Friday, November 30, 2007

Radical Christian Missionaries in Iraq - To Conquer & Convert

The Soup Comes With a Sermon- To Conquer & Convert
" This is a Religious War "

In the video below we get a glimpse at how Christian Missionaries are helped by the American military to preach to Iraqis. The American occupying force seems unable or unwilling to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq & to provide schools & hospitals or basic medical care for Iraqis but the Americans have no problem delivering a few million Bibles to Iraqis.

Much of American Humanitarian Aid to Iraqis is delivered through Faith Based Organizations who are aggressively proselytizing to convert Muslim Iraqis to Christianity while defaming & insulting Islam & Characterizing Islam as " Evil ".
So much for democracy & tolerance . Radical Christians can no more tolerate people of a different religion than can Radical Muslims like the Taliban can tolerate any who dare not believe in their brand of Islam .


One version of the video is from from Omaribnalalbani at YouTube who makes the following comment:
American Plans to Convert Iraq into Christianity

American Missionaries and Generals in the American Military are working together in order to convert Helpless Muslims in Iraq to Christianity. Many of these Missionaries which are Supported by the Bush Administration are from Evangelical Christian Groups Such as Southern Baptist Convention, World Help and other Evangelical Christian Organizations. They go into Iraq as aid workers in Disguise or as American Private Contractors working in Iraq. Many of these people have been given support and Protection from American Generals in Iraq by providing them Housings in Americans Bases in Iraq to work from. When ever the American Military goes into a Village or a Town in search and destroy Mission these missionaries follow them and hand out Pamphlets promoting Christianity and also Also Anti-Islamic material to the helpless Muslims in Iraq.

Many of them follow the American Military as well in their routine Night raids where the American Soldiers Kills or detains Muslim males from the families, Iraq is a traditional Society and most of the Support a family receives is from the Male, and once there is no Male guardian for the Family the family does not have a chance for survival.

Many Muslim Women and families are being taken advantage of by these American Christians, since they provide them with food and Shelter or Money in Exchange for the Bible and Christianity the most Vulnerable of these families are Muslim women with children whose husbands and Sons have been killed or been detained by the Americans


In the second version of this video the Youtube user has this to say :While innocent people are getting killed everyday in Iraq Christian missionaries are trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.
(from HUMANOo )

Deaths of converted Iraqi Muslims to Christianity of little concern since they are among the SAVED & that's all that really matters & by dying because of their faith in Jesus makes them Martyrs for Christ -


Many American soldiers & their officers seem to believe that To kill a Muslim is not a crime since it is a killing of the bad "Malicide" which is typical of so called Christian Charity & love -( see my post Thursday November 22 )*

So much for Iraqis deciding on their own fate. People are encouraged to convert or starve or do without medical help or have their neighborhood or village shot to pieces over & over again.
This is like the Nazis insisting that those countries whom they invade accept their racist & religious political ideology

* Note: Augustine developed The Doctrine of The Just War whereby under certain conditions Christians could go to war out of self-defense or for the defense of the Faith & the Church .

" The code of the Just War called for good faith with the enemy, regard for non-combatants , respect for hostages and prisoners. But all such restraints were abandoned in dealing with the infidel. The warrant for this view of warfare was found in the biblical account of the conquest of Canaan by Joshua " ( p. 174, Bainton - Horizon History )

And St. Bernard explained that " The soldier may securely Kill, Kill for Christ and more securely die. He benefits himself if he dies and Christ if he Kills. To Kill a malefactor is not homicide but malicide ( the killing of the bad ). In the death of the Pagan the Christian is glorified because Christ is glorified ." ( p. 194, Bainton)

In this way the Christian Church could justify the unnecessary & brutal Crusades to attempt to conquer & convert or wipe out the Muslims & they believed they were justified in the killing of heretics & oppressing & murdering the Jews.
(from post Nov. 22,2007 )

take care,
GORD.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

CRUSADES CONTINUE- LET's BOMB IRAN & Wounded Soldiers Made to Pay Back Signing Bonuses

Anyway here's a funny bit about how The Bush Regime Supports The Troops ???

The Bush Regime & its supporters claim that they support American troops but the evidence suggest that this is not always the case. For instance there was the scandal over the Walter Reid Hospital that it was a disgrace & that parts of it were dire of need of repair or should be torn down & replaced. There have been scandals & questions about the lack of equipment or that the equipment given to the American troops were inadequate ie body armor & personnel carriers . There are also questions about the decrease in military morale when it comes to successive involuntary re-deployments to Iraq & Afghanistan. There have been further criticisms about the training of new recruits & of members of the National Guard as to whether or not the training is adequate or not. -paying signing bonuses if that are wounded - You gotta read the fine print - so this is another insult to the troops. So all their talk about " Support The Troops " tends to ring hollow & is just more phony " Bumper Sticker Patriotism ".

Adding insult to injury the soldiers who make a modest salary just barely a living wage get to watch the 150,000 Mercenaries stationed in Iraq as private contractors pulling down better salaries without being accountable for their actions.
There have also been stories that psychological illnesses which soldiers have developed while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder may not get the intensive treatment they need . It appears that the military under Bush have developed the attitude that PTSD is just a made up illness & is just a lot of " Psycho-Babble " . And as the article below claims that soldiers who have been wounded or have for psychological reasons are unable to complete their tour of duty are being told they must return to the government their signing bonuses . It seems the Bush regime is more interested in cost cutting measures than spending the resources necessary to properly equip soldiers & to take care of their medical needs where necessary or even to pay the average soldier a better & more reasonable salary. The article below this one shows that the military & the administration are downplaying the numbers of suicides of those troops who have returned to American soil after fighting in the war on terror.


Wounded Vets Asked to Pay Up, Monday 26 November 2007 AP & TRUTHOUT

New York - Service members seriously wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan after they received a $10,000 bonus for enlisting are being asked by the Pentagon to repay portions of the incentive money, says a U.S. senator who calls the practice an example of military policy gone wrong.

"A bill in the mail is not the kind of present our soldiers deserve in this holiday season," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. said. "Our veterans are not being treated with the dignity, respect and thanks that they deserve. It's just a disgrace."

At a news conference Sunday, he said the policy remained in effect despite a report last July by a presidential commission that wounded veterans were being unfairly penalized by a requirement that enlistees must fulfill their entire term of service or lose a pro-rated portion of their bonus.

"This policy and early discharge as a result of service-related injury is now preventing thousands of combat-wounded warriors from getting the bonuses they have earned," Schumer said. "This includes several hundred New Yorkers who suffered wounds or catastrophic injuries before concluding their duty."

He said that when the case of Jordan Fox, an Army sniper partially blinded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, was called to the Pentagon's attention, officials replied that the demand for him to repay $2,800 was a "clerical error" and canceled the debt.

If the Mount Lebanon, Pa., soldier's case was an isolated incident, there has been no explanation of why hundreds of other wounded veterans have also received letters demanding repayment, Schumer said. "When you talk to the Pentagon, you get different answers from different people," he said.


Also see: CBS NEWS INVESTIGATION :Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans-A CBS News Investigation Uncovers A Suicide Rate For Veterans Twice That Of Other Americans NOVEMBER 13, 2007

And update at Alternet on suicide rates:

120 War Vets Commit Suicide Each Week on Average
By Penny Coleman AlterNet Monday 26 November 2007


The military refuses to come clean, insisting the high rates are due to "personal problems," not experience in combat.

Earlier this year, using the clout that only major broadcast networks seem capable of mustering, CBS News contacted the governments of all 50 states requesting their official records of death by suicide going back 12 years. They heard back from 45 of the 50. From the mountains of gathered information, they sifted out the suicides of those Americans who had served in the armed forces. What they discovered is that in 2005 alone - and remember, this is just in 45 states - there were at least 6,256 veteran suicides, 120 every week for a year and an average of 17 every day.

As the widow of a Vietnam vet who killed himself after coming home, and as the author of a book for which I interviewed dozens of other women who had also lost husbands (or sons or fathers) to PTSD and suicide in the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, I am deeply grateful to CBS for undertaking this long overdue investigation. I am also heartbroken that the numbers are so astonishingly high and tentatively optimistic that perhaps now that there are hard numbers to attest to the magnitude of the problem, it will finally be taken seriously. I say tentatively because this is an administration that melts hard numbers on their tongues like communion wafers.

Since these new wars began, and in spite of a continuous flood of alarming reports, the Department of Defense has managed to keep what has clearly become an epidemic of death beneath the radar of public awareness by systematically concealing statistics about soldier suicides. They have done everything from burying them on official casualty lists in a category they call "accidental noncombat deaths" to outright lying to the parents of dead soldiers. And the Department of Veterans Affairs has rubber-stamped their disinformation, continuing to insist that their studies indicate that soldiers are killing themselves, not because of their combat experiences, but because they have "personal problems."

Active-duty soldiers, however, are only part of the story. One of the well-known characteristics of post-traumatic stress injuries is that the onset of symptoms is often delayed, sometimes for decades. Veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam are still taking their own lives because new PTSD symptoms have been triggered, or old ones retriggered, by stories and images from these new wars. Their deaths, like the deaths of more recent veterans, are written up in hometown newspapers; they are locally mourned, but officially ignored. The VA doesn't track or count them. It never has. Both the VA and the Pentagon deny that the problem exists and sanctimoniously point to a lack of evidence they have refused to gather.


From the Real News Network:
Noam Chomsky on U.S. policy towards Iran
November 19, 2007

American Manifest Destiny continues with an all out Christian Crusade against the Middle East & the Islamic World as it were and so it goes... What Would Jesus Do ? The God of love says " Kill Them ALL "



Chomsky: Do the Democrats have a different answer on Iran?
Democrats the " ME TOO PARTY " wants to invade Iran while the Media Elite cheer them on -
Hilary & Bush can you tell them apart ?



