Irenicist :
“You are mistaken. As you correct our views concerning Islam, please accept correction regarding Christianity. The Jews are not and were not “Christ crucifiers”. The Gospel is clear in this matter. Christ was crucified by pagan Romans. At most, some leaders of the Jewish temple supported his crucifixion in scriptural contrast to the Jewish multitudes who mourned”
Sorry, I do know what is Catholic Church’s new attitude towards Jews.
It was in 1965, that the Roman Catholic Church partially abandoned its historical stance towards Jews and Judaism. In a remarkable reversal of their position, the Church rejected its earlier teachings that:
All of the Jews in Palestine circa 30 CE were responsible for the execution of Jesus.
All Jews who are currently living are also responsible for Jesus’ death.
God has rejected Jews because they murdered of Jesus.
Lets have a brief description of past centuries view:
3rd century CE: Origen (185 - 254 CE): “The blood of Jesus falls not only on the Jews of that time, but on all generations of Jews up to the end of the world.”
St. Cyprian of Carthage (circa 200 - 258): “This name rebukes and condemns the Jews who not only spurned Christ faithlessly, but also cruelly executed Him Who was announced to them by the prophets, and sent first to their nation. No longer may they call God their Father, because the Lord confounds and refutes them, saying: ‘your father is the devil’ [John 8:44]. O sinful nation, O people weighed down with guilt, breed of evil-doers, lawless children, you have turned your backs on the Lord and have provoked the Holy One of Israel.”
4th century CE: St Athanasius (circa 296 - 373): Jews “…have no abiding place, but they wander everywhere … But in every place they transgress the law, and as the judgments of God require; they keep days of grief instead of gladness. Now the cause of this to them was the slaying of the Lord, and that they did not reverence the Only Begotten … Therefore the Lord cursed them under the figure of the fig tree.”
St. Hilary of Poitiers (315 - 367) referred to Jews as a perverse people who God has cursed forever.
John of Antioch (347 - 407) (a.k.a. John Chrysostom): He delivered a group of four homilies titled “Against the Jews”. Homily 4 said, in part: “The difference between the Jews and us in not a small one, is it? Is the dispute between us over ordinary, everyday matters, so that you think the two religions are really one and the same? Why are you mixing what cannot be mixed? They crucified the Christ whom you adore as God. Do you see how great the difference is? How is it, then, that you keep running to those who slew Christ when you say that you worship him whom they crucified?”
5th century CE: St. Jerome (circa 345 - 420): “Judas betrayed Me [Jesus], the Jews persecuted and crucified Me…In particular, this is the story of Judas; in general it is that of the Jews…Judas is cursed, that in Judas the Jews may be accursed.”
St. Augustine (354 - 430) wrote: “The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jew can never understand the Scriptures and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus.”
On another occasion, he wrote: “Judaism, since Christ, is a corruption; indeed, Judas is the image of the Jewish people: their understanding of Scripture is carnal; they bear the guilt for the death of the Savior, for through their fathers they have killed Christ.”
7th century: The 17th Church Council of Toledo, Spain in 694 CE defined Jews as the serfs of the prince. This was based, in part, on the beliefs by Chrysostom, Origen, Jerome, and other church fathers that God punished the Jews with perpetual slavery because of their collective responsibility for the death of Jesus.
11th to 13th centuries: The First Crusade was launched in 1096 CE. Although the prime goal of the crusades was to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim control, Jews were a secondary target of opportunity. As the soldiers passed through Europe on the way to the Holy Land, large numbers of Jews were challenged with the order: “Christ-killers, embrace the Cross or die!” 12,000 Jews in the Rhine Valley alone were killed in the first Crusade. This behavior continued for eight additional crusades until the 9th Crusade in 1272. Hundreds of thousands of defenseless Jews died in the attacks.
13th century: Pope Innocent III wrote to the archbishops of Sens and Paris in 1200 CE that “the Jews, by their own guilt, are consigned to perpetual servitude because they crucified the Lord…As slaves rejected by God, in whose death they wickedly conspire, they shall by the effect of this very action, recognize themselves as the slaves of those whom Christ’s death set free…”
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