-Caveat Lector-
"...one of the principal incitements to anti-Semitism
in this century: Jewish participation in Communism,
with its terrifying persecution of Christians. Where is
the...statement of Jewish leaders repudiating and repenting
the Jewish role in a cause whose crimes dwarf those of
Hitler? Did major Jewish spokesmen or organizations condemn
Communism as it devoured tens of millions of Christians?
Did a few brave Jews in the Soviet Union and the other
Communist-ruled countries act, at personal risk, to shield
Christians from arbitrary arrest and murder? Even today,
how many Jews condemn Franklin Roosevelt for his fondness
for Stalin, as they would condemn him if he had shown the
slightest partiality to Hitler? "
The Church and Jewish Ideology
JOE SOBRAN'S COLUMN
(Reprinted from SOBRAN'S, May 1999, page 4)
The prevalent Jewish myth today is not the founding myth of Abraham
or Moses on Sinai, but the story of Jewish persecution. In our
time the Jews are defined less by ancestry than by "anti-Semitism,"
which is cited for many purposes, including the legitimation of the
state of Israel. Most Zionists no longer claim that God gave the
Holy Land to the Jews; instead they contend that the Jewish state
is necessary as a haven for world Jewry.
According to this modern myth, the Jews are in no way responsible
for their own unpopularity from ancient times. What, then, is the
source of such persistent hostility to this fundamentally innocent
people? Why, the Catholic Church, of course!
Many Jewish scholars find the seed of anti-Semitism in the Gospels
of Matthew and John, where the Jews are depicted as engineering the
Crucifixion, with the assistance of Romans who "know not what they
do." Some Jews have even demanded that the offending passages be
deleted from the Scriptures, not realizing (or caring) that
Christians regard their holy books as off-limits to human editing.
Others persist in blaming Pius XII for failing to condemn Nazism
more strongly for its persecution of the Jews of Europe. The
Catholic Church in particular has been targeted as the historic
matrix of anti-Semitism; and unfortunately, many churchmen have
accepted the role of defendant against accusers who will never
acquit the Church or drop the case.
In recent years the Vatican has tried, as far as possible, to
appease Jewish objections. The Second Vatican Council, mindful of
Nazi crimes, proclaimed that today's Jews don't share the guilt of
the Jews who conspired to murder Christ. Pope John Paul II has
been especially eager to cultivate good relations with the Jews,
even making an unprecedented visit to a Roman synagogue a few years
ago. He has gone so far as to name Steven Spielberg's Schindler's
List as one of his favorite films -- though it contains scenes of
nudity and simulated intercourse.
In this spirit, the Vatican last year promulgated We Remember,
a statement of repentance for the failures of the Church and the
mass of Christians during the Holocaust (or Shoah, the Hebrew word
that has become current lately). Its theme was that "erroneous
and unjust interpretations of the New Testament" have contributed
to anti-Semitism; and that the Church, though never a party to
persecution, should have done more to oppose the "unspeakable
tragedy" of the Shoah, which "can never be forgotten." The
statement also affirmed the Church's "very close bonds of
spiritual kinship with the Jewish people" and the "Hebrew
roots of [Catholic] faith."
Many Jews resented the statement's exculpation of the Church for
the Shoah itself. The document distinguished sharply between
regrettable Christian attitudes toward the Jews throughout
European history (it made no reference to Jewish attitudes
toward Christians) and the virulent nationalist and racialist
anti-Semitism that arose in the nineteenth century. Predictably,
a Jewish historian has rejected this distinction.
In an article in the April issue of Commentary, "The Pope, the
Church, and the Jews," Robert S. Wistrich, professor of modern
Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, attacks
We Remember for defending Pius XII and for minimizing the Church's
guilty role in fostering anti-Semitism through the ages. Wistrich
belittles Pius's efforts to protect Jews as not only insufficient
but lacking in "moral courage." As for the nineteenth-century
anti-Semitic ideologies, they "presupposed a cultural framework
that had been fashioned by centuries of medieval Christian
theology, ecclesiastical policy, and popular religious myth."
This is nothing new for Commentary, which has previously carried
articles blaming Christianity itself for the Holocaust. Wistrich
doesn't cite, though he might as well have, the charge of the
Jewish scholar Jules Isaac that "the permanent and latent source of
anti-Semitism is none other than Christian religious teaching of
every description, and the traditional, tendentious interpretation
of the Scriptures." Isaac's work and influence helped shape the
Second Vatican Council's statement about the Jews.
