We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (March 16, 1998) hit the media as a storm long lurking on the horizon. Loyal supporters of Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church see the document as a mature response to calls for Church repentance (In Defense of Pius XII, Kenneth L. Woodward, NEWSWEEK March 30, 1998, p. 35).

 Mature it is: some fifty-three years after the closing of that horrific era in human history. Over mature also in preparation: the product of eleven years’ reflection. But, not alone in its negative assessment of the document, a scorching editorial in THE NEW REPUBLIC proclaims (“With Burning Anxiety,” April 6, 1998), “An apology is not an apologia. [T]he statement of the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews is an apologia disguised as an apology.”

Why has this latter-day effort of the Vatican to extinguish the smoldering ashes of the Holocaust met with such an outburst of recriminations? It may well be the near inability of one social system to communicate with another. This failure points up as well the need to understand how social systems operate and what results they produce. The failure to recognize social-world systems has led to assumptions that simply fall short of reality, in particular, the simplistic presupposition that all humans can communicate on a set of universals.

Many maintain that Vatican theology is couched in a collectivist system characteristic of pre-scientific thinking. Witness its use of biblical readings in the CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. Gerard S. Sloyan concludes his review of this CATECHISM with the critique:

The question that emerges from this essay is whether the literal sense of texts of the Bible, proposed as primary by the Second Vatican Council and the 1993 document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, can exist in harmony with typological interpretations of the sort proposed by the church Fathers and the authors of this volume (The Use of the Bible in a New Resource Book: A Review of the Vatican’s Catechism by Gerard S. Sloyan, BTB 25 [1995] 12).

Vatican II was the product of Pope John XXIII’s awareness that the Church had fallen behind and needed to reengage itself with the state of society today. The Council was distinguished for its members’ rejection of documents prepared by the Vatican, less out of disrespect than out of a sense of purpose that John XXIII had enunciated: the official line needed reevaluation. Yet, in recent years since the Council, the slide back to Vatican style seems apparent in such documents as the CATECHISM, notably in the way the Catechism reflects a mode of biblical interpretation that is out of step with the critical modes of analysis current in Biblical Commission documents. Thus, Sloyan argues:

 Although the [Catechism’s] authors favor figurative and illustrative usages and by their silences show themselves clearly uneasy at the progress in biblical interpretation of the past two centuries, the two modes of understanding (out of many) have a place in the same modern volume. The literal sense of a passage, in the measure that it can be known, must always be presented first. . . . Then, in immediate context in this better adult catechism, the richly suggestive kaleidoscope of biblical texts can be proposed for their beauty and power in prayer. [T]his it can and should do in a modern catechism, having first done the other [12].

But, what is the literal sense, and why is knowing it of such import for the modern person? Exegetes have labored long and hard to unearth the context—historical, literary, and more recently social—for biblical texts, contexts that shape meanings for the canonical words which are merely conventional symbols with local significations. Lacking awareness of such contextual meanings, interpreters take flight into whatever fancy seems “natural” to them.

Perhaps because modern society is so demonstrably different from the ancient, modern scholars must struggle to establish a footing in the writings’ context in order to approximate a literal reading of the texts— what the texts likely meant to their writers and readers. Often enough, given the disparity of values and assumptions between then and now—here and there—the result of these struggles often demonstrates how foreign the text and its message are for modern readers. The modern recognizes the context as a world view no longer applicable or even desirable. When biblical theologians fail to acknowledge such a disconnect between social worlds, they naively perpetuate values and norms that to all intents and purpose are not only out of context in the modern world but actually unlawful and hurtful (see John Pilch, Beat His Ribs While He Is Young, BTB 23 [1993] 101–13; compare Alice Miller, FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. HIDDEN CRUELTY IN CHILD-REARING AND THE ROOTS OF VIOLENCE. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981).

