The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

Secondly, I believe it is the height of arrogance for Christians to ask Jews to forgive them.
On what grounds? We can, as established by evidence of changed teachings and changed
behavior, repent and work toward mutual reconciliation with Jews. But we have no right to
put Jewish survivors in the impossible moral position of offering forgiveness, implicitly, in
the name of the six million (as, again, several of the original respondents articulated quite
well). Placing a Jew in this anguished position further victimizes him or her. This, in my
reading, was the final sin of the dying Nazi.
Bitburg was a classic case in point. There, the Christian leader of the victorious Allies
met with the Christian leader of the defeated Germans at a Nazi cemetery to “forgive” each
other for what Christians had done and allowed to be done to Jews by Nazis. Jews who
raised questions were dismissed by some other Christians as “unforgiving” and even
“vengeful.” It was a sad replay of the ancient stereotypes that had contributed to the problem
in the first place.
Over the years, I have kept getting from my fellow Christians variations of the same
refrain. And I keep rejecting them. I also receive the question from well-meaning Catholics
and Jews: Has the Church officially apologized to the Jews yet and asked for their
forgiveness? “The Church has done more,” I reply, hoping that a theological response will
satisfy a sociological and psychological question. It has expressed its repentance before
God and before all humankind. It has refrained from asking “the Jews” (which Jews speak
for all?) for “forgiveness.” That could easily be seen as “cheap grace.”
In 1990, at a meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee (ILC) in
Prague, which I had the honor to attend, Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy of the Holy See's
Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews spoke officially for the universal Church