One year ago, the longest and deadliest war between Israelis and Arabs since 1948 began, having profound effects on the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis marked the anniversary of the beginning of the war in Israel after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack by calling a day of prayer and fasting for peace.
On October 6, Francis presided over a rosary for peace, without mentioning that the anniversary coincides with another significant event in the history of inter-religious relations.
During the Counter-Reformation, popes gave the rosary a role in explaining the triumph of Christians in the Holy League over the superior Ottoman forces at the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571, an event still evoked today by neo-traditionalists opposing Islam.
In 1572, Pius V established the feast of Our Lady of Victories on October 7 to give thanks for the victory, and in 1573, Gregory XIII dedicated the day to the Virgin of the Rosary, merging her iconography with that of the Virgin of Victory.
There was much that Pope Francis could not mention.
And there was something that he should not have mentioned in his “Letter to Catholics in the Middle East,” for example, the passage from the Gospel of John 8:44, which some consider the single most antisemitic line in the New Testament.
This is just one example of the disastrous effects of the events of October 7, 2023, and their aftermath on relations between Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
Globalisation and the future of Catholicism
The war also impacts church politics. The war in the Middle East since October 2023 has amplified the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
It has brought to the forefront three Italian cardinals on the international stage: Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state; Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna and Francis’ special envoy for peace in Ukraine; and Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
Whatever happens between now and the next conclave, there is an Italianisation of the leading figures in the Catholic Church dealing with these major international crises.
Between the end of the Middle Ages and the early modern age, the Italianisation of the papacy and the Roman Curia was a response to the challenges brought to the church by the European powers and their support for schismatic demands.
We will see how the cardinals in the next conclave will respond to the challenges coming from the 21st-century world disorder.
“Having more cardinals from “the peripheries” means a college of cardinals more representative of the global Church, but also means a much higher number of cardinals physically distant from Rome and therefore potentially less able to advise the pope and the Curia.”
The second effect is on the institutional responses of the Catholic Church and the Vatican in this age of geopolitical uncertainties. The globalisation of Catholicism means also a de-Europeanisation of the historical and religious narratives on the character and identity of the Church.
There have been previous phases of internationalization of the leadership of the Church in the College of Cardinals, especially since the 19th century, but today’s diversification takes place in a situation Church in the Americas, especially in the United States.
This is visible in the list of the 21 new cardinals that Pope Francis will create in his tenth consistory of December 8.
This list sends strong signals to the countries that influence the destinies of the world: for example, creating as a cardinal Belgian missionary Dominique Joseph Mathieu, OFM Cap., archbishop of Tehran-Ispahan in Iran — a clear gesture to the United States and Israel at this time of serious risk of all-out war between Iran and an Israel supported by the United States.
But this internationalisation of the College of Cardinals also means the risk of overstretching the global institutional capacity of Catholicism.
Having more cardinals from “the peripheries” means a college of cardinals more representative of the global church, but also means a much higher number of cardinals physically distant from Rome and, therefore, potentially less able to advise the Pope and the Curia.
The strain on inter-religious relations
The third, most delicate, and disastrous series of effects concerns the future of the relations between the Catholic Church, Judaism and Islam.
This war in the Middle East broke out during the pontificate of Pope Francis, who is trying to do for the relations between the Church and Islam what John Paul II did for the relations with Judaism.
But now Catholicism must face the reality that institutionalised Christianity has been replaced as a source of antisemitism by some radical groups within Islam.
On the other side, there are Israel’s political and constitutional trajectories under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In many ways, the State of Israel now faces the challenge of developing a modernity that reconciles religion and politics, a challenge that became more evident after the Holy See and Israel established full diplomatic relations in 1993.
Netanyahu’s response to October 7 and his framing of relations between the Jewish state and Judaism are cementing a political theology of enmity between Jews and Muslims.
This challenges the post-Vatican II project of dialogue between the three Abrahamic religions as fundamental for peace-building, not only in the Middle East but as a paradigm for a new world order.
Vatican II set Catholic-Jewish dialogue in the context of European history, but that context is no longer the dominating working frame for interreligious relations, and not even for Jewish-Catholic relations.
The issue is not only that the moral lessons of World War II are now being sidelined or sometimes disregarded in secular post-colonial and de-colonial discourse.
In inter-religious dialogue, Jews and Muslims strongly committed to dialogue with the Catholic Church now feel that there is a growing set of issues that are not being acknowledged and understood in Rome.
This is paradoxically one of the fruits of the de-Europeanisation of the Vatican and global Catholicism. Vatican II set Catholic-Jewish dialogue in the context of European history, but that context is no longer the dominating working frame for inter-religious relations and not even for Jewish-Catholic relations.
On the other hand, the suffering of Palestinians and Christians in Gaza and Lebanon serves as yet another reminder of the challenges to fostering a culture of peace in today’s high-tech warfare, where so-called pinpoint precision often accompanies indiscriminate bombings, leading to more innocent victims.
It also casts a dark shadow on the viability of the theology of liberation in the face of 21st-century state power and in the midst of wars and occupations where religion is manipulated into a “clash of civilizations.”
The war unleashed by the events of October 7, 2023 risks squandering the journey made since the Second Vatican Council.
These events are happening during a time of the minimisation, in militant Catholic circles, of the theology of inter-religious dialogue within a Catholic Church that is more global but also far removed from Vatican II after 60 years.
After the conciliar declaration Nostra Aetate and especially after John Paul II, it was a common assumption that fighting antisemitism was an entry-level requirement for Catholics.
Sadly, this is no longer always true. It is not only the theology of new Catholic influencers but a broader process of de-theologisation and deculturation that reveals the marginalisation of Vatican II and its key documents on inter-religious relations, including Nostra Aetate and Dignitatis Humanae on religious liberty.
Impact of the war on the Catholic Church
One enormous problem is posed by radical traditionalist Catholic groups, but there are also the progressive Catholics who think that Vatican II is passé, the last gasp of a Church not inclusive enough, too Catholic to be modern.
There are some parallels between today’s leftist progressivism and the blindness of socialists, communists, and radicals to antisemitism in the 20th century.
In many Western universities, the way administrators have handled the conflict and its aftermath has revealed that the religious diversity of Jews and Muslims and their protected status as minorities often does not align with the prevailing focus framed as sexual diversity and in ethnic-racial terms, particularly in the fight against “white supremacy,” which tends to overlook religious considerations.
“One enormous problem is posed by radical traditionalist Catholic groups, but there are also the progressive Catholics who think that Vatican II is passé, the last gasp of a church not inclusive enough, too Catholic to be modern.”
There is an irresponsible complacency that takes Vatican II for granted, but at times, there is also a programmatic liquidation of that chapter of our magisterial and theological tradition, becoming particularly problematic when on display in Catholic schools and universities.
Nostra Aetate and Christian-Jewish relations built many bridges in the post-Vatican II period, but many of these bridges now need to be inspected and, in some cases, rebuilt, also within Catholicism.
This war redefines the contours of what Karma Ben-Johanan, a professor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, called in her 2022 book on Christian-Jewish relations after Vatican II “the new covenant between Jews and Christians as the edict of the hour”.
The new war in the Middle East represents a critical moment for that new covenant. October 7, 2023, and its aftermath affect the Catholic Church at the most profound institutional, theological and religious levels, with internal, international, and diplomatic dimensions that we have just begun to see.
- First published in La Croix International
- Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, columnist for La Croix