The claim is that the pope has not sufficiently condemned the crimes of Hamas and, furthermore, that he has created a symmetry between Hamas and Israel in his comments.

If that were not enough, apart from the pope, the church officials charged with dialogue with the Jewish people—first and foremost among them Cardinal Kurt Koch, head of the church's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews— have chosen thunderous silence, not responding at all to the horrific events that took place in Israel.

The Jewish expectation was that as the fruit of the blessed process of dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people, the church and its leader would stand by our side in our fight against the terrorism of Hamas.

It is not my interest here to enter into a debate with the criticism that is being leveled, and there might or might not be some truth in it.

Rather, I seek to present the issue within a broader context, that of interreligious dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people.

Interreligious dialogue, by its very nature, is expressed through formal institutions, whether they be those of the Jewish rabbinic establishment or those of the church.

At the same time, precisely because the dialogue is developing in positive ways, it inevitably breaks through the formal frameworks that have been established and is practiced in the best possible way — through people rather than through institutions, and through those who do not need an official role in the dialogue in order to talk to one another.

In other words, the most successful interfaith dialogue takes place between religious leaders who desire to talk to one another, rather than between those who are formally obligated to talk to one another.

When we began to realise the extent of the horrors of Oct. 7, many of my Catholic friends contacted me immediately because of their deep concern.

This concern was personal and human, and my friends also expressed genuine anguish for the Jewish people because of the tremendous crisis it was experiencing. Such concern, bursting from the heart, is dearer to me than a thousand official letters from senior bureaucrats in the church.

On the night of Oct. 7, I discovered that my friends in the Catholic Church do not simply engage in diplomatic relations with me. Rather, they are truly my friends and friends of the Jewish people.

One good example of the kind of friendship I am referring to was provided by Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem.

He expressed himself in an exceptional way on Oct. 16, when he offered himself in return for the Israelis who had been kidnapped: "I am ready for an exchange, anything, if this can lead to freedom, to bring the children home. No problem. There is total willingness on my part."

It was completely evident that his words were sincere, and the sorrow he expressed was completely authentic.

In all of Cardinal Pizzaballa's statements, even those in which he expressed his deep concern for the residents of Gaza and criticised the practices of the State of Israel (perfectly logical considering that he is the patriarch first and foremost of his Palestinian flock), he continued to harshly condemn the criminal acts of Hamas on Oct. 7. Continue reading

• Guy Alaluf is an Israeli Orthodox rabbi and teacher who researches the relationship between Judaism and the Catholic Church. He leads the Daath and Tvuna (Knowledge and Understanding) Orthodox Jewish Community in Rosh HaAyin, Israel.

But from the beginning, in almost every document of the New Testament, we see the disciples divided, quarrelling, excommunicating each other. We are gathered in this Synod because we too are divided and hope and pray for unity of heart and mind.

This should be our precious witness in a world which is torn apart by conflict and inequality. The Body of Christ should embody that peace which Jesus promised and for which the world longs.

Yesterday I looked at two sources of division: Our conflicting hopes and different visions of the Church as home.

But there is no need for these tensions to tear us apart; We are bearers of a hope beyond hope, and the spacious home of the Kingdom in which the Lord tells us there are ‘many dwelling places' (John 14.1).

Of course not every hope or opinion is legitimate.

But orthodoxy is spacious and heresy is narrow. The Lord leads his sheep out of the small enclosure of the sheepfold into the wide-open pastures of our faith. At Easter, he will lead them out of the small locked room into the unbounded vastness of God, ‘God's plenty[1]'.

So let us listen to him together. But how?

A German bishop was concerned by ‘the biting tone' during their synodal discussions. He said they had been ‘more like a rhetorical exchange of verbal blows" than an orderly debate.'[2]

Of course, orderly rational debates are necessary. As a Dominican, I could never deny the importance of reason! But more is needed if we are to reach beyond our differences.

The sheep trust the voice of the Lord because it is that of a friend. This Synod will be fruitful if it leads us into a deeper friendship with the Lord and with each other.

On the night before he died, Jesus addressed the disciples who were about to betray, deny, and desert him, saying: ‘I call you friends.' (John 15.15).

We are embraced by the healing friendship of God which unlocks the doors of the prisons we create for ourselves.

"The invisible God speaks to men and women as friends" (Vatican II, Dei Verbum, 2). He opened the way into the eternal friendship of the Trinity.

This friendship was offered to his disciples, to tax collectors and prostitutes, to lawyers and foreigners. It was the first taste of the Kingdom.

Both the Old Testament and classical Greece and Rome considered such friendships impossible. Friendship was only between the good.

Friendship with the wicked was considered impossible. As Psalm 26 says, ‘I hate the company of evildoers and will not sit with the wicked' (v23).

