If the Pope refuses to comment on Mel Gibson's provocative film The Passion of the Christ, relations with Jews will be damaged, writes Patsy McGarry.
It was Sunday March 26th, 2000, and something wonderful had happened in Jerusalem. The Pope had prayed at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine. Proceedings began with Rabbi Michel Melchior, then Israel's minister for social and diaspora affairs, telling Pope John Paul that "in the tortuous dungeons of the Inquisition, while awaiting the hangman's noose, when cramped in cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, Treblinka, or Maidanek, and in the heat of battle defending our state, Jews have longed for and prayed towards this place".
He welcomed the Pope's presence "as the realisation of a commitment of the Catholic Church to end the era of hatred, humiliation, and persecution of the Jewish people".
Then Pope John Paul, in one of his most dramatic gestures - and there have been many - towards the Jewish people, prayed as would a Jew. And, as is traditional with Jews, he placed his prayer in a crevice in the Wall.
It read: "God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: we are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."
That night Israeli television played the moment over and over again. The feeling of exultation in that old and troubled city was palpable and deeply moving.
"A 2,000-year-old account is now closed," said Israel's minister for communications Benjamin Ben-Eliezer. The event "was beyond history, beyond memory" said Rabbi Melchior.
The previous Thursday there was disappointment that the Pope had not condemned the silence of Pius XII during the Holocaust, at a ceremony in Jerusalem's Yad Vashem memorial hall.
There Pius was criticised by then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, who quoted lines from a poem by Nathan Alterman. "As our children cried underneath the gallows/the wrath of the world we did not hear ...." Titled Of All The People, it continued: "And the Holy Christian Father in the city of Rome/did not leave the palace .... to experience the pogrom."
By Sunday evening the disappointment was gone. The minister for Jerusalem affairs Haim Ramon said "this special Pope" had effected a revolution in Catholic attitudes towards the Jews. Rabbi Melchior announced "today begins a new era ... that will bring peace to all religions and all believers".
Hope springs eternal, not least in a millennium year. Rabbi Melchior would probably be less sanguine these days.
He might also be less sure whether the Pope's gesture at the Western Wall was of such epic significance. His doubts would have been fuelled by the seemingly equivocal attitude of Rome to Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, which, in its "old time religion" portrayal of Jesus's last hours, many Jews and others see as anti-Semitic.
The rabbi would have become aware, as did most of the world, that Pope John Paul saw an edition of the film in early December and was reported widely in the international media as having commented on it, "it is as it was". This was interpreted as an unofficial imprimatur.
For weeks Vatican spokesmen refused to confirm or deny the reports of what the Pope was supposed to have said. Then on January 19th Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Pope's private secretary, said "the Holy Father told no one of his opinion of this film".
But the damage was done, and remains. Why did it take so long for the archbishop to speak up? Why allow another papal silence disturb the peace of the world's Jews, particularly when anti-Semitism is on the rise again in Europe. Why would a Pope so particularly attuned to Jewish sensitivities allow this to happen? Is it because he really believes the film depicts the last hours of Jesus "as it was".
It is understandable why Ireland's Chief Rabbi, Dr Yaakov Pearlman, should ask Rome to clarify these matters. Further silence, in the light of what happened - or didn't - last December/January, however reasonable may be an explanation, will feed into what are now real anxieties. These could undo much of the good achieved by Pope John Paul where the Catholic Church's relationship with Jews is concerned.
Because there is no doubt this film's portrayal of Jews is provocative. Barabbas is a caricature Jew of Middle Ages Europe. He is a leering, violent, hardly civilised figure, not unlike simian Paddy from 19th century Punch cartoons. The film has a one-dimensional high priesthood and blood-thirsty Jewish mob repeatedly demand crucifixion for Jesus.
And it invents a scene which has those priests attend the crucifixion. This is without biblical or historical foundation and illustrates ignorance of a code which forbade such priests from attending executions. The film also has Jewish children harassing Judas (invention), becoming, in his description, "little Satans", into which they obligingly morph before becoming Jewish again.
But more than Jews will be disturbed by this film.
It invents a scene where Pilate's wife presents Mary, mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene with garments, which they later use to mop up seeming gallons of blood, generously and widely spattered during the scourging. Again totally without foundation in gospel or history.
And there is a grotesque episode where a raven plucks out the "Bad Thief's" eye, also without biblical foundation. Both "events" are rooted in visions of Catholic mystics. And it has Satan played by a woman, a throwback to a view of the female as temptress and danger to men's souls.
Its prolonged and savage violence is deliberate and intended to illustrate primitively a theology which insists that you and I and all the living and the dead - through our sins - "did this" to Jesus all those years before and since we and he existed on earth. It is designed to return us to the perennial guilt that was so recently our condition. It is hell-fire sermon stuff, writ bloodily. It is as it was in Catholicism before the Second Vatican Council.
With its mixed-up gospel stories and pure invention, The Passion of the Christ is straight out of what many of us from the tradition would see as the dark ages of Catholicism, resurrecting grotesques and images from a medieval religion, believed happily by many to be long since dead and buried. It is fundamentalist Catholic piety run amok.
In a context where the current climate in Rome is dominated by retreat to a pre-Vatican II spirit, the phrase "it is as it was" is not reassuring where many Catholics are concerned either.
It might be helpful, for Jews and such Catholics alike, to know what they really think about this film in Rome.
Then again, it might not!