At the dawn of the new millennium, Pope John Paul II visited Israel in March 2000.
He visited the Western Wall and participated in the tradition of leaving a note — his was printed and embossed with the seal of the Vatican.
The pope prayed in the name of Abraham, the common patriarch of Jews and Christians. He asked for forgiveness for those who caused the Jewish people to suffer "in the course of history."
The pontiff — whose boyhood friends in Krakow were engulfed in the Holocaust — recommitted the church to "genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."
Much of this promise and premise is anchored in the profoundly serious reckoning of the Roman Catholic Church and its relationship with Judaism.
Nostra Aetate (In our Time) — promulgated 50 years ago, as part of the progeny of Vatican II deliberations of the church — declared among other things: 1) Jews were not collectively responsible for the death of Jesus; 2) anti-Semitism was a sin against God; and 3) the Jewish Covenantal relationship with God remained intact.
Nostra Aetate and similar Protestant declarations are fundamental to the wonderful rediscovery and celebration of kinship between Christians and Jews, particularly in North America and Europe.
For all of this progress, though, part of this recognition and appreciation of difficult history means coming to grips with the salient sociological facts of the Holocaust.