The bad do not have friendships since they only collaborate for evil deeds. But our God was always inclined to shocking friendships. He loved Jacob the trickster; and David, the murderer and adulterer; and Solomon the idolater.

Also, friendship was only possible between equals. But grace lifts us up into the divine friendship. Aquinas says solus Deus deificat, ‘only God can make us godlike.'[i]

Today is the Feast of the Guardian Angels, who are signs of the unique friendship that God has for each of us. The Holy Father said on the Feast of the Guardian Angels, ‘No one journeys alone and no one should think that they are alone[3]'.

As we journey, we are each embraced by the divine friendship.

Preaching the gospel is never just communicating information.

It is an act of friendship. A hundred years ago, Vincent McNabb OP said, ‘Love those to whom you preach. If you do not, do not preach.

Preach to yourself.' St Dominic was said to have been loved by all since he loved all. St Catherine of Siena was surrounded by a circle of friends: men and women, lay and religious.

They were known as the Caterinati, the Catherine people. St Martin de Porres is often shown with a cat, a dog, and a mouse eating from the same dish. A good image of religious life!

There were no easy friendships between men and women in the Old Testament. The Kingdom broke in with Jesus surrounded by his friends, men and women.

Even today, many people doubt the possibility of any innocent friendship between men and women. Men fear accusation; women fear male violence; the young fear abuse. We should embody the spacious friendship of God.

So we preach the gospel by friendships that reach across boundaries. God reached across the division between Creator and creature.

What impossible friendships can we make?

• Father Timothy Radcliffe, OP, is an English Catholic priest and Dominican friar who served as master of the Order of Preachers from 1992 to 2001. This is Part 3 of the reflection he shared with those about to attend the General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which began yesterday.

Talking about sexual assault is hard.

For many survivors, the reaction of the first person they disclose to, often a friend or family member can have a huge effect on their healing process.

Over the past 25 years, RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is the US' largest anti-sexual violence organization, and has helped more than 3.2 million people, including many family and friends who are looking for guidance on how to help someone they care about.

About one-third of visitors to the hotline have never disclosed before.

As a result, many conversations become about disclosure — when it goes well, when it doesn't, and when someone is thinking about disclosing and is worried about how someone in their life will react.

Despite a loved one's best intentions, sometimes survivors feel blamed or questioned after telling someone they love, and this can make it hard to continue talking about what happened and to start healing.

Most of the time, loved ones of survivors want to do anything they can to help, but just aren't sure what to do.

Whether someone you love has disclosed to you already, or you just want to make sure you're prepared if the moment ever arises, take the time to proactively learn how to support a survivor as they disclose. It can make all the difference. Here are a few tips to keep in mind.

Don't play detective - just listen

Many people are shocked and upset when they learn that someone they love has experienced sexual violence. They're so worried about saying the wrong thing and so badly want to help that they start asking a lot of questions.

Even if you have good intentions, unfortunately, this isn't helpful. Asking questions can make a survivor feel blamed or pressured into sharing more of their story than they're comfortable with. It's important to keep in mind that, if someone discloses an assault to you, they're not looking for you to gather facts — they're looking for your love and support.

Even if your instinct is to ask for more details, it's best to avoid doing so. Simply listen to however much or little someone is comfortable sharing with you.

Recognise the importance of managing your own emotions

It's normal to feel angry or upset that something has happened to someone you love — and you might even think that showing your feelings is a way of expressing that you care about them. However, this can be counterproductive.

If you become very upset when someone discloses to you, it can make them feel that they are responsible for your feelings.

Show you care by using supportive phrases, such as:

• I believe you.
• It's not your fault.
• You are not alone.
• You didn't do anything to deserve this.
• Thank you for telling me this.
• I am always here for you.

By managing your emotions, you can help remove this burden from the person who is disclosing so that they can focus on their own healing process. Continue reading

The book argues for something important: We should recover a sense that politics is not about a partisan competition or any effort to win by defeating somebody else.

Politics is friendship—and really the highest form of friendship.

Politics is the sort of friendship that builds our communities. It is the means by which we discover and seek the common good together.

For real politics to be possible, we have to see one another as friends.

We want to be precise about that word friends.

We all know that there are many kinds of friendship.

We have close, lifelong friends.

We also have friends who are the neighbors we wave to, the people we know through work, the cashier at the local store, and a wide range of other casual acquaintances.

It is not necessary to see every friend as someone who is close or whom we know intimately. But in the most ordinary sense, when we say friend we mean someone from whom we anticipate goodwill and toward whom we wish no harm.

This is closer to the sort of friendship we are talking about in politics.

Citizenship needs to be based on that feeling of kinship with others.

