China is not only the most populous country on earth; it also has the world's oldest civilization. It would be no surprise, therefore, if the Chinese were not greatly stirred by the passage of a mere half-century. Last week, however, Beijing engineered a massive celebration of the 50th anniversary of Mao Zedongs proclamation of The Peoples Republic on Oct 1, 1949.

On March 16, 1998, the Holy See’s Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews published "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah." This document is only one of a long series of statements that have come from official Catholic sources. In 1990 the same commission issued the "Declaration of Prague," in which it acknowledged that some traditional Catholic teaching and practice had contributed to the spread of anti-Semitism in Western society.