A less than perfect touch

Catholics and Jews: Its not just the things Benedict does,but the way he does them

Whatever history says about Pope Benedict XVI,it will not blame him for worrying too much about the feelings of people outside the global community of 1.1 billion or so people which he leads.

On January 24th,he lifted the excommunication of four traditionalist clerics who had been barred from the Catholic church in 1988 after being ordained as bishops by a rebel French ecclesiastic,Marcel Lefebvre. By itself,that might have been written off as an internal church matter-except that one of the four,Richard Williamson,a Briton,had denied the Nazi Holocaust,saying that 8220;historical evidence is hugely against 6m Jews having been deliberately gassed.8221;

A German pope already mistrusted by many Jews might have been expected to flinch at receiving such a figure just before the United Nations8217; Holocaust commemoration day-or,at least,to issue a statement deploring the Englishman8217;s views. Not this pope. His spokesman said the ultra-conservative8217;s comments were 8220;totally extraneous8221; to the revoking of the excommunication. The Lefebvrists apologised to the pope 8220;and all men of good will8221; over any offence caused,but not specifically to the Jews. Then,on January 28th,the pope himself expressed 8220;full and unarguable solidarity8221; with the Jewish people.

That soothed tempers. Rabbi David Rosen,head of inter-religious affairs for the American Jewish Committee,called it 8220;important,good and useful8221;. But by then he and other senior Jews had been inveighing against the pope for four days.

It was the latest case of Benedict8217;s seeming indifference to the impact and timing of his actions. Since his election four years ago,he has repeatedly ruffled feathers. In 2006 he enraged Muslims with a speech citing a medieval Islamophobe. The next year,he upset indigenous Latin Americans by saying that their evangelisation was not the 8220;imposition of a foreign culture8221;. Also in 2007,Benedict eased curbs on using the old Latin mass,stirring the first of several Catholic-Jewish rows. The Tridentine rite includes an Easter prayer for the conversion of Jews that has been amended but never dropped.

For Marco Ventura,a professor of law and religion at Siena University,the pope8217;s abrasive style seems to reflect both conviction and a sense that tough talk plays well in the 8220;religious market8221;. On top of that,he says,Benedict probably just takes 8220;a pride in being contrary8221;.

In any case,the Vatican was not the only world authority under fire this week for giving heart to anti-Semites. A deputy foreign minister of South Africa,Fatima Hajaig,prompted horror among Jews in her country,and around the world,when she asserted at a pro-Palestinian rally that 8220;control of America,just like the control of most Western countries,is in the hands of Jewish money8221;. Wendy Kahn,director of South Africa8217;s Jewish Board of Deputies,said the minister had 8220;crossed all limits8221; by engaging in 8220;anti-Semitism of the oldest and most classical kind8221;.

The Economist Newspaper Limited 2008