Catholic antisemitism

  • Thread starter Thread starter oneseeker
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
O

oneseeker

Guest
There’s a site that lists church fathers and such from the third century on in a timeline. According to the timeline and quotes, antisemitism is part and parcel of the whole Catholic faith. VII has helped that perception, but how did the Church condone, support, and enthusiastically believe these vile things about Jews? (i.e. Christ killers, collective guilt, synagogue of satan) 😦 Is that why so many Christians (more in Catholic Poland) turned in people in hiding during the Holocaust? :confused:

I am still seriously looking into Catholicism, but this is a real sticking point for me. Yes, many Jews rejected Christ and wanted him gone, but not all.

oneseeker
 
oneseeker said:
There’s a site that lists church fathers and such from the third century on in a timeline. According to the timeline and quotes, antisemitism is part and parcel of the whole Catholic faith. VII has helped that perception, but how did the Church condone, support, and enthusiastically believe these vile things about Jews? (i.e. Christ killers, collective guilt, synagogue of satan) 😦 Is that why so many Christians (more in Catholic Poland) turned in people in hiding during the Holocaust? :confused:

I am still seriously looking into Catholicism, but this is a real sticking point for me. Yes, many Jews rejected Christ and wanted him gone, but not all.

oneseeker
Click to expand...
Antisemitism is a sin of which many, not just Catholics, have been guilty over the years.
Regarding the terms you listed - their origin comes from Scripture.
“Synagogue of satan” - Rev. 2:9 and 3:9
“Christ killers” - Acts 3:15 and 5:3
“Collective guilt” - expression covering the meaning of the following passages: Matthew 27:25; Romans 11:20-21

Regarding what the Catholic faith teaches: we do not deny the history recorded in the gospels and Acts surrounding Our Lord’s death. It really happened. But that does not justify antisemitism; and to willingly hold and/or act on such a position would be considered a sin (against charity) by our Catholic faith.

Nita
 
And let us not forget, as much as we love our Jewish friends, that the Jewish synagogue was violently opposed to the Early Christians for the first 300 years of the Church, persecuted them, killed them, turned them over to the pagan Roman authorities, you name it. The Talmud contains blasphemies against Christ and ridicule of Christians.

My point? Certainly NOT to condone antisemitism.
Merely, rather, to point out that NEITHER SIDE
is as innocent as a white dove when it comes to hostility toward the other.

Jaypeeto4 (aka Jaypeeto3)
 
Pope John Paul II apologized to the Jewish people for any wrongdoing against them by the Church in the past.

"And in one area, his personal views are genuinely revolutionary. The man actually likes Jews. I say this not as a joke, or a statement about individuals, but as a way of understanding what has taken place in the relations between official Roman Catholicism and the existence of world Jewry during his papacy. Growing up in pre-WWII Poland, John Paul II knew Jews. He lived next door to them, ate with them, went to school with them, played soccer with them, let them copy his homework, and after the war, as a young priest, carried one of them who had just been liberated from Auschwitz on his very back for a mile because she could not walk herself. To him Jews were people just like any other, and to those of us who have grown up in a secular world, you have to step back and really see how extraordinary that is.

From the absolute beginnings of Christianity, relations between Christians and Jews were strained. The early followers of Jesus were of course Jewish and had hoped that all Jews would accept the Good News. When that did not happen, the Christians turned to the pagans of the Roman Empire for converts, but never forgot the rejection their forebears had received at the hands of the Jewish tribes. When, three centuries later, Christianity became legal under Constantine in 312 AD, it didn’t take long for its high officials to exact their revenge. At the Council of Nicea just twelve years later, Jews were declared “perfidious,” “Christ-killers,” people to be avoided, converted, or persecuted. Thus began nearly two thousand years of mistrust, misunderstanding, segregation, hatred, and, often, violence. It wasn’t until Pope John XXIII and the Vatican Council of 1965 that Jews were absolved of the murder of Jesus, but it took the papacy of John Paul II to truly reorder the landscape.

He is the first pope to visit Israel and actually say the name of the country. He is the first pope to apologize to the Jews for the centuries of persecution on the part of Christians. He is the first pope to step inside a synagogue, having gone to the main temple in Rome in 1985. He is the first pope to insist that Jews be called “our older brothers.” And now, as part of the Jubilee activities of 2000, he is certainly the first pope to stand before the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and place a written wish in one of the many ancient crevices, asking again for forgiveness and for the promotion of world brotherhood. As a gesture it was spectacularly telegenic. In light of the sad history between Catholics and Jews, it was truly unbelievable."

