Friday, March 29, AD 2024 1:34am

PopeWatch: Anti-Semitism

 

 

It would take a blind man not to notice that anti-Semitism is growing in strength on the left.  Unsurprisingly with the advent of Pope Francis, definitely a man of the left, anti-Semitic tropes are beginning to emerge within the Church.  Sandro Magister gives us the latest:

 

“Israel, people of a jealous God. Consistencies and ambiguities of an elitist religion.” Already from this conference title wafts an air that is by no means friendly for Jews and Judaism.

But if one goes to read the original text of presentation, there is even worse to be found: “thinking of oneself as a people belonging in an elitist way to a unique divinity has determined a sense of the superiority of one’s own religion.” Which leads to “intolerance,” “fundamentalism,” “absolutism” not only toward other peoples but also in self-destruction, because “one has to wonder to what extent the divine jealousy may or may not incinerate the chosen’s freedom of choice.”

And yet these were the initial title and presentation of a conference that the Italian Biblical Association has scheduled from September 11-16 in Venice.

The statutes of the ABI are approved by the Italian episcopal conference, and its members include about 800 professors and scholars of the Sacred Scriptures, Catholic and not. Among the speakers at the conference in September is the leading biblicist at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Belgian Jesuit Jean-Louis Ska, a specialist in the Pentateuch, which in Hebrew is the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. No invitation to speak, however, has been extended to any Jewish scholar.

But the rabbis could not remain silent. And they have made themselves heard with a letter to the ABI signed by one of their most authoritative representatives, Giuseppe Laras, the news of which was first covered by Giulio Meotti in “Il Foglio” on March 10.

An extensive extract from the letter is reproduced further below. But first a couple of notifications are in order.

When Rabbi Laras writes of a “Marcionism” that is now emerging with ever greater insistence, he is referring to the school of thought that from the second-century Greek theologian Marcion until our day contrasts the jealous, legalistic, warlike God of the Old Testament with the good, merciful, peaceful God of the New Testament, and therefore, as a result, the Jewish followers of the former with the Christian followers of the latter.

Not only that. Laras – still remembered for his dialogues with Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini – makes reference to Pope Francis as one who perpetuates this contrast.

And in effect it is not the first time that authoritative representatives of Italian Judaism – like the chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni – have criticized Francis for the distorted use of the term “pharisee” or of the comparison with Moses to cast discredit on his adversaries.

This is what Francis did, for example, in the concluding address of the synod of bishops, when he lashed out against “the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases.” Not caring that he was contradicting himself, because one innovation that the pope wanted to introduce into the practice of the Church was the restoration of divorce, allowed by none other than Moses and instead prohibited by Jesus.

But now it’s Rabbi Laras’s turn.

*

Dear friends,

[. . .] I have read, together with my esteemed fellow rabbis and with Prof. David Meghnagi, cultural commissioner of the UCEI [Union of Italian Jewish Communities], the event guide for the ABI [Italian Biblical Association] conference scheduled for September 2017.

I am, and this is a euphemism, very indignant and embittered! [. . .]

Of course – independently of everything, including possible future apologies, rethinkings, and retractions – what emerges conspicuously are a few disquieting facts, which many of us have felt in the air for quite some time and about which there should be profound introspection on the Catholic side:

1. an undercurrent – with the text a bit more manifest now – of resentment, intolerance, and annoyance on the Christian side toward Judaism;

2. a substantial distrust of the Bible and a subsequent minimization of the Jewish biblical roots of Christianity;

3. a more or less latent “Marcionism” now presented in pseudo-scientific form, which today focuses insistently on ethics and politics;

4. the embracing of Islam, which is all the stronger as the Christian side is more critical toward Judaism, now including even the Bible and biblical theology;

 

 

Go here to read the rest.  The Pope is friendly to atheists and Muslims and bashes believing Catholics and Jews.   Thus are the insane times of the current Pontificate.

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Art Deco
Art Deco
Thursday, March 16, AD 2017 7:10am

I suspect most Europeans with some tertiary schooling are anti-semites in a very contemporary way. They despise the state of Israel – not because of any acts of the government therein or properties of social life therein – but because Israel’s political class sides with it’s own population in making public policy and has no time for the talking cure in international relations or domestic security. There are anti-semites in loci like this. About 1/3 of them are ‘social justice’ types, 1/3 are old-school cuckoos babbling about the Rotshchilds, and 1/3 are palaeo types. One thing that bothers me about Traditionalist literature is that (The Latin Mass the exception) editors are willing to open their pages to these types.

David Spaulding
David Spaulding
Thursday, March 16, AD 2017 9:45am

This is deeply disturbing because I can feel the frustration and concern in Rabbi Laras’s response and it greatly saddens me. The specter of anti-semitism is ever at the door and, to many of the Jews I know well, the Pogroms, Holocaust, and the Edict of Expulsion are as yesterday. What I mean is that I am friends with Jews DESPITE what has been done by my culture to their ancestors so every fresh insult and offense is going to cut deeper than our learned Jesuit friends imagine.

Academia is rotten and one of the elements that is rotting that tree is an overabundant need to “publish or die.” We research, write, and publish to justify position, not to enlighten or spur thought. One of the results is that disturbing that status quo is its own purpose. We see that Shakespeare’s work is “homoerotic,” “Jesus” is an amalgam and, so, neither human, nor divine, or, as here, reinterpreting Scripture to create a stir.

