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“What I like about the Catholic Church is that it is one of the few institutions left that still believes that some propositions are true” — Patterson Brown, c. 1964

Recently I was asked to appear on a show on a Catholic TV station to present the Jewish point of view about the controversial Good Friday Latin prayer adopted by Pope Benedict XVI (I’ve written about it here and here).

What I wanted to say was that I wasn’t bothered at all by the prayer, which asks that God may “illumine their hearts that they might acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Savior of all”.

This is because Pope Paul VI, in a declaration issued in 1965 called Nostra Aetate, made the following points quite clear:

1. The Church believes that its doctrine is true and universal for all people
2. Nevertheless, one must be respectful and tolerant of other religions

Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism are mentioned, and antisemitism is categorically singled out for condemnation. Arguments like “the Jews are guilty of the death of Jesus” are specifically refuted.

I do not object to Catholics hoping that I will ultimately see the light, as long as they have stopped inciting pogroms because of my refusal to do so. If it makes them feel better, they should hope.

What I would have said on the TV program was that yes, there is a long history of antisemitism based directly on Church dogma and in many cases incited by officials of the Church, going back to the first century. The stubbornness of Jews in refusing to see the ‘truth’ as propounded by Christianity was an excuse for many massacres, the Inquisition’s burning of ‘judaizing’ converts, and even the pogroms that drove my grandparents out of Czarist Russia.

But in 1965, the Church resigned from the ranks of the antisemites. Maybe it was because of the Holocaust, and one can wish that it had happened years earlier, but in any event it happened. Catholicism did not give up its insistence on the truth of its doctrines, but began to insist that correct belief be accompanied by tolerance.

Now the story — both my personal story and the historical one about antisemitism — gets interesting. Did antisemitism start to die out when the Church dumped it?

No. Actually, there was a resurgence of antisemitism which started in the 1960’s, and which came from an entirely different place. Instead of Christian dogma, it stemmed primarily from the radical anti-Zionism of the Arab nations, abetted by the Left (which took its cue from the Soviets, who had taken the Arab side in the Mideast conflict and who still had plenty of traditional Russian Zhid-hatred in their blood).

Arab and Persian Muslims found support in the Quran and other writings for their antisemitism — Muhammad had several conflicts with Jewish tribes in his conquest of Arabia and wasn’t shy about expressing his feelings. And Islam did not have a Vatican II to distinguish between a doctrinal disagreement and a casus belli. Making things worse, Muslim antisemites adopted the tried and true themes of European Jew-hatred such as the blood libel, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and so forth.

So now you can hear in one place that Zionist, colonialist Jews are sons of apes and pigs who drain the blood of non-Jewish children to make matzah and commit genocide against the Palestinians while undermining the foundations of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

This rejuvenated anti-Jewish incitement now plays exactly the same role as it did for the Nazis, setting the Jewish people apart, blaming them for their own persecution, and developing conditions under which they can be destroyed.

I wanted to contrast the attitude of today’s Church with that of the Islamic fundamentalists of Iran and Hamas. I wanted to say that I would far rather have someone praying for the veil to be removed from my eyes (as an earlier Good Friday prayer said) than the head from my neck.

Unfortunately, the TV producer told me that I was expressly forbidden to use the words ‘Muslim’ or ‘Iran’ on the program, and that the only antisemitism that could be discussed was that of the Catholic Church.

I wasn’t prepared to talk about antisemitism without mentioning the elephant in the living-room, the incitement from the Arab nations and Iran. And I couldn’t talk about the Holocaust and leave out the likelihood of another one within the next two years. So I won’t be on the program.

I think the producer would have preferred for me to say that the new Pope’s prayer was a step backward, because it states that we Jews are incorrect in our beliefs. But I don’t think that the Church ever accepted the radical view that all religions are equally true.

What I would have liked to emphasize was the other part of Nostra Aetate: the part that is clearly not accepted by so many Muslims, the part that says that you must respect and tolerate the religious beliefs of others, even if you think they are wrong.

Technorati Tags: antisemitism, Good Friday Prayer, Catholic Church, Jews, Muslims, Nostra Aetate

Antisemitism has taken many forms throughout its long career. It’s a frustrating rejoinder to those who believe that there is such a thing as social progress analogous to technological development.

Many of us think of Christian antisemitism, forged in the struggle of the early Christians with the Roman Empire, as the seminal form from which later Jew-hatreds sprang. There’s some truth to this.

