Ventajas y Beneficios de Six Sigma

There are distinctive tendencies in the attitudes of Christian Churches to the existence of the State of Israel. While the indigenous Christian community in Palestine, which has lived there since the early Christian centuries under a variety of political rulers, sees no special importance in the state, and is prominent in the opposition to Israeli occupation and oppression, some ninety million Christian Zionists world-wide see Zionism as the instrument of God promoting the gathering of Jews into Israel. In some such circles, anyone who opposes Zionism opposes God himself. The mainline Christian Churches in the West take an intermediate position, distinguishing between the return of the Jews and the creation of a state.

The historical context of Church involvement

Before reviewing some of the perspectives of the Christian Churches on Zionism and the State of Israel, it is instructive to survey the attachment of Christians to the Holy Land, particularly to Jerusalem, recognising that this attachment reflected changing political interests. Jerusalem and the surrounding area were the scenes of the historical origins of their faith, and the location of the expected Second Coming of Christ. After Emperor Hadrian (AD 117–38) refounded the city as the Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina, statues of the new Roman gods were erected in the place of the ruined Herodian Temple. Emperor Constantine determined to relieve the Holy Place of the Cross and Resurrection of its pagan idol: the Temple of Venus was destroyed and the site excavated, in the course of which one rock tomb was identified as the Holy Sepulchre. Constantine ordered Bishop Macarius to build an appropriate surrounding for the Holy Sepulchre, which was dedicated in September 335 (see Hunt 1984:25–26). Soon, the sacred cave at Bethlehem and that on the Mount of Olives also were adorned with churches, built under the supervision of Constantine’s mother, Helena.

Constantine also ordered Macarius to erect a basilica at the shrine of Abraham at Mamre near Hebron.

The news that the Holy Sepulchre had been discovered and that the site had been converted into a Christian basilica increased the number of pilgrims (see further Prior 1997b:118–21). The position of Jerusalem in the sixth century

mosaic in the church in Madaba (the Madaba Map) confirms the importance of the city for the Christian faithful. Whereas Jews had focused on the Temple, Christians could now focus on the Hill of Golgotha. The much later Mappa Mundi of Hereford Cathedral places Jerusalem and the Crucifixion at the very centre of the world.

By the time of the first Muslim conquest in 638 by Omar, the second caliph (634–44), a number of Church communities had come into being. There was still, however, only one Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, who negotiated with the Muslims on behalf of all the Christians of the area. Between that date and the establishment of the Crusader Kingdoms there was harmony among the various Christian communities in Jerusalem, in spite of the growing estrangement between Rome and Constantinople.

The capture of Jerusalem by the Seljuk Turks in 1071 was answered in the West by Pope Urban II’s call in 1095 for a crusade to liberate the Holy Places.

On the night of 13–14 July 1099, the Crusaders murdered all whom they met, men, women and children, emptying Jerusalem of all its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. With none left to kill, the Crusaders went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to give thanks (Runciman 1951:287–88). Saladin’s decisive victory over the Crusaders at the Horns of Hattin on 4 July 1187 was followed by the capture of Jerusalem on 2 October. The hegemony of the Latin Church in the Holy Places, under a Latin Patriarch, followed.

The conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 and their capture of Jerusalem in 1516 brought about fundamental change in the Middle East, introducing international politics into the controversies surrounding Jerusalem and the Holy Places. After King Francis I of France had signed the Capitulation Treaty with Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1535), the Western Church asked France to represent its interests in the region. France claimed the right to protect all Ottoman subjects who were members of the Latin or Eastern Catholic communions. Subsequently, following the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarja in 1774, the Russians claimed a similar position in respect of Ottoman subjects with Orthodox beliefs. As the Empire weakened, the interests of the Great Powers increased. The Treaty of Berlin (1878) recognised France’s rights, and stipulated that there be no alterations in the status quo in the Holy Places. The status quo of the Sultan’s Final firman (decree) of 1852 has been adhered to scrupulously up to the present.

