Addressing this is essential for maintaining moral credibility, supporting interfaith dialogue, and continuing the path set by Nostra Aetate.

While global attention was focused on the U.S. elections, people continued to die in the most dangerous, horrific war that the Middle East has seen since 1948.

Considering the United States as the center of the issue overlooks the enormity of what is happening to the east of the Mediterranean and the widespread, culpable indifference.

October 7, 2023, is a caesura and periodising date in our history.

There is no possible moral justification for what Hamas did on that day against Israel, a brutal reflection of its appalling commitment to destroying Israel and murdering Jews.

But while Europe and the Western world in general have a well-rehearsed response to antisemitism, their response to what happened after October 7 has been far more problematic.

Either Europe and the Western world do not realize the extent of what is happening to the Palestinian people, or they are in a state of moral and political denial. Or worse.

The behavior of the Israeli government and armed forces is beyond what is morally acceptable and legally permissible.

Israel continues to bomb places that can hardly be said to be a military target or where the proportion between military targets and civilian "collateral damage" goes beyond any understanding of morality and legality.

Civilian victims have become victims twice, thanks to widespread mistrust—or international ignorance—of the news in wartime propaganda. Yet, the reality of what is happening is undeniable.

Navigating religious and political tensions

Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself, and it's hard to fathom what this means from the quiet of the American suburbia where I write this.

However, looking back on it from the start, Israel's action in Gaza cannot be seen solely as a response to October 7.

The ethnic supremacist undertones of Netanyahu and his collaborators had been present long before October 7.

The narrative on the role of religions in world affairs is dominated by extremist positions — in Islam, Judaism, Christianity, not to mention Hinduism and more — that are too often considered the only true ones.

Christians and Catholics, in particular, must walk a very fine line.

There is a significant difference between clearly condemning the Israeli government's specific policies and the violent sentiments held by some Christians and Catholics toward the entire State of Israel, which often extends—implicitly or explicitly—to a broad animosity toward all Jewish people.

Needless to say, this goes back for millennia.

It is striking — and terrifying — to see how some radical-progressive Catholics went from Philo-Semitism in the late 20th century to the risk of seemingly flirting, sometimes unknowingly, with anti-Judaism and antisemitism today.

The pro-Israeli stance of many governments cannot hide the anti-Israeli aversion and sometimes the open antisemitism, especially among those who have not yet renounced political activism.

On the other hand, there is a moral unresponsiveness, even among the most aware and least naïve who acknowledge and defend Catholic-Jewish dialogue as one of the most important fruits of Vatican II and the post-Vatican II period.

Their fear that critique of the State of Israel could morph into new forms of anti-Judaism and antisemitism is real, but no excuse to sit on the sidelines as things progressively escalate.

Historically, the political, cultural, and ecclesiastical elites of countries important for Catholicism, such as France and Italy, have had a different and more intimate relationship with both Muslims and Christians in the Middle East and the Arab world compared to Britain and the United States.

In the last few years, the Catholic perception of the Middle East has been shaped more by the Anglosphere, leading to an undeclared (and occasionally declared) Catholic Zionism.

That often overlooks the heavy toll paid by innocent victims—particularly Muslims, but also Christians and Jews. They are simply "collateral damage."

A call for moral clarity

Now is the time for a moral denunciation of what is happening in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. This is the work of far more than the Holy See.

In fact, it is not clear how much the Holy See can do. Catholics can act in ways the Vatican and the pope cannot.

Liberal-progressive Catholics, especially, are under an obligation to give more explanations than conservative or traditionalist Catholics.

University professors at Catholic universities cannot teach about Dorothy Day, the Berrigan brothers, liberation theology, and not teach about the Middle East today.

They cannot teach how to do theology inter-religiously without talking about what is happening in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.

It is morally impossible to condemn "Christian nationalism" without considering the risks of a theocratic turn in the relations between religion and politics in the State of Israel.

