So not to justify anti-semitism, but I find it shocking that anyone would expect early Christians wouldn’t have stronger feelings here than we do…
Okay so anti-Jewish attitudes against Jews in the Catholic Church may be justified, if I understood your post, for 3 reasons. The first is that the Jews “Crucified the Christ”.
Now how did this happen?
Supposedly the figure of Yeshua bar Yosef was so popular among the Jews that the Romans deemed it wise to arrest him and execute him, presumably as a political agitator/leader. However, after he is arrested he is apparently so unpopular among the Jews, that the Romans are now “forced” to execute him, because of his unpopularity.
Now Judea was a vassal state under Rome so it’s not clear why they would defer to the Jews or the Sanhedria in making a decision to arrest and execute a Jew whom they considered a liability. In any case, the Sanhedria under Jewish law could not order anyone executed unless someone was willing to speak in his defense (the people involved in writing the Christian scriptures were perhaps unfamiliar with Jewish Law). Had he been sentenced by the Sanhedria he would have been stoned to death. If the crowds were so unruly couldn’t they easily have accomplished this? If the Romans wanted “to wash their hands” of the whole thing, and the Jews had in fact sentenced to him death and wished to see him die, why not just leave Yeshua to the Jews?
Of course, we have to understand how it came about that the same person who could draw crowds of thousands, suddenly, literally overnight,turned against him. This is explained as Yeshua claiming to be a god and rejecting Torah. The problem here is that suddenly, almost all people, Jew and non-Jew (Romans) are not able to recognize God, even face to face. This is the first time that this has ever happened. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, the judges and the prophets and the nation of Israel are never in doubt that God is before them. This problem only arises with the figure of Yeshua in Christianity.
Now it is not clear why a single person would engender such an extreme reaction, however from a Jewish perspective according to God’s law in the Torah, the death sentence (by stoning) would have been indicated to a person advocating rejecting Torah and claiming to be a god in human form. So at best “The Jews” are being blamed for acting in accordance with the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people (the logic here is that God made an eternal covenant with the Jewish people whose sole purpose was to bring the Jews to aid in the killing of the same God in human form because he stood in total contradiction to the eternal covenant between God and the Jews)
Finally, according to Christian theology the whole point to the life of Yeshua bar Yosef was to sacrifice himself for the sins of mankind, and since Christians believe that Yeshua is a god and since it is impossible for a human to overcome a god - it follows that all actions leading to the execution of the Christian deity,were according to the Christian perspective, a part of their god’s plan.
So even forgetting the incongruities we can be sure that the Christian messiah was executed by the Romans, We can also be sure that not only did the Romans not have any inkling that this was a god but that the Jews did not even take him seriously enough to stone him. Of course, “Roman” Catholics don’t blame “the Romans” they blame “the Jews”
The second reason given is persecution of Christians. While a few martyrs are mentioned we never get any reliable historical evidence of this supposed wide spread persecution of Christians by Jews. The fact is that the Jews were caught up in a rebellion against Rome from 66 c.e. to 135 c.e and weren’t really in a position to do anything but defend themselves. However, we do know that the Romans systematically persecuted Christians as they did not qualify for the privi lege (2 words) of exemption from the Emperor’s religious ceremonies. Romans literally feed the Christians to the lions. Of course, “Roman” Catholics never discuss on this forum persecutions by the Romans, they do however have a lot to say about supposed persecutions by Jews (which apparently “just” ended about 1800 years ago but somehow justify 2000 years of Christian anti-Semitism).
Your third reason is that Jews developed laws against Christians. Which is certainly strange as the Jewish religion teaches that the Gentile has an easier path to the world to come than for the Jew, while the history of the Church is full of Papal bulls and Church edicts involved in denying basic civil and legal rights to the Jews.
The purpose of this thread should have been to acknowledge the existence of these anti Jewish attitudes in the Catholic Church and to show that since Vatican II, the Church has made a real and sincere effort to eliminate these attitudes among Catholic adherents. Instead, it has become a thread justifying and explaining Christian anti-Semitism.