The recent film (from the book by James Carroll) “Constantine’s Sword” comes down quite hard on the Catholic Church:

In Carroll’s telling, Catholic hostility to Jews goes back at least to the fourth century, when the emperor Constantine conquered Rome, carrying a sword fashioned as a cross. At the time, he says in the film, there were roughly the same number of Jews as Christians in the world.

In subsequent centuries, the Church’s attitudes toward Jews ranged from cold tolerance to frenzied orgies of religiously inspired mass murder. Among the highlights of this tortured history is the total destruction of centers of Jewish life situated along the Rhine river in 1096. As the Crusaders journeyed to the Holy Land to make war on the Muslims — armed with shields bearing signs of the cross and with priests in the lead — they warmed up for the battles to come by wiping out the Jewish settlements in their path. — Ben Harris (JTA)

There is no question that it was bad for Jews in the Christian world long after the middle ages. Discrimination, pogroms, even mass expulsions were their lot in Europe for hundreds of years. My own grandparents fled the Pale of Settlement almost exactly 100 years ago to escape violent persecution by the locals, who used Christianity as an excuse for their actions.

In the mid-20th century the anti-Christian Nazis and the atheist Stalin cynically used Christian themes to buttress their own antisemitic programs, and the Jews suffered mightily. And there were also Catholic voices raised against the Jews, even here in America (see Charles Coughlin). But a funny thing happened, in part as a reaction to the massive evil of this time:

The Church grew up.

In one of the most important documents of the modern Church, Nostra Aetate (1965 – read it!), Pope Paul VI does not dilute what he sees as the fundamental principle of Christianity — that there is only one way to salvation — but calls upon Catholics to understand and appreciate the truths (albeit partial, in his view) found in other religions. Most importantly, he demands that the Church treat adherents of other religions with respect and tolerance, specifically denouncing antisemitism.

Unfortunately, at just about the same time that the traditional host of the antisemitism virus began to reject it, a new one appeared. During the 1960’s, the Arab-Israeli conflict had taken the form of a proxy struggle between the US and the Soviet Union, with the Soviets taking the side of the Arabs. This led to such absurdities as fascist Arab regimes like that of Syria declaring themselves to be ‘socialists’, but also to the international Left — which if not pro-Soviet was at least anti-American — taking a strong anti-Israel position as well.

Although not all anti-Zionism is antisemitic, there is a natural progression which has been followed here, and today the extreme Left has outstripped the neo-Nazi Right as a reservoir of antisemitic expression.

But the greatest outpouring of Jew-hatred today comes from the Muslim world:

Muslim anti-Semitism is growing in scope and extremism, to the point that it has become a credible strategic threat for Israel, according to a 180-page report produced for Israeli policymakers by the semi-official Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC)…

Among the report’s most worrying findings is the growth over the past three decades of uniquely Muslim roots to older European versions of anti-Semitism. Without discounting classical Christian Europe’s canards regarding secret Jewish conspiracies, the ritual slaughter of non-Jewish children and other allegations of Jewish evil, anti-Semitism in the Muslim world increasingly finds its own, Islamic reasons for anti-Jewish hatred through new interpretations of Islamic history and scripture.

From the Koranic story of a Jewess who poisoned Muhammad, to the troubled relations between Muhammad and the Jewish tribes of Arabia, radical Islamist groups and thinkers have been using extreme anti-Semitic rhetoric that has grown increasingly popular with the Muslim public, particularly in Iran and the Arab states. Using well-known Koranic texts, these groups have been mapping out the Jews’ “innate negative attributes” and teaching a paradigm of permanent struggle between Muslims and Jews.

The goal of this “Islamified” anti-Semitism, according to the report, is to transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a national territorial contest which could be resolved through compromise to a “historic, cultural and existential struggle for the supremacy of Islam.” — Jerusalem Post

The report goes on to describe how — instead of European antisemitic literature being imported to the Middle East, it is now exported to Europe, where it influences Muslim segments of the population there. And in the Middle East, antisemitism has government approval in many countries which are allegedly at peace with Israel — like Egypt, where you can buy Arabic translations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on many street corners.

The most worrisome thing in the report is that antisemitism as an instrument of national policy, last seen in Nazi Germany, has returned:

At the heart of this surge in Muslim anti-Semitism lies Iran, with the regime’s support for Holocaust denial and hosting of anti-Semites from around the world, along with formal calls for Israel’s destruction by many of the country’s leaders.

“Iran is the first example of its kind since Nazi Germany in which a state officially adopts an active policy of anti-Semitism as a means to further its national interests,” the report notes.

