Followup: Nazism, Zionism, and Nutty Hypersensitivity

Because of the controversy described in Nazism, Zionism, and Nutty Hypersensitivity, I sent a letter of support to Cardinal Meisner of Cologne and started a web campaign to demand that the BBC fire Marianne Landzettel, who was the correspondent defaming him.

About two months ago, Cardinal Meisner sent a thank-you note. I so rarely receive physical mail of this sort that I was pleasantly surprised. Below is my rendering of the letter into English. A scan of the original follows the translation and the explanation of the Cardinal's reference to Sym-pathia.

Dear Mr. Martillo,

I express to you a heartfelt word of thanks for your supportive writing in the public debate over a comment in my sermon in the Cologne Cathedral at the inauguration of the KOLUMBA art museum.

So many positive letters, faxes and calls came to me in this matter that I feel myself strengthened despite the campaign against me. In the course of the time, the public picture in addition became clear anew as I received many Letters to the Editor.

Through this campaign it has become more and more plain to me that the political correctness or incorrectness of my phraseology was not the issue, but in the end it was the question of God, which for many contemporaries by now is unbearable.

It is the duty of a Catholic bishop to highlight the question of God in our culture and society whether it is convenient or inconvenient. The public reaction showed me on September 14 how important it is for the sake of our country not to slacken in this effort.

For your sympathia* I say once again "God rewards it" and continue in my heartfelt wishes for blessing.

Yours,

Joachim Cardinal Meisner

*See Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today, which contains Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's famous Erasmus Lecture of Jan. 27, 1988. His conclusions remain as important today as ever:

Finally, the exegete must realize that he, does not stand in some neutral area, above or outside history and the Church. Such a presumed immediacy regarding the purely historical can only lead to dead ends. The first presupposition of all exegesis is that it accepts the Bible as a book. In so doing, it has already chosen a place for itself which does not simply follow from the study of literature. It has identified this particular literature as the product of a coherent history, and this history as the proper space for coming to understanding. If it wishes to be theology, it must take a further step. It must recognize that the faith of the Church is that form of "sympathia" without which the Bible remains a closed book. It must come to acknowledge this faith as a hermeneutic, the space for understanding, which does not do dogmatic violence to the Bible, but precisely allows the solitary possibility for the Bible to be itself.

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