Posted on 05/05/2011 12:12:38 PM PDT by presidio9
Passover is over and Shavuot is weeks away. It's a season when Jews traditionally take time for contemplation and reflection.
This year, I've been reflecting on Catholicism. Rather on the complicated interfaith nexuses between Catholics and Jews.
In large part, of course, this is because of the beatification May 1 of Pope John Paul II.
Critics have questioned the decision by Pope Benedict XVI to waive the usual five-year waiting period and fast-track John Paul's road to sainthood.
And JP2 had his faults -- his handling of the priest sex abuse scandals has come under particular recent scrutiny.
But the Polish-born pontiff was the best pope the Jewish world ever had.
"There have been few times in the 2,000 years of Christian Jewish relations when Jews have shed genuine tears at the death of a Pope," the eminent Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum wrote in a recent column. "When Pope John Paul II died, I -- and many other Jews -- cried."
I don't recall actually shedding tears when John Paul died on April 2, 2005 at the age of 84. In fact, I was in the midst of celebrating my nephew's bar mitzvah.
But I did feel deeply touched by his passing -- I had reported on John Paul during most of his nearly 27-year papacy.
In a deliberate and demonstrative way, he had made bettering Catholic-Jewish relations and confronting the Holocaust and its legacy a hallmark of his reign, and I had chronicled milestone after milestone in this process.
There had been frictions and setbacks, to be sure. Key among them was the pope's support for the canonization of his controversial World War II predecessor, Pius XII, and his refusal to open secret Vatican archives to clarify Pius' role during the Holocaust.
He also hurt Jews by welcoming Austrian President Kurt Waldheim to the Vatican after Waldheim's World War II links to the Nazis had come to light. And he upset Jews with his meetings at the Vatican with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
These episodes, however, were far outweighed by positive steps. Some of them were truly groundbreaking measures that jettisoned -- or at least shook up -- centuries of ingrained Catholic teaching and changed Catholic dogma to reflect respect for Jews and the Jewish religion and apologize for the persecution of Jews by Catholics.
They ranged from his visit to Rome's main synagogue in 1986, to his frequent meetings with rabbis, Holocaust survivors and Jewish lay leaders, to his repeated condemnation of anti-Semitism, to the establishment of relations between the Vatican and Israel, to John Paul's own pilgrimage to the Jewish state in 2000, when he prayed at the Western Wall.
It was evident throughout that he was deeply influenced by his own personal history of having grown up with Jewish friends in pre-World War II Poland and then witnessing the destruction during the Shoah.
As Berenbaum put it, John Paul II was "directly touched by the Holocaust" and "assumed responsibility for its memory."
The program director of a Catholic-run interfaith and dialogue center near the Auschwitz death camp agreed.
"Auschwitz was not an abstract tragedy but it formed part of his life," the Rev. Manfred Deselaers told the Catholic news agency Zenit.org. "Auschwitz was the school of holiness of John Paul II."
Given this background, it seemed fitting that the Vatican chose to beatify John Paul on May 1 -- the eve of this year's Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoah.
The coincidence, though, was not intentional.
In the Catholic calendar, May 1 this year marked the Sunday after Easter, a feast called Divine Mercy Sunday. And John Paul II had died on the very eve of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005.
Still, the timing sent out a powerful message. And it made me reflect on how very, very radically relations between Catholics and Jews have changed, even in just the past few decades.
Relations between Catholics and Jews are not perfect, of course, and they never will be. There are still anti-Semitic elements in the Church, and John Paul II's teachings have not trickled down to all the world's more than 1 billion Catholics. But we do live in a different world.
For centuries, the popes and the Vatican "worked hard to keep Jews in their subservient place -- barring them from owning property, from practicing professions, from attending university, from traveling freely," Brown University historian David Kertzer wrote in his 2001 book "The Popes Against the Jews." "And they did all this according to canon law and the centuries-old belief that in doing so they were upholding the most basic tenets of Christianity."
Here in Rome, the papal rulers kept Jews confined to a crowded ghetto until 1870. In many places Jews would stay indoors at Easter for fear of being caught up in a blood libel accusation or be accused of desecrating the Host.
Less dramatically, I still remember from childhood how Catholic kids in my suburban Philadelphia neighborhood were forbidden to enter synagogue to attend their friends' bar mitzvah services.