This war is changing interreligious relations in ways that will continue for decades, even for the rest of our lives.

The fact that this is complicated is no excuse and never has been for Catholic understandings of moral culpability.

Forgetting the victims has become one of the most typical moves today—and perhaps the most subtle form of contempt.

The deafening silence of Catholics on this topic carries profound long-term consequences for the relations between the Church and Islam that will endure far longer than the effects of the vote of Arab-American voters in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

To the historical guilt of the European and Western Churches for the Holocaust is now added the guilt toward the Middle East.

Such a burden cannot be alleviated by the clear and pressing need to respond always and everywhere to the return of antisemitism.

The question for Catholics is how to raise their voices so as not to leave the victims of the ongoing war in oblivion. It is simply wrong to expect that only the pope and the Vatican should do it.

Central to the Francis papacy has been a push for a new vision of Global Catholicism. What is happening in the Middle East could turn it into a graveyard of this vision for Global Catholicism, along with many other dreams and lives.

The institutional silence or hesitation of Church leaders and Catholic authorities, both clergy and lay, regarding Gaza and Lebanon in Europe and the broader West aligns with the prevailing interpretation in the Anglosphere and translates into a strong push for the re-Westernization of Catholicism.

The turn towards a more global Church, requiring a break from the Anglosphere and attention to a diverse and local-global dialogical Catholic self-understanding, cannot be reduced to something like a "diversity, equity, and inclusion" corporate programme.

Global Catholicism is not about recruiting more diverse personnel. It is about diverse understandings, ones that truly reflect global realities and not simply power plays or historical amnesia.

This is not the time for an ersatz orientalist nostalgia for the status of Christians under the Ottoman Empire or in the post-World War I "mandate system."

As Christians and Catholics, we cannot ignore or overlook what is happening in the Middle East, especially the catastrophe facing the Palestinian people.

Of course, the caution of Catholics in taking a stand on the conflict in the Middle East must be understood in light of their role in the history of antisemitism up to the Holocaust.

Within the Western world, Christians carry a heavy responsibility. The most conscientious quarters know that antisemitism is alive and well and must be fought tooth and nail.

But keeping the legacy of Nostra Aetate and continuing that path will be much more difficult, or impossible, should Catholic voices fail to recognise that the post-October 7 war in the Middle East is one of the signs of our times that we need to read in light of the Gospel.

• First published in La Croix
• Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, columnist for La Croix International, and contributing writer to Commonweal.

"Colours of day dawn into the mind,

The sun has come up, the night is behind,

Go down in the city, into the street,

And let's give the message to the people we meet."

There is almost something post-COVID in that opening verse: the sun has come up, and the night is behind.

In contrast to its gray-toned absence, color is returning to brighten our days, the arrival of expectant hope. Later in the hymn, we are encouraged to:

"Go through the park, on into the town,

The sun still shines on, it never goes down,

The Light of the world is risen again,

The people of darkness are needing a friend."

After a journey through darkness the light of the world has risen again.

Life as a jigsaw

Our lives resemble, in many ways, a jigsaw or the art form known as collage: many small pieces arranged together to create a whole.

In the early '90s, I spent some time working on paper collages, one of which is reproduced in this article.

They were constructed from colored paper taken from magazine illustrations, cut, and arranged in abstract patterns. Some shapes were torn from the original image, leaving a rough, ragged edge before re-assembly.

Similarly, the fragments that form our lives are sometimes shaped by clean-cut lines, at others roughly torn from our experience of the day-to-day bustle of living.

The pieces don't always fit together like a neat jigsaw, each carefully interlocking with another.

No, the rough edges jostle for space, each anxious to assume dominance.

The consequent discomfort is one that we have all experienced as we learn to take the good times and the not-so-good times in equal parts.

Life comes to us multi-shaped, with great joys and small pleasures, enormous hurts, and aggravating niggles. All hit us at one time or another, just as the materials of a collage come together to form one whole design.

