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Posted on 10/20/2011 7:46:30 AM PDT by NYer
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Jewish groups have called on the Vatican to suspend reconciliation talks with a traditionalist group after one of its bishops argued that the Jewish people were responsible for the death of Jesus.
"Comments like these take us back decades to the dark days before there was a meaningful and mutually respectful dialogue between Jews and Roman Catholics," Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said in a statement Oct. 19.
"We call upon the Catholic Church to suspend negotiations with extremist Catholic tendencies until it is clear that these groups show a clear commitment to tackling anti-Semitism within their ranks," he said.
He was referring to comments by Bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the Society of St. Pius X, who said recently in his online newsletter that the killing of Jesus "was truly deicide, the killing of God" and that "only the Jews (leaders and people) were the prime agents of the deicide" because they clamored for his crucifixion.
Bishop Williamson criticized modern church leaders who have moved away from that position, and said: "Until (the Jews) convert at the end of the world, as the church has always taught they will do, they seem bound to choose to go on acting, collectively, as enemies of the true Messiah."
Bishop Williamson, one of four bishops whose excommunication was lifted in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI, became well-known at that time for his remarks denying the Holocaust. He has since been told by the Vatican that he will not be welcomed into full communion in the church until he disavows and publicly apologizes for those comments.
Meanwhile, Bishop Williamson has grown increasingly estranged from the leaders of the Society of St. Pius X. Bishop Bernard Fellay, the head of the society, recently told Bishop Williamson to stop publishing his online newsletter.
In New York, the Anti-Defamation League called on the Vatican to publicly repudiate Bishop Williamson's remarks.
"Bishop Williamson's remarks are further evidence that the Society of St. Pius X has no place in the mainstream church," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director.
"It is hard for us to imagine how a congregation that does not accept fundamental church teachings against anti-Semitism, and promotes classic anti-Jewish canards, can be accepted back into the fold," he said.
In its landmark 1965 document on non-Christian religions, "Nostra Aetate," the Second Vatican Council affirmed that "though Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ, neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his passion."
The document said that although the church is the new "people of God," the Jews "should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed." The text also underlined the church's "common heritage" with the Jews.
Morning, BlackElk. It’s always a pleasure to read anything you’ve written.
To claim "Victimization" suffered by ancestors even if true, merely serves to inflate the argument and society is discounting such, given the attraction to make inflated claims by so many discrete groups.
The Victimization card has been played so ofter by so many groups that it has lost its meaning.
From the Roman Catechism (Catechism of the Council of Trent)
sinners were the authors and the ministers of all the sufferings that the divine Redeemer endured …We must regard as guilty all those who continue to relapse into their sins. Since our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross, those who plunge themselves into disorders and crimes crucify the Son of God anew in their hearts (for he is in them) and hold him up to contempt.
And it can be seen that our crime in this case is greater in us than in the Jews. As for them, according to the witness of the Apostle, “None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” We, however, profess to know him. And when we deny him by our deeds, we in some way seem to lay violent hands on him.
Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of those still living (which would not include Marcel LeFebvre who died without recanting his misbehavior). B-XVI most certainly did not "disavow" those excommunications. Think of B-XVI extending papal charity toward the surviving miscreants to give them an opportunity to recant their evil.
If anyone in schism is automatically excommunicated, you will notice that B-XVI has also treated the Eastern Orthodox as no longer excommunicated. Is the Great Schism not a schism or does the papacy have considerably more authority than marvelous Marcel and his fellow miscreants imagine?
Don't bother to repeat the foolish nonsense of Dario Cardinal Castrillon de Hoyos and Msgr. Perle neither of whom has been pope or ever will be in disagreeing with John Paul II's declarations against SSPX. Their wish to play "Fr. Recruiting Sergeant" towards the tradition-hating "traditionalists" of SSPX does not trump papal authority.
We have our Tridentine Mass back not because of the grand theft (of bishop status) ecclesiastical of SSPX's chronic malcontents and eccentrics but in spite of it. de Mallerais and Williamson are particularly loathsome, but each and every one of them with the possible exception of Gallaraga has played a role in making restoration far more difficult than it had to be.