By such reasoning as Wistrich's, it would be easy to blame the Jews
for bringing persecution on themselves. After all, they have been
unpopular not only in Christian countries, but in pagan and Muslim
lands. Cicero, Tacitus, Juvenal, and other Roman authors inveighed
against them. They have repeatedly migrated to Christian countries
and have been repeatedly expelled, for reasons that have usually
had little to do with theology -- though the obscene blasphemies
against Christ and his mother in the Talmud, unique in religious
literature, besides reflecting oddly on Jewish demands for
Christian tolerance and for the cleansing of offensive passages in
the Gospels, have done nothing to endear the Jews to Christians.
Wistrich mentions none of this. Nor does he mention one of the
principal incitements to anti-Semitism in this century: Jewish
participation in Communism, with its terrifying persecution of
Christians. Where is the corresponding statement of Jewish leaders
repudiating and repenting the Jewish role in a cause whose crimes
dwarf those of Hitler? Did major Jewish spokesmen or organizations
condemn Communism as it devoured tens of millions of Christians?
Did a few brave Jews in the Soviet Union and the other
Communist-ruled countries act, at personal risk, to shield
Christians from arbitrary arrest and murder? Even today, how many
Jews condemn Franklin Roosevelt for his fondness for Stalin, as
they would condemn him if he had shown the slightest partiality
to Hitler?
Further, might the Talmudic imprecations against Christ and
Christians have helped form the Bolshevik Jews' anti-Christian
animus? Did the Talmud help form the "cultural framework" for the
persecution of Christians, and for the eradication of Christian
culture in America today? If so, will Jews make an effort to
expunge the offending passages from the Talmud? How many rabbis
speak of their "spiritual kinship" with Christianity?
The answers to these questions are only too obvious. The Jews,
with honorable but ineffectual exceptions, judge Christians by a
standard that doesn't seem to apply to themselves. Or rather,
their single standard is "Is it good for the Jews?"
As shepherd of the Catholic Church, Pius XII was bound to be guided
chiefly by the question "Is it good for the Church?" He was not
a Jewish leader, after all, but a Catholic one -- a somewhat
neglected point in these controversies. His first duty was to
protect the Church amid the madness of a world war, knowing that
its deadliest enemy was not Nazism but Communism (which, with
American assistance, conquered several Catholic nations in Eastern
Europe by the war's end). He did what he could to protect Jews and
others too, and the most eloquent testimony to his efforts is the
conversion of Israel Zolli, chief rabbi of Rome, to Catholicism.
Zolli even took the baptismal name Eugenio in honor of Pius, who
was born Eugenio Pacelli; he would hardly have done this if he had
seen Pius as indifferent to the persecution of Jews.
Yet Wistrich complains that "in confronting the Shoah, Pius XII's
chief concern was less with the ongoing annihilation of the Jews
than with the interests of the Church." Think of that: a Pope
putting the Church first! Nowadays even the papacy is to be judged
in terms of Jewish interests. Self-absorption can go no further.
It's some consolation that even the treacherous Roosevelt is now
being criticized for doing too little to save Jewish lives. Jewish
critics argue that he might have ordered the bombing of railroads
leading to the concentration camps. But the chief effect of such
a practice would surely have been to starve the camps' inmates.
The smear of Pius XII -- and of the Church -- persists, and will
no doubt continue indefinitely, in the endless campaign to make
Christianity and anti-Semitism synonymous. Wistrich barely
acknowledges that the diplomatic Pius may have feared that a more
explicit condemnation of Nazism would have backfired not only
against the Church, but against the Jews themselves. Besides,
if papal condemnations of Communism had failed to deter the
persecution of Christians, how could Pius expect papal
animadversions against Nazism to be any more efficacious?
Even American Jewish groups refrained from denouncing the Shoah
during the war, for fear that speaking publicly about it might
do more harm than good. This policy of silence has resulted in
bitter recriminations between American and European Jews, but
it has discouraged few Jews on either continent from blaming
Pius for saying too little.
The prevalent attitude of Christians toward the Jews has been
(and remains) not so much hatred as fear. The Acts of the Apostles
tells how the early Church was forced to take various precautions
"for fear of the Jews." Few deny, or doubt, that this is
historically accurate; the tolerance recommended to Christians has
never been a salient trait of the Jews themselves, when they have
held power. On the contrary, the state of Israel is based on an
ethnic supremacism that would be roundly condemned as anti-Semitic
if it were enforced against Jews by gentiles. Yet most Jews hotly
resent any suggestion that Zionism is "racist." (A United Nations
declaration to that effect was eventually repealed in response to
American pressure.)
