Catholic Converts - Israel (Eugenio) Zolli - Chief Rabbi of Rome

LRC ^

[reagandemocrat]

I don't envy your job, here.

[warsaw44]

Hit piece on Jews? Your ignorance knows no bounds.

[Religion Moderator]

Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.

[markomalley]

So I notice that the Caucus label was removed from this thread.

So what were your issues with this gentleman's bio?

(Remember, in the words of our esteemed babysitter, "Discuss all you want, but don't make it personal")

[Enosh]

Okay, this is one in a series of conversion stories. Are they all posted as a caucus or are they distributed to a wider audience?

If he had been an atheist would you still be posting these comments?

Yes.

Imagine this headline: "Pope Renounces Faith, Embraces Atheism (Atheism Caucus)"

Think you might have something to say about that?

[Enosh]

I think Rabbi Zolli's story is heartwarming, but that's just me.

[Alex Murphy]

I think Rabbi Zolli's story is heartwarming, but that's just me.

I would imagine it's not so heartwarming to Jews :(

[Nihil Obstat]

What a beautiful story. I was thinking about it all night so I had to read it again this morning. Thanks for posting.

[Enosh]

Nope.

[NYer]

What a beautiful story. I was thinking about it all night so I had to read it again this morning. Thanks for posting

It is a truly remarkable story ... and there are more to come :-). I believe you will enjoy this one, as well. Lenten blessings to you.

[Titanites]

Can this be made a Catholic/Jewish Caucus to be open only to the two so called "confessions" discussed?

[AnAmericanMother]

Thank you for posting this beautiful story.

Certainly our elder brothers in Israel may be concerned . . . particularly in the context of sensitivity about assimilation and disappearance of the Jewish people into the general culture. I know that Orthodox Jews particularly treat a convert as one dead (I know personally a man whose parents put up a gravestone when he became an Episcopalian) -- and given all the slanders that are bruited about concerning Catholics and especially Pope Pius, the knee-jerk reaction is to be offended.

But stop and think a moment -- this is one man's story of what happened to him in his life. It was real, and it happened, and you can't sweep it under the carpet and pretend it somehow didn't occur.

And I don't see any way of getting around the possibility of offending people of other faiths -- the alternative is self-censorship and reluctance to obey the Great Commission. And that is exactly what the secularists (who hate Catholics, Jews, and every other strong faith) would like to see -- all religious discussion forbidden for fear of offending somebody.

[Nihil Obstat]

I will never know, this side of Heaven, whose prayers and sacrifices purchased the graces for my entirely unsought after and undeserved conversion, but I can only thank them profoundly, and exhort others, too, to pray for the conversion of (the world)

Thank you for the link to Roy Schoeman's story. How very similar to Israel Zolli's conversion - both stories start with seeing a Crucifix in the home of a pious family. Every Catholic and Orthodox home should have Holy reminders, and we should all pray for the conversion of the world. Thank God for pious families like Stanislaus's family in Rabbi Zolli' story and the Austrian housekeeper in Roy Schoeman's story.

Now I have to read Fr. Raphael Simon's story "The Glory of Thy People" referenced in Roy Schoeman's article. God bless you, NYer.

[ELS]

So what were your issues with this gentleman's bio?

As far as I can tell from their comments on the thread, they don't actually have any issues with the bio. There is no indication that they actually read the bio. Their main issue seems to be the caucus designation even though the thread has nothing to do with Protestantism. One would think they could find joy in the conversion of someone to Christianity.

[Zionist Conspirator]

I thought the Catholic Church was against proselytizing or converting people from other religions? At least that's what they say whenever some poor Baptist hands a Catholic a tract.

Apparently it all depends on who's doing the converting.

[AnAmericanMother]

I have never, ever heard that. Matthew 28:18-20 hasn't been struck from the Bible to my knowledge.

Btw, my Catholic daughter goes to Bible study at a Baptist Church, because the Catholic campus center doesn't have one.

[markomalley]

I thought the Catholic Church was against proselytizing or converting people from other religions? At least that's what they say whenever some poor Baptist hands a Catholic a tract.

Apparently it all depends on who's doing the converting.

If you can show me in this story where some Catholic handed this gentleman a tract, I'd appreciate it.