Formal dialogue began only in 1965, with the Vatican's Nostra Aetate declaration that repudiated the charge that Jews were collectively responsible for killing Jesus, stressed the religious bond between Jews and Catholics, and called for interfaith contacts.
Two decades later, in 1986, when John Paul became the first pope to visit a synagogue, he embraced Rome's chief rabbi, Elio Toaff, and declared that Jews were Christianity's "dearly beloved" and "elder brothers."
Toaff met frequently with John Paul, and the two established a warm rapport. In fact, Toaff and the pope's longtime secretary were the only two individuals named in John Paul's will. The rabbi called that inclusion "a significant and profound gesture for Jews" as well as "an indication to the Catholic world."
Long retired now, Toaff celebrated his 96th birthday on April 30 -- the day before John Paul's beatification.
The memory of John Paul "remains indelibly impressed in the collective memory of the Jewish people," Toaff said in a statement published after the beatification in the Vatican's official newspaper. "In the afflicted history of relations between the popes of Rome and the Jewish people, in the shadow of the ghetto in which they were closed for over three centuries in humiliating and depressing conditions, the figure of John Paul II emerges luminous in all of its exceptionality."
Until you come up with some plausible story as to why Rabbi Herzog could possibly have been forcibly removed from his position after having served for nine years with distinction, your assertions are laughably false.
You have had multiple opportunities to state any piece of evidence for your ridiculous claims and, unsurprisingly, you can't find any to post.
I have to consider your repeated baseless posts to be an example of sour grapes on your part.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
..................
Everything you said was true.
But also, the Italian Fascists were never really ardent anti-Semites. Mussolini referred to anti-Semitism as “That German Disease”.
Unlike the German Protestant Churches, the German Catholic Church never embraced Nazism.
Everything you said was true.
But also, the Italian Fascists were never really ardent anti-Semites. Mussolini referred to anti-Semitism as “That German Disease”.
Unlike the German Protestant Churches, the German Catholic Church never embraced Nazism.
I feel sorry for you that you've apparently formed this opinion without ever getting to know any Catholic Priests or nuns. I have two in my family, and have known hundreds in my lifetime. You'll have to take my word for it that these people do have human desires, but they've willingly given their lives to God, and accept that their reward will be after this life. They also take vows of obedience and sometimes poverty, which are also unnatural the average human psychology. For that matter, so is complete selflessness, but that's also the appeal of Christianity.
In this country, there are 40,000 Catholic priests, a handful of whom are actual pedophiles (and I do mean single digits). There are also a few dozen who have been accused of improper relationships with gay teen-aged boys. You probably think the number is higher, because (A)Some of the cases you are familiar with are decades old, (B)A large percentage of the accusations have turned out to be false, (C)Catholicism is a ripe target for lawsuits due to the perception that oversight of parish priests goes all the way to the Vatican, and (D)most importantly, the liberal media has a axe for the most pro-life, pro-family, pro-private charity, pro private education, and anti homosexual organization on the planet.
Catholic priests have little to do with small children today. I suspect that rabbis also have little to do with children, and they have less than their share of pedophiles, but they are still higher than Catholic priests. There are just far, far fewer rabbis, so you don't hear about it as much, but they definitely exist. Google "pedophile rabbi," like you just made me do and see what I mean.
Thanks for letting me educate you. Next time you pass a priest on the street, introduce yourself. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised.
You don't know what you're talking about. See post 67.
Next time you pass a rabbi on the street, introduce yourself. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Don’t confuse him with the facts - his mind is already made up.
Why did he perform the wedding of Mussolini’s daughter, Eda? Must have been quite an honor!
Zolli’s deepest desire was to be named Chief Rabbi of Israel and it was not going to happen. No sarc tags needed for a fact!
By what standard of morality would that be a sin?
So, to drag this back to your original contention, there was no reason for Zolli to lie about PXII in order to get a position he wasn't going to get anyway. You're slandering a man because you don't like what he said?
Of course, since Golda Meir, Albert Einstein, and other contemporary Jews praised PXII, they were liars too? What did they get?
Occam's Razor.
