Another Christian celebration is imminent so, no doubt Robert will ramp up his little homilies, spurred on by the fervour of his local Catholic priest and the promulgations of his Catholic Church. Look, that's OK, really. It's their one big event of the year and I can understand the self-justification. It must be tough going through the whole year wearing a dress, particularly a black one that's not exactly fashionable unless they jazzed it up a bit from this:
To this:
But, we know that's not going to happen, certainly not in the Catholic Church.
I've heard it before - truly - I have heard it all before because I was once a Catholic. The same silly little stories will be shared about a virgin birth, a foreseen event, wise men on holiday and a whole lot more bi-polar 'saints' recounting their hallucinations visions. No, what I want to hear is some hard talk.
I used to like watching the BBC HARDtalk news series and sill catch the odd one on YouTube.
Wouldn't it be good if, this Christmas, the Catholic Church and it's leaders told us, whether being questioned by HARDtalk interviewers or not, what they really think of the Jews.
The Jews have had a hard time from Christians throughout history with traditionalist Catholics who are devoted to the ancient traditions of the Church, and reject many of the changes made since Vatican II, holding that Jews are believed to be damned unless they convert.
Even enlightened Catholics still cling to the idea of the 'Jewish deicide' - Jews complicity in the death of Jesus no matter that St Augustine and Pope Gregory The Great talked against this although old Gus was about protecting the Jews because "Jews must be protected for their ability to explain the Old Testament." A bit of selfishness there.
We all know of the Crusades and successive Catholic Popes spurring Christians on to take Jerusalem away from the Arabs (Moslems) and the Jews and that at the time, in the 14th century, the Black Death which killed a third of the Western population was blamed on Jews and anti-Jewish violence erupted throughout Europe.
In defence of the Jews, Pope Clement VI issued two Papal Bulls in 1348 which condemned the violence and said those who blamed the plague on the Jews had been "seduced by that liar, the Devil." He went on to emphasise that "It cannot be true that the Jews, by such a heinous crime, are the cause or occasion of the plague, because through many parts of the world the same plague, by the hidden judgment of God, has afflicted and afflicts the Jews themselves and many other races who have never lived alongside them." This shows the depth of hostility there was against Jews by Catholics though, fuelled by the 'Jewish deicide' sentiment.
Well before The Holocaust the Catholic Church has been seen to make noises in favour of relationships with Jews (not marriage relationships though) and in the late 6th century the Papal Bull sponsored by Pope Gregory -
"became the foundation of Catholic doctrine in relation to the Jews and specified that, although the Jews had not accepted salvation through Christ, and were therefore condemned by God until such time as they accept salvation, Christians were nevertheless duty-bound to protect the Jews as an important part of Christian civilization. The Bull said that Jews should be treated equitably and justly, that their property rights should be protected, and that they should keep their own festivals and religious practices. Thus, in the Papal States, Jews enjoyed a level of protection in law."
- Wikipedia
Post World War Two, Christian anti-Judaism was critically examined by historians attempting to explain the origins of the Holocaust. A movement for Christian-Jewish reconciliation grew. According to historian Geoffrey Blainey "In the following forty years, Christians and Jews were to come together more closely than at perhaps any other time since the half-century after Christ had died."
"A new understanding of the relationship between Catholics and Jews is also reflected in the revised liturgy of Good Friday in a particular way. The pre-1962 version of the Good Friday Prayer of the Roman Rite had Catholics praying that the "perfidis Judaeis" might be converted to "the truth". The English cognate "perfidious" had, over the centuries, gradually acquired the sense of "treacherous". In order to eliminate misunderstanding on this point, Pope Pius XII ordered in 1955 that, in Catholic liturgical books, the Latin word "perfidis" be properly translated "unbelieving", ensuring that the prayer be understood in its original sense: praying for the Jews who remained "unbelieving" concerning the Messiah. Indeed, the same adjective was used in many of the ancient rituals for receiving non-Christian converts into the Catholic Church.
Owing to the enduring potential for confusion and misunderstanding because of the divergence of English usage from the original Latin meaning, Pope John XXIII ordered that the Latin adjective "perfidis" be dropped from the Good Friday prayer for the Jews; in 1960 he ordered it removed from all rituals for the reception of converts.[7] As part of the revision of the Roman Missal, the prayer was completely rewritten. The current prayer of the Roman Liturgy for Good Friday prays for "the Jewish people, first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of His name and in faithfulness to His covenant."
Jewish deicide[edit]
In 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council, a pastoral ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. It closed under Pope Paul VI in 1965. One of the most revolutionary changes that resulted from interpretations of this council's documents concerned the Church's attitude to Jews and Judaism.
Among other things, the Second Vatican Council addressed the charge of Jewish deicide, repudiating the belief in the collective Jewish guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus stating that, even though some Jewish authorities and those who followed them called for Jesus' death, the blame for what happened cannot be laid at the door of all Jews living at that time, nor can the Jews in our time be held guilty. The council issued the declaration Nostra aetate ("In Our Time"), which reads in part:True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. The Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ."
- Wikipedia again.
The anti-Jewish sentiment doesn't go away though. In 2001, at the 17th meeting of the International Liaison Committee in New York, Church officials stated that they would change how Judaism is dealt with in Catholic seminaries and schools. In part, they stated: "The curricula of Catholic seminaries and schools of theology should reflect the central importance of the Church's new understanding of its relationship to Jews. ... Courses on Bible, developments by which both the Church and rabbinic Judaism emerged from early Judaism will establish a substantial foundation for ameliorating "the painful ignorance of the history and traditions of Judaism of which only negative aspects and often caricature seem to form part of the stock ideas of many Christians.""
In 2015 the Catholic Church in Poland published a letter referring to antisemitism as a sin against the commandment to love one's neighbour. The letter also acknowledged the heroism of those Poles who risked their lives to shelter Jews as Nazi Germany carried out the Holocaust in occupied Poland.
In 2015, the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews released a theological reflection that, while rejecting the idea of “two different paths toward salvation, the Jewish path without Christ and the path with the Christ”, and calling on Christians to “bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ in a humble and sensitive manner” to Jewish people, acknowledged that Jews were “participants in God’s salvation” and that the Church views evangelisation to Jews “in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views”, rejected the principle of an institutional Jewish mission, and called on Catholics to fight anti-Semitism.
Pope Francis has been considered to be particularly instrumental in furthering Catholic-Jewish relations. During a visit to a synagogue, Francis echoed Pope John Paul II's statement that Jews are the "elder brothers" of Christians, and further stated: "in fact you are our brothers and sisters in the faith. We all belong to one family, the family of God, who accompanies and protects us, His people."
OK, good on Frank who has shown enlightenment in other areas as well. I think that the other popes over the years have been pressured into their statements (Bulls) through changing opinions of their voters congregation and they must be taken with a grain of salt. What's clear though is the entrenchment of anti -Jewish feeling amongst Catholics at the people level and in the institution itself.
I would really like to hear from Robert what his views are of the Jews and the Jewish religion. Does he ascribe to the 'Jewish deicide' belief? Does his church, in the Sunday sermons preach any anti-Jewish sentiment?
These are the hard questions.
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