Were the Church Fathers and early popes antisemitic?

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yinekka

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An anti Catholic came on to a Catholic discussion board here in Australia and posted the following names claiming that they taught hatred of Jews; therefore the Church is antisemitic. I have no idea where to go to checkout her claims. Can anyone help me? I would really appreciate your help on this one. She is forever coming in and bagging the Church and no one seems to know how to refute or put her claims in context. :confused:

St Gregory of Nyssa
St John Chrysostom - ‘Eight Sermons’
St Ambrose of Milan
St Augustine
Justin Martyr - 'Dialogue With Trypho the Jew"
St Jerome

Pope Innocent III
Pope Paul IV - Papal Bull - "Cum nimis absurdum’

She included quotes but I think the post would be too large if I inserted them.
 
We really would need the quotes and where the quotes are from. Quotes taken out of context mean nothing. One verse in the Bible says there is no God. It is taken out of context from the remaining verses, but that is how anti-catholics need to support their arguments.
 
St. Gregory of Nyssa 4th century:

"Slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, adversaries of God, haters of God, men who show contempt for the law, foes of grace, enemies of their father’s faith, …

St. John Chrysostom (349-407)
(known as the “golden mouthed” due to his eloquence in speech:

"The synagogue is worse than a brothel… it is the den of scoundrels and the repair of wild beasts…
"…a criminal assembly of Jews… a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ…
"The synagogue is nigh to a curse. Obstinate in her error, she refuses to see or to hear; she has deliberately perverted her judgment: “I would say the same thing about their souls”

Chrysostom’s thunder, taken from eight sermons:

The Jews "are inveterate murderers, destroyers, men possessed by the devil . . . debauchery and drunkenness have given them the manners of pigs and lusty goats. … The Christian’s duty is to hate the Jews.

They sacrificed their sons and daughters to devils; they outraged nature and overthrew their foundations of the laws of relationship. They are become worse than the wild beasts, and for no reason at all, with their own hands, they murder their offspring, to worship the avenging devils who are foes of our life… … It is incumbent upon all Christians to hate the Jews.

It is because you shed the precious blood, that there is now no restoration, no mercy anymore, and no defense…"
Cohn, Sherbok, D. The Crucified Jew, Harper Collins, London, 1992, p33

St. Ambrose of Milan (379-395 AD.)

Following one of his speeches in which he preached that the synagogue was “a house of impiety, a receptacle of folly, which God himself has condemned,” the people went off and burnt one down.

With his ardent approval:

"I declare that I set fire to the synagogue, …
St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo:

“The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jew …forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus”
From: Calendar of Jewish Persecution

Justin Martyr

Concerning the accusation of “deicide” - killing God - in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, stated that the Jews should “rightly suffer”, for they had “slain the Just One.”
Wilson, M. Our Father Abraham, Wm.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Michigan, 1989, p93

St. Jerome about the Synagogue:

"If you call it a brothel, a den of vice, the Devil’s refuge, …Wistrich, R. Antisemitism. The Longest Hatred, Pantheon Books, New York, 1991, pl9 & 25

Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny:

"Truly I doubt whether a Jew can be really human… I lead out from its den a monstrous animal and show it as a laughing stock in the amphitheater of the world. I…Hay, M. Thy Brother’s Blood, Hart Publishing Co. 1975, p57

Pope Innocent III(1198-1216):

"The Jews guilt of the crucifixion of Yeshua consigned them to perpetual servitude, and like Cain, they are to be wanderers and fugitives… …
Soon before the Church’s Fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215 CE, preached the above:

“The Jews, against whom the blood of Jesus Christ calls out, although they ought not to be killed, lest the Christian people forget the Divine Law, yet as wanderers ought they remain upon the earth, until their countenance be filled with shame.”
Brown,M. Our Hands Are Stained With Blood, Shippensburg, Destiny Image, 1993, p13

Pope Paul IV 1555:
(Papal Bull)

“Cum nimis absurdum. Forasmuch as it is highly absurd and improper that the Jews, condemned by God to eternal slavery because of their guilt should, on the pretext that they are cherished by Christian love, and permitted to dwell in our midst, … and considering that the Roman Church tolerates the Jews in witness of the true Christian faith… we do therefore order the following measures, which are perpetually valid…”

Followed with a list of decrees against the Jews.
 