You are both quite confused. Substituting "rabbi" for "priest" in my quote has no meaning as I did not and would never disparage any rabbi. I'm from NY. I grew up next door to a rabbi. Fourty years later, I still address the man as "Uncle Seth," and he and "Aunt Becca" have dinner at my parent's house every Easter. His family is orthodox, and I have been to his synagogue for weddings and bar mitzvahs. I have also been to the reform temple in my small town for the weddings and barmitzvahs of my classmates. For that matter, Jesus Christ was addressed as "Rabbi" by Peter, the first apostle and first pope. gogogodzilla called BS on a fact, so I set the set the record straight for him.
OTOH, your minds are clearly made up on the subject of Catholic priests, and I find that sad. gogogodzilla: Your post was silly. Julie, you look even sillier talking about "facts." That's all I (or most of the people you argue with) ever talk about.
Unfortunately, what you call fact is truthfully nothing more than the fabrications of a diseased mind. I’m very sorry that you cannot seperate truth from fiction.
For if you could, you would have provided easily found documentation to support your assertations.
But, alas, there are none.
However, there are many links to anti-Semitic and supersessionism websites on that topic.
???
His belief that there are more pedophile rabbis than Catholic priests is the warped offspring of a diseased mind.
After a cursory internet search, I’ve found that the only sites pushing this ‘idea’ are the anti-semitic, supersessionist ideology sites.
Knock it off with the "diseased mind" thing please. Personal attacks are not welcome on FR. Thanks.
You seem to be on the defensive with me because you have made so many outrageous and unsubstantiated claims elsewhere that several people are eating your lunch on this thread. In this case, you are responding to things I haven't said. If you want to continue this discussion, please read my posts more carefully. Of course there aren't "more pedophile rabbis than Catholic priests." I never said that. Wouldn't try to defend it. Its an idiotic suggestion, and it is an indication that we have an honest misunderstanding here, you are creating a straw man argument, you are more ignorant than I supposed on this subject, or you are just not very good at math.
I am Christian, so I will be charitable. There are 70,000,000 Catholics in the United States. There are 5,000,000 Jews, at least 1/3 of whom are secular, i.e. ethnically Jewish, but not practicing the religion. I have no idea how many rabbis there are in the US, but the number is obviously a lot lower than the 45,000 Catholic priests. Here are the numbers that I do have: 55 American priests have been exposed for any instance of sexual impropriety. Most of the 55 have been circumstances of ongoing consensual relationships between gay teenagers and priests. Still illegal, but not pedophilia in the classic sense. Four have been cases of actual child molestation. I'm sure you feel comfortable with the stereotypes, but they are incorrect. The percentage of the male population in general who are pedophiles is somewhere between 3% and 9%. Your original point, which I was responding to (and which Julie agreed with), was that celibacy is unnatural and causes men to act like animals. In the case of Catholic priests, the exact opposite is demonstrably true. The men who become priest (like the men who become rabbis) have a special relationship with God, a vocation. Now, in any population, you are going to have some outliers, but the fact is that Catholic priests are quite obviously far less likely to be pedophiles that males in general, celibacy and all. They also typically take a vow of poverty, and are far less likely to mug someone, and a vow of obedience, and are far less likely to be iconoclasts. This is what it means to them to live their entire lives for God and their congregation. You both seem to be having a problem with this concept. You can either look at the numbers and accept it, or find your own numbers on some anti-Catholic website to dispute them. I don't do your work for you.
Again, I have many, many Jewish people in my life who I love and respect. I admire their own dedication to God, their family, and their community. This is not about me disrespecting Jews or their faith. This is about setting the record straight. I find it ironic that I point out the obvious: that Jewish rabbis are just as likely as Catholic priests to be pedophiles (that's what I said, go back and read post #1 professors), and both of you take it as some sort of an attack on Judiasm. You are extrapolating here the same way you extrapolate with Catholicism. A few outliers represent the entire population. It's foolish. I don't visit antisemetic websites (unless you count news sources like alJazeera and the New York Times), but a Google search of legitimate news stories of pedophile rabbis will quickly tell you that they have their fair share. Any case of a pedophilia is a lifelong tragedy, but attacking and entire religion based on a few dozen delinquents is willfully prejudiced and caustic.
Catholic priests have little to do with small children today. I suspect that rabbis also have little to do with children, and they have less than their share of pedophiles, but they are still higher than Catholic priests. There are just far, far fewer rabbis, so you don't hear about it as much, but they definitely exist. Google "pedophile rabbi," like you just made me do and see what I mean.
Stating that rabbis have a higher percentage chance for pedophilia than priests.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.