Britain’s interest in the Middle East increased in the late eighteenth century as a result of her acquisition of territories in India, with which it was necessary to secure safe and speedy overland passage. Moreover, Britain wished to protect her trade with the Persian Gulf region. She was anxious also to limit the power of Mohammed’Ali of Egypt, who wished to set up an independent Arab state embracing Egypt, Greater Syria and the Arab Peninsula. Britain stationed the first European Consulate in the city in 1838, and in 1841 established the Protestant (Anglican) Bishopric in Jerusalem (El-Assal 1994:131–32; the Right

Reverend Riah El-Assal, enthroned in 1998, is the thirteenth Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem).

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century Church institutions in the Holy Land expanded greatly. That period also witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of Christian visitors to the Holy Land, especially from England and Russia (see Hummel and Hummel 1995), and the USA, including Scripture scholars, archaeologists, Protestant missionaries and pilgrims who were major formers of opinion in America (see Handy 1981).

The current variety of thirteen Churches of the Mother Church of Jerusalem (the Oriental Orthodox, Byzantine Orthodox, Catholic, Evangelical and Episcopal families) reflects developments which brought to the Jerusalem Church divisions which had occurred outside. Currently the Churches exhibit an unprecedented unity. The leadership has issued common statements, including that of 14 November 1994, The Significance of Jerusalem for Christians, which lays out the significance of the city for the indigenous Christian community.¹

The Catholic Church, Zionism and the State of Israel

Relations between the Catholic Church and the representatives of Zionism prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and with Israel itself since then reflect changing political circumstances, as well as warmer relations between Christians and Jews. The discussion which follows is restricted to an examination of the Catholic Church’s attitude towards Zionism as a political movement and the State of Israel; other aspects of the dialogue are reviewed elsewhere (e.g. in Fisher, Rudin and Tanenbaum 1986; Widoger 1988; see relevant documents in Croner 1977 and 1985).

During the Ottoman period the primary interest of the Holy See was in the Christian Holy Places, and the voluminous Vatican files dealing with Palestine during the last years of Pope Leo XIII’s pontificate (1896-1903) do not mention Zionism, nor the growing presence of Jews there (Kreutz 1990: 51 note 20).² Theodor Herzl’s tactics for advancing the Zionist cause included intensive diplomatic lobbying (11 May 1896, Herzl 1983–96, II: 340–41), and with that end in view he requested Baron Gleichen-Russwurm on 9 May 1901 to secure an audience with the Pope: ‘I am convinced that they [the Pope and Cardinal Rampolla] would bestow their favour on the cause if they had detailed

1 The three Patriarchs (Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Latin) meet bi-monthly under the presidency of the Greek Patriarch to discuss matters of common concern. The completion of the repair and decoration of the dome of the Holy Sepulchre (2 January 1997), whose ownership reflects the

2 The Holy See, being the juridical personification of more than 1,000 million Catholics who are in complexity of the histories of the Churches, marked a welcome level of co-operation. communion with Rome, enjoys the rights to make international agreements and receive and dispatch representatives.

information’ (Herzl 1960, 3:1096–97). Two years later he would try to get an introduction to the Pope (19 October 1903, Herzl 1960, 4:1566–67), and had written already to the President of the Italian Zionist Federation, in the hope that his proposal would be accepted by the Pope: ‘We want only the profane earth in Palestine…. The Holy Places shall be ex-territorialised for ever. Res sacrae extra commercium, as a right of nations’ (September 1903, Kreutz 1990:32).

With failing health, Herzl visited Rome on 23 January 1904 and met Pope Pius X, who refused to support the Zionist intentions: ‘We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem—but we could never sanction it. The soil of Jerusalem, if it was not always sacred, has been sanctified by the life of Jesus Christ’ (Herzl 1960, 4:1602–3). According to Herzl’s account, the Pope also said:

It is not pleasant to see the Turks in possession of the Holy Places but we have to put up with it; but we could not possibly support the Jews in the acquisition of the Holy Places. If you come to Palestine and settle with your people there, we shall have churches and priests ready to baptise all of you (Herzl 1960, 4:1601–2) Prior to the Balfour Declaration the major concern of the Holy See focused on the likely fate of the Holy Places ‘in the custody of the synagogue’. Fearful of the declaration and Britain’s conquest of Palestine in 1917, the Secretary of State, Pietro Cardinal Gasparri, remarked: ‘It is hard to take back that part of our heart which has been given over to the Turks in order to give it to the Zionists’

(Minerbi 1990:xiii). On 6 March 1922, Gasparri severely criticised the draft British Mandate for Palestine of 7 December 1920 as being incompatible with the Covenant of the League of Nations. The British plan would establish ‘an absolute economic, administrative and political preponderance of Jews’, and would act as ‘the instrument for subordinating native populations’ (in Kreutz 1992:115). One detects here the emergence of a concern for the rights of the Palestinians in the land, whose Christians were among the staunchest Arab opponents of Zionism, and supporters of nascent Arab nationalism.

