Does Robert Sungenis REALLY believe this?

[DavidPalm]

The OP was correct. One can find many statements in Sungenis’ anti-Jewish writings that make you go, “Huh? Can he really mean that?”

It seems that the quality of Sungenis’ scholarship is directly proportional to the extent to which he’s dealing with “fringe” topics. His early works on core Catholic doctrines were very good. But his writings on Jews and Judaism are seriously marred by shoddy scholarship, repeated plagiarism (often of extremely unsavory sources), rash judgments, and what can only be called outright bigotry.

I have not read the most recent criticism of Bishop Fiorenza, but as pnewton points out publicly accusing a bishop of heresy is an extremely serious business. I have looked in detail into Sungenis’ charges of heresy against his own ordinary, Bishop Rhoades, and they are completely without foundation; basically, Sungenis made those charges to excuse himself from having to follow the directives of Bishop Rhoades. A few on this thread seem to wink at this sort of behavior, but I consider it wreckless and extremely dangerous.

Below I comment on a few specific statements in this thread:

“Sungenis does believe in a few unusual thinks, concerning the Holocaust from what I read on his site he does not believe that necessarily 6 million Jews died, but he does not deny it either, he just has not accepted it as fact yet.”

I would suggest reading the following article with quotes from Bob and Pope Benedict XVI:

sungenisandthejews.blogspot.com/2009/05/pope-benedict-xvi-continues-to.html

Note in particular where Bob tips his hand, promoting “unsanitized accounts of what really happened” (his words, my emphasis) – that expresses more than simply having doubts about the Holocaust. He’s pushing extreme Holocaust revisionism but he’s (usually) a bit more cagey about it.

“But you have said that Sungenis has said hateful things. That is (from a Christian perspective) a very serious accusation. I have said that some of his remarks have made me uneasy, but I have never read anything from him that is actually hateful.”

I would suggest reading:

sungenisandthejews.blogspot.com/2008/09/open-invitation-to-bob-sungenis.html and sungenisandthejews.com/Section2.html

It’s not just any one thing – although some individual quotes are bad enough. It’s the long pattern of this kind of prejudice against Jews.

“I can only wonder if his use of the phrase “the Jews” is deliberate or ignorant. He points out rightly in some parts that the Church had never blamed all the Jews. This seems a little ridiculous since that would have accused all the apostles, as well as the Lord. Yet he constantly fell back to the vague phrase “the Jews”. Let us say a man blamed “the blacks” for drug-trafficking in this country and “the blacks” for riots and gang activity. Would a statement acknowledging that all blacks do not traffic drugs, riot or belong to gangs bear any significance if you went right back to use accussing the blacks of these things? Yet this it what Sungenis does. After clarifying that not all Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, he goes right back to referring to them as a group. This comes across as bigotry and anti-semetism regardless of the intent. It does make him seem hate-filled whether he is or not.”

This is smack on. Theoretically, Bob understands that bigotry is wrong and he doesn’t want to defend it. But in practice, he falls into it regularly when Jews are involved. I subscribe to the Golden Rule approach: if a Jewish interlocutor was using Bob’s verbiage against Catholics, would we consider it anti-Catholic? I think most people here would.

“In short, for a layman to accuse an Archbishop of heresy is a dangerous thing. He lacks authority and cause.”

Another excellent point. Read the following for more about Bob’s penchant for playing the role of uber-bishop:

sungenisandthejews.blogspot.com/2008/03/by-sungenis-alone_29.html

and

sungenisandthejews.blogspot.com/2009/09/bishop-rhoades-and-dual-covenant-theory.html

“He didnt plagiarize at all. STOP!!! Look on his web site, and he clears all that up.”

No, Bob did not “clear all that up.” It has been a recurring problem for which he’s never taken responsibility. He’s got a piece up on his site right now that contains multiple instances of blatant plagiarism (see documentation here).

On the on-going problem read:

wquercus.com/sungenis/

and

sungenisandthejews.blogspot.com/search/label/plagiarism

“You need to go to Bob Sungenis’s website and pull down the article titled “A Successful Dialog on the Old Covenant” because this article is a dialog between Art Sippo and Bob Sungenis where Bob convinces Art Sippo that Duel Covenant theology is heretical!”

Art never subscribed to the dual covenant theory. They were saying similar things in different ways and found that out through discussion. If you read the article, Bob wrote: “I think you are correct that you and I have been using different terminology to say the same thing.”

You should also have noticed where Art cautioned: “We are still going to disagree on a few things, Bob.”

If you want to know what those “few things” are, Art wrote about Bob in the foreword to Sungenis and the Jews and at his own blog:

sungenisandthejews.com/ (scroll down to the foreword, the second entry is Art’s)

and

art-of-attack.blogspot.com/2008/02/bob-sungenis-and-his-ordinary.html

God bless,

 

[Rogerteder]

Yet he stated in the article several times support for the Jews killing Christ. He clarified that position properly, as he did the position on Christians who killed Jews. However, words mean something and reveal things. Rhetoric can be a skillful tool of propaganda. When one says, “The Jews killed Christ” and “Some Christians killed Jews”, you can mean the same thing and clarify the similarities. Yet the fact that the wording is different reveals something. Being technically accurate while adding emotional content is a tool. I do not like his emotional content. It is either deliberate or subconscious. Neither option is good.

Are you judging his intentions? That could be a sin if you are.

 

[pnewton]

Are you judging his intentions? That could be a sin if you are.

Are you judging me? That too could be a sin, and round and round we go. Perhaps you should instruct Sungenis on the sin of judgementalism since he is accusing an AB of hreresy.

No, I specifcally said I did not know if his emotional content is subconsious or deliberate. Here is what Emmanuel Kant says:

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. " In other words, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”

Pharisees excelled at this hypocricy. So here we have a man who is critical for those who use “Christians” in a collective sense to say that things like “Christians persecuted the Jews” and “Christians tried to extermiinate them in WWII.”
Yet he is liberal with his own use of the phrase “The Jews” and even defends that particular collective use. This is the very definition of hypocricy.
Sungensis needs to tend to his own beams before he concerns himself with the motes among the leaders of our Catholic Church.

 

[Randy_Carson]

No. Unfortunately I have been put off too much by his tangent interests, like geocentrism, to care to read him. I have other good authors that do not engage in this sort of fringe activity in their apologetics, but stick to the Catholic Faith. They too are razor sharp and speak more to my needs.

Well, as other posters said above, his books are brilliant, and you ignore them to your own detriment.

Do you by chance play chess?

 

[pnewton]

Well, as other posters said above, his books are brilliant, and you ignore them to your own detriment.

Do you by chance play chess?

No, I do not play chess, at least not in years. Also, I do not ignore his books, but choose not to read them. Not every Catholic can read every Catholic book. It is no detriment to read other fine authors, along with Scriptire, the Catechism, papal encyclicals, Church Fathers and various other ecclesial writings, the writings of the Saints, etc.

There is a wealth of materials out there.