Unless you have previously used other screennames on FR, we have not tangled previously. I almost left the Church for Russian Orthodoxy in the 1970s over liturgical abuses. I was persuaded to wait a year by a fellow alumnus of the Jesuit prep school I attended and I never changed. I recognize, as Catholics must, the validity of a properly celebrated Novus Ordo Mass but prefer the Tridentine Mass which is the exclusive form celebrated by the Institute of Christ the King pastor at our local Oratory. Whatever your personal opinions of "previous liberal popes" may be, is irrelevant. They were popes (whether you admit it or deny it, whether Marcel obeyed or disobeyed, whether your tastes were offended or not) and that settles the issue. No one died and left you or Marcel or SSPX or SSPV or "Pope" Michael of North Dakota or the late Leonard Feeney, SJ, during his excommunicated period or otherwise, or Fr. Nicholas Gruner or some village idiot posturing as Catholic or any number of other miscreants to sit in judgment upon any pope.
As to any misdeeds by Jews and by Moslems, I will leave that to them and to God. Their souls and the eternal disposition thereof are in their own hands subject to God's judgment. If any of them have offended us in any way, we should remind ourselves of the words of the Lord's Prayer which we Catholics and some other Christians pray as Jesus instructed us: "...Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us...." That is to say, if we don't forgive those who sin against us, we are asking God not to forgive us for our own sins against whomever and more importantly against Him. As to those who commit various evils in the name of Catholicism, it is a different story in that candor requires that we Catholics (assuming that you are Catholic) recognize evils committed in our name as Catholics. I would be happy to see Williamson excommunicated again until he cleans up his anti-semitic act and publicly repents. Whether he is excommunicated again is up to B-XVI and his successors. The Keys are his and will never be mine (for which fact SSPX should be eternally thankful).
It is an insult to human intelligence (and to history) to deny that evils have been perpetrated against Jews by Catholics (however sinful). Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land apparently stopped at Jewish European villages on the way to rape Jewish women and loot the towns. They were marching towards Jerusalem to free the Holy Land from Islam because God wills it (Deus Vult). They were risking death in battle or by disease in the name of God and of the Catholic Church but committed such crimes along the way. The Eastern Orthodox Church can justly complain of Crusaders perpetrating genocidal crimes in the East. Pope Gregory XVI in about 1830 ghettoized Rome's Jews when Rome was governed by him as part of the Papal States.
To admit such misdeeds and many others is not self-abasement and is not slobbering. Rather it is the candid admission by Catholics of the historical and immoral record of SOME Catholics.
Catholic misbehavior is not limited to that against Jews. If the homosexual pedophile scandals of recent decades teach us anything, they teach us that we must be ever vigilant against the enemy within rather than making believe that there are no enemies within. Further, we humans are all sinners (save Mary and Jesus, both of whom were Jews). As such, we all crucified Christ (save Mary and Jesus) and that responsibility does fall but not at all uniquely on Annas and Caiaphas and their little mob so subject to their demagoguery. They were the immediate occasion but we all (including Christians) were the cause through our own respective sins.
If you would be honest with yourself, you will have to admit that I have a "grip." If someone Jewish were to admit the truth of the shameful role played by Annas and Caiaphas, that would not make the person anti-Jewish but would rather serve as an example of candor and honesty.
Aw shucks! Thank you, dear lady.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
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Let's review the history. Shall we? At the end of World War II, the old League of Nations British mandate known as "Palestine" was partitioned (largely due to a remarkable and successful Jewish revolt against the Brits led by David ben Gurion, and many famous Jews including Menachem Begin) and the Jews received Israel and the rest became Jordan and was for the "Palestinians." The Palestinians still have Jordan but they want to pry Israel away from the Jews and drive them into the sea. The Jews have allowed a remarkable number of "Palestinians" to continue to live among them in Israel and have been badly mistreated for decades by many Arabs in and out of Israel as their reward for their generosity.
The "Palestinians" apparently recognized as their leader one Yasir Arafat who was not himself "Palestinian" but rather an Egyptian communist on the payroll of the soviet KGB via the intermediary services of the Bulgarian KGB. This according to the Bulgarian KGB paymaster who wrote Yasir's paychecks (many millions of $) and the story for the Wall Street Journal which published it. The "Palestinian" "leadership" has been keeping the "Palestinian" proles in concentration camps for decades and blaming the Jews for not vacating Israel. They keep the inmates of the camps stoked up in hatred against the Jews in a manner reminiscent of the hate sessions in Orwell's 1984 without the telescreens and personal luxuries.