It is equally clear, however, that the Holy See had little enthusiasm for an Arab government in the area. As late as January 1948, Monsignor Montini (the future Paul VI, then the Under Secretary for Ordinary Affairs) informed the British Minister to the Vatican that the Holy See preferred that ‘a third power, neither Jew nor Arab…have control of the Holy Land’ (Perowne in Rome to Burrows, 19 January 1948—FO 371/68500, in Kreutz 1992:116). However, such was the international support for Zionism in the wake of the virtual annihilation of mainland European Jewry that it was virtually impossible for the Holy See to challenge it publicly.

While the Zionist expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, including some 50,000 Christians—35 per cent of all Christians who lived in Palestine prior to 15 May 1948—was acknowledged to be a disaster, it did not induce the Holy See to make any diplomatic representations. In his Encyclical Letter In

Multiplicibus of October 1948, Pope Pius XII expressed only his anguish at the general conditions of refugees, and in Redemptoris Nostri six months later he was no more specific. However, the Holy See’s envoy insisted that the return of the Christian exiles was ‘basic to an Israeli-Church rapprochement’ (Kreutz 1992:117). Nevertheless, the Palestinian issue was not mentioned publicly for the next twenty years.

‘Through the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962—65) the Church, in Pope John XXIII’s words, opened a window to the world, abandoning its citadel character. The Council’s Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate, 28 October 1965) reflected the new climate of respect for and better relations with other religions, including, of course, Judaism. The American Jewish Committee played a prominent role both before and during the Councils deliberations, providing Vatican officials with documentation tracing the 2,000 years of ‘the Catholic teaching of contempt towards Jews and Judaism’ (Rudin 1986: 14). Nevertheless, despite the warm tone of its acknowledgement of Christianity’s roots within Judaism, this Magna Carta of the Jewish-Christian dialogue made no mention of the State of Israel.

During that period also, there was a growing sense in the Church of the relationship between the Gospel and issues of justice and peace, reflected in a range of papal encyclicals (Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris of John XXIII, Populorum Progressio and Evangelii Nuntiandi of Paul VI, and later Redemptoris Hominis and Laborem Exercens of John Paul II). Translated to the Middle East, two conflicting tendencies were developing: a greater respect for the Jews, and a growing sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians.

A number of significant factors influenced future developments. The victory of Israel in 1967 imposed a new sense of the power of the Jewish state. Contacts between Jews and Catholics increased. Pope Paul VI, who had already visited the Holy Land in 1964, concerned at the decrease in the numbers of Christians there, lamented that if their presence were to cease, ‘the Holy Land would become like a museum’ (‘Concerning the Increased Needs of the Church in the Holy Land’, 1974). In addressing Israeli Jews on 22 December 1975, the Pope acknowledged the rights and legitimate aspirations of the Jews to a sovereign and independent state of its own, and appealed that the Jews ‘recognise the rights and legitimate aspirations of another people, which have also suffered for a long time, the Palestinian people’ (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, January—March 1976, p. 134).

At the level of documents also there was progress. In 1975, the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews issued its ‘Guidelines and Suggestions for implementing the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate. The Guidelines suggested ways in which the ideals of Nostra Aetate could be implemented. Again, while stressing the place of the ‘mystery of Israel’ within the mystery of the Church, it was silent on the role of the State of Israel. The International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations expressed its regret at the omission (Higgins 1986:31).

By 1983 Monsignor W.Murphy, Under-Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace, acknowledged that the Holy See recognised the factual existence of Israel, its right to exist within secure borders, and other rights that a sovereign nation possesses. Pope John Paul II welcomed Shimon Peres, the Israeli Prime Minister, to the Vatican on 19 February 1985, after which the Vatican spokesman referred to divergencies on essential problems, which included the status of Jerusalem, the sovereignty of Lebanon, and the lot of the Palestinian people. The Pope’s visit to a Roman synagogue on 25 June 1986 marked another stage in the growing cordiality between the two bodies.