Take care,
GORD.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Urban Myths , Rumors , Anti-Semitism & "The Blood Libel "

One of the most grotesque & bizarre accusations made against Jews by Anti-Semites was that the Jews were engaged in ritual sacrifices of Christian children which is referred to as " The Blood Libel".

At Religious Tolerance.Org Article:Blood libel & host desecration myths Christian myths against Jews 1144 CE to now

In 1144 CE, an unfounded rumor began in eastern England, that Jews had kidnapped a Christian child, tied him to a cross, stabbed his head to simulate Jesus' crown of thorns, killed him, drained his body completely of blood, and mixed the blood into matzos (unleavened bread) at time of Passover. The rumor was started by a former Jew, Theobald, who had become a Christian monk. He said that Jewish representatives gathered each year in Narbonne, France. They decided in which city a Christian child would be sacrificed.

The boy involved in the year 1144 hoax became known as St. William of Norwich. Many people made pilgrimages to his tomb and claimed that miracles had resulted from appeals to St. William. The myth shows a complete lack of understanding of mainline Judaism. Aside from the prohibition of killing innocent persons, the Torah specifically forbids the drinking or eating of any form of blood in any quantity. However, reality never has had much of an impact on blood libel myths. This rumor lasted for many centuries; even today it has not completely disappeared.

Pope Innocent IV ordered a study in 1247 CE. His investigators found that the myth was a Christian invention used to justify persecution of the Jews. At least 4 other popes subsequently vindicated the Jews. However, the accusations, trials and executions continued. In 1817, Czar Alexander I of Russia declared that the blood libel was a myth. Even that did not stop the accusations against Jews in that country.

"Holy shrines were erected to honor innocent Christian victims, and well into the twentieth century, churches throughout Europe displayed knives and other instruments that Jews purportedly used for these rituals. Caricatures of hunchbacked Jews with horns and fangs were depicted in works of art and carved into stone decorating bridges. Proclaimed by parish priests to be the gospel truth, each recurrence of the blood libel charge added to its credence, thus prompting yet more accusations. This vicious cycle continued to spiral."

And that "there are 150 recorded cases of the charge of ritual murder, and many led to massacres of the Jews of the place."

1870's: "With the rise of the modern antisemitic movement in the late 1870s, the traditional blood accusation merged easily with the new scientific racial arguments, serving as a lowest common denominator to unite its secular (and often anti-Christian), Catholic, and Protestant members." 3 Roman Catholic Bishop Martin of Pederborn, Germany, wrote that Jews ritually murdered Christian children.
1881: A Roman Catholic journal, Civilta Cattolica, started a series of articles which attempted to prove that ritual murder was an integral element of the Jewish religion. They argued that the ritual murders occurred at Purim rather than Passover. "It is in vain that Jews seek to slough off the weight of argument against them: the mystery has become known to all." (Not quite all. Historians have rejected the stories of blood libel as myth.)


And as the article continues incredulous as it may seem it appears that even in the 1930's such stories were circulated as if they were irrefutable facts for instance :

1930's Hitler re-used the blood-libel myth as justification for the Holocaust. The Nazi periodical, Der Stürmer, often published special issues devoted to allegations of ritual murder by Jews. Hitler had asked that a propaganda film be made of the 1840 Damascus case. World War II ended before it could be made.

And even in recent years such stories continue to be spread by those who wish to discredit the Jews to further their own agenda as the article goes on to report :

2000's: The Jewish blood-libel myth continues to circulate among many Muslim countries.

2007: Ariel Toaff, an Israeli historian of Italian origin, published a book that has revived the blood libel story. It is titled: "Bloody Passovers: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders." Toaff suggests that several crucifixions of Christian children occurred from 1100 to about 1500 CE. He wrote:

"My research shows that in the Middle Ages, a group of fundamentalist Jews did not respect the biblical prohibition and used blood for healing. It is just one group of Jews, who belonged to the communities that suffered the severest persecution during the Crusades. From this trauma came a passion for revenge that in some cases led to responses, among them ritual murder of Christian children."

He bases his book on the testimony given under torture. Twelve of Italy's chief rabbis issued a press release stating:

"It is totally inappropriate to utilize declarations extorted under torture centuries ago to reconstruct bizarre and devious historical theses. ... The only blood spilled in these stories was that of so many innocent Jews, massacred on account of unjust and infamous accusations."

Sergio Luzzatto, in an article in the Corriere della Serra wrote:

"Even if the author should manage to prove that a deviant sect existed for centuries...clearly it could never be identified as a Jewish group, or as part of a Jewish community. This would be comparable to saying that the rabbis who were present at [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's Holocaust Denial Conference in Teheran represent mainstream Judaism."


Once a story is told often enough it begins to be accepted as fact or that it must be based on some actual incident & in this case the proponents of anti-Semitism seem all too willing to pass on such stories without any objective investigation of the incident to determine what did or did not occur . For the anti-Semite given their " paranoia " & dark fantasies & projections such accusations as the Blood Libel & the desecration of the Host which are made against Jews are seen as reasonable . In the same way anti-Semites blamed the Jews for every occasion of a natural disaster or an outbreak of disease or failures of crops or the loss of a battle or a nation going to war or losing a war - all the calamities which are visited upon us in the Anti-Semites view are the work of the Jews . And so the Jews are accused of poisoning wells & spreading diseases such as the Black Plague and of using Black Magic & of being traitors by selling out the country in which they " reside " As we have seen anti-Semites believe that the Jews are only loyal to other Jews & have little regard for the countries in which they live.

These improbable stories are given added credence when those in positions of authority repeat the accusations & infer that they have some validity such as the Catholic Church or other Christian Churches or representatives of the various Churches or secular authorities such as monarchs or political authorities or even secular scholars & intellectuals -

There is inherently great difficulty in disproving such fantastical myths about the Jews or about other groups such as Freemasons , the Illuminati or The Skull and Bones since any denial of these accusations are seen as further proof that a " conspiracy " exists. Any evidence to the contrary which suggest that the Jews do not sacrifice children or desecrate the Host or poison wells or spread disease or are involved in a world wide conspiracy to destroy Christianity or other religions or to rule the world is seen as more propaganda on the part of the Jews for instance and that all those who defend the Jews in such cases are either willing participants in the " conspiracy " or have been fooled by the Jews whom the anti-Semite believe control just about everything from behind the scenes.


How Urban Myths & rumors become facts

Once a story is told often enough it begins to be accepted as fact or that it must be based on some actual incident & in this case the Catholic Church seems all too willing to pass on such stories without any objective investigation of the incident to determine what did or did not occur.

" Blood Libel " - Jews killing Christian children & sometimes Christian adults for their secret rituals :

For instance as David Kertzer in his book The Popes Against The Jews explains how damaging such lies are when those in authority lend credence to them :

1840 -In Damascus Father Tommaso supposedly murdered by Jews to use his blood & flesh in secret rituals

" In 1869 there appeared the first important publication on ritual murder since the Damascus affair, a work by the French Catholic scholar Henri Gougenot des Mousseaux titled THE JEW: JUDAISM AND THE JUDAIZATION OF CHRISTIAN PEOPLES- which develops " the image of Jews as Demons seeking Christian blood. The story was a familiar one: Jews required the blood of Christian children for their Passover bread...The Talmud readers were told " not only permits the Jew, but commands him and urges him to cheat and to kill the Christian whenever he finds an occasion to do so." (p. 128 Kertzer )

And the Pope believed this was an important book revealing the true nature of the Jewish people & Judaism and so Pope " Pius IX praised the book and its author, offering Gougenot his benediction and awarding him the Cross of Commander of the Papal Order for his efforts "( p. 128 Kertzer )

" The charge that Jews secretly murdered Christian children first began to spread in the 12th century. Jews were accused of crucifying their innocent prey in demonic re-enactment of what their ancestors had done to Jews ." p. 152 Kertzer )

" The notion that they ( the Jews ) murdered such children to get their blood only began to surface later. By the thirteenth century such accusations had become so common that the German Emperor Frederick II convoked a committee of scholars and Jewish converts to Christianity to determine if Jews indeed did require Christian blood for their rites ." p. 152 Kertzer

For instance in 1475 - a Christian boy named Simon was found dead and his murder was blamed on the Jews of Trent and some 15 Jews were executed but Simon was probably murdered by a Christian Yet Pope Sixtus V in 1588 formally declared Simon a Christian Martyr and a Saint ( pp. 155- 156 Kertzer
)

Then in 1485 there is the case of " The Ritual Murder of Lorenzino of Marostica - the five year old boy was supposedly grabbed by some Jewish children who then nailed him to a tree crucified the child draining him of blood p. 128 Kertzer

Though this may seem like a dark fantasy proving the gullibility & ignorance of the people of an earlier age- Yet again Pope " Pius IX's decree, in 1867, affirmed the official Church status of the cult- 1870 declared the second Sunday after Easter each year to be the sacred holiday devoted to celebrating the little martyr" ( p. 128 Kertzer )

It is remarkable and disturbing that accusations for such ritual murders continued through to the 19th century so it was not merely a phenomenon of the Dark Ages but persisted into the Modern Age and the accusations were often made by Catholic authorities & became part of the Catholic Church's official view of the Jews -

" In 1887-1891 alone , at least twenty two different ritual murder accusations were widely reported in the press ( that is the Catholic press) ( p. 156 Kertzer )

again in 1903 in Kishinev Moldavia a boys dead body was found and the death was blamed on the Jews leading to a Pogrom in which some 49 Jews were killed , 500 injured and left 2, 000 Jewish families homeless (p. 156-158 Kertzer )


