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The Church and Jewish Ideology
(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!
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