Unless, of course, this qualifies as proseltyzing:

Lieutenant Colonel Kappler took advantage of the deportation order that he had received for extortion. He summoned the two men presiding over the Jewish community in Rome, and demanded they deliver 50 kilos of gold to him in twenty-four hours, or else all the men in the Jewish population in the city would be deported immediately. In fact, it was a matter of a list of three hundred hostages, at the top of which Zolli appeared. The next day, the Jewish community had been able to collect only 35 kilos of gold. They asked the Chief Rabbi to go to the Vatican to try to borrow what was missing. He succeeded in entering the Vatican, all the exits of which were monitored by the Gestapo, by a hidden door in the back of the City, and explained his request for a loan of 15 kilos of gold to Pius XII's Secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione. He gave his own person as a security. The prelate consulted with the Holy Father, then asked Zolli to return before one o'clock in the afternoon. But shortly thereafter, Zolli learned that the quantity of gold required had already been collected, thanks to contributions from priests and numerous Catholic organizations.

But maybe you see something I didn't in the piece.

[Nihil Obstat]

During the feast of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) in October 1944, he presided over the prayers of Great Pardon in the synagogue in Rome. 'Suddenly,' he wrote, 'I saw, with the eyes of the mind, a large prairie, and standing in the middle of the green grass was Jesus, dressed in a white robe... At the sight of this, I felt a great interior peace, and, from the depths of my heart, I heard these words: 'You are here for the last time. From now on, you will follow Me.' I received them in the greatest serenity, and my heart immediately responded, 'As it shall be, so it must be.'... An hour later, after supper, in my room, my wife declared to me, 'Today, while you were standing before the Ark of the Torah, it seemed to me that the white figure of Jesus was laying His hands on you, as if He were blessing you.' I was stupefied... At that very moment, our younger daughter, Miriam, who had gone to her room and hadn't heard anything, called for me to tell me, 'You are in the middle of talking about Jesus Christ. You know, Papa, this evening I saw a big Jesus, all white, in a dream.' I wished them both a good night and, without feeling at all ill at ease, I continued to think about the extraordinary sequence of events.'

Jesus converted him

[Zionist Conspirator]

I have never, ever heard that. Matthew 28:18-20 hasn't been struck from the Bible to my knowledge.

Btw, my Catholic daughter goes to Bible study at a Baptist Church, because the Catholic campus center doesn't have one.

I apologize for my rude intrusion into this thread and thank you for your gentle response.

The Catholic Church was certainly missionary once, but having "converted the world" some seventeen hundred years ago has chosen to depend on sexual reproduction to keep going, as have all the ancient, ethnic churches. The American Catholic Church is an urban immigrant church with the same hostility to the Protestant heartland as other historical American minority groups. One of the ways this manifests itself is in hostility to missionary activity. American Catholic publications and spokesmen sound exactly like Jewish anti-missionaries: Protestant missionaries are ignorant bigots, the Bible was ours before it was theirs, they don't understand the Bible because they've rejected the Oral Tradition, etc., etc. etc. Then along comes a thread boasting about converting an Orthodox Jewish rabbi (and I note also that Jews don't seem to be as worked up about losing people to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy as they do to Fundamentalist Protestantism). Naturally this pushes my buttons. I regard it as the height of hypocrisy to attack the very idea of missionary activity (eg, by calling it "sheep stealing") by people whose church still exists today only because their own ancestors were proselytized at some time in the past.

I was Catholic for six years. If I am bitter (and I am), please believe me that this bitterness comes from personal experience. To join the Church I had to overcome a great many personal prejudices, only to have every one of those prejudices confirmed a thousand times over.

Here on FR Catholics bash Protestants and Protestantism but whine whenever Protestants criticize Catholicism, even going so far as to equate anti-Catholicism with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (and considering the role Catholics have played in spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that takes a great deal of gall). Just as with Blacks vs. whites, American Catholics seem to feel entitled to a one-way flow of criticism because of their role as a "historically oppressed minority" in America.

Another thing I object to is the caricature of America's native Protestant culture as a bunch of ignorant "snake handlers" by members of a Church the majority of whose members are illiterate peasants who practice a folk Catholicism unknown in America. I have read at least two Catholic posts referring to Protestants as "snake handlers." Do you know that at a village in Italy the peasants wrap snakes around a statue of the local saint? Have you ever heard of the "cargo" system of the Catholic Maya of Central America? Yet US Catholics puff out their chests and boast of their Catholic intellectuality vis a vis the ignorant, illiterate, buck-toothed, bigoted hillbilly Protestants (do you recall the sneering references to "Cletus" or "Billy Bob's Glory Barn?"). And this from a Church that claims to be the official ccustodian of conservatism! It still sounds like Al Sharpton to me.

I hope you will attempt to restrain your co-religionists from some of the hateful and hypocritical "reverse bigotry" they engage in on this forum.

[Pyro7480]

Some clerics and laity may be against it. The need for conversion still stands.