" In 1871 an Austrian Catholic Priest, August Rohling, published The Talmud Jew. Among its main themes was the claim that Jews were bound by their religion to murder Christian children for their blood ." ( p. 158 Kertzer )


" 1881 article in Civilta cattolica claimed " The Talmud commanded the Jewish race ...to kill Christians ." ( p. 159 Kertzer )

" 1899 another article appeared about " a new ritual murder in a Hungarian town where a poor seven year old orphan had been killed

" Between March and April 1892 forty four articles on the subject appeared ..." and " the priests of L'Osservatore cattolica proclaimed that " to fight the Jews- " It is a ( matter ) of defense...an act of patriotism, of charity , of religion ." ( p. 165 Kertzer )


" as late as 1933 the Vatican was still insisting that the Jews had committed ritual murders throughout the centuries ..."(p. 220 Kertzer )

So given the attitude of the Catholic Church (or other Christian Churches or those in positions of authority or those are otherwise respected as scholars or as intellectuals ) towards the Jews over the centuries & even into more recent times it is therefore more understandable why such negative attitudes & the persistence of myths such as the Blood Libel & Desecration of The Host & other such nonsense has continued . And this is a further concern about why it is important that the Catholic Church & other institutions make a full & sincere apology about such accusations & do so publicly & officially without any hesitation or obfuscation. The Catholic Church like many institutions find it difficult to admit when they have done wrong since it shows that they are no " Infallible " but were created & are operated on a daily basis by mere mortals . It is like the sex-scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church in recent decades the Catholic Church's response is one of denial & defensiveness & at times belligerence & at times attacking the victims all of which does not help its reputation. If the Catholic Church were to be honest & straightforward & sincere in trying to discover the truth in each instance & punish those who have done wrong by sending them off to live in seclusion or handing them over to the local authorities and to apologize & find ways to make amends through reparations or what have you its reputation would be restored but acting as if the Church were the victim & that it is being once again besieged by evil secular forces does not help its case at all.

also see:
ANTI-SEMITISM AND ANTI-JUDAISM WITHIN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 1st to 20th Century CE

and:
Religious Tolerance .Org

Other References:

A Moral Reckoning :The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, pub. 2002

Constantine's Sword : The Church & the Jews by James Carroll, pub. 2001

The Catholic Church By Hans Küng -Translated by John Bowden, pub. 2001

The Popes Against The Jews: The Vatican's Role in The Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, By David I. Kertzer pub. 2001

THE CRUCIFIED JEW: TWENTY CENTURIES OF ANTI-SEMITISM by Dan Cohen-Sherbok , pub.1992

The Horizon History of Christianity, by Roland H. Bainton pub.1964.

Warrant For Genocide : The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of The Elders of Zion, by Norman Cohn 1967 & revised 1996.

also see Jewish-Christian Relations.net
& of particular interest at this website on anti-Semitism in the New Testament see the article Removing Anti-Jewish Polemic
from our Christian Lectionaries: A Proposal by Norman A. Beck


see On Martin Luther's Anti-Semitism
Martin Luther's dirty little book:On the Jews and their lies A precursor to Nazism by Jim Walker

and also see:
Medieval Sourcebook: St. John Chrysostom (c.347-407) Eight Homilies Against the Jews

And from the website Catholic Answers: Just War Doctrine

and for more in depth coverage of the Holocaust & Anti-Semitism see the following websites:

The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)
Dedicated to 12 million Holocaust victims who suffered and died
at the hands of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime


Antisemitism Research Resources
This Web site provides annotated links and original material about antisemitism and the Holocaust (Shoah)


The Protocols of the Elders of Zion website Thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of Jews have died because of this infamous forgery.Rabbi Joseph Teluskin Jewish Literacy

Anti-Semitism of the "Church Fathers"

YASHANET.COM

take care,
GORD.

Friday, November 23, 2007

David Kertzer : The Popes Against the Jews - " Blood Libel "& Other Absurdities

Anyway there are those who might object to accusing the Catholic Church of having a long history of preaching & teaching & encouraging anti-Semitic views & promoting laws which discriminated against the Jews & so we should be careful that our opinions are backed up with historical facts . But the Catholic Church when it has done wrong it too is accountable like any other institution or individual . But as a religious body it appears to be unrepentant for fear of admitting to mistakes & that it is therefore not INFALLIBLE - that then is the ' Sin of Pride ' & shows a lack of humility . Of course the Catholic Church is a religious organization which claims to believe in God's love or Jesus' love & in redemption & forgiveness yet the Catholic Church seems more interested in its own survival as an institution than acting in a manner which reflects the basic teachings of Jesus of Nazareth but maybe that's beside the point as far as the Church & the average Catholic is concerned . Is Jesus' message that we build palaces & empires rather than being our brother's keeper - is Charity , Love , Kindness ,Empathy all just empty platitudes or do they mean something in this Our Dark Night of The Soul ( see St. John of the Cross) ... and as Mr. Vonnegut reminds us ...and so it goes ...

" The tendency among some representatives and the defenders of the Church to deem anti-Catholic anyone who explicitly criticizes or questions some aspect of the Church stems in part from the Church's self-definition as the embodiment of God on earth and therefore as infallible. The critic is deemed " anti-Catholic " merely because he is against the Catholic Church's own imperious claim that it and its core doctrine are not subject to criticism ." ( p. 189 , Goldhagen )

For instance here is an example of how the Catholic Church which it has at times denied was in fact treating Jews as a separate race & not just members of the religion of Judaism .The ' racist " form of anti-Semitism it was often claimed was an innovation introduced in the Modern age & proved the perniciousness of Modernity. For some anti-Semites they believed if they could put a scientific veneer on their racist views including anti-Semitism then it would be more acceptable but the underlying racism is still the foundation of their belief no matter how they present it or dress it up as it were. It is really a form of rationalization for believing what they believe.

" The Society of Jesus known as the Jesuits , established racist criteria in 1593, with its so called pure blood decree expelling all Jesuits who had Jewish ancestry, and forbidding admission to all Christians who were tainted by Jewish blood, no matter how small the quantity . " (p. 154 Goldhagen ) ( later modified for those free of Jewish blood for five generations

As David Kertzer in his book THE POPES AGAINST THE JEWS argues that modern anti-Semitism has its roots in the Catholic Church's promulgating anti-Semitism over six centuries preaching that the Jews were not just voluntary members of the religion of Judaism but were a " separate race " who were the minions of the Devil or the Anti-Christ & that they were the enemy of the Church & Christianity & God and that they were an immoral , treacherous race that practiced human sacrifices .

Kertzer like others questions whether or not Modern anti-Semitism is really to be seen as a radical departure from the traditional Christian Anti-Semitism as taught by the Catholic Church & Luther & other Protestant churches -



" Pius IX set the tone in 1864 , when he issued the historic encyclical QUANTA CURA, and with it distributed a Syllabus of Errors, a listing of the eighty principal errors of modern times condemned by the Church. Along with rejecting modern ideas, the pope embraced a conspiratorial view of the world. In an outlook that would shape Catholic attitudes for decades to come, he portrayed an embattled Church besieged by the force of evil." ( p. 126 Kertzer )

In his dark & twisted conspiracy fantasies Pope Pius IX saw the Freemasons ,Jews & the Illuminati & liberals & Marxists & even Monopolistic Capitalists as all part of this conspiracy but it was the Jews who were the real force behind all of these different modern movements .

And Pope Pius IX listed " Among the errors denounced in the accompanying Syllabus were belief in freedom of religion, in the separation of Church and state, and in the ending of ecclesiastical control of public schools...and the Syllabus rejected the doctrine that " the Roman Pontiff, can and ought to reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization ." (p.126 Kertzer )

IN 1873 - Pius IX returned to the theme that it was the " synagogue of Satan " that lay behind the world wide conspiracy . " the web of forces conspiring to destroy the Church. In this he had ample evangelical precedent for the term came from the last book of the New Testament , where twice the Jew's places of worship are termed " synagogue of Satan " ( Revelation 2.9& 3.9 ) " (p. 127 Kertzer )



anyway at the end of the last post I mentioned the journals & newspapers run by the Catholic Church which were used to spread the Vatican's message which the Vatican has every right to do . But the Vatican must be held responsible for what appears in its publications especially if the Vatican has a hands-on policy towards these publications.