Abraham Foxman tends to be a despicable wretch particularly in his attacks on the Roman Catholic Church which rescued him personally from the Holocaust when he was an infant and taken in by a Lithuanian priest and nun at the request of his parents. Because the Church will not reveal to him the identities of the priest and the nun, he is in a permanent personal snit against the Vatican. It should be noted that his subordinates in the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai Brith have publicly chastised Foxman for his anti-Catholic attitude and attacks on the Church and have publicly admonished him to give it a rest.
You are certainly correct in noting the lack of attention paid to the victims of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot but that should occasion more notice of the sufferings of those victims and not be used as an excuse to silence coverage of the sufferings of the Jews who were targeted by Hitler and his minions simply for having been born Jewish. A racially based holocaust is not a very pretty thing. Nor was communism as practiced anywhere.
I’m Jewish, but the Catholic Church has a special place in my heart since I went to Mass on Sundays with my Grandpa as a kid and my wife is Catholic, so I have a pretty unique view on this topic. (Not only that, I know more about being Catholic than I do being Jewish. My parents were agnostic leftist Jews, but that’s another rant for another time.)
The Catholic Church has nothing to apologize for, and the Church should never, EVER apologize to the detestable Abe Foxman and his All-Democrat League (ADL). Foxman’s bunch doesn’t defend Jews, it defends LEFTIST Jews. Ask Mark Levin or David Horowitz the last the ADL rode to their defense. The Orthodox, those who married outside of Judaism like I did, and Conservatives (that’s me, too) are left to fend for themselves while the ADL defends George $oros and Rachel Maddcow.
The ADL has no right to demand an apology from anyone. If anything it owes an apology to both Catholics AND Jews for the constant division it tries to create between Jews and Catholics.
God bless!
As a Catholic, I will leave it to Lutherans and reformed Christians generally to defend Luther.
You reference what you call "the filthy anti-Semitism espoused in the theology of the likes of Justin Martyr, Augustine, Origen..." Would you care to provide the details of such charges? I doubt that most FReepers are any more familiar with such claims than am I. Substantiate or withdraw the scurrilous editorial.
St. Justin Martyr apparently engaged in a written debate in which he disagreed with Judaism and is said to have attacked Judaism. He was beheaded by Roman authorities in about 165. At the time of his martyrdom, Christianity was under Roman persecution for sharing the Jewish reluctance to engage in pagan worship of emperors. Did St. Justin Martyr claim that Judaism was somehow incomplete or that Jesus was rejected by His fellow Jews? If so, that is no more anti-Semitism than is any other theological disagreement (and a milder form of offensiveness than parts of your #21).
I make no claims to scholarship on this subject. However, in a quick study, I have found no references to anti-Semitism by Origen. I am at a loss to review the massive works of St. Augustine to see what it is in his writings that may have drawn your colorful objections.
In any event, it is a bit much to somehow attribute the Holocaust as you suggest to the influence of St. Justin Martyr, St. Augustine and Origen on 1930's Europe and the reign of those pagans who ruled Germany and its brief and brutal empire in the Third Reich.
There was a great Conservative Jewish scholar Saul Lieberman (d. 1983) who apparently may have studied on the dispute between St. Justin Martyr and Judaism but, if so, there seems no easy reference to his work in its details. He was the general editor of Judaica acting through Yale University.
When you are baited by someone who wants to diminish the very real 20th century suffering of Jews and the genocide that they suffered by trying to substitute the self-inflicted suffering of Palestinians held in concentration camps by their own, you might want to refrain from responding as though such a repulsive argument were somehow mainstream Christianity much less Catholicism.
Americans of all faiths and none liberated the camps (much later than should have been the case but that is on FDR). Few have expressed regrets over doing so. Most Europeans of the 1930s would have been altogether ignorant of St. Justin Martyr and of Origen. Most would have heard of St. Augustine and of Martin Luther but few would have read the written work of either. It was not some golden age of scholarship on matters religious.