In intellectual life, Jews have been brilliantly subversive of the
cultures of the natives they have lived amongst. Their tendencies,
especially in modern times, have been radical and nihilistic. One
thinks of Marx, Freud, and many other shapers of modern thought and
authors of reductionist ideologies. Even Einstein, the greatest
of Jewish scientists, was, unlike Sir Isaac Newton, no mere
contemplator of nature's laws; he helped inspire the development
of nuclear weapons and consistently defended the Soviet Union
under Stalin.
Jews have generally supported Communism, socialism, liberalism,
and secularism; the agenda of major Jewish groups is the
de-Christianization of America, using a debased interpretation of
the "living Constitution" as their instrument. When the Jewish
side of an issue is too unpopular to prevail democratically, the
legal arm of Jewry seeks to make the issue a "constitutional" one,
appealing to judicial sovereignty to decide it in defiance of the
voters. Overwhelming Jewish support for legal abortion illustrates
that many Jews hate Christian morality more than they revere Jewish
tradition itself. This fanatical antagonism causes anguish to a
number of religious, conscientious, and far-sighted Jews, but they,
alas, are outside the Jewish mainstream.
Today, in American politics, journalism, and ecclesiastical
circles, fear of Jewish power is overwhelming. This is most
obvious in the dread of incurring the label "anti-Semitic," in
the way Christians shrink from calling this country "a Christian
nation" (a phrase that enrages Jews), and in the groveling before
Israel that has become a virtual requirement for anyone who aspires
to high office. Nobody dares to point out the obvious, that Israel
is inimical to the principles Americans profess to share; nearly
everyone in public life pretends that Israel is a model democracy
and a "reliable ally" of the United States, despite repeated
episodes of Israeli spying and betrayal against its chief
benefactor. Israel has not only refused to return the documents
stolen by Jonathan Pollard; it continues to press the U.S.
Government for his release from prison. In fact Israel exemplifies
most of the "anti-Semitic stereotypes" of yore: it is exclusivist,
belligerent, parasitic, amoral, and underhanded. It feels no
obligation to non-Jews, even those who have befriended it.
Most Jews regard conversion to Christianity as the ultimate treason
to Jewry and resent Christian attempts to convert them; never mind
that for Christians, concern for the salvation of souls is the
highest charity next to the adoration of God. In Jewish eyes, such
charity is next door to persecution. Jews for Jesus, a convert
group, is especially execrated among Jews, and in Israel Christian
proselytization can be punished by law under various pretexts.
(Even giving a copy of the New Testament can be construed as a
"bribe.") Yet Christians, who may not claim a nation of their own,
are taxed to support the Jewish state. History is replete with
the lesson that a country in which the Jews get the upper hand is
in danger. Such was the experience of Europe during Jewish-led
Communist revolutions in Russia, Hungary, Romania, and Germany
after World War I. Christians knew that Communism -- often called
"Jewish Bolshevism" -- would bring awful persecution with the
ultimate goal of the annihilation of Christianity. While the
atheistic Soviet regime made war on Christians, murdering tens of
thousands of Orthodox priests, it also showed its true colors by
making anti-Semitism a capital crime. Countless Jews around the
world remained pro-Communist even after Stalin had purged most Jews
from positions of power in the Soviet Union.
Clearly, it is futile for the Church to try to mollify a hatred
so ancient and so deep as the Jewish animus against Christianity.
Despite all the sentimental rhetoric to the contrary -- such as
pious nonsense about "the Judaeo-Christian tradition" -- Judaism
and Christianity are radically opposed over the most important
thing of all: Jesus Christ, who commands us to be wise as serpents
and harmless as doves, and to love our enemies, which does not mean
mistaking them for friends.
This is not to suggest that true friendship can't exist between
Jews and Christians as individuals. And there is much about the
Jews, an immensely talented people, that a Christian can honor and
delight in. But any concord based on lies, evasions, and partisan
propaganda is false and should be rejected. We Remember is an
honorable attempt to vindicate the honor of the Church. If only
it had dealt more frankly with the real history of Jewish-Christian
relations!
(end)
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