" The most influential Catholic periodical anywhere in the world- founded at the request of Pope Pius IX ( died 1878 ) and supervised by the Popes and their secretaries of state - was the Jesuit biweekly, Civilta cattolica . The Jesuit journal kicked off its long campaign against the Jews in December 1880 with a series of thirty -six fiercely ant-semitic articles which were published over the following forty months ." ( p. 134 Kertzer )

It should be noted that Civilta cattolica was not completely independent from the Vatican & each edition had to be approved by the Vatican. " Each new edition was first sent to the Vatican's Secretary of State: The articles must conform to the Church's official teachings in matters of faith & morals. On questions involving relations with other states, the position espoused must agree with that adopted by the Holy See. The timing of publishing the articles must be opportune ."( p.135 Kertzer The Popes Against The Jews ) and its main task was to defend the Pope and help spread his message .
and " its influence was tremendous. " since " The network of Catholic newspapers throughout the world regarded it, along with the Vatican's daily paper, L'Osservatore romano, as the most authoritative source for Vatican perspectives on current events and quoted its articles constantly. " ( p. 135 Kertzer )

" By 1882 , Civilta cattolica was happily heralding the first eruptions of the modern anti-Semitic political movement. The newly formed groups sprang from different sources and had a variety of interests, but increasingly they were viewed as part of a common international movement of like minded people . Anti-Semitic newspapers were being founded as were anti-Semitic political clubs and parties . ...Although these groups differed in many respects- some were Catholic, some protestant, others were populists, and leftists, others conservative but anti-clerical- they were unified in identifying the Jews with the painful dislocations of late nineteenth-century society. " ( p. 141Kertzer )

As Kertzer argues that while the Catholic Church was preaching anti-Semitism it was concerned that if violence broke out against the Jews it could be seen as responsible so they used certain techniques to avoid being accused of promoting violence though it is merely a ploy and nothing more - its like a little ' legalese ' hedging :

" the standard pattern" of official articles or those approved by the Catholic Church" was to " Paint the Jews in the most horrific terms imaginable , but then add a disclaimer saying that violence against the Jew is unchristian . " (p.212 Kertzer )

From Civilta cattolica Kertzer gives numerous examples of the Anti-Semitism to be found in the journal for example :

" if this foreign Jewish race is left too free, it immediately become the persecutor , oppressor, tyrant, thief and devastator of the countries where it lives." and the twisted argument goes that " Far from persecuting the Jews such legislation served to prevent the Jews from persecuting the Christians. " ( p. 136 K ) and encouraged " the notion that Jews belonged to a separate race and the notion that the Jews were a festering foreign sore eating away at society ..." ( p. 137 Kertzer )

Over & over the Catholic Church along with other anti-Semites given their hatred of Jews view all events through their racist Mindset and so insists the Jews are not to be trusted for they will say or do whatever they think is necessary to fool the Christians & thereby achieve their ends - again the argument is such that whatever Jews do even when it appears to be for the good it is in fact just another step to promoting their secret agenda -


" In an article in 1890 in Civilta Cattolica entitled " The Jews - Why They Remain Jews" the author argues that " the Jews ...had long ago stopped observing Mosaic law and now followed only the execrable Talmud. They had rejected and murdered the Messiah and believed that they were themselves divinely ordained to rule the world ." ( p. 143 Kertzer ) and the article continues that as the Jews were given more rights and freedoms " They began ' a remorseless constant war against the Christian religion and especially against Catholicism...and began " an unbridled campaign of usury , monopolies ,and thievery of every sort, to the detriment of those among whom they have enjoyed and continue to enjoy civil liberties. " and the article concluded that " brotherhood and peace were and are merely pretexts to enable them to prepare- with the destruction of Christianity, if possible and with the undermining of the Christian nations- the messianic reign that they believe the Talmud promises them " ( p. 143, Kertzer )

"in another series of articles in Civilta cattolica it was claimed that " The Jews' formed a foreign nation in the nations where they resided , a sworn enemy of the nations well being...Although they may live in France , in Germany , in England , they never become French, or Germasn or English but remain Jews and nothing but Jews". and that " History ...is full of betrayal at the hands of the Jews ." (p. 144 Kertzer )

Or for example Father Rondin in an article in Civilta cattolica expresses the view of the Jews as a multi- armed or tentacled octopus which is operating everywhere at once to destroy Christianity & Western culture :

" The Jewish nation " does not work but traffics in the property and work of others, it does not produce, but lives and grows fat with the products of the arts and industry of the nations that give it refuge. It is the giant octopus that with its oversize tentacles envelops everything. It has its stomach in the banks...and its suction cups everywhere: in contracts and monopolies...in postal services and telegraph companies, in shipping and in the railroads, in the town treasuries and in state finance. " (p. 145 Kertzer )

Yet " fearful of being called anti-Semitic the contributor to the Catholic journal argues:
" We do not write with any intention of sparking or fomenting any anti-Semitism in our country. Rather we seek to sound an alarm for Italians so that they defend themselves against those who, in order to impoverish them, dominate them , and make them their slaves, interfere with ( their ) faith, corrupt their morals, and suck their blood ." (p. 146 Kertzer )

another " 1897 article warned that the Jews were working towards their goal -world domination " ( p. 146 Kertzer )

And further in another twisted piece of perverted logic in the 1890s when public " Sympathy for the Jews arose after brutal attacks on the Jews- " Why such concern ? " - The Catholic church argued that the savage attacks on Jews were prompted by the Jews themselves- they are so diabolical as to allow some Jews to be killed to raise sympathy among non-Jews" ( p. 147, Kertzer )

And to continue with the twisted perverse logic to the point of absolute absurdity :

" The fact that recent pogroms in Russia had stirred up so much sympathy for the Jews, the Vatican journalist argued , showed that they could only have been engineered by the Jews themselves ." ( p. 147 Kertzer )

It is disturbing & mind boggling how so many people in Europe & elsewhere could believe such nonsense . It would be funny but the consequences to the Jews based on such spurious arguments was in fact deadly - a matter of life & death.

also see:
ANTI-SEMITISM AND ANTI-JUDAISM WITHIN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 1st to 20th Century CE

and:
Religious Tolerance .Org

Other References:

A Moral Reckoning :The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, pub. 2002

Constantine's Sword : The Church & the Jews by James Carroll, pub. 2001

The Catholic Church By Hans Küng -Translated by John Bowden, pub. 2001

The Popes Against The Jews: The Vatican's Role in The Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, By David I. Kertzer pub. 2001

THE CRUCIFIED JEW: TWENTY CENTURIES OF ANTI-SEMITISM by Dan Cohen-Sherbok , pub.1992

The Horizon History of Christianity, by Roland H. Bainton pub.1964.

Warrant For Genocide : The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of The Elders of Zion, by Norman Cohn 1967 & revised 1996.

also see Jewish-Christian Relations.net
& of particular interest at this website on anti-Semitism in the New Testament see the article Removing Anti-Jewish Polemic
from our Christian Lectionaries: A Proposal by Norman A. Beck


see On Martin Luther's Anti-Semitism
Martin Luther's dirty little book:On the Jews and their lies A precursor to Nazism by Jim Walker

and also see:
Medieval Sourcebook: St. John Chrysostom (c.347-407) Eight Homilies Against the Jews

And from the website Catholic Answers: Just War Doctrine

take care,
GORD.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

FAITH , CERTAINTY , PARANOIA & ANTI-SEMITISM

Pope Urban II 1095 & the Council of Clairmont- The First Crusade Announced to the Crowd that:
DIEU LE VEULT " GOD WILLS IT "


Chrysotom- about the Jews he said

" When animals have been fattened by having all they want to eat, they get stubborn and hard to manage when animals are unfit for work, they are marked for slaughter, and this is the very thing which the Jews have experienced. By making themselves unfit for work, they have become ready for slaughter. This is why Christ said ' as for my enemies who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before (me) " p. 213 Carroll


" St. Ambrose declared himself ready to burn synagogues " that there might not be a place where Christ is denied " A synagogue he said is" a haunt of infidels, a home of the impious , a hiding place of madmen, under the damnation of God Himself." ...to order the rebuilding of such a place, once it has been burned, was an act of treason to the faith . " ( p. 207 Carroll )

" Why was he ( Pope Pius XII ) able to " excommunicate all communists in the world in 1949...but not excommunicate a single German or non-German who served Hitler- or even the Catrholic born Hitler himself-as the million-fold willing executioners of the Jewish people?" ( p.49 A Moral Reckoning ,Goldhagen )

" Viewed historically, then, the Holocaust, perpetrated by antisemitic Germans who were aided by antisemitic Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles, French, and others, should be regarded as but the largest and most comprehensive in a long history of annihilative onslaughts. " ( p. 36 Goldhagen )


To summarize part of Goldhagen's argument he concludes that the Catholic Church , the Pope & the Vatican did not instruct Catholics not to participate in the oppression and elimination of the Jews because they believed it was not wrong legally or morally to oppress, segregate, deport or kill Jews & if this was so then Catholics participating were not therefore endangering their immortal souls . To understand this we need to examine the history of the Church & how Christianity which at the beginning was a pacifist religion which then changed or evolved into an aggressively militant & powerful organization. As the saying goes " power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely".

As I have mentioned previously when you add the concept of " Papal Infallibility " then any policy or theological decision is beyond dispute since the Pope is God's Vicar on earth & what he proclaims must be what God would proclaim . There is then no room for human error or correcting past decisions - if the Church preached against the Jews in 1097 as being the children of Satan then this fact was true then and true always & is therefore an eternal truth . Was the extermination of the Jews therefore God's will and part of God's ultimate plan which the Catholic Church would be duty bound to carry out or facilitate as much as it possibly could.

It is this certainty of one's beliefs & that one's actions are beyond questioning which can have such disastrous consequences leading to mass murder & untold suffering as occurred in the Holocaust . This was not just true about the Catholic Church but also of other institutions, governments & individuals who somehow came to believed with " absolute certainty " that they too like Hitler were doing God's Work or that the elimination of the Jews was for the betterment of Humankind or that racial purity was absolutely essential.

Early Christians & the Jews;
Temple destroyed 70 AD & the notion of the Persecution of The Christian Church

From the beginning Christians saw themselves as being unjustly persecuted which had some truth to it but once the Christians got the upper hand & controlled the Roman Empire they rather than showing the tolerance they had wished for themselves instead they became the persecutors while at the same time continuing to claim to be the besieged & the persecuted.

The Christian persecution complex as it were continues to one degree or another to the present day. Given this siege mentality it is no wonder that the Christian Church in its paranoia began to imagine powerful enemies all around them from the ancient Pagans who were eventually wiped out to the Jews to the Humanist & liberals & democratic forces of later centuries .The heretics were seen as the enemy within who were not merely expressing a difference of opinion on theological points but were agents of the devil who had to rooted out . The Jews were seen by the Church as the eternal enemy who insisted on living amongst the Christians in order it was believed to undermine & eventually destroy Christianity.

