The pope, in his new book, apparently asserts that the Jews didn’t kill Jesus. So what? Who cares anymore? Are we really going to let the pope decide our opinion on such matters as, Are Jews intrinsically evil? That sounds pretty ridiculous today, but for centuries the pope’s opinion on such matters really mattered. Thankfully, his words are now grist for the mill of Twitter jokes. Here’s my attempt at an elegant controbattuta:
An incomparable description of Hitler’s mental world:
“The Jews inhabited Hitler’s mind. He believed that they were the source of all evil, misfortune and tragedy, the single factor that, like some inexorable law of nature, explained the workings of the universe. The irregularities of war and famine, financial distress and sudden death, defeat and sinfulness – all could be explained by the presence of that single factor in the universe, a miscreation that disturbed the world’s steady ascent towards well-being, affluence, success, victory. A savior was needed to come forth and slay the loathsome monster. In Hitler’s obsessed mind, as in the delusive imaginings of the medieval millenarian sectarians, the Jews were the demonic hosts whom he had been given a divine mission to destroy.”
(Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews p. 21)
I find this passage utterly chilling.
The really funny thing is that what people occasionally say is no more absurd and far-fetched than this little ditty by Pope Anti-Semiticus. I mean, I know you know someone who really thinks this way.
Please forward to your favorite Jew-baiter or jihadi cousin. (Via kinoppete.)
Honestly, I didn’t think even the Vatican was capable of stooping so low. Father Raniero Cantalamessa, while speaking today before Pope Benedict XVI, read a letter he had received from “a Jewish friend.” The letter expressed its author’s sympathies with the Church, and went on about the historic coincidence of Easter and Passover overlapping, as if that were some sort of divine message to be decoded by both parties. In fact, if you believe in divine messages, even the number of words in the letter might have profound significance. Nonbelievers have a word for this kind of thing: apophenia, meaning “the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated phenomena,” according to Skepdic.
“I follow with disgust the violent, concentric attacks against the Church, the Pope and all of the faithful by the entire world,” the letter reads. “The use of stereotypes, the transference of guilt and personal responsibility to the collective remind me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”
Let’s look at this a bit closer. The entire world? All of the faithful? I am fairly critical of the Church, but I have never for any reason allowed that criticism to leak out onto those friends and family members who might be counted as being among the faithful. If they want to believe things I personally find ridiculous or adolescent, that’s their business and I respect it. Even Christopher Hitchens, one of the Pope’s most distinguished critics, has never to my knowledge spoken out in favor of persecution of the Catholic faithful for the sins of the corrupt clergy. Here is a recent piece from the Washington Post:
Joseph Ratzinger may be a mediocre and corrupt Bavarian official but he is acclaimed by his flock as the holder of the chair of Peter and the vicar of Christ on earth. Their choice. Their responsibility. Let them say that their redeemer has chosen such a person as his spokesman. They must still be made aware that as long as this outrage persists, they will never, ever, hear the end of it. Justice is coming.
Now, Hitchens is using characteristically strong language. One might even infer that he wishes the Catholic faithful to accept some measure of responsibility for their undisputed (and unelected, by them) leader. We are talking about a huge, an incredibly huge scandal of systematic sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests. That the Pope has been personally implicated in its cover-up only amplifies the gravity of these crimes. What Hitchens did not write was, “Rough up the Catholics wherever you find them. Make them pay in blood.” That, I agree, would have been somewhat closer to what our letter-writer called “the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” But that is not what is being said by Hitchens or anyone else, much less “the whole world.”
What is being said is that it is time to hold the Church accountable for its crimes. The rhetoric of “sin” and “repentance” is not enough. The fires of hell are not enough, not least of all because they do not exist. What is needed is accountability here and now for crimes committed against real human beings, not against gods and holy spirits. If there be such beings, they can look after themselves.
I watched Father Cantalamessa read this letter on television with a frowning, stony Joseph Ratzinger seated behind him. Who knows what was going through his head? The letter is a laughable piece of propaganda, however. After centuries of immunity from the law and public opinion, the Catholic Church is finally being treated like any other institution on (and of) this earth. It is in no way the object of discrimination or violence. Criticism of the Pope, the Church and its actions have nothing to do with their being Catholic and everything to do with their actions. To equate such criticism with anti-Semitism is laughable, inaccurate and dangerous. It distorts the meaning of what anti-Semitism is while simultaneously granting the Church immunity from criticism. That the letter was written by a “Jewish friend” adds insult to injury, and only serves to give an ounce of credibility in the public mind to an otherwise offensive analogy. Who would have taken such words seriously had they been credited to the Pope himself?