Why, we might ask, can’t Vatican theologians read the Bible in the modern manner that the Pontifical Biblical Commission supports? Here, indeed, is a keen question for biblical theologians. Using critical perspectives and analyses will likely reveal that the world of the Bible centered on collective identity, ascribed roles and group honor as dominant features of the systemic social values. Authors of articles in BTB have carefully delineated how these features of the circum–Mediterranean world shape perceptions and determine values, all quite foreign to a world in which individual identity and personal achievement predominate.

For those immersed in an individualist system, the collectivist honor/shame system is both foreign and seen as detrimental to the pursuit of truth. Predictably centripetal, societal pressures in a collectivist system subordinate truth—even the perception of the truth—to group loyalty.

The Vatican, as other traditional societies, characteristically enunciates values of collective identity and corporate honor in ways that baffle many modern Catholics. When a document such as We Remember fails to state the obvious, that Catholic theologians and their approved writings did denigrate Jews to the point of contributing to anti-Semitism, then the modern critic cries, “An apologia, not an apology!”

And, when a modern reader of We Remember asks why Pope Pius XII, or even Pope Pius XI didn’t do more, and finds only a routine defense of the corporate head of the Church’s hierarchy, the response is, “Cover-up!”

Indeed both are true, but in the collectivist honor system, one can never criticize the corporate head, the seat of the group’s honor, or find fault with the collective group lest the feature critical to all collectivist thinking is undermined: loyalty. These are values and norms that inhere in a collectivist system. They are not universally understood or shared values.

But is it disloyal to recognize failures within one’s church? When the assertion is made that the Church is not a democracy, is it implicit that one cannot criticize the Church as one may a democratic government, or a church leader as one might a civil leader? Is the sub-script of We Remember, that Catholics can acknowledge others’ pain but cannot, by reason of group honor, admit contributing to it? Is it all about honor rather than truth?

To the extent that biblical texts support negative views of Jews today, is there an obligation of biblical interpreters to draw the lines of distinction that effectively separate that world from ours, that system from ours? As biblical theologians, our task is to assiduously let the biblical contexts shape the way we read and interpret the texts—literally. But, then our task is also to make judgments about whether the biblical world contexts are present, or, on the contrary, whether they are actually out of the question for modern people. Otherwise, we’re left arguing to bring back what should remain buried in the past—child abuse, blind obedience, biological and scientific absurdities. We can’t make them right by insisting that because God’s word spoke them they’re valid, much less necessary, for us today!

Biblical theologians must responsibly recognize and explain why such contextual features inhere in systems that are foreign to modern readers. Denial or obfuscation of truth in defense of the group is one such likely contextual absurdity. It is defending the indefensible. Several case studies appear in this current issue of BTB.

Heather McKay examines what moderns view as cross-gender dialogues in her witty and insightful study, She Said to Him, He Said to Her: Power Talk in the Bible. What pre-modern societies view as “distinct by nature”—the social roles of males and females—moderns perceive in less absolute and therefore adaptable terms, distinguishing biology from society. The author describes how the biblical world operated in the exercise of gender power, without suggesting that that approach should be a model for contemporary application.

John J. Pilch analyzes Appearances of the Risen Jesus in Cultural Context: Experiences of Alternate Reality as a contextualization of events described in the Bible viewed cross-culturally. By using a model to analyze how the biblical social world viewed experiences of what today we call altered states of consciousness, the author allows the literal meaning of the texts to adhere comfortably in their social world context without assuming a one-to-one correspondence with today’s mode of perceiving.

Author David A. deSilva continues a series of studies in BTB on how honor underlies virtually every reading from biblical world writings, in “Let the One Who Claims Honor Establish that Claim in the Lord,” Honor Discourse in the Corinthian Correspondence. Without an awareness of how determinative honor was in biblical society, many social interactions are totally misconstrued when interpreters carry meanings across social systems.

Bruce J. Malina continues his highly revelatory study of “astrodynamics” in the biblical world, with the exploration, How A Cosmic Lamb Marries: The Image of the Wedding of the Lamb (Revelations 19:7ff.). The book of Revelation, innocently read by some people today as having a literal, direct impact on their lives, is a fine example of just how foreign the conceptual world of the Bible is for moderns.