It was a gray Monday afternoon in the rural town of Oswiecim, Poland. Children returning home from school waved to women on bicycles with baskets filled from the market. Workers returning from the fields with soiled knees hardly noticed the sound of the passing trains or the unique gathering of high-ranking interfaith leaders who had assembled from around the world.

On May 18, 1998, rabbis and priests, scholars and bishops, Islamic leaders and cardinals, and observers from 12 countries gathered for a three-day conference to discuss the role that religion plays in cultivating peace or promoting violence. They were invited to Poland by Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz, executive director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding of Sacred Heart University.

The conference, "Religion and Violence, Religion and Peace," was held at the Catholic Church-operated Center for Dialogue and Prayer, a short walk from the main gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where an estimated 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were killed amid the horror of the Nazi regime during World War II.

Not surprisingly, some participants had expressed reservations about the choice of the conference site. An infamous Nazi concentration camp hardly evokes thoughts of peace. Ehrenkranz, however, chose Auschwitz because it is a symbol of the international cemetery which the world will be reduced to if we don't find some way to live in peace with one another.

"Our aim in this coming together of continents," he said, "is to see how we can cooperate in eliminating the violent direction so much religious teaching takes. We want to establish that violence in the name of God cannot be justified."
Among the conference's participants were the Muslim president of Meshihat of the Islamic community of Croatia;the chairman of the Council of Imams and Mosques in London; a former Episcopal bishop from Cyprus; the archbishop of the Macedonian Orthodox Church; and representatives from the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. No fewer than three cardinals were present: the retired Catholic primate of Northern Ireland, Cardinal Cahal Daly; the archbishop of Krakow, Poland, Cardinal Franciszek Macharski; and Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, who chairs the U.S. bishops' committee on Catholic-Jewish relations.

Of special importance to the CCJU was the participation of five Orthodox rabbis from Jerusalem, the West Bank Settlement of Efrat, France, New York and Connecticut. This was the first time that a group of Orthodox rabbis participated in an inter-faith discussion of a theological nature. Orthodox rabbis have considered inter-faith discussion of religious doctrine to be forbidden, due to the Middle Ages practice when "disputations" between rabbis and priests frequently resulted in a beaten or dead rabbi.

The CCJU conference at Auschwitz received strong support from the Vatican. In a letter to Ehrenkranz, Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, president of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, said, "His Holiness Pope John Paul II expresses strong encouragement for your endeavors and a sincere wish that your work may contribute to bringing about lasting peace for the whole human family."

Ehrenkranz said, "From a Jewish viewpoint, it is hardly believable that the Catholic Church is still accused of indifference to Jewish concerns. We realize that more has been achieved in the last 30 years than in the previous 2000, and that we are living in exceptional times."

University President Anthony J. Cernera, Ph.D., opened the conference saying, "We have come together because we believe that our respective religious traditions can contribute to creating a world where there is greater justice and peace. Our conference provides us with the opportunity to search together for meaning and to enter into honest and humble reflection together, in the hope that we can -- because we will work together -- take a small step in the direction of fostering peace and overcoming violence."

In his welcoming remarks, Macharski encouraged participants to remember that "only religion is able to give us such a comprehensive outlook upon man . . . Sincere authentic faith in God can be considered a factor of peace among people, the best guarantee of peaceful, mutual relations between people. Religions unite people of all beliefs who take deeply into their hearts God's commandment: Thou shalt not kill."

And so the conference began -- a respectful, balanced and cautious dialogue discussing peace and violence in religion. Attendants heard papers on the roots of peace in the Torah, the New Testament and the Koran. Speakers warned that religions still have the potential to incite wars and, as such, have a grave responsibility to foster a spirituality for life and cultures of justice.

Samuel Pisar, international attorney from Paris and New York and an Auschwitz survivor, described the violence that he, his family and friends experienced when religion did too little to combat prejudice and injustice. In a moving address entitled "Blood and Hope," he said, "On these killing fields, we dare not forget that the past can also be prologue . . . fundamentalism, fanaticism, all ideologies that despise the human being can push our societies toward a new delirium of violence."

The subject of fundamentalism and fanaticism in religion surd several times in the course of the conference. The most systematic presentation of the roots and causes of fundamentalism came from Martin Marty, Ph.D., Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. The world-renowned scholar on religion and society sees fundamentalism as a possible precursor to violence.

Marty pointed out that insecurity, danger and distrust cause groups or peoples to withdraw into themselves, protecting and fortifying what they believe is fundamental and essential to their cultural and religious identity. Thus fundamentalism can become the fuel that indirectly or directly leads to violence. Most fundamentalist movements "see themselves as chosen, as elect instruments to carry out divine purposes as they have been instructed to do in sacred writings," he said.

He explained that the fundamentalist reacts to "the others" whose opposing views of God and the social order are perceived as an attack to this election. These "others" may be seen as wrong, ignorant or even demonic, thereby deserving of [in the mind of the fundamentalist] ridicule, humiliation or even military violence. The Muslim speakers all stressed that the Koran outlawed violence and that the atrocities committed in Algeria, for example, bore "no relation whatever" to authentic Islam. Noted one Muslim in a small group conversation, "The feeling I have when someone equates me with Islamic violence is probably the same feeling you have when a so-called Catholic bombs an abortion clinic."

In late afternoon of the second day, participants were invited to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp. In the words of Pisar, this was "a cursed and sacred place, the modern Golgotha." The visitors were stunned to silence and reverence as the shoes of children and the hair of countless women, small scraps of extinguished human lives, called out, "Never forget!"

It was gruesomely apparent that these were not only the remnants of martyrs, these were the remains of murders. The holy and the horror, the Holocaust and Shoah were understood in the universal language of compassion and all were reduced to their essential humanity.

Standing on the site of a destroyed crematorium, the group's only possible response was prayer. Sung and spoken in Hebrew, Arabic, English and Spanish, all were drawn into the fundamental truth: We are all God's creation, all life is sacred.

The next day, many participants remarked that it had been impossible to sleep because the weeping sounds of the trains by the hotel echoed like the Kaddish, the Jewish prayers for the dead.

One does not expect monumental accomplishments at a three-day conference. But it was clear that new friendships had been formed and trust had been strengthened through honest dialogue. The Orthodox Archbishop of Wroclaw and Szczecin, Poland, said this was the first time he had been at a meeting where people of different faiths could share ideas and break bread in peace.

Daly called the meetings an "important step toward better interfaith relations. The Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding has come of age with this conference. It has extended its outreach into the various religious communities and become more convinced of the need to pursue its contacts with ever greater courage."

In his closing remarks, Rabbi David Rosen, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League in Israel, urged participants "to devote ourselves with renewed energy and vigor, because our works in gatherings like this are a testimony of what is possible. They are a sanctification of God's name. They are a testimony of divine presence in the world and of divine purpose in the world. And therefore, we have every reason to be very grateful to you and all others who organized this very significant event."

As the conference attendees departed, there was a consensus that their time had been well spent but much work still needed to be done. In the town of Oswiecim, children were on their way to school, women rode their bicycles to the market, men went to the fields to plant. Those who had been in the conference pledged to continue to work in the fields of hope and peace.

David Coppola, Ph.D

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