But to the Christians they were not merely being besieged by mortal enemies but that these enemies of the Church were acting on behalf of the devil or Anti-Christ . Once a group of people are demonized in this way it becomes easier to abuse & even kill them since they are already damned or can be characterized as being " soulless ". But the early Christians were pacifists so Augustine developed the Just War Theory which later could be used to allow for fighting wars & killing all who are characterized as enemies of the Church & God .

The Jews were singled out from the beginning of Christianity as agents of the devil or of the Anti-Christ. There were of course problems with Islam but the Muslim threat to European Christianity ended by the eight or ninth century & was definitively ended at the latest with the Reconquista of Spain in 1492 . The Christian Crusades as such were for the most part an attempt on the part of the Christians to extend their borders & influence throughout the Middle East & to wipe Islam off of the face of the earth if they could but the Crusades into the Holy Land was a series of miscalculations, missteps & disasters.

As James Carroll points out the Christians could not accept that the Jews were simply not convinced that Jesus was the Messiah & that they continued on with their own religion & traditions , rather the Christians believed there was something nefarious & malevolent going on and so :

"...in this post -temple period, only the synagogue-based movement generally associated with the Pharisees had survived to compete with the Jesus Movement for the legacy of Israel. When these rabbinic Jews , who were building their identity around the Scriptures, rejected claims being made by the Christian Jews, the Christians felt threatened because those same Scriptures functioned as their proof. This conflict found its way into the second, third , fourth,iterations of the story Christians were telling each other and newcomers which is how the Pharisees came to be pressed into service as the main antagonists of Jesus even though they had been no such thing ." ( p. 562-563 -Carroll )

And further the Christians chose to believe the Jews had plotted against Jesus & continued to plot against the Christians down through the centuries :

" So as Christians felt themselves and their movement to be mortally challenged by the refusal of their fellow Jews to affirm their Messianic understanding of Jesus , it was a small step to lay the actual death of Jesus at the feet not so much of Rome as of these rejecting Jews. Christians accounted for the the rejection they were experiencing by making a version of that rejection- " his own people received him not "- central to the experience of Jesus, not just in his passion but throughout his life ". ( p. 563 Carroll )

And as Goldhagen in his book A Moral Reckoning argues the Christian Church was not satisfied with living in peace within its own sphere of influence but believed that it had a right & a duty i.e. the Great Commission, to spread its message & its authority throughout the world by force if necessary :

" For centuries the Catholic Church, this pan-European institution of world hegemonic aspirations, the central spiritual, moral, and instructional institution of European Civilization, harbored antisemitism at its core, as an integral part of its doctrine, its theology, and its liturgy. It did so with the divine justification of the Christian Bible that Jews were Christ-Killers minions of the devil." ( p.37 Goldhagen )

And as Hans Kung argues in his History of The Church that the original Christians were pacifists but this changed over the centuries as the Church became more authoritarian in its outlook & more militant :

" Contrary to the tradition of the early church , there were wars of conversion, wars against pagans, wars against heretics: indeed in a complete perversion of the cross, there were crusades, even against fellow Christians." ( pp. 90-91Kung )

and:

Augustine " thought that even violence against heretics and schismatics could be theologically justified...(to ) " compel those outside to come in." ..."Thus Augustine , who could speak so convincingly of the love of God and human love , who defined God as " love itself ", fatally became the key witness for the theological justification of forcible conversions, the inquisitions , and the holy war against deviants of all kinds-" ( p.47 Hans Kung )

and as James Carroll says about the Church becoming militant :

Augustine " If the church was to direct the state, the state was to uphold the church, even to the point of using coercion in the interests of true faith " ( p. 134 Horizon History )

" In one notable instance eighteen campaigns were required to bring the Saxons to Baptism and to submission". ( p. 135,Horizon )

Augustine developed The Doctrine of The Just War whereby under certain conditions Christians could go to war out of self-defense or for the defense of the Faith & the Church .

" The code of the Just War called for good faith with the enemy, regard for non-combatants , respect for hostages and prisoners. But all such restraints were abandoned in dealing with the infidel. The warrant for this view of warfare was found in the biblical account of the conquest of Canaan by Joshua " ( p. 174, Bainton - Horizon History )

And St. Bernard explained that " The soldier may securely Kill, Kill for Christ and more securely die. He benefits himself if he dies and Christ if he Kills. To Kill a malefactor is not homicide but malicide ( the killing of the bad ). In the death of the Pagan the Christian is glorified because Christ is glorified ." ( p. 194, Bainton)

In this way the Christian Church could justify the unnecessary & brutal Crusades to attempt to conquer & convert or wipe out the Muslims & they believed they were justified in the killing of heretics & oppressing & murdering the Jews.

So for some eight hundred years or more to the present The Catholic Church preached against the Jews & preached & passed laws to oppress the Jews-

" The Fourth Ecumenical Council of the Lateran in 1215 convened by Innocent III...passed the resolutions against the Jews...the Jews were to wear special dress to isolate them , were prohibited from holding public office or going out on Good Friday, and had to pay a compulsory tax to the local Christian clergy . As already under Gregory VII, so too under Innocent III, papalism and anti-Judaism went hand in hand." p. 88 Hans Kung

Through its official journals & other publications the Catholic Church continued its attack on the Jews & as we shall see even after the Holocaust The Catholic Church remained unrepentant .

1800-1945

The Vatican's authoritative magazine - Civilta Cattolica-published in the 19th century onward reflected the views of the Popes. Each issue of this magazine had to be approved by members of the Vatican at the highest levels ie the Secretay of State or the Pope himself to ensure it was theologically sound & did not contradict the views of the Pope. So any articles published in the Civilta cattolica was considered authoritative & representing the Vatican & the Pontiff .Many articles over the years were approved which were decidedly anti-Semitic claiming that the Jews were behind all of the evils of the Modern age from liberalism to human rights to anarchism & nihilism to communism to democracy & anti-monarchism & secularism ie that there should be a seperation between church & state .

" In Civilta cattolica, " the boundary seems very fluid between the Church's anti-Judaism and the ' average ' antisemitism of the period. " p.82

" Even a sampling of the hate filled charges against the Jews that Civilta cattolica was printing in the 1920s and 1930s show them to be Nazi-like. In 1922 it declared that " the world is sick...Everywhere people are in the grip of inexplicable convulsions .. Who is responsible ? " The Synagogue." Jewish intruders control the principal threat to world order, Russia and the Communist International " In 1936 after the Nuremberg Laws had been published and the Jews had been under sustained assault in Germany for some years, it echoed standard Nazi antisemitic rhetoric in accusing the Jews of being " uniquely endowed with the qualities of parasites and destroyers " as pulling the levers of both capitalism and communism, in a pincer assault to control the entire world ." p. 82 Goldhagen



more to come next time-

GORD.

also see:
ANTI-SEMITISM AND ANTI-JUDAISM WITHIN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 1st to 20th Century CE

and:
Religious Tolerance .Org

and for in depth coverage of The Holocaust with links see :The Holocaust History Project
"The Holocaust History Project is a free archive of documents, photographs, recordings, and essays regarding the Holocaust, including direct refutation of Holocaust-denial."

Other References:

A Moral Reckoning :The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, pub. 2002

Constantine's Sword : The Church & the Jews by James Carroll, pub. 2001

The Catholic Church By Hans Küng -Translated by John Bowden, pub. 2001

The Popes Against The Jews: The Vatican's Role in The Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, By David I. Kertzer pub. 2001

THE CRUCIFIED JEW: TWENTY CENTURIES OF ANTI-SEMITISM by Dan Cohen-Sherbok , pub.1992

The Horizon History of Christianity, by Roland H. Bainton 1964.

also see Jewish-Christian Relations.net
& of particular interest at this website on anti-Semitism in the New Testament see the article Removing Anti-Jewish Polemic
from our Christian Lectionaries: A Proposal by Norman A. Beck


see On Martin Luther's Anti-Semitism
Martin Luther's dirty little book:On the Jews and their lies A precursor to Nazism by Jim Walker

and :
Warrant For Genocide : The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of The Elders of Zion, by Norman Cohn 1967 & revised 1996.

and also see:

Medieval Sourcebook: St. John Chrysostom (c.347-407) Eight Homilies Against the Jews


And from the website Catholic Answers: Just War Doctrine

"Augustine (A.D. 354-430) provided The Just War Doctrine..In the intervening centuries the theory has been refined, but its framework remains as he gave it.

JUST WAR DOCTRINE TODAY

The most authoritative and up-to-date expression of just war doctrine is found in paragraph 2309 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It says:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

* the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
* all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
* there must be serious prospects of success;
* the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

Monday, November 19, 2007

SHOAH & THE RIGHT TO JUDGE THE GUILTY

(The ) confession and apology of Pop Hadrian VI " ...delivered into the hands of the Diet of Nuremberg in 1522 a far clearer confession of sins than John Paul II at the beginning of the twenty-first century :
" We are well aware that for some years now many abominable things have taken place at the Holy See: abuses in matters spiritual, transgressions of the commandments; indeed that all has turned for the worse. So it is not surprising that the sickness has spread from the head to the members, from the pope to the prelates. All of us , prelates and clergy have departed rightway . "p. 133 Hans Kung


" ...that Catholic history, while not causing the Shoah, was a necessary, unbroken thread in the rise of genocidal anti-Semitism as well as the source of the Church's failure to openly oppose it . "
p. 603 Carroll


The " Blood Libel " was the claim of the Catholic Church til recently that Jews kidnapped Christian children and then killed them using the blood of the victims in secret Jewish rituals & this was a staple of Catholic anti-Semitism from the 12th century on to the Catholic Journal " Civilta Cattolica " published in the 19th century & up til the Second World War which remained virulently anti-Semitic.

