| On May 6, 1998, the
Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College sponsored a panel
discussion on the recently released Vatican statement on the Holocaust, We Remember: A
Reflection on the Shoah. The enormous attention the document received in the news
media, and the controversies that arose over what it said and did not say, showed that the
Church’s role in the Holocaust remains more than a half-century later a difficult and
tender subject. By bringing together leading Catholic and Jewish experts to offer
perspective on the Reflection, the Center sought to deepen public understanding of
this subject by placing the Vatican’s latest effort to address Catholic-Jewish issues
in historical and institutional perspective. The participants in the panel discussion
were Jerome Chanes, program director for the National Foundation for Jewish Culture;
Philip Cunningham, professor of theology at Notre Dame College in Manchester, New
Hampshire, and co-director of the College’s Shalom Center for Understanding Between
Christians and Jews; Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, professor at the Harvard Divinity School and
counselor to Catholic Relief Services in Baltimore; and Rabbi James Rudin, national
interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee. The discussion was
chaired by Mark Silk, director of the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. The
result was a thoughtful and rigorous discussion that brought clarity and perspective to a
central episode in modern religious history that bears considerable importance for the
future of interreligious relations in our world.
What follows is an edited transcript of each speaker’s presentation, the ensuing
interchange among the speakers, and a selection of questions-and-answers with the
audience. It has been edited and prepared for publication by Anthony B. Smith, Ph.D.,
former program associate of the Center. We also reprint, as an appendix, the Vatican
document itself, along with the letter of introduction from Pope John Paul II.
The Catholic Church and the Holocaust
Perspectives on the Vatican Statement
We Remember:
A Reflection on the Shoah
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