Page 80 - October 7 - Teresa Pirola

our Jewish friends, leaving them to fight their battles against antisemitism alone, which, in light of our history, amounts to yet another form of betrayal?
‘These are pressing questions which we need to lean into. Even where clear-cut answers elude us, that needn’t stop us asking the questions, much less “living the questions”, with honesty and courage’.
October 7 ‘required the strongest response from the Catholic Church’, states Pirola emphatically, ‘because of our history, our culpability in the Holocaust and centuries of spreading anti-Jewish ideas, and also in light of 60 years of positive relationships since Nostra Aetate. I’m at a total loss to explain the public silence. It has shocked me to the core. I’ve been grief-stricken since October 7.
‘I feel the bewilderment of the Jewish people, especially those who have invested their lives in interfaith harmony. I can’t explain why more Catholics don’t feel their grief. I wish I could’.
Teresa Pirola is author of Catholic-Jewish Relations: Twelve Key Themes for Teaching and Preaching, published by Paulist Press.
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