Continuing Agony: From the Carmelite Convent to the Crosses at Auschwitz

Reflections from Jews and Roman Catholics on their struggles with the crucial and painful issues that continue to plague Christian-Jewish dialogue.

This book evolved from the editors' long-standing conviction that informed and honest dialogue is essential in seeking even a partial mending of Christian-Jewish relations after Auschwitz. The task is daunting because of the tortured history involved, and owing to vastly different understandings of basic terms and principles such as "forgiveness," "history," and "repentance." Moreover, political, psychological, and theological triumphalism are far from being vanquished. However, the winds of change seem to be blowing at least in certain quarters of the Roman Catholic Church. And while rejecting the assumption of a moral equivalency between the history of Catholic Christian anti-Semitism and the attitude of Judaism towards their frequent persecutors, one notes the appearance of a more nuanced understanding of Catholicism emerging in sectors of the Jewish community.