bones_IV:
Think again Shoshana. That has got to be the biggest load of baloney I’ve ever heard! I disagree that the Church Fathers writings are anti-semetic this is historical revision by flaming liberals who hate the Catholic Church.
Here’s what Matthew Bunson said. He said "I know of no valid reason to accuse him of anti-semetism. On the contrary he was concerned about protecting Jews from Nazis and one of the most out-spoken critics of Nazism in Poland. This extroadinary Franciscan Conventual and founder of the sodality of Militia of Mary Immaculate in 1917 and was renowned in his own era as a journalist earning the enmity of the Nazis for his writings. Thus when Poland fell in 1939, the Nazis arrested Maximillian Kolbe for what they considered to be illegal activities. Released, he was picked up again in Febuary 1941 for giving aid to Jews in the Polish underground. Sent to Auschwitz, Kolbe, as prisoner 16670, was subjected to brutal treatment because he was a Catholic priest.
You can find the rest on EWTN’s website.
From the book 'The Hidden pope"…the untold story of a lifelong friendship that is changing the relationship between catholics and jews…the personal journey of JP2 and Jerzy Kluger…by Darcy O’Brien
But Jurek remembered something else about Father kolbe, or Saint Maximillian, as he was soon certain to be known. Was this not the same Fransciscan who had been the founder and director of the publishing house that issued 'Maly Dziennik, the most anti-Semitic of any church-affiliated daily newspaper in Poland before the war? Did Kolbe himself therefore not bear some responsibility for dissemination the type of propaganda that, while it played no role in the german invasion of Poland, had contribued to the atmosphere that made the Holocaust possible? This, of course, included the murders of Jurek’s grtandmother, mother, sister and other relatives.
A scrupulous examination of the record showed that Fr Kolbe’s own writings indicated personnally he had not been an anti-semite. He had opposed the boycotting of Jewish shops–although more on the grounds that this did nothing to improve Catholic Polish trade than because such discrimination was intrinsically immoral. Not only had he opposed the Nazis, but his outspokenness had landed him in Auschwitz.
From a Catholic point of view, the definition of Fr Kolbe’s saintliness was inherent in the manner of his death. Even if Fr Kolbe was guilty in life of a sort of passive anti-semitism, surely his anti-nazism and indisputable heroism in death might outweigh that fault.
From the jewish point of view, however, the issue was not so much Fr Kolbe himself or even his personal connection to an anti-semitic newspaper. It was that he was a priest and that by sponsoring such newspapers, the church in Poland and throughout Europe abetted rcial hatred and played into Nazi hands. This was an argument that few catholics were willing to concede at that time.
I had forgotten that Saint M. Kolbe himself was not anti-semitic in his writings. Forgive me my lack of memory. I will try not to make the same mistake. When I will have more time I will give you an excerpt on
JP2’s comments on the church’s guilt in the growth of anti-semitism…