Here, we are, regular, ordinary Christians who seek to live as Christians in a diverse world that includes Jews. By declaring the fundamental beliefs of Jews to be elitist and potentially extreme, the presentation gets notoriety at great cost to the faith.

Now, we have to answer for this nonsense, assuring our friends and the general public that we are not anti-semites, despite our history and the reinforcing realities of the now.

Nice going, guys!

Mary De Voe
Thursday, March 16, AD 2017 2:54pm

Saint John Paul II called Jews “our older brothers” because, since Abraham, the Jews carry the Truth of the Triune God, the law of God and the Ten Commandments. “(T)he laws of Nature and Nature’s God” allow “their Creator” to be a jealous God, in Justice. Those who would deconstruct “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and “their Creator” as Lord must aggregate together to eradicate the Truth. We are all Jews in Jesus and Jesus Christ’s Virgin Mother, our Mother and Mother of the Church. It is atheism.

Dick the Butcher
Dick the Butcher
Thursday, March 16, AD 2017 3:34pm

These people have no grasp of the obvious. They uncharitably judge entire nations/groups of their brothers and sisters based on dishonest, counter-factual stereotypes. and outright falsities

Anti-Semitism isn’t the only “anti” of which many on the left are guilty. Many misguided, mal-educated ideologues apparently are also anti-facts, anti-free-markets, anti-historical, anti-personal responsibility, anti-marriage/nuclear family, anti-unborn, anti-economic growth, anti-white, anti-American, etc.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Thursday, March 16, AD 2017 7:43pm

I have read a fair amount of rad-Trad items around the ‘NET. Many of them remind me of a Sponge Bob Squarepants episode when Sponge Bob chases around jellyfish with a net without catching anything. The thing is that the Jews reject Christ as the Messiah and Savior. There is no getting around that.

Clinton
Clinton
Thursday, March 16, AD 2017 11:48pm

I think one of the reasons we’re seeing a resurgence in anti-semitism on
the left is that the Democrats are cozying-up to muslims, and anti-semitism is
practically as much a Pillar of Islam as making a pilgrimage to Mecca.

The recent “Women’s March” held in DC right after Trump’s inauguration was
chaired by a Brooklyn-based Islamist named Linda Sarsour, recruited by the event’s
organizers. Ms. Sarsour has ties with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and is
an outspoken proponent of sharia law for the USA. She is deeply and outspokenly
anti-semitic, and runs with that unsavory BDS crowd. And the left recruited her
to be a chair of that march. She was chosen to be the face of feminism by today’s
left.

The recent “Day Without Women” organized by the left was also chaired by the
odious Ms. Sarsour, in tandem with others such as Angela Davis and Rasmieh Odeh–
muslims all, and each more anti-semitic than the next. Interestingly, Ms. Sarsour
recently made the news when she publicly stated that “Jews cannot be feminists”.

And of course, the DNC’s recent selection of a new party Chair saw Rep Keith
Ellison come close to securing the position, landing endorsements from Bernie
Sanders, Rep. John Lewis, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, Sen. Elizabeth
Warren, and Sen. Chuck Schumer. Ellison has a long history of anti-semitic
statements and well-documented associations with Nation Of Islam and the Muslim
Brotherhood– both groups being deeply, proudly anti-semitic. And yet this man
just came within an ace of being elected chair of the Democrats’ party. Such is
the willingness of the left to overlook (or not-so-secretly accept and normalize)
hatred of Jews and of Israel.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, March 17, AD 2017 1:48am

Robert Redeker has suggested that, post Cold War, the French left has replaced “sovietophilia” with “islamophilia,” and that “Palestinians and the contemporary Muslim masses replace the proletariat in the intellectuals’ imagination” as the pure, ideal alternative to Western capitalism. (Le Monde, 11/21/01).

Similarly ,in an essay on anti-Semitism, Au Nom de l’Autre: Réfléxions sur l’antisémitisme qui vient (In the Name of the Other: Reflections on the Coming Anti-Semitism), Alain Finkielkraut took aim at the left, explaining that anti-Jewish hatred of today comes not from those nostalgic for Pétain and Vichy but rather the activists of the anti-globalization and anti-racism movements. He explains that European unity is constructed around a series of ‘never agains.’ No more war, nor power, nor empire, nor nationalism. Progressive Europe has disavowed its embarrassing past. This makes it ill at ease with a state, Israel that clings to its borders just as Europe renounces its own, that nurtures its army just as Europe demilitarizes, and that must combat implacable enemies just as Europe denies such things exist.

in La Nouvelle Judéophobie, Pierre-Andre Taguieff points to a myth current among many young people, Christians, third-worldists” and anti-globalization activists. The myth “is constructed on the demonized figure of ‘Jews-Israelis-Zionists’ supported by the ‘Americans’ and in opposition to that, no less mythical, of the Palestinian Arab ‘innocent victims.’“ On one side, Taguieff continues, stands the “cosmopolitan Satan,” the unholy trinity ‘United States/Israel/The West.’ On the other side stands the “dominated and the oppressed.” Thus the new judeophobia recycles old stereotypes such as the rich Jew and the dominating Jew under the “varnish of progressivism.” The Jew is once more the stand-in for capitalism, imperialism, cosmopolitanism, indeed the whole economic order

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