It goes on to say that while Iran does not deny that Jews were massacred during WWII, the current regime seeks to minimize the scale of the Holocaust in order to reduce support for Israel’s very existence in the West, which it believes comes from feelings of guilt over the world’s inaction while Jews were murdered during WWII.

So one can understand, in the face of all this, my unconcern about Pope Benedict XVI’s promulgation of a Latin Good Friday prayer that calls for Catholics to pray for the Jews to accept Jesus as savior — something which does not contradict Nostra Aetate, although it is perhaps uncomfortable for some Jews, and although liberal Catholics may wish that the Church had moved further along the road to ecumenicism than it actually did.

Nevertheless, it’s unfortunate that other organizations, like the UN, have not followed the lead of the Church in this area. If the world has learned anything from the history of the mid-20th century one would expect firm condemnations — and real sanctions — of governments like those of Egypt and especially Iran, which today exemplify the racist philosophy that should have been buried with Adolf Hitler.

Technorati Tags: antisemitism, anti-Semitism, Catholic Church, Pope, Nostra Aetate, Muslim antisemitism, Iran

From Reuters:

Jewish groups complained last year when the Pope issued a decree allowing wider use of the old-style Latin Mass and a missal, or prayer book, that was phased out after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which met from 1962 to 1965.

They protested against the re-introduction of the old prayer for conversion of the Jews and asked the Pope to change it.

The Vatican last month revised the contested Latin prayer used by a traditionalist minority on Good Friday, the day marking Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, removing a reference to Jewish “blindness” over Christ and deleting a phrase asking God to “remove the veil from their hearts”.

Jews criticized the new version because it still says they should recognize Jesus Christ as the savior of all men. It asks that “all Israel may be saved” and Jews say it keeps an underlying call to conversion that they had wanted removed.

Vatican II changed the ancient Latin version of this prayer, removing the phrase ‘perfidious Jews’. But then it created a new collection of prayers in various local languages — the vernacular liturgy — which was supposed to replace the Latin one. The prayer which appears in the vernacular liturgy does not mention conversion, but the Latin version still did, although ‘perfidious’ was gone.

The Latin ritual did not totally disappear, however. Some conservative Catholics continued to use it, but were required to obtain permission from their bishop.

The present Pope, as mentioned in the article, is encouraging those Catholics who want to use the Latin ritual to do so, and has removed the requirement for approval. But some Jews and liberal Catholics wish that he had simply translated the vernacular prayer back into Latin. Instead, he chose to create a new prayer that took a middle course — but still mentioned conversion.

We can understand the concern, given the long history of Christian antisemitism based to a certain extent on the stiff-necked Jews’ refusal to see the light. And we can also understand the Pope — and many other Christians — for whom a primary part of their belief system is that it is universal.

I think, though, that the concern is misplaced in view of the nature of antisemitism today. Consider this:

Britain has become the epicenter for anti-Semitic trends in Europe as traditional, age-old anti-Semitism in a country whose literature and cultural tradition were “drenched” in anti-Semitism has developed into a contemporary mix of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, an Israeli historian said Monday.

The problem of anti-Semitism in Britain is exacerbated by a growing and increasingly radical Muslim population, the weak approach taken by a timid British Jewish leadership, and the detachment of the British from their Christian roots, said Hebrew University historian Prof. Robert S. Wistrich in a lecture on British anti-Semitism at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. — Jerusalem Post [my emphasis]

Wistrich goes on to argue that the roots of antisemitism in Britain are ancient, and of course they are entangled with Christianity. But it seems to me that today the major sources of antisemitism throughout the world are not Christian, but rather

• Traditional right-wing Jew hatred (neo-Nazis, etc.)

• The extreme anti-Zionism of the Left

• Muslim antisemitism and extreme anti-Zionism

Indeed, the desire to see Jews converted to Christianity is dear to Evangelical Protestants here in the US, a group which is generally pro-Zionist and which does not express views common to contemporary antisemites, such as “the Jews are responsible for 9/11 (or the Iraq war, etc.)”, or “the Jewish lobby controls the US government”. Recent violent acts against Jews or Jewish property in the US have mostly been perpetrated by neo-Nazi or racist groups, and radical Muslims.

I am personally less bothered by Christian prayers for my conversion than, for example, Hamas’ interpretation of the Quran which calls for Muslims to kill Jews.

It should be noted that critics of the Pope are not required to go into hiding because of death threats from Catholic fundamentalists.

Possibly those of us who are particularly worried about Christian antisemitism today are like the generals who always prepare to fight the last war instead of the next one?

Technorati Tags: antisemitism, anti-Semitism, Pope Benedict, Catholic liturgy