Here’s the link to the rest of the article. astheromansdo.com/pope_john_paul.htm
 
oneseeker said:
There’s a site that lists church fathers and such from the third century on in a timeline. According to the timeline and quotes, antisemitism is part and parcel of the whole Catholic faith. VII has helped that perception, but how did the Church condone, support, and enthusiastically believe these vile things about Jews? (i.e. Christ killers, collective guilt, synagogue of satan) 😦 Is that why so many Christians (more in Catholic Poland) turned in people in hiding during the Holocaust? :confused:

I am still seriously looking into Catholicism, but this is a real sticking point for me. Yes, many Jews rejected Christ and wanted him gone, but not all.

oneseeker
Click to expand...
This is a difficult topic to approach. It is hedged about by explosive feelings and loaded language. Discussion could be impossible, unless a workable entrée can be found.

The categories imposed on the topic by common usage and cliché are not sufficient to appreciate the important truths involved.

If one is committed to the idea of “anti-Semitism” and all that entails, then the best that can be done is to point to the apologies that have been offered by the Pontiffs for “wrongs done by those who have borne or bear the name of Christian.”

This is the course that needs to be taken by those who seek to judge the Church.

However, if one recognizes the Church as Christ incarnate in the world, then the approach must be different. Distinctions must be made and insights must be sought which will allow one to see both the failings of those who follow Christ and the perfection of the Truth taught by the Church. For this, however, one must be open to the truth that the Church is perfect – and not a merely human and fallible institution.

To do this may take a good deal of work. It requires that some ideas about the world and how it works must be revised to make room for the idea of the True Church. Many of these ideas were in part designed to crowd out the truth of the Church. They represent the wonderings of human ideas which are un-tethered from the Truth. But they are deeply embedded in the common understanding of society and of history.

If you wish to take the first approach, then please consider this Universal Prayer: Confession of Sins and Asking for Forgiveness: jcrelations.net/en/?item=1025.

If you want to pursue the second, we can begin what may be a difficult discussion.

Pax Christi tecum.

John Hiner
 
oneseeker said:
There’s a site that lists church fathers and such from the third century on in a timeline. According to the timeline and quotes, antisemitism is part and parcel of the whole Catholic faith. VII has helped that perception, but how did the Church condone, support, and enthusiastically believe these vile things about Jews? (i.e. Christ killers, collective guilt, synagogue of satan) 😦 Is that why so many Christians (more in Catholic Poland) turned in people in hiding during the Holocaust? :confused:

I am still seriously looking into Catholicism, but this is a real sticking point for me. Yes, many Jews rejected Christ and wanted him gone, but not all.
Click to expand...
“Christian anti-Semitism” is an oxymoron. It was coined to distinguish the sophisticated and fashionable intellectuals who hated Jews on the grounds of race from the backwards Christians who hated them because they rejected Jesus and persecuted the Church.

Let’s say that there was a movement in Britain, started by shopkeepers and the like, to clear beggars from the streets by murdering them. Now obviously every decent person would have to oppose such an organisation, break it up, and put the ringleaders behind bars. As part of the fight against them it might be necessary to say some positive things about street people. On one level, these might be true. A lot of people do not sleep rough by choice, a lot of women could easily get off the streets if they chose to be prostititutes but reject that option, many of the men are ex-soldiers who have given a lot to their country. However to say that street people are not a real nuisance who create an atmosphere of menace, deter shoppers, get involved in drugs and petty crime, and so on, would be absurd.
Similarly, one can oppose the German policy of genocide without particularly liking the victims.
 
Sort of OT, but I have two book recommendations along this topic -

First is The Assisi Underground: The Priests Who Saved Jews by Alexander Ramati. Unfortunately, it’s out of print but I found a copy at my local library.

Secondly, I’ve never read it by I’ve heard that Righteous Gentiles: How Pius XII And the Catholic Church Saved Half a Million Jews from the Nazis by Ronald J. Rychlak is also a very good read.

Also, if people say Catholicism is anti-Semitic… you should check out what Martin Luther had to say about the Jews some time.
 
oneseeker said:
There’s a site that lists church fathers and such from the third century on in a timeline. According to the timeline and quotes, antisemitism is part and parcel of the whole Catholic faith. VII has helped that perception, but how did the Church condone, support, and enthusiastically believe these vile things about Jews? (i.e. Christ killers, collective guilt, synagogue of satan) 😦 Is that why so many Christians (more in Catholic Poland) turned in people in hiding during the Holocaust? :confused:

I am still seriously looking into Catholicism, but this is a real sticking point for me. Yes, many Jews rejected Christ and wanted him gone, but not all.

