, the Jews are referred to as “the perfidious Jews”. That is willfully treacherous in rebelling against the truth. Coupled with this, was the charge of Deicide – “the Christ Killers”.

With the establishment of the State of Israel the Vatican was again forced to drastically re-examine its relationship with the Land of Israel, on a level not encountered since the patristic period or the Crusades.

It was bad enough to have a Protestant administration of the Holy Land through the British Mandate. But from the beginnings of Zionism, the numerous iterations of delegations that petitioned the Holy See for support were met with outright rejection. Pope Pius XII was prominent in his hostility to the notion of a Jewish State. His war time record itself was rather abysmal in not contemporaneously condemning the Holocaust of European Jewry. But in no way was he an outlier in opposing the creation of Israel.

Practically, the Church’s interests would focus on safeguarding access to sacred sites and churches associated with Jesus and the Apostles amongst other holdings in Israel. But beyond these concerns, were uneasy questions of the theological implications of the return of the Jews to Israel their ancient homeland. And I think that this spills over the entire terrain of contemporary relations. The persistent existence of the Jewish nation posed its own problem. The Church considered itself as the New Israel. Until more conciliatory language was gradually adopted in the post-war period, the Jew’s wretched continued existence was viewed as a kind of ‘Mark of Cain’ curse. Such mythologies as the eternal wandering Jew developed around this notion.

The Vatican only reluctantly formally recognized Israel and established diplomatic relations in 1993 post-Oslo because by then even the PLO recognized Israel. It seemed that Israel was on the cusp of normalizing relations with the wider Arab World and the Vatican didn’t want to appear as a straggler. But beyond tentative steps towards diplomacy, the entrenched theological issues remained and were impervious to ambiguous signed agreements.

Since its inception , Catholicism had developed its understanding of itself in relation to the Jewish people on the assumption that the Jews had rejected Christ, lost their sovereignty and been scattered among the nations. The Church could understand itself as the custodian of the Christian covenant while the Jewish people existed as a dispersed remnant, witnesses to a biblical past but no longer possessing political sovereignty in the land from which that biblical story had originated.

Then, rather inconveniently for Christian theology, the Jews came back. Not only did they return, but they established a modern state in the very territory in which the foundational events of Christianity had taken place. Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee and the wider Land of Israel were no longer merely locations encountered through Scripture, pilgrimage and liturgy. They were once again part of a sovereign Jewish polity.

This creates an extraordinary reversal. The Church had spent almost two millennia interpreting Jewish dispersion as part of the meaning of Christian history. Zionism and the establishment of Israel introduced the possibility that Jewish history might not have ended where Christian theology had expected it to.

And this is where I think the Vatican’s relationship with Israel becomes particularly fractured. The Holy See is not simply dealing with another nation-state which happens to contain important Catholic holy places. Israel is a state whose very existence touches upon some of the most fundamental questions concerning Christianity’s understanding of Judaism, the biblical covenant, the meaning of Jerusalem and the relationship between the Old and New Covenants.

The Vatican therefore has to perform a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, the Catholic Church has gradually and substantially repudiated many of the older anti-Jewish formulations that once formed part of Christian teaching and popular devotion. The Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate marked a profound change in Catholic teaching concerning the Jews. The idea that Jews collectively bore responsibility for the death of Christ was rejected, and the Church began to articulate a relationship with Judaism based less upon supersession and accusation and more upon the shared inheritance of Scripture.

On the other hand, the Church did not suddenly become Zionist. And this distinction is important.

Catholic acceptance of Jews did not necessarily translate into an enthusiastic embrace of Jewish nationalism. The Vatican could come to regard the Jewish people with renewed respect while remaining deeply uncomfortable with the political implications of Jewish sovereignty over the Holy Land.

From an institutional perspective, this is understandable. From an Israeli perspective, however, it can feel rather strange. The Jewish people, after centuries of exile, persecution and statelessness, establish a state in their ancestral homeland. They reunify Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty in 1967. And yet one of the world’s oldest Christian institutions continues to approach that sovereignty with considerable reservation.

This is not simply because Catholics dislike Israel. Nor, in my view, is it adequately explained by the more fashionable claim that the Vatican is simply “anti-Israel.” Something more complicated is happening. The Catholic Church has spent centuries constructing a theological relationship with Judaism in which Christianity became the universal continuation of Israel while the Jewish people remained outside the Church. The modern State of Israel disrupts that neat theological arrangement simply by existing.

A sovereign Jewish state is not merely a political fact on the ground. It is a theological tsunami wave. And that may explain some of the Vatican’s persistent ambivalence. The Church can take the giant leap (for them) of recognizing Israel. It can adopt politically correct, extremely nuanced rhetoric towards interfaith relations. Popes can snap photogenic shots at the Western Wall. The Church’s teaching concerning the Jews can be revised and edited to remove blatant antisemitism and prize the unique place that the Jews yet occupy in God’s heart. Yet Israel remains, in a peculiar sense, an uncomfortable reminder that Judaism did not disappear into the pages of Christian history: ‘Am Yisrael Chai’.

The fact is that the Jews returned to their land and did not vanish into historical obscurity.

Perhaps that is why the Vatican’s relationship with Israel has always seemed so much more complicated than its relationship with an ordinary foreign state. Israel forces the Church to confront not merely another religion, but its own origin. Israel is like a mirror held up before the Church that prods it to delve into its own identity.