James Carroll claims that the Jews killing of Christ which is usually referred to as " Deicide " could be viewed as the first shedding of Christian Blood :

" One might say , indeed that the first Blood Libel appears in the foundational Christian story of the death of Jesus. Thus the Church- absolving wall between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism teeters at its base, just as the wall moves unsteadily between the sadism of Christian mobs and the nonviolent but contemptuous teaching of the Church establishment . " p. 274 Carroll



In spite of the injustices committed against the Jews under the Papacy of Pope Pius IX the Vatican began the process of making him into a saint & so we can question the seriousness & sincerity of the Vatican in regards to what now seems its half-hearted apology for the wrongs committed against the Jews by the Catholic Church & its priests for over 1700 years as James Carroll points out :

" September 3, 2000 the last pope to maintain the Roman ghetto,Pius IX ( 1846-1878), a pope who referred to Jews as " dogs "was beatified by John Paul II..." p. 380


As Eli Wiesel has said about the Catholic Church & Christians who were silent or took an active part in the Holocaust :

"How is one to explain that neither Hitler nor Himmler was ever excommunicated by the Church? That Pius XII never thought it necessary, not to say indispensable, to condemn Auschwitz and Treblinka?

That among the S.S. a large proportion were believers who remained faithful to their Christian ties to the end?

That there were killers who went to confession between massacres. And that they all came from Christian families and had received a Christian education?

How explain that the Christian in them did not make their arms tremble as they shot at children or their conscience bridle as they shoved their naked, beaten victims into the factories of death?"

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor



The rise of Hitler & the Nazis did not occur in a vacuum but within an historical context & within a cultural tradition of intolerance especially in the form of anti-Semitism as it was fostered & promulgated by the Catholic Church & other Christian Churches . The Nazis hatred of the Jews was not new but was ,in fact, part of the European Christian tradition. There are those who wish to argue that Nazi anti-Semitism was an aberration . The argument is somewhat like claiming that Hitler & the Nazis were " evil demonic beings " who had ascended from Hell to commit those atrocities or that some " Demonic Force " had spread throughout Germany & much of Europe which led to the deaths of six million Jews & some six million non-jews ie. Gypsies, slavs, homosexuals , socialists, communists, liberals & others in the concentration camps who were considered the enemies of the Third Reich & of Christian Western Civilization.

For instance one of the arguments made is that Hitler was insane & was a madman & did not in any way represent to some extent the beliefs of European Christianity . Another part of the argument is that it is only the most extreme Nazis who are responsible for the atrocities committed by the Third Reich. But we know that large numbers of people across Europe either willingly took part in these atrocities or who knew what was going on & yet silently stood by & took no action . When examining the details of the deportation of Jews from the various countries occupied by the Nazi Germans . It is quite disturbing to realize how willing so many nations were to help the Nazis round-up & deport the Jews in their country with very little concern for what would eventually become of those Jews who were deported. The fact is that anti-Semitism was a common belief throughout Europe or to put it another way it was a common European characteristic or " trait " from the British Isles to Norway & Finland & Russia to Hungary to France & Belgium to Poland & the Balkans through to Italy to Spain & Portugal to Greece to Gibraltar . But the people of Europe prefer to characterize Nazism & Fascism & anti-Semitism as wholly the creations of the extremists of Germany & Italy. Yet Hitler & Mussolini were often depicted not just by Germans & Italians but by many Europeans as a new hope & the salvation of Christian European Civilization. Yet from early on it was decided for political reasons that the guilt for these atrocities & especially for the Holocaust be characterized as wholly a German issue of certain extremist within Germany rather than an issue which needed to be dealt with by large numbers of Germans but also a large number of Europeans who had taken part or who were silent or who claimed or feigned ignorance of the atrocities committed. One of the few exceptions during that time was the government & people of Denmark who resisted the Germans & managed to save a majority of the Danish-Jews . In doing so the Nazis did not retaliate in a wholesale slaughter of Danes . Other European countries to defend themselves after the war against claims that they should have done more to save the Jews & others marked for death claimed they had no choice but to go along with whatever the German Nazi conquerors ordered or they would face annihilation or they claimed ignorance of the death camps .

As Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in his book " A Moral Reckoning: The Role of The Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair " points out :

" The facts: During the Nazi period many ordinary Germans were antisemites, did support the eliminationist persecution of the Jews, and did commit mass murder. The German government, German companies, and many ordinary Germans did enslave people on a vast scale. Swiss banks ( and institutions in other countries ) did steal from the victims and did help to finance the Germans' apocalyptic onslaught . Some leading German historians served the Nazi Regime, justifying with their work , among other things, its policy of foreign conquest and subjugation which they knew included mass murder- and their students, some of the most prominent historians in Germany today kept it buried . The Catholic Church was a source of an enormous amount of antisemitism and acted badly towards Jews in many ways. " (p. 13 Goldhagen )


And the question arises about whether we have a right to judge those who in one way or another acquiesced & took an active role in the " Exterminationist Persecution " policies of the German Nazis & their affiliates throughout Eastern & Western Europe .
If one is a moral relativist extremist then all values are merely relative & who knows what is right or wrong or good or evil - such a view means that a common criminal a murderer for instance may commit an act such as murder yet we have no right to judge them that is to arrest them put them on trial & if found guilty have them imprisoned or executed - in the same way these days we hear the Bush Regime & its defenders going to great lengths to defend the use of Kidnapping & torture because the term is rather vague & according to American attorneys is difficult to define & that in some situations torture should be permitted & that the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq or elsewhere is acceptable & is termed under the Euphemism of " collateral damage " & the destruction of a country's infrastructure , its roads , hospitals, schools , Mosques , its economy its culture is all justified to punish or take revenge on the Iraqi people for the 9/11 terrorist attack & now for any resistance by the people of Iraq against the foreign occupation of their country by the Americans & British who drop bombs indiscriminately on town, villages or cities - or as was said about the Roman Empire " Where the Romans make a wasteland or desert they call it peace "

But as Daniel Goldhagen argues that :
" It is our right to judge ...it is our duty to judge. If any event cries out for a concerted moral reckoning of those involved, it is the Holocaust- which is why those who even implicitly suggest as much are attacked by those who know how devastating the judgements ought to be. If there is any institution and set of people who are fit to be the subjects of such an investigation, and who themselves ought to welcome it , it is the Catholic Church and its clergy. This is so mainly because of the Church's self-understanding as a moral institution and its prominent contemporary role as a forceful moral voice in public discourse. The Church itself, Catholics, the victims, and those who care about each of them, all stand in need of a moral reckoning with the the Catholic Church . This appears obvious. Yet, when it comes to the Holocaust people are skittish about judging the Church and its members . Why ? ( Goldhagen ,p. 15)

Now I would say that Goldhagen & James Carroll or Hans Kung & others are naive to believe that an institution as powerful as influential as the Catholic Church which has proclaimed the " Infalliblity " of the Pope could ever come clean as it were about its past mistakes & crimes against humanity . If the Popes are infallible then one cannot question what they have or have not done since all they do is divinely inspired or directed as it were by God himself . As Pope Urban II in 1095 at the Council of Clairmont in proclaiming the First Crusade argued Dieu Le Veult - " GOD WILLS IT " & that in the end sealed the argument - if god wills it then who is to contradict not just the Pontiff but also God as they are one & the same .And this attitude existed from the earliest years of the Christian Church in dealing with the various heretics & establishing the Creed of the Church to the mass killings of the Pagans who refused to convert to the Crusades against the the Muslims who like the Jews were depicted as soldiers of the anti-Christ who had to be exterminated & the numerous Crusades against other non-Christians & those Christians who rejected some part of the official Creed or the authority of Christian Rome which lasted down to the 18th Century to the Inquisitons & the killings of Jews from the time of the Crusades to the Pogroms & massacres of the Jews down to the Holocaust .

Medieval Sourcebook:Saint John Chrysostom (c.347-407) :Eight Homilies Against the Jews


The Guilt of Christianity Towards the Jewish People by Sister Pista Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, Darmstadt / Germany As Sister Pista argues that the Church must come to terms with its role in encouraging anti-Semitism & the role of the Church in the Holocaust :

After the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed, the question was raised: How could it have happened? The shocking truth is that the Holocaust was the culmination of centuries of hatred and violent persecution, often inspired by Christian theology.

I feel deeply convicted as a Christian but also as a German, for as early as the Middle Ages Jews were mercilessly killed by the thousand in German cities. Mother Basilea Schlink, founder of our community in Darmstadt, Germany, writes movingly in her book Israel, My Chosen People of how those who attack God's people attack Him, for Israel is the apple of His eye.

Considering the atrocities committed against the Jews in the name of Christ throughout much of Christianity's 2000-year history, how can we celebrate the millennium without first expressing our deep sorrow over the past in a spirit of repentance? By our unchristian attitude and behaviour we have brought shame upon the name of Jesus, making it offensive to His own people, the Jews … And so today it is our prayer that Christians all over the world will be inspired to commemorate the millennium with a service of repentance in a spirit of unity, acknowledging our common Christian heritage.


and:

Commemorating 2000 Years of Christianity by Sister Pista at the Christian Celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jerusalem, Oct. 97.