oneseeker
Click to expand...
Catholic antisemitism is old news. The Vatican, espescially under the leadership of Pope John Paul II did much to reverse the past errors. The trend started earlier with Pope Paul VI. Some links…

mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive…0the%20Western

transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP…/12/sm.06.html

bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-…ardon_mass.htm

vatican.va/roman_curia/co…nc-itc_en.html

www1.yadvashem.org/about_yad/…pe/speech.html

www1.yadvashem.org/about_yad/…ope/visit.html

The next one by Pope Paul VI

vatican.va/archive/hist_c…aetate_en.html

Subrosa
 
oneseeker said:
There’s a site that lists church fathers and such from the third century on in a timeline. According to the timeline and quotes, antisemitism is part and parcel of the whole Catholic faith. VII has helped that perception, but how did the Church condone, support, and enthusiastically believe these vile things about Jews? (i.e. Christ killers, collective guilt, synagogue of satan) 😦 Is that why so many Christians (more in Catholic Poland) turned in people in hiding during the Holocaust? :confused:

I am still seriously looking into Catholicism, but this is a real sticking point for me. Yes, many Jews rejected Christ and wanted him gone, but not all.

oneseeker
Click to expand...
This one strucked a nerve especially when you said about Christians in Poland turning people in which were hiding during the Holocaust. Any source of how many were turnded in? I wonder what would you do when you knew that you and your family could be killed for hiding a Jew? That’s the question to be pondered. How about Jews turning Jews in? But if Poles were so evil, why there are over 6000 of them recognized at Yad Vashem? www1.yadvashem.org/righteous/index_righteous.html
Also, please remember that Holocaust not only affected Jews, but Poles as well. Poles were the first people who were imprisoned in concentration camps.
 
StRaphael said:
For discussion of specific quotes from saints and popes you can read and comment on my posts in forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=137957.
Click to expand...
These quotes show that the Council of Elvira Canon 50 revokes Communion for people who eat with Jews. The Ecumenical Council of Nicea forbade conversing, eating, and socializing with Jews under penalty of excommunication. Pope Innocent III and Pope Innocent IV said that Jews should be slaves to Christians and Canon 26 of the Third Ecumenical Council of the Lateran said the same. Pope Eugene IV decreed that “for all time” Christians should never eat, bathe, or cohabit with Jews and never admit them to feasts. Pope Stephen III expressed his “great sorrow” that Jews in a Christian land lived with and were equal to Christians. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Basil, and St. Jerome said that the Jews corporately murdered Christ and are all guilty of deicide.
 
Oneseeker,

I would be careful to draw a distinction between what individual Catholics have done and what the Church has officially taught.

You might try the following:

amazon.com/Hitler-War-Pope-Ronald-Rychlak/dp/0879732172

amazon.com/Myth-Hitlers-Pope-Against-Germany/dp/0895260344/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-3485357-8539049?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173725803&sr=1-1

Another important book for those who may be inclined to think that Catholics have not been guilty of some great ugliness against Jews is Fr. Flannery’s The Anguish of the Jews. I am about half-way through and have found it difficult to accept at times.

In balance, Flannery also presents evidence of Jewish ugliness against Christians…especially in the earlier centuries when Jews more often had greater power and influence.

There has been a great deal of bad blood. And if we read what each side has done to the other in the past there is a very real danger that these ancient sibling animosities and tensions will be given new life within us today. Such things must be read with a certain perspective and detachment else the Adversary may use them to incite more of the same.

Even saints of the Church have said, written and done very ugly things that we would rightly cringe at or condemn today. But there are great signs of hope, great movements of healing at work. JPII played an immensely important role in that process, imo. Benedict XVI is continuing it.

I believe these are times of great opportunity. But as is so often the case with great opportunity, great danger also lurks nearby. We need to keep firmly in mind what that great Jewish believer in Christ, St. Paul, told us about all this, especially in Romans 11.

We are adopted children, grafted onto the root of the Patriarchs of Israel…Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And our savior is the Israelite par excellence, the God-man, who will be eternally a Jew as well…born of a Jewess we are privileged to call “Mother”. Our very Church is founded upon 12 Jews.

The Jews are our brothers. And I believe, along with St. Paul and a great number of the Fathers, Saints and Popes of the Church, that God continues to have a special and abiding concern for his fleshly “first-born”, Israel, to this day. One day, I believe they will be restored to the fulness of the faith, regrafted back onto the tree along with us.

This seems to be a slight variation on the parable of the Prodigal Son…this time, the older son is the one returning. And in the mean time, God continues to call them home in varying numbers.

We should pray for them, humbly remembering that we too may be cut off, and that faith itself is a gift from God. We need to love our Jewish brothers and sisters and that requires a few things that may be difficult and even seem paradoxical at times.

I believe it means trying to genuinely understand and respect them as the individuals, rather than as "Jews, " coming to understand what being a Jew means to each individual in the process.
I believe it means walking with our Jewish brothers in a spirit of charity and humility, not viewing a Jew (or anyone else for that matter) as a person to personally convert or “notch one’s belt” over.

