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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!!

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To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (17461)2/5/1998 11:01:00 PM
From: Grainne  Read Replies (2) of 108807
 
Gee, Freddy, I did a quick search on the web and quickly found about fifty sources, of varying quality and scholarship of course, discussing prejudice against the Jews which stemmed somehow from the New Testament of the Bible, whether by contemporaneous intent or later misinterpretation. So I am not sure exactly what you are talking about, but there seems to be a body of scholars and at least one revered public figure who disagree with your opinion:

centuryone.com

users.bournemouth-net.co.uk

shemesh.scholar.emory.edu

yale.edu

Saturday, November 1, 1997

Pope: Anti-Judaism dimmed
Christian eyes during Nazi
persecution

By Daniel J. Wakin / Associated Press

VATICAN CITY -- John Paul II on Friday blamed centuries of anti-Jewish
prejudice for "deadening" Christian resistance to the Nazi persecution of Jews
-- but steered clear of blaming the church itself.
"Humanity had a right to expect" more defiance from the "disciples of
Christ," he said in a ringing condemnation of anti-Semitism.
But in his speech to a Vatican seminar on anti-Jewish currents in Christian
theology, the pontiff stopped short of confronting the issue of alleged church
complicity in the Holocaust -- through silence or inaction, as some critics
charge.
After the French church last month apologized for remaining silent during the
persecution and deportation of Jews by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime, there was
speculation John Paul might do the same for the church as a whole.
"I had hoped that the pope's statement would approach that kind of
admission, as an acceptance of responsibility," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder
and director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based group that
battles anti-Semitism.
But Hier called the pope's speech "a breath of fresh air. Had the church said
this hundreds of years ago, so much suffering would have been spared in the
world," he said.
The pope's condemnation of anti-Semitism was not new, and this pope is
widely credited with repairing relations with those he calls Christianity's "older
brothers." A recent guide issued by the Vatican on how to teach Church
doctrine worldwide set the overcoming of anti-Semitism as a goal.
But his comment on anti-Semitism's theological origins was a step in his
quest for an accounting of Catholic misdeeds as Christianity's Third Millennium
approaches.
John Paul said wrong or unfair interpretations of the New Testament had
created "hostility" toward the Jews in the Christian world.
"I do not say on the part of the church as such," John Paul emphasized.
Those Gospel-based prejudices "helped in deadening consciences, so that
when the wave of persecutions inspired by a pagan anti-Semitism flooded
Europe ... the spiritual resistance" was weak, the pope said in a reference to
Nazism.
"Anti-Semitism is without any justification and absolutely to be condemned,"
he said.
John Paul told the 60 scholars from around the world, mostly theologians,
that their work would deepen the dialogue between Catholics and Jews and
help a "purification of memory."
Some in the church believe that the pope has gone too far in making
apologies. John Paul's statement that he was not speaking "on the part of the
church as such" was an attempt to mollify that group, Vatican officials said.
In another key passage, John Paul stressed Christ's Jewish nature.
"The figure of the Lord" would lose his identity if detached from the fact that
Christ was a Jew and lived in a Jewish milieu, he said.
The church in 1965 officially discarded the teaching that the Jews were
responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.
An open wound in relations between the church and many Jews is the record
of the World War II pope, Pius XII. Critics say he failed to intervene to stop
the persecution of Jews, though his defenders argue that he felt he could be
more effective by keeping ties with belligerents and not endangering Catholic or
Jewish communities in Germany and elsewhere.
In a subtle jab at these critics, John Paul cited a Pius XII encyclical of 1939.
In it, John Paul said, Pius evoked "the law of human solidarity and charity
toward every man, to whichever people he belonged."
John Paul continued:
"To the moral evil of all genocides is added, with the Shoah (the Holocaust),
the evil of a hatred which is against God's plan of salvation for history. The
church herself has been directly faced with this hatred."
The closed, three-day conference ends Saturday.

Copyright 1997, The Detroit News



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