We can view the Church as a collage

Many great artists have used the collage technique in their work, creating memorable statements through a simple, tactile form.

The extensive use of this technique by Henri Matisse comes to mind. His spiral arrangement of irregular polygons of colour, entitled The Snail, is well known.

His blue-colored nudes and the rich tones of The Dancers brilliantly demonstrate the artist's skill in this medium.

I had reproductions of both hanging on the wall of my room in school.

The use of found materials, rearranged in a creative manner, can be transformed into something of great simplicity and beauty.

In many ways, we can view the church as a collage, a whole edifice constructed from many fragments, some with neat, clean edges carefully arranged, each in its place.

Others, with roughly torn edges jostling with their neighbor, are anxious for space that their voice might also be heard.

It is often suggested that one of the great difficulties experienced by religious communities is the very fact that a disparate group of men or women live together week after week, putting up with each other's foibles and forgiving each other repeatedly.

In fact, the parish can also be seen as a collage, small pieces of color assembled to form a great whole, each alongside the other, with rough and smooth edges alike.

Prayer

How about our times of prayer? Indeed, there is another example of an aspect of life as a collage.

Our times of prayer are never the same. Sometimes, the edges are smooth, and everything seems to fall into place. On other occasions, the rough edges make for an uncomfortable ride.

We do not choose the time or place; it just happens, and we have to cope with the consequences.

It is just another aspect of life that has to be managed, one step at a time.

If we are sensitive to change, then we can learn from the experience. In making a collage, not every cut or tear or choice of color is right the first time. The rejected pile of materials that grow on the floor around the artist's feet tells the story.

So, too, does the litter pile from our broken attempts at prayer accumulate throughout our lives. The important thing is that we do not become dispirited and that each attempt at prayer is seen as a step on our journey rather than an occasion of failure.

Many books have been written on prayer, offering new insights into well-worn paths. All is well and good, but reading about prayer is no substitute for prayer itself.

In a journal entry in December 1964, Thomas Merton tells us, "In the hermitage, one must pray or go to seed. The pretense of prayer will not suffice. Just sitting will not suffice. It has to be real. Yet, what can one do?

"Solitude puts you with your back to the wall or your face to it, and this is good. So you pray to learn how to pray!"

Honest, direct, and without frills, Merton does not attempt to cover the hardship with well-fashioned phrases or sentiments. He says it as it is and concludes that we might pray to learn how to pray.

Building the collage of prayer is to set out on an arduous journey, one with many points of failure and darkness, occasionally lit with the light of God's presence to encourage our effort.

There is nakedness in our efforts as we struggle to live a life in prayer, as each tentative step brings with it the risk of joy or perceived failure.

And there lies the nub of our problem; what we call failure may not be a failure at all, just as a serious fall does not always follow a small stumble.

So, although our steps falter, the pilgrimage of prayer continues as we return again and again to pick up the pieces, the torn and ragged fragments of the Collage we are trying to form.

Returning to the collage image accompanying these few words, it is formed from many different colored shapes. Moving across the image, there is change, and we respond differently to the dance of its organization and detail.

Dance of prayer

Taken to the edge

we face the emptiness of words

that once had meaning.

There we face the loss of surety

where in the cold stillness

of each dawn hour,

in the breaking light

the echo of words remains

and the dance continues.

Sr. Wendy Beckett wrote in her book Simple Prayer that the essential act of prayer is to stand unprotected before God. What will God do? He will take possession of us.

Have you ever thought to pray for the artist whose work is our inspiration? None are perfect, and despite fine lines and glorious color, each artist has secrets and shame in their hidden lives.

To conclude where we started, the people of darkness need a friend. It is through the prayer collage of our lives that darkness finds light.

• First published in La Croix
• Chris McDonnell is a retired headteacher from England and a regular contributor to La Croix International.