After the age of the apostles, the theory arose that God was through with the Jews, that the Church was the New Israel and that the Jews were being punished for the crime of killing God. Later, when Christianity became the state religion, this theology was used as the basis for anti-Jewish policies In time, the Jews were blamed for every calamity. A case in point is the Black Death, said to have been caused by the Jews poisoning the wells. In the name of Jesus unimaginable atrocities were committed: Jews were humiliated, deprived of their rights, baptised by force, burnt at the stake -- thousands upon thousands of them. Christian festivals, such as Easter, were sometimes chosen as a time to attack Jews. While burning the Jewish population in the synagogue in Jerusalem, the Crusaders sang 'Christ, We Adore Thee'.

Whether it was the Crusades, or, more recently, the pogroms, or, most horrific of all, the Holocaust -- Christian anti-Semitism paved the way for these atrocities. Is it any wonder that the name of Jesus is not loved by Jews -- and that the cross is, for them, a symbol of persecution?

The truth is that the Jewish people have suffered more violence from Christians in the last 2000 years than from any other group. As modern-day Christians we all share in the responsibility for the continuous persecution of the Jews down through the ages. Regardless of our Christian tradition or denomination, our spiritual roots go back to the Early Church.


also see:
ANTI-SEMITISM AND ANTI-JUDAISM WITHIN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 1st to 20th Century CE

and:
Religious Tolerance .Org

Other References:

A Moral Reckoning :The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, pub. 2002

Constantine's Sword : The Church & the Jews by James Carroll, pub. 2001

The Catholic Church By Hans Küng -Translated by John Bowden, pub. 2001

The Popes Against The Jews: The Vatican's Role in The Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, By David I. Kertzer pub. 2001

THE CRUCIFIED JEW: TWENTY CENTURIES OF ANTI-SEMITISM by Dan Cohen-Sherbok , pub.1992

also see Jewish-Christian Relations.net
& of particular interest at this website on anti-Semitism in the New Testament see the article Removing Anti-Jewish Polemic
from our Christian Lectionaries: A Proposal by Norman A. Beck


see On Martin Luther's Anti-Semitism
Martin Luther's dirty little book:On the Jews and their lies A precursor to Nazism by Jim Walker


take care,
GORD.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Hitler , Martin Luther :The Roots of Anti-Semitism

In my last post I was discussing the role the Catholic Church & Christianity had in encouraging , & teaching anti-Semitism from the time of the creation of The Roman Catholic Church to the modern era & that the Catholic Church & other Christian churches continued to preach anti-Semitism even after the rise of Mussolini & Hitler. This is not merely an opinion but rather historical facts. Anti-Semitism can be seen as an on-going theme throughout the history of Christianity.

In order to shift the blame there are many Christians especially Evangelical Fundamentalists & the Religious Right who claim that modern anti-Semitism was a creation of " liberalism " . They further contend that yes there were outbreaks of Anti-Semitism in Europe over the centuries but these were aberrations & not the result of the teachings of the Christian Churches.
They characterize the anti-Semitism of the Nazis & Fascists as being a form of atheism, humanism , liberalism & Neo-Paganism .

As is shown the laws passed by the Nazis restricting the freedom of Jews were for the most part merely a continuation of the various restrictions placed on the Jews in Europe by the Catholic Church & those in power who acquiesced to the demands of the Vatican or to other Christian authorities.

The Christian Churches though usually stopped short of endorsing the complete extermination of the Jews . The Popes & the Vatican believed that the Jews were to " survive but not thrive " and so the conditions of the Jewish people was to be one of misery & despair & if they began to thrive it was the duty of the Church & all Christians in positions of authority to enforce laws against the Jews to reduce them once again to poverty .The Jews were made to live in Ghettoes which were locked at night, they were to wear distinctive clothing & were prevented from holding public office or pursuing various forms of livelihoods or professions & were not permitted to socialize with Christians . For centuries the Talmud & other sacred writings of the Jewish people were placed on the " index of forbidden books" & from time to time the authorities would hunt down copies of the Talmud & such & have them burned in the public square.

As mentioned anti-Semitism was not exclusive to the Roman Catholic Church but became a basic ingredient as it were of Protestant Theology as can be seen for instance in the writings of Martin Luther who is considered the founder of Protestantism .

Martin Luther depicts the Jews as a vile race which is responsible for killing Jesus & for refusing to convert to Christianity & that further in their teachings & their actions the Jews are the enemy of Christianity & wish to gain power over Christians & to undermine & destroy Christianity as they are the children of Satan . Martin Luther also believes in the " Blood Libel " that the Jews kill Christian children & use the blood of these children in their secret ceremonies .
But how far would Martin Luther go in persecuting the Jews is somewhat uncertain as he talks about showing " mercy " & then talks about destroying all the Synagogues & Jewish religious texts & the homes of Jews & goes further to take all their property & give it back ( in his view ) to the Christians & that they be expelled from all Christian lands but not all killed since it is possible that a few might be saved from the " fires" of Hell .

Here are some excerpts from Martin Luther's book:
On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543 Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)Translated by Martin H. Bertram which can be read on line -

What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames.


First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them.

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them the fact that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them.

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb.

Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let them stay at home

Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping.


I recommend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen. 3 [:19]). For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting., and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.


But if we are afraid that they might harm us or our wives, children, servants, cattle, etc., if they had to serve and work for us -- for it is reasonable to assume that such noble lords of the world and venomous, bitter worms are not accustomed to working and would be very reluctant to humble themselves so deeply before the accursed Goyim -- then let us emulate the common sense of other nations such as France, Spain, Bohemia, etc., compute with them how much their usury has extorted from us, divide, divide this amicably, but then eject them forever from the country. For, as we have heard, God's anger with them is so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!

We cannot help it that they do not share our belief. It is impossible to force anyone to believe. However. we must avoid confirming them in their wanton lying, slandering. cursing, and defaming. Nor dare we make ourselves partners in their devilish ranting and raving by shielding and protecting them, by giving them food, drink, and shelter, or by other neighborly acts, especially since they boast so proudly and despicably when we do help and serve them that God has ordained them as lords and us as servants.

Thus the Jews, our guests, also treat us; for we are their hosts. They rob and fleece us and hang about our necks, these lazy weaklings and indolent bellies; they swill and feast, enjoy good times in our homes, and by way of reward they curse our Lord Christ, our churches, our princes, and all of us, threatening us and unceasingly wishing us death and every evil. Just ponder this: How does it happen that we poor Christians nourish and enrich such an idle and lazy people, such a useless, evil pernicious people, such blasphemous enemies of God, receiving nothing in return but their curses and defamation and every misfortune they may inflict on us or wish us? Indeed, we are as blind and unfeeling clods in this respect as are the Jews in their unbelief, to suffer such great tyranny from these vicious weaklings, and not perceive and sense that they are our lords, yes, our mad tyrants, and that we are their captives and subjects. Meanwhile they wail that they are our captives, and at the same time mock us -- as though we had to take this from them!

..the Jews, the bloodthirsty foes of our Christian and human name, in order to earn heaven thereby. But that the Jews enmesh us, harass us, torment and distress us poor Christians in every way with the above mentioned devilish and detestable deeds, this they want us to tolerate, and this is a good Christian deed, especially if there is any money involved (which they have filched and stolen from us)...

...these Jews are a brood of vipers and children of the devil, that is, people who will accord us the same benefits as does their father, the devil...

I have read and heard many stories about the Jews which agree with this judgment of Christ, namely, how they have poisoned wells, made assassinations, kidnaped children, as related before. I have heard that one Jew sent another Jew, and this by means of a Christian, a pot of blood, together with a barrel of wine, in which when drunk empty, a dead Jew was found. There are many other similar stories. For their kidnaping of children they have often been burned at the stake or banished (as we already heard).

Now let me commend these Jews sincerely to whoever feels the desire to shelter and feed them, to honor them, to be fleeced, robbed, plundered, defamed, vilified, and cursed by them, and to suffer every evil at their hands -- these venomous serpents and devil's children, who are the most vehement enemies of Christ our Lord and of us all.

There was never a viler people than they, who with their lying, blaspheming, cursing, maligning, their idolatry, their robbery, usury, and all vices accuse us Christians and an mankind more before God and the world than any others. By no means do they pray for us sinners as the text says; they curse us most vehemently, as we proved earlier from Lyra and Burgensis. Their great slothfulness and malice prompt these blasphemous scoundrels to mock Scripture, God, and all the world with their impudent glosses. This they do in accord with their merit and true worth.


see On Martin Luther's Anti-Semitism
Martin Luther's dirty little book:On the Jews and their lies A precursor to Nazism by Jim Walker

Youtube Martin Luther & Hitler



SHOAH
Hitler "I am doing the Lord's Work"

About This next Video
from: Church of Atheism at YouTube


Hitler, like Luther, was raised as a Roman Catholic and in Mein Kampf he wrote "Therefore, I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's Work."

At a Nazi celebration in 1926 he noted "Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews ... The work that Christ started but could not finish, I -- Adolf Hitler -- will conclude."

In a Reichstag speech in 1938, Hitler again echoed the religious origins of his crusade. "I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work."


The songs are 'Prisoner 562' and 'Song Of Choice'
sung by Dick Gaughan:
Dick Gaughan's Website




also see: American Atheists
&
The Rational Response Squad

Take care,
GORD.

Friday, November 16, 2007

HOLOCAUST/ SHOAH & THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Trailer for Costa Gavras' film " AMEN " which focuses on the Catholic Church & its Silence & possible Complicity in the Holocaust/ Shoah - Was anti-Semitism a part of the basic foundations & theology of the Church & of Christianity that the Christian Churches were for the most part unconcerned about the fate of the European Jews?