There must come a point where our disagreements pause while we recognize what we share in common.

Even if our fellow citizens are not our closest or most intimate friends, our friendship with them is higher than any other because that kind of civility makes our civilization possible.

Such friendship enables us to live together in peace and build something through a common effort, even over our disagreements.

Von Heyking's book contains a lot of wisdom, but one particularly wonderful line stays with me, because it points to the true problem that haunts our politics today.

He writes, "The purpose of politics is peace, and the regime that does not know what to do with peace will necessarily be warlike."

In other words, the deepest problem with our politics only appears to be its warlike polarization and its never-ending conflict.

In fact, our ongoing, divisive arguments are only a symptom of the deeper, truer problem: We do not know what to do with peace. We do not know how to practice politics. We do not know how to see one another as friends.

Von Heyking's insight arrives in a book about Plato and Aristotle and about an ancient Greek world where theater and poetry were an important part of a close-knit, free civic community.

The science of history began in that Greek world with Thucydides, who sought to understand why his city went to war with another city.

Those Greeks did go to war, of course. But they also knew what to do with peace.

War and conflict were not, as von Heyking says, "necessary" for them. They knew that the arts and what we call the humanities build up our human kinship and make us friends.

They practiced a healthy, participatory politics in a strong community.

Americans were once able to do that, too.

We were never perfect, any more than the Greeks were. But at one time we had the knack of political friendship.

It was more possible for disagreements to end at the water's edge. Patriotism once bound us all together.

Now, patriotic expressions like waving the flag place us on one side of a political argument, and too many Americans feel as if their worst enemies are not abroad but here at home. I

have a theory about what has happened.

Greek civilization collapsed after a generations-long conflict, the Peloponnesian War.

Something similar has happened to us since the Cold War.

Not only did war and conflict become a too-easily indulged habit of mind during those years, but something else happened too. Continue reading

• Steven P. Millies is associate professor of public theology and director of The Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. His most recent book is Good Intentions: A History of Catholic Voters' Road from Roe to Trump (Liturgical Press, 2018).

1. Never admit it. That's the fastest way to make them infinitely more attractive to toddlers and teenagers. If you want to change a vague friendship into something resembling Romeo and Juliet in terms of passion and intensity, just say you don't like someone. Also, never enthuse about anyone you think is a great influence as that can put the kiss of death on the friendship.

2. Take the long-term view. Children grow up, teenagers stop rebelling and parents learn to relax a little. Friends you are currently not keen on can be dropped overnight, turn into absolute charmers, or become the friend who is always there for your child, no matter what. Stay quiet and keep an eye on things, as well as being honest enough to admit you got someone wrong.

3. It's not about you. Sometimes you don't like a parent or a different way of bringing up children and that can translate into an unreasonable dislike of a child. Try to be honest with yourself - does a very confident child make yours seem timid, or a different approach to discipline undermine what you always previously thought was reasonable?

4. Befriend them. This works at every age. Don't be sycophantic or overeager - just practical and friendly. When they are younger, do things with them such as making cakes, or include them in slightly odd activities, such as clearing out a shed and taking rubbish to the dump. Talk to them, listen to them, be interested. Give them slightly more responsibility than they are used to, so that coming to your home makes them feel more grown up. Similarly with teenagers. Treat them as adults and they find it hard not to respond. Also, your teenagers might find that the coolest person in school isn't quite such a rebel with their feet under your kitchen table having a cosy cup of tea. Continue reading

• Joan McFadden loves Sundays because she can do what she likes after a childhood in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

He thanked me as I wheeled him out of the doctor's office. "I notice you stayed," he said, and grinned a little. Sick as he was, my discomfort amused him.

Mine was a tiny act of friendship. Not a big deal, even for someone with needle-phobia. It still meant something to a sick man to have his friend stay with him as he got his shot.

Woody Allen said that "Eighty percent of success is just showing up," and in being with my friend (I wrote about him here and here). I've been seeing how much of the Christian life is just being there, which is not an easy lesson for some of us to learn.

Christianity answers our questions, sure, but it doesn't always answer them as completely as we want. Sometimes the truth that you believe with all your heart doesn't help you deal with pain.

The truth can comfort you but it doesn't comfort you in the same way that a friend sitting at your side comforts you.

Don't Lean on Answers

I'm not saying that the answers aren't important and that the suffering should throw out their copies of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

We need to know the big story to make sense of our own small stories. The Church tells us that our suffering matters and that the world still makes sense, that it's still a good place, that everything works out for our good in the end. It tells us we can live in hope. Continue reading

• David Mills, former executive editor of First Things, is a senior editor of The Stream, editorial director for Ethika Politika, and columnist for several Catholic publications.