According to Fr Giovanni Caprile the remaining problems concerned: a just solution to the Palestinian problem, and the establishment of a Palestinian homeland; an internationally guaranteed special status for Jerusalem, with access to, and equality for Christians, Jews and Muslims, making Jerusalem a real centre of spiritual and fraternal development; and an improvement in the legal rights and social situations of the Christian communities living under Israeli control (in La Civilta Cattolica, 16 February 1991:357–58).

The appeal for recognition of the rights of both peoples has been a constant call of John Paul II, whose statements about the State of Israel must be seen against the wider background of his treatment of the relations between Christians and Jews (see Fisher and Klenicki 1995). The most comprehensive expression of the Pope’s concern is contained in his communiqué after the visit of Yasser Arafat on 15 September 1982 (La Documentation Catholique 73, 17 October:

921, 947). In his Apostolic Letter, Redemptionis Anno of Good Friday 1984, he expressed the desire to feel the same joy and emotion of heart which Paul VI had experienced on his visit to the Holy Land in 1964. Moving beyond expressions of personal piety, he added,

The Palestinian people who find their historical roots in that land and who for decades have been dispersed, have the natural right in justice to find once more a homeland and to be able to live in peace and tranquillity with the other peoples of the area.

(Secretariatus pro non-Christianis, Bulletin 57 (1984), XIX(3), p. 254) In his audience with American Jewish Committee leaders on 15 February 1985 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the Pope reviewed progress in Jewish-Christian relations since its promulgation, and expressed the hope that ‘The Lord give to the land, and to all the peoples and nations in that part of the world, the blessings contained in the word shalom’ and ‘that the sons and daughters of Abraham—Jews, Christians and Muslims —may live and prosper in peace’ (in Tanenbaum 1986:58–59).

The wide-ranging document of the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews (‘Notes on the Correct Way to present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church’ 1985) affirms the religious attachment between the Jewish people and the land of

Israel, with its roots in the biblical tradition and as an essential aspect of Jewish covenantal fidelity to the one God. However, it adds that ‘the existence of the State of Israel and its political options should be envisaged not in a perspective which is in itself religious, but in their reference to the common principles of international law. The permanence of Israel…is an historical fact and a sign to be interpreted within God’s design’ (paragraph 25). Although this marks the first statement concerning the State of Israel in an official Vatican document, one wonders with Widoger (1988:119) what possible sense preachers and others could make of such a contorted formulation.

During his visit to Austria in June 1988, the Pope called again for equality for Israeli Jews and Palestinians, and pointed out that full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel are ‘dependent on a solution to the Palestinian Question and the international status of Jerusalem’. The Palestinians have a right to a homeland, ‘like every other nation, according to international law’. In his Easter Message of 1991, he pleaded, ‘Lend an ear…to the long ignored as pirations of oppressed peoples such as the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the Kurds, who claim the right to exist with dignity, justice and freedom’. In his 1994 Encyclical, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, the Pope reiterated his desire to visit Lebanon, Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the year 2000, and visit the places associated with Abraham, Moses (Egypt and Mount Sinai), as well as Damascus, the city which witnessed the conversion of Saint Paul (paragraph 24). He achieved part of that ambition by visiting Lebanon in May 1997.

The Holy See-Israel Fundamental Agreement

The Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and Israel, signed on 30 December 1993, marked the culmination of the work of a bilateral commission set up in 1992. The fifteen articles deal, inter alia, with freedom of religion (art.

1), antisemitism and the Holocaust (art. 2), respect for the status quo in the Christian Holy Places (art. 4), Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land (art. 5), as well as matters of organisation of the Church in Israel (schools, art. 6, media, art.

8, charitable functions, art. 9, property rights, art. 10). While ‘both parties declare their respective commitment to the promotion of the peaceful resolution of conflicts among States and nations’, the Holy See committed itself solemnly

8, charitable functions, art. 9, property rights, art. 10). While ‘both parties declare their respective commitment to the promotion of the peaceful resolution of conflicts among States and nations’, the Holy See committed itself solemnly