It seems odd that there are those Christians who would have us believe that anti-Semitism was invented by the Nazis or that anti-Semitism was a creation of Modernity when this is not at all the case. Anti-Semitism existed for centuries before the Nazis & before the modern era . For centuries the Catholic Church & later the Protestant churches preached & taught a rather vicious form of anti-Semitism which can be seen as leading to the Holocaust. For instance at the beginning of the First Crusade in 1097 the first acts of the Christian Crusaders on their way to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims was to massacre thousands of European Jews & so began centuries of violent anti-Semitism .

As James Carroll points out the Catholic Church & the Pope believed Hitler & the Nazi Party were just what was needed to reverse what the Church believed to be the evil & pernicious philosophies of " Modernity " such as pluralism, freedom of the press , tolerance , human rights , personal freedom & freedom of conscience & the dangers of Communism, socialism & liberalism which were all antithetical to the theology & hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

The most notable of the Nazi-friendly Catholic theologians was Karl Adam of Tubingen. His Spirit of Catholicism, published in the mid 1920s, an important text in my own training forty years later,( writes Carroll ) was a prophetic statement of the new idea of the Church as a community. That Adam was perhaps the most notable Catholic theologian of his generation is why it matters that it was also he who said that the Nazi movement and the Catholic Church complement each other like nature and grace.As for Hitler, Adam wrote in 1933,

" Now he stands before us , he whom the voices of our poets and sages have summoned, the liberator of the German genius. He has moved the blind-folds from our eyes and , through all political , economic, social, and confessional covers, has enabled us to see and love again the one essential thing: our unity of blood, our German self, the Homo Germanus. " James Carroll Constantine's Sword p. 518

As James Carroll explains the Catholic Church even as late as 1999 was still characterizing the changes in our culture as being at odds with the Doctrine & Creed of the Catholic Church:

" In 1999 a European Synod of Bishops concluded that:

Pluralism has taken the place of Marxism in cultural dominance, a pluralism which is undifferentiated and tending toward skepticism...In the context of the present increasing pluralism in Europe, the synod also intends to proclaim that Christ is the one and only savior of all humanity and consequently, to assert the absolute uniqueness of Christianity in relation to other religions ...Jesus is the one and only mediator of salvation for all of humanity. Only in Him do humanity, history and the cosmos find their definitively positive meaning and receive their full realization. He is not only the mediator of salvation but the salvation's source ." p. 584 Constantine's Sword




James Carroll contends that modern Antisemitism was for the most part an extension of the Antisemitism which was part of Christian & Catholic Theology extending back to the early days of Christianity & even to the New Testament itself .-

As author James Carroll says:


"...in the official proclamation by the Catholic Church 1998 " We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah" denies the causal link between the admitted history of Catholic anti-Judaism and the Nazi hatred of Jews. the document speaks of modern racial anti-Semitism as if it were unrelated to what had gone before. "p. 381/ Carroll

spread of the notion of " Blood Purity " throughout the Church & insisting that those of Jewish blood could not hold an office within the Catholic Church... nothing not even baptism could ensure the loyalty of the Jews

"...this introduction of a distinction by race into the Central Institution of Christianity- a distinctive assuming not mere racial diversity but a biological divide of racial superiority and racial inferiority-stands as a watershed not just in Church history but in human history. " p. 381


1593-1594 - "... that no one will hereafter be admitted to the Society who is descended of Hebrew or Saracen stock..."
then later in 1608 the regulation was extended from parents to the fifth degree of family lineage ...and again in 1923 the decree was renewed & again in 1946 but in vaguer language ..."p. 383

Centuries before the rise of so-called Modern anti-Semitism Laws were passed by the Church or at the Church's behest that Jews were to wear distinctive clothing & or a Yellow Badge or a Yellow Conical Hat , that they were not to socialize with Christians , that they were not permitted to own property, that they were to live in a particular part of a city or town & that this Jewish Quarter would be walled in & locked at night -

It was taught by the Church & its priests that Jews were the sworn enemies of Christianity & in their secret rituals desecrated the Host & killed Christian children whose blood they drained to use in their rituals & further that the Jews were working secretly to undermine & destroy Christianity.



Even though it was the Romans who crucified Jesus the crime was shifted from the Romans to the Jews. It was in fact The Jews who were depicted by the Church from early on as Jesus' enemies & as the killers of Jesus . Therefore it is the Jews who were condemned for the crime of " deicide " rather than the Romans . But the guilt for the crime of killing Jesus was then passed on from generation to generation of Jews so that even the Jews of today are just as guilty of this crime as were the original Jews who were blamed for the death of Jesus. Many Christians up to the time of Hitler's " Final Solution " still believed that the Jews had been cursed for killing Jesus.

The Powerful Roman Empire as it were was more important & useful as an ally to the Christians than were the powerless Jews who were by the 4th century without a state or homeland - after the fall of Judea came " Diaspora " - the Jews were now scattered about . The loss of the Temple & their homeland & being scattered about in the " Diaspora " was according to the Church a punishment & curse placed upon the Jews because they had murdered Christ & over the centuries the Jews out of pride & willfulness refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah.

The Romans came to play an important role in the growth & establishment of the Christian Church once Constantine had converted to Christianity as the result of a vision he had of a cross - from then on the cross became the symbol of Christianity & twisted the essential message of Jesus . The Church from then on was to play a role as a political entity & as a religious entity which was to be the embodiment of the teachings of Jesus. But the two different roles came into conflict as the Church became more of a political entity with a hierarchy & bureaucracy & like all such political entities became overly concerned with its survival & its continuing growth in power & riches . It also became over the centuries more militant & less tolerant of differing views on theology & the powers & rights of The Church & the Pope over all Christians .

The Church would go further & kill all heretics & pagans & other non-believers & would argue in favor of such inhumane practices such as torture & burning heretics to slavery & genocide ie the native peoples of the Americas & the peoples of Africa . The Christian theme became convert or die or if a people were thought to be incapable of understanding the Christian Creed then they could be enslaved & slavery became a lucrative enterprise .

To a great extent the Church has seen itself as being besieged & persecuted even when the Church was the most powerful entity with a formidable army at its side.

The Jews were depicted as the children of Satan " the Father of Lies " in part based on the fact that they killed Jesus / God which was the crime of Deicide which was passed down from generation to generation of Jews til today - and further that the Jews rejected Jesus as Messiah in his own time but have continued to do so over the centuries as being " a stiff-necked people " who refused to bow to Jesus & so the Jews lost Israel / Judea & their Temple & were left to roam the earth homeless .

and even after the rise of Hitler & the Nazis the Catholic Church did little to condemn the actions of the Nazis in regard to the Jews or to explicitly condemn the oppressive anti-Semitic laws which caused great hardships for the Jews passed by the Nazis & not once did the Catholic Church speak out against the Nazis from 1933 to 1945 in regard to the Nazis treatment of the Jews except for those Jews who had converted to Christianity .

As author James Carroll points out this silence & reluctance to speak out on behalf of the Jews continued even after the Vatican had become aware of the extent of Hitler's Final Solution in 1941 or 1942 though various church & state leaders appealed to the Vatican & Pope Pius XII to intervene at the very least to mention what the Nazis were doing to the Jews & to be clear & explicit about what was happening . For whatever reason Pope Pius refused to speak out on behalf of the Jews even in the midst of the Holocaust / Shoah.

But shouldn't the Pope & the Vatican & the Catholic Church's first priority be to take a moral stand to try to stop this mass murder considered to be the greatest single crime in human history or is the Catholic Church in the final analysis only concerned with its own existence & so if need be it would sign a pact with the Devil himself in order to survive as in the fact that the Vatican entered into a treaty with Hitler in 1933 & thereby being the first political entity in the world to recognize the Nazi regime as legitimate which helped to embolden Hitler & the Nazis.
Both were afterall anti-Semitic & anti-Communist & both believed that the ideology of "liberalism " & individual freedom & equality other such ideas were the source of the perniciousness of " Modernity " & that there must be a return to the acceptance of higher authority & of the more traditional hierarchy in which the few rule over the many .

after over a thousand years of the oppression , intimidation , segregation ,ghettoizing & mass murder of Jews,pogroms ,the Inquisition still the Catholic Church is in denial in claiming that it had little to do with the spread of anti-semitism in Europe or elsewhere.



" The first result of Anselm's theology of salvation ( soteriology) was ... to solder the faith to the cross, and to make the death of Jesus more important than anything he had said, despite his clear statement that " the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." His death counted for more than his having been born, having lived as a Jew, having preached a gospel of love in the context of Israel's covenant with a loving God, having opposed the imperium of Rome, even having been brought to the new life of Resurrection. The death obsession of the flagellants was deemed holy, and the blood lust of the crusaders was sanctified. God, too had blood lust. Christ's agony on the cross would now become the black flower of the Western imagination-on armor,in Passion Plays, in paintings,in altar carvings, in rituals like the Stations of the Cross,and ultimately in the cross of Auschwitz."
James Carroll p.582


A Moral Reckoning :The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, pub. 2002

Constantine's Sword : The Church & the Jews by James Carroll, pub. 2001

The Catholic Church By Hans Küng -Translated by John Bowden, pub. 2001

The Popes Against The Jews: The Vatican's Role in The Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, By David I. Kertzer pub. 2001

THE CRUCIFIED JEW: TWENTY CENTURIES OF ANTI-SEMITISM by Dan Cohen-Sherbok , pub.1992

also see Jewish-Christian Relations.net
& of particular interest at this website on anti-Semitism in the New Testament see the article Removing Anti-Jewish Polemic
from our Christian Lectionaries: A Proposal by Norman A. Beck


see On Martin Luther's Anti-Semitism
Martin Luther's dirty little book:On the Jews and their lies A precursor to Nazism by Jim Walker