I have had the privilege of becoming acquainted with one elderly Holocaust survivor who had arrived at Auschwitz as a strong 19-year old man in about 1939. He and I had a very lengthy conversation one afternoon when my family had been invited by his daughter's family for a Passover Seder. He dug the graves of the victims for about five years and lived to be liberated. He came to the US after the war, met and married an American Jewish wife, established a small store to support his wife and children and died very recently. Despite all the evil that he personally witnessed at Auschwitz and his own personal sufferings there, he lacked entirely the vitriol you express against Christians and well understood that his torment did not arise from Christianity much less from St. Justin Martyr, St. Augustine and/or Origen.
We exist in anonymity on Free Republic. I feel certain that I am not personally acquainted with you and, if you have suffered personally, I am certainly not familiar with the details. OTOH, it is no more reasonable for you to blame all of Christianity with a broad brush for the very real sufferings of Jews than it was for the anti-Semites of history to act upon the infamous blood libel or to pretend to be justified by the demagogic ravings of Annas and Caiaphas.
I have not responded to your #21 on the assumption that you actually believe its contents. Jesus was certainly a Jew. He certainly resurrected. He certainly taught from Hebrew Scriptures (there were no others at the time). He was crucified by permission of the Roman governor by Roman soldiers of whatever legion and whatever ancestry. Pilate was a pillar of jello but he gets a worse rap in history than perhaps even he deserves. Pilate was a moral coward in the face of public pressure. You need not be a believer in the New Testament but it certainly disagrees with your analysis as to whether Jesus started a new religion. See particularly the Peter passage in Matthew and the New Testament generally. Also the historical evidence of Jesus includes the writings of Flavius Josephus, a contemporary, who was a Roman General but also a Jew from the Holy Land. It is remarkable and puzzling that you concede His resurrection (and capitalize His), the central belief of Christianity, but deny that He founded Christianity.
Thank you!
I am surprised that nobody picked up on the “Killed God” bit of this. God cannot be killed - Jesus was killed and yes he was fully man and fully God but you cannot kill God.
So it’s a bit of nonsense from the outset.
Mel
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_10501.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0002_0_01603.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_10225.html
Not a problem, boss!
:)
Again, I am no scholar or expert on the subject but that passage seems to suggest to me that the Covenant given by G-d to Abraham remained intact and that Jesus brought to men a New Covenant which Jews could accept or reject but distinct from the continuing Covenant with Abraham. G-d put no time limit on His Covenant with Abraham and G-d does not lie.
It may well be that the Vatican wanted to make crystal clear that Naziism and Catholicism are not at all related to one another. Catholics discount Hitler's childhood Catholicism as compared to his pagan adulthood just as we discount Karl Marx having himself baptized Catholic as a young teenager before becoming a Satanist in college or discount Margaret Sanger having herself baptized as a young teenager and apostasizing within the year to begin her murderous career leading ultimately to the abortion Holocaust.
There are specific sources of Vatican discomfort having to do with the traditional Good Friday service which references "perfidious Jews." Those references were erased at or just after Vatican II to assure that the blame was on Annas and Caiphas and their immediate co-conspirators and not on Jews generally. The reference to "perfidious Jews" was also thought to have encouraged anti-Semitism and was especially embarrassing during and after World War II.
See Golda Meir's eulogy for Pope Pius XII in 1958 or 1958 before the United Nations, the writings of Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide, the generous post WW II statements of Albert Einstein, and the story of Rabbi Israel Zolli (?) Chief Rabbi of Rome during World War II who converted to Catholicism after the war and took as his baptismal name Eugenio in honor of Pius XII (whose original name was Eugenio Pacelli). Other than Zolli, these people were not Catholic. None of them were fools.
I utterly fail to see the connection between a belief that Catholicism is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament and making "the systematic persecution, torture and murder of Jews theologically acceptable.
When an early associate of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits back when they were Catholic, whispered in his ear a gossipy detraction and warning that Fr. Diego Lainez (apparently a fourth generation Catholic of Jewish ancestry) was "a secret Jew," Loyola responded joyfully by saying: How very fortunate he is to be related to Our Lord and His Blessed Mother! Lainez succeeded Loyola as the second General of the Jesuit Order.
May you be blessed.
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