Susan Jacoby writes,
I am not sorry that the Catholic Church is finally being revealed for the morally bankrupt, bureaucratic institution that it is. But I am sorry that this is happening because of the suffering of generations of children. I am sorry for those who still love the Catholic faith–I grew up with them–and must reconcile that love with the terrible acts of the men who run their church. I am deeply grateful that, as an atheist educated in the Catholic Church, I no longer bear that burden. I also feel a deep sympathy for good priests–and I know many of them–who have never betrayed the trust of loyal Catholics. But for this pope, and all of the other church officials who knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it, I have nothing but contempt. They ought to resign and walk a personal via dolorosa every day of their lives. But they won’t do it. They will continue to cling to worldly power with all of their might, even as the moral power of their institution diminishes.
The Church could not ask for fairer or more elegant criticism than this.
We visited this synagogue, Etz Chayyim, on our trip to Crete in 2008. It was a beautiful, tranquil, unpretentious place open to the public. Apparently, they used to boast that it was one of the last Jewish buildings in Europe (or elsewhere, for that matter) without 24/7 surveillance. This will change, of course, once they get the synagogue up and running again.
There aren’t many Jews in Crete. Most Greek Jews live in Athens. And there aren’t many of them there, either. Why anyone feels threatened by Jews is a mystery to me; why anyone feels threatened by a reconstructed synagogue (it had been used as a pigsty until the 1990s) is an equal mystery. The BBC reports.
How did I miss this???
Today the European court made an important ruling against the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools, saying that “the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religious and education freedoms.” Right. But the Vatican doesn’t see it that way. In fact, they (and most Italian politicians who either believe this hooey or don’t have the balls to stick up for their country against the bishops) are even trying to twist the crucifix into a universal, non-denominational “cultural” symbol. As Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini puts it:
”In our country nobody wants to impose the Catholic religion, let alone with a crucifix, but it is not by eliminating the traditions of individual countries that a united Europe is built.”
The Bishops’ Conference added:
”The multiple significance of the crucifix, which is not just a religious symbol but a cultural sign, has been either ignored or overlooked.”
Don’t be fooled. Europe is no more united by the crucifix than the United States are by the Ten Commandments. In fact, if anything unites the countries of the Euopean Union, it is a collective desire to get beyond the stifling, warring factionalism of inter-Christian warfare. The Catholic church imposed itself on Europe (and much of the rest of the Christianized world) largely through religious war and political domination, extirpating all other religious denominations except for Judaism, which was left to suffer beneath the heel of the Church as a “living witness” to Christ. Ghettoized, expelled, forced to convert, stripped of their rights and property, they were prepared for the slaughter of crusades, pogroms and – given enough time – the unprecedented carnage of the Shoah. This is the legacy of the Christianization of Europe and the universal values of the Catholic church.
It’s time Europe left them behind for good, making Christianity just another one of the many competing religious and non-religious identities on the continent. Everyone has the right to choose a religion and practice it, believe in it and love it. But no one has the right to impose that religion (yes, Christianity is a religion) on anyone else. Italy is a secular country, born in strict opposition to the totalitarian dogma of the late 19th century church (infallibility, et al). Under Mussolini, the church was given new life as a de facto state religion. The Italian constitution has upheld these agreements to this day.
The time has come for them to be abrogated in the name of humanism and a pluralistic, secular Italian state with freedom of religion for all and privilege for none.
T.S. Eliot’s reputation has undergone a thorough reassessment over the last sixty years or so. He was, at mid-century, the prevailing protagonist of orthodox English literature. As both poet and critic, he was worshipped in the academies and by struggling young poets alike. Hart Crane’s admiration from Eliot was so extreme that his long epic The Bridge was conceived as an answer to The Wasteland.
In 1951 the Anglo-Jewish poet Emanuel Litvinoff read a poem that he had written, “To T.S. Eliot.” It was something of a game-changer, as it brought into the open the most uncomfortable aspect of Eliot’s poetry–his anti-Semitism. Amazingly, Eliot was in the audience that evening and is quoted as saying, “It is a good poem, it is a very good poem.”
None of this is news, however. In 1995 Cambridge University Press published a book-length study of Eliot’s controversial poetry, “T.S. Eliot, anti-Semitism and Literary Form” by Anthony Julius. A few years later, Julius would represent Deborah Lipstadt in court against David Irving. Lipstadt was defending herself against a charge of libel. She had written that Irving was a Holocaust-denier. He pressed charges, and the court found him giuilty. Lipstadt’s account can be read in History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier.”
