I read this article with a mixture of awe and sadness.  What a truly convoluted mess the world is, and no less between God's Chosen people and Jesus Christ's Church.  

I come to this article as someone with profound respect and awe for Orthodox Judaism, for the Judaism that best continues not only in practice but belief what has been received over the last 2000+ years.  The religious Judaism which rightly and faithfully traces itself to a wandering Aramean and his rag-tag band of descendants, slaves transformed into a theocratical success and then a watchword for faithlessness that stirs the attentive heart still today.  I come as one who views Christianity as a Jewish sect, and sees in our deeply interwoven pasts, the aching need for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to once again free God's people from the chains in which they continue to wait.  I am immensely impressed with the Orthodox Jewish culture, but would gladly see that culture tossed aside in an embrace of their Messiah, rather than enshrine it behind glass to preserve it forever in it's resigned weariness.

The Jews have suffered incredibly, as denoted in the annals of history.  I can't think of another ethnic and religious group that has endured so much persecution, and yet remains as a vital force in our world today.  The various enemies of the Jews - Assyrians, Babylonians, Bolsheviks, Nazis - have all fallen by the wayside, their ideologies spent, their glories exposed for the sinful veneer of hate and ambition that they truly were.  But the Jews remain.  In Israel, in America, and around the world.  I have not one bit of doubt that only the Chosen People of God could be so faithfully and continually subjected to murder, theft, abuse, and general destruction.  No other people - with the exception now of the Church of God on Earth - have such large and glowing metaphysical bullseyes painted upon themselves.  The Jews' bullseye is pitted and chipped and cracked and worn from the implements of war aimed at it over 3000+ years.  The Church's bullseye is not unscathed, but seems rather new in comparison.

So little words mean a lot.  Compassion as opposed to pity.  Murdered as oppose to killed.  Because every subtly shifted word away from the awful truths of that long history of Jewish suffering, so recently bronzed in the Holocaust, is a step towards a repeat of these abuses, towards the next Holocaust.  And they're right on this point.  Yet also wrong.  As though by preserving the integrity of the historical witness, they could avert the consequences of broken and fractured and sinful humanity.  The Jews once sought to survive in the past by glossing over the abuses of history and make amends with their host nations.  That tactic proved horribly, terribly ineffective, and so tactics have shifted.  I can't blame them for this.

Benedict XVI is not John Paul II, and should not be expected to be.  His strength is not charisma and telegenic appeal.  But he deserves enormous credit for following the trail blazed by John Paul in reaching out in Christian love to the Jews and to the Muslims, traditional enemies of one another for as long as there has been one or the other around to take issue with.  I question the efficacy and purpose of comparing Benedict to John Paul in this article.  Bauer may have liked John Paul better - he's probably not alone in this.  But that's a rather poor starting point for a critique of Benedict.  

Yehuda Bauer is quick to point out the abuses of the Catholic Church, and to paint the Jews as innocent victims - which they have been all too often.  Yet he doesn't see fit to acknowledge that the Jews themselves were guilty of similar abuses against the early Christians.  Not that this justifies the sufferings of the Jews at the hands of Christians.  But it demonstrates that there are guilty parties on both sides of the issue.  And, as I'm sure Bauer would agree, far more innocent parties on both sides than guilty ones - a recognition that is difficult to sort through and make sense of as we seek some sort of dialogue of integrity with one another.  The Diaspora that commenced with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE was the final and decisive elimination of any sort of Jewish political power, and therefore the elimination of their ability to carry out abuses against those they disagreed with.  But if Bauer wishes to cast a wide glance over history to examine the offenses of Christians, he won't object to casting that glance just a little farther back, and understanding that abuses of power are not the exclusive domain of Christians.

And this highlights the main difference - Benedict comes as an embodiment and desire for forgiveness.  Bauer and those who side with his point of view don't have this impetus.  Forgiveness is perceived as a weakness they are unable to indulge in.  Dialogue is only possible by continually insisting on dialoguing through a mandated listing of abuses and shortcomings by one side, while ignoring the sinfulness that plagues both sides.  This makes conversation difficult for everyone, in the end.  Suffering has been inflicted and endured, and continues to be so throughout our world, in places where there are neither Christians or Jews.  Suffering is not unique to the Jews, even if the intensity and duration of it is.  And ultimately, simply maintaining an awareness of past sufferings is no protection against future ones.  Ultimately, if forgiveness is not sought in the wake of suffering,  even the times of non-suffering will be joyless and lifeless watches of futility, furtively searching for the next abuse, and undoubtedly, never able to stop it.