Each journey of faith is a very personal, individual process and it is a privilege to be able to walk part of it with anyone…Jew, Hindu or Buddhist.

Some of this is very basic and obvious. But for some reason, imo, it seems that some of us forget these basics when interacting with Jews.
 
We must also not forget that in the Middle Ages, it was actually the Catholic bishops who protected Jews from the anti-Jewish mob, especially during the pogroms on the sidelines of the First Crusade.

Also, often, the repercussions against Jews were done by temporal rulers for political or financial aims.

@St Raphael:
AFAIK orthodox Christians were generally forbidden to commune with heretics, Jews and pagans through eating, drinking and friendship at the time. (St. Thomas writes something about this in the Summa I think, I don’t remember exactly where)

And, as another poster has already noted, “Christian anti-semitism” is an oxymoron. Hatred of Jews out of religious reasons (which is also wrong of course) is called “anti-Judaism”.
 
StRaphael said:
These quotes show that the Council of Elvira Canon 50 revokes Communion for people who eat with Jews. The Ecumenical Council of Nicea forbade conversing, eating, and socializing with Jews under penalty of excommunication. Pope Innocent III and Pope Innocent IV said that Jews should be slaves to Christians and Canon 26 of the Third Ecumenical Council of the Lateran said the same. Pope Eugene IV decreed that “for all time” Christians should never eat, bathe, or cohabit with Jews and never admit them to feasts. Pope Stephen III expressed his “great sorrow” that Jews in a Christian land lived with and were equal to Christians. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Basil, and St. Jerome said that the Jews corporately murdered Christ and are all guilty of deicide.
Click to expand...
No problem here. Those were not Ex Cathedra pronouncements.😉
 
lumendelumine said:
We must also not forget that in the Middle Ages, it was actually the Catholic bishops who protected Jews from the anti-Jewish mob, especially during the pogroms on the sidelines of the First Crusade.

Also, often, the repercussions against Jews were done by temporal rulers for political or financial aims.
Click to expand...
What tended to happen was the the Christian ruler had a certain amount of dirty and sensitive work to do, such as extracting taxes from the population.

Naturally, anyone with their grubby hands on the money might also be tempted to make a grab for the throne. So a good wheeze to guard against that was to give the financial jobs to the Jews. No Jew could ever be King.

Every so often taxes would be jacked up too high and the people get restive. So the King could find out that his Jews were skimming off money, execute a few of them, and reduce taxes a bit, thus maintaining his popularity. If matters got really bad he could organise a general expulsion, confiscate Jewish money, and start over.
 
kaycee said:
No problem here. Those were not Ex Cathedra pronouncements.😉
Click to expand...
True; none of these were infallible. Some of these fall under the Ordinary Magisterium: The Ordinary Magisterium teaches when (1) one or more Bishops (2) speak in their official role as a Church teacher and leader (3) propose a theological position or judgment (NOT a final doctrinal decision) (4) on the truths on faiths and morals found in the Sacred Deposit of Faith (5) “which all are obliged to abide by and be in conformity with.”

So, the statements of St. Aquinas and St. Jerome do not even fall under the Ordinary Magisterium.

I just found an excellent article at crisismagazine.com/january2003/feature4.htm. It is called “The Church and the Jews in the Middle Ages” by Professor Thomas F. Madden.
 
The article from Crisis looks very interesting, with some good information. However at least in regard to St. Agobard, the article may have somewhat understated some things, too.

Fr. Flannery’s The Anguish of the Jews ( amazon.com/Anguish-Jews-Twenty-Three-Antisemitism-Christianity/dp/0809127024 ) is a respected work on this topic and Fr. Flannery documents St. Agobard’s anti-Jewish excesses at some length.

Two of St. Agobard’s treatises written to the emporer Louis the Pious (the emporer and he were at odds over the place of Jews) “have assumed a high place in medieval anti-Judaica and have received the names On the Insolence of the Jews and On Jewish Superstitions.” (The Anguish of the Jews, page 84).

According to Flannery, in these treatises, “Jews were stigmatized as devotees of superstition, blasphemy and calumny…stealing Christian children and selling them to Arab slavers…” (p 84)

St. Agobard’s attacks are compared to those of St. John Chrysostom. At one time he wrote that Jews are “cursed and covered with malediction, as by a cloak. The malediction has penetrated them as water in their entrails and oil in their bones…”(p 84)

Fr. Flannery writes, “Agobard has few equals in anti-Judaic literature. As in the case of Chrysostom, his antisemitic animus represents a deplorable lapse not alone from Christian charity but from basic civility as well and contributed substantially to the growth of Christian antisemitism.” (p 85)

I have not yet finished the book but it seems to be well done, well documented.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top