But what is so extraordinary about T.S. Eliot, you ask? Everyone, arguably, was anti-Semitic in those days. Except, of course, those who weren’t. And Jews themselves, who paid a hefty price for this durable brand of bigotry. Litvinoff was horrified not only that Eliot had written these poems in the first place as far back as the 1920s, or even earlier. Litvinoff was horrified by the fact that Eliot had them reprinted in his 1948 Selected Poems. Considering that Eliot had barred his embarrassing early book, After Strange Gods, from ever being reprinted, one must ask the question: Why did he allow his Der Sturmeresque characterizations of Jews (or “jews” as Eliot himself wrote it) to be reprinted immediately following the Nazi carnage? Could this have been an oversight on the part of the great poet? If so, then why was After Strange Gods, with its ranting on about perilious “freethinking Jews” (p.20) and the utopian dream of a “Christian society” (p.21), not similarly overlooked?
These are just some of the questions readers must ask themselves when they open Eliot and begin reading, “The rats are underneath the piles/ the jew is underneath the lot.”
Here is a revealing comment to my recent post about anti-Obama hate speech. In fact, it is so perfectly blind in its sheer disgust of him that I felt it deserved a place of its own in a post instead of getting lost in the comments.The author calls herself The Mad Jewess, and mad she is. At what, it’s hard to say.
“I stood up to the excrement on Youtube, and advised them to REPENT: Rabbis4Obama, Jews4Obama, the list is ENDLESS of the sheep that voted in the Marxist, Fascist, Muslim Usurper in Chief..but remember, we dont make up a whole heckuva lot of the populace, and those that did NOT vote for the pig, NEED to get blogs and head almost far right, with a little balance.
As much as people dont want to admit it, MADOFF got rid of the JINOs; ACLU, and MANY, believe you me.”
Elsewhere, she decries feminism, blacks, abortion, divorce, the anti-christ, racism (against “white people”), Latinos, gun control, Bolsheviks…an this is all on the first page of her blog! If this is any indication of the general attitudes of the anti-Obama hate-clans, it’s a lethal cocktail of far-right xenophobia and the inability to distinguish one thing from another in order to make a cesspool of one’s personal hatreds. These people are not out to debate policy, they are out to offend by any means necessary.
Israelis need all the friends they can get to combat prejudice. But are Jewish xenophobes who court right-wing American bigots (the Left Behind people) the answer to Islamist death squads and anti-Zionist xenophobia on the far left?
The propaganda is essentially the same all around. Change the names, or melt them all together into a Zionist-Muslim-Commie-Fascist-Abortion-loving-Negro-hugging-Feminist hatefest to suit your own personal woes. There is nothing constructive about any of this, however. And it remains a mystery exactly why they think Obama’s policy on Israeli settlements is so unique. It may be ‘displacement’, but is is not really divergent or particularly original.
And Madoff is their hero.
Some 70% of American Jews voted for Barack Obama in the last elections. Now, we find out we voted for Hitler? This is something I can’t quite digest, this pro-Israeli Obama-bashing. How did the conservatives hijack Zionism?
“The dhimmi in the White House” has increasingly become a sort of anti-Obama rallying cry. The scope is not to discuss or criticize Obama’s ideas on Israel (entirely debatable,as ever) but to dirty him with the dhimmi brush. He has been tarred and feathered as an enemy of Israel and the Jewish people and a lackey of Islamic rejectionism. As my blogger friend Jew With a View posted recently (quoting Joseph Farah):
I hope my Jewish friends remember this well. Many of them voted for Barack Obama. Many of them voted for Hillary Clinton. These are not your friends. These are the same kinds of people who turned away ships of Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1940s. These are the same kinds of people who appeased Adolf Hitler at Munich. These are the same kinds of people who made the reformation of the modern state of Israel so difficult.
We have gone from understandable criticism of Obama-administration pressure on Israel to stop existing settlement growth to a mischaracterization of Obama as–what? Hitler? Ahmadinejad? Appeasement incarnate, apparently. Farah goes so far as to call this “ethnic cleansing”, perhaps borrowing his human-rights jargon from the anti-Zionist hard left. My baloney detector is going haywire.
Is Barack Obama a cosmically-charged enemy of the Jewish people? Was he sent by God (or the Adversary) to beguile and destroy Jewish continuity in the guise of the president of the USA? Is he, as we are expected to believe, completely subservient to the Islamist lobby? Is he ransoming the State of Israel to appease the likes of Osama bin Laden and the Iranian regime? Does any of this sound familiar?? It sounds like the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis turned on its head. If only everything in politics were so black and white.
I’m all for crticism where it is due, and Obama is no exception. I used to feel disgusted at the hatred against Dubya, though I’ve never felt close to the Republican party or kinship with American conservative causes. I even stood up to fellow liberals when they crossed the line from criticism to hate speech. And there was a lot of that back then. Now it’s back–with a vengeance.
Can’t we say shoyn genug* to conspiracy theories once and for all?
* “enough already!”
Marc Di Martino 