I haven’t look up each person online, but from the document I linked to regarding defending the Jews:

In the V-VI centuries, Pope S. Gregory the Great took the defense of the Jews of Terracina, who were forced by the Christians to move their Synagogue, just as some Jews of Arles and of Marseilles who were forced to Baptism. Beginning from the XI Century, some pontifical bulls were published which aimed to protect, amongst others, the Jews against the accusation of “sacrificial ritual.” And closer to us, at the beginning of the XX century, S. Pio X protested against the pogroms. In the 1928, the Holy Office condemned anti-Semitism, a condemnation reiterated by Pio XI in 1938.
 
Anti-semitic is a misnomer because it denotes a racial prejudice but as we all know the Catholic Church is multinational so it is definitely not in its interest to discriminate based on race. No, the Church was not anti-semitic but anti “Judaic”. There is a big difference. One based on race, the other on religion.
 
I would say that when one views quotes they must do so in context, not only with the rest of the text that the quote is in, but also in the context of the time period when they were written.

It is very easy when reading things of the past to view them with todays values/morality/knowledge. You must acknowledge the mindset of the time when you read things of the past.
 
Sounds like not just the early Popes and Church fathers were…
 
These posted quotes are hard to make a judgment on since they are full of so many ellipses and other indications of being taken out of context. Like so much anti-Catholicism, it would take 10 hours of research to address 5 minutes worth of charges.
 
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JesusIsTheWay:
Sounds like not just the early Popes and Church fathers were…

Looks like they still are…
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This is a pretty laughable link. Anybody that cites Jack Chick for anything has NO credibility.
 
i think the question might be better put this way… were the popes and church fathers without sin… Nope!.. Anyone (name removed by moderator)utting on this thread without sin…? I can only speak for me NOPE!.. how about you?.. 👍
 
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Fidelis:
This is a pretty laughable link. Anybody that cites Jack Chick for anything has NO credibility.
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So does that mean that all the pictures showing Catholic church officials with Hitler and all the Nazis never really happened??? Someone actually saying something happened I could see where credibility is an issue… but when someone says something happened and has pictures about said event depicting their statements… that makes things a little different…
 
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JesusIsTheWay:
So does that mean that all the pictures showing Catholic church officials with Hitler and all the Nazis never really happened??? Someone actually saying something happened I could see where credibility is an issue… but when someone says something happened and has pictures about said event depicting their statements… that makes things a little different…
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ROFL! Ok if that’s the case then what do we make of the Munich Agreement signed in 1938 by Britain, France and Germany giving Hitler control of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia? Does that mean Britain supported the nazis?

Look Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain with Hitler! They must have been in cahoots! :rolleyes:

 
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JesusIsTheWay:
So does that mean that all the pictures showing Catholic church officials with Hitler and all the Nazis never really happened??? Someone actually saying something happened I could see where credibility is an issue… but when someone says something happened and has pictures about said event depicting their statements… that makes things a little different…
Click to expand...
What it means is what I said. I simply said that any website that features a recognized paraniod anti-Catholic kook like Jack Chick as a reference has no credibility. I stand by that statement. What you read into it is of your own choosing.
 
Ynekka
St. Ambrose of Milan (379-395 AD.)
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Following one of his speeches in which he preached that the synagogue was “a house of impiety, a receptacle of folly, which God himself has condemned,” the people went off and burnt one down.
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I have read most of the writings of St. Ambrose and don’t recall coming across that one.

But if someone said the same about a couple of our local churches it wouldn’t be anti catholic because it would be true.

Fortunately those churches are a distinct minority.

From what I read he spent most of his time writing about the Church or against the Arians. His works on Christian faith and the Holy spirit are excellent.

About the only thing about St. Ambrose that might be anti-semitic is that he attempted to convert Jews to Christianity some consider any attempt to convert their people to be anti Semitic.

Peace

Scott
 
just put those two names on google or yahoo and please post what you find
 
The answer is: no, the early Church Fathers and Popes were not anti-Semetic. Anti-Semitism, hatred of the Jewish people, is a heresy; always has been, always will be.

The Fathers were anti-Jewish, and rightly so. Modern-day Judaism is not Biblical Judaism, and is in fact a false religion, although its more orthodox branches contain much that is true and holy.

Let’s start with the first quote, from Saint Gregory of Nyssa:

"Slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, adversaries of God, haters of God, men who show contempt for the law, foes of grace, enemies of their father’s faith, …

This quote is a forgery. Challenge anyone who claims it to provide a citation. I did a Google search, found many writers who quoted this. Not one of them gave a source. That should say something, no?

In fact, acording to the Wikpedia article “Christianity and Anti-Semitism”:
Many websites have lists of supposed quotes by Christian leaders and saints. For example, one page on Christian Jew Haters (sullivan-county.com/identity/jew_haters.htm) claims to list “quotes that reveal shocking hatred against the Jewish people and false accusations against the Jews by popes, ‘saints’ and other Christian religious functionaries”. Many of these quotes turn out to be partly or completely fabricated by people seeking to discredit Christianity. Amongst the victims of these misquotations is Gregory of Nyssa.
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So much for Saint Gregory being an anti-Semite!

Should I tackle the other quotes, or does someone else want to do it? We could take turns, make a game out of it!
 
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DominvsVobiscvm:
The answer is: no, the early Church Fathers and Popes were not anti-Semetic. Anti-Semitism, hatred of the Jewish people, is a heresy; always has been, always will be.

The Fathers were anti-Jewish, and rightly so. Modern-day Judaism is not Biblical Judaism, and is in fact a false religion, although its more orthodox branches contain much that is true and holy.

Let’s start with the first quote, from Saint Gregory of Nyssa:

"Slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, adversaries of God, haters of God, men who show contempt for the law, foes of grace, enemies of their father’s faith, …

This quote is a forgery. Challenge anyone who claims it to provide a citation. I did a Google search, found many writers who quoted this. Not one of them gave a source. That should say something, no?

In fact, acording to the Wikpedia article “Christianity and Anti-Semitism”:

So much for Saint Gregory being an anti-Semite!

Should I tackle the other quotes, or does someone else want to do it? We could take turns, make a game out of it!
Click to expand...
DV,

Anyone who doesn’t believe that anti-Semitism existed on the part of some in the early Church and still continues to exist on the part of some (including hierarchs) is naive.

You have a bad habit of applying the term "heresy"to everything with which you disagree that passes before you on the computer screen. Anti-Semitism is a hateful and sinful act, but it is not heresy. The Holy Office issued a statement in 1928 indicating that the Pope (Pius XI) condemned “especially hate against that people which was once chosen by God, that hate which is now usually called 'anti-Semitism.” Note, he did not use the term “heresy”.

As to the source you rely upon - Wikipedia - it’s a wonderful source of information, but hardly authoritative in any regard, since you (or anyone else) can write and add a topic to it or edit any topic presently on it. Note the small superscript “[edit]” which appears at intervals in the right hand margin of the topic from which you quote. If you click on that, you will find yourself faced with the editable copy of the text which you’ve been reading. You could then enter any text you choose into the topic - ou could, in fact, delete and completely rewrite the topic.

As a matter of fact, the link that you posted within the quoted topic has been edited since you accessed the Wikipedia page and, if hit on there, now produces a 404 (page not found) error. The web addy there in no way resembles the one in your post (which does work).
Scott Shelton:
I have read most of the writings of St. Ambrose and don’t recall coming across that one.
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Scott,

As to the quote attributed to St. Ambrose by the original poster, see Letter XL, reproduced at Catholic Encyclopedia

Many years,

Neil
 
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yinekka:
An anti Catholic came on to a Catholic discussion board here in Australia and posted the following names claiming that they taught hatred of Jews; therefore the Church is antisemitic. I have no idea where to go to checkout her claims. Can anyone help me? I would really appreciate your help on this one. She is forever coming in and bagging the Church and no one seems to know how to refute or put her claims in context. :confused:

St Gregory of Nyssa
St John Chrysostom - ‘Eight Sermons’
St Ambrose of Milan
St Augustine
Justin Martyr - 'Dialogue With Trypho the Jew"
St Jerome

Pope Innocent III
Pope Paul IV - Papal Bull - "Cum nimis absurdum’

She included quotes but I think the post would be too large if I inserted them.
Click to expand...
She’s just throwing out Ad Hominem - Abusive attacks…and her argument is riddled with fallacies…for instance…the fallacy of Category Errors - Composition.
 
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