Zionists scored PR points with papal declaration, 61 years ago today
Today marks 61 years since the publication by Pope Paul VI in 1965, of Nostra Aetate. I stumbled across the anniversary while researching a response I'm composing in a discussion on whether anti-semitism is still a real thing.
Jewish friends seem aghast that I assert that anti-semitism at this point in history is at best a zionist trope. It has certainly been invoked so often that it has lost all meaning. Yet among my pro-palestine jewish friends, they pretend that the accusation should
still stop the conversation.
I wrote:
"The most blatant example of (anti-semitism) these days must surely be the occupation by East Europeans of the lands of semitic people against whom they continue this moment to conduct a genocidal operation of ethnic cleansing, as they have now for nearly eighty years."
I acknowledge the mass shooting in Pittsburg and of course that terrorists exist who are motivated by anti-semitic sentiment to carry out such attacks. But I also know many of the stories of fatal attacks in our masjids; about the rash of arson attacks on our black churches in my corner of the country, and have visited the wiki page providing a timeline of violent attacks based on religious bigotry. The page features a table whose first row features an 1884 attack against Mormons in Tennessee. My point being that there exists plenty of hate to go around; and none of it makes one congregation more special or victimized than another.
I went on to explain that most of what I hear getting called out as anti-semitism seems more grounded in hurt feelings of jews; rather than in any actual violence or harm done or threatened to jews, because they are jews. I hear this accusation leveled at anyone who examines facts, history, the comments of jewish people talking about jewish power, any examination of wealth accumulation (40% of the Fortune 400 were jewish, according to a jewish authored analysis of one year's iteration of the Forbes list); any examination of media ownership (anti-trust legislation be damned, zionist Larry Ellison now owns the intellectual property necessary to determine whether, and under what circumstances 14,000 titles from the nation's filmography ever gets seen again).
In my political circles its fair game to discuss the rapidity of the mal-distribution of wealth. We can discuss the 1%. But for some reason it is verboten to consider that 40%.
I cited the jewish efforts to lobby the Roman Catholic Church to apologize and take a stand against a history of anti-semitism by the Church heirarchy.
One jewish friend pushes back to state: "one of the hallmarks of Vatican II was the rejection of the collective guilt placed on the Jews for centuries for the killing of Christ." I get it, that is the narrative that jews tell one another, and us. Certainly the jewish media reported it that way, as if Vatican II were all about them. I am not Catholic, have only a vague comprehension of glimpses of their history which has been tangential to my own research, but will not try here to outline the scope of that multi-year project know very little about. But I can assure you from my reading and conversations with Catholic friends on the subject that V2 had almost nothing to do with the jewish community and its PR objectives and was entirely inwardly focused on the future of the Roman Catholic Church.
Whatever the jewish press told its audience, there are also other perspectives on the history, to be sure. Except to assert an alternative narrative earns one an accusation of anti-semitism. And rather than discussing history or issues you are back to fielding
accusations of bigotry for the sin of disagreeing with or hurting the feelings of a member of the tribe, or an ally who insists on defending them.
Apparently the Vatican II conferences were not the first time that representatives of world jewery had lobbied for changes to catholic liturgical practice. Apparently the Pope asked the clergy, in their recitation of the Good Friday Prayer, to omit the adjective rom their prayer for the 'perfidious jew'. Seems rather than read the word to mean 'faithless', jews took offense reading it as meaning 'treachrous'.
Another jewish friend in this conversation asserts: "If Jewish influence was disproportionate in getting Christian institutions to drop the Christian blaming of Jews in the murder of Jesus, then that is an indictment of Christian passivity, not Jewish activity."
Makes me wonder how often Jewish congregations have considered requests from non-jews to reimagine their own religious practice, as ordained by God.
Sociologist Rodney Stark, in the first chapter of his book "Bearing False Witness" discusses being hired as a young grad student by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, for whom he wrote a volume called, "Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism". He reports that "before I had completed a draft of the book, I was asked to prepare a brief summary of the findings to be distributed to the bishops attending Vatican II" discussions in 1962. As I understand the history, the Bishops gathered multiple times over a four or five year period to hammer out the details, and published sixteen documents. I have read only one of them.
Of course the Quran (Surrah al-Nisa, 4:155-158) has a completely different take on what transpired around what the Christians call the Passion of Christ. As muslims, we are told that Jesus / Issa (pbuh) did not die on the cross, "Rather, Allah raised him up to Himself." (Q. 4:158).
In his "Bearing False Witness" book, published fifty-four years later, one can feel the pride young Rodney Stark must have felt when "According to Cardinal Augustin Bea, as quoted in the New York Times (September 26, 1964, page 1), that summary of mine played a significant role in producing the council's statement on the Jews . . . "
Except the statement was not about the jews, though the jewish owned press would report it that way. The declaration spoke also of the church's relationship with hindus, bhuddists, and muslims as well.
The Nostra Aetate was published 61 years ago, today by Pope Paul VI. It did not reject "the collective guilt placed on the Jews for centuries for the killing of Christ", as my friend had asserted. That is the jewish narrative of Vatican II, not a Catholic one. In English, the document's title reads "Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions". It was not a papal encyclical. Nor was it really a statement of new policy, no matter what the jewish press might have told us. It might be more accurately described as a clarification and restatement of teachings the church had long promoted among its congregations and clergy.
The papal declaration gives eight paragraphs, in its fourth of five enumerated sections of a 1700 word document, to discussing the Church's relationship with the practioners of Judaism. It makes clear the distinction drawn by the Church between the old and the new covenant. It reminds us that the Virgin Mary, her son (peace be on each of them), His disciples and most of His initial followers were all jewish.
It states, and I love the allusion to grafting a new plant onto the sturdy trunk of an established tree:
"Nor can she (the Church) forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles (Romans 11:17-24). Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles. making both one in Himself.(Ephesians 2:14-16)"
It restated the church's long held position that:
"True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ(John 19:6); still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures."
The Quran reminds us constantly to respect the 'People of the Book', yet warns us as well about non-believing jews:
"They were condemned for breaking their covenant, rejecting Allah’s signs, killing the prophets unjustly, and for saying, 'Our hearts are unreceptive!' — it is Allah Who has sealed their hearts for their disbelief, so they do not believe except for a few — " (Q. 4:155)
The Gospels would have us believe that the parties responsible for the crucification of Christ, pbuh, were Pontius Pilate, the Pharisees and a mob agitating for His execution. Except for the Roman Governor, each of them were obviously jewish. But despite the actions of wayward congregants and sometimes clergy, the Roman Catholic Church never sanctioned collective guilt for the actions of those who were actually there that Thursday.
I get it, that the jewish community suffered a tremendous trauma not quite 90 years ago. The narrative we have heard our whole lives is that was at the hands of German Nazi's.
But historian and journalist Alison Weir tells a very different story. In her book, Against our Better Judgement", relying on mostly jewish sources she makes clear that zionists (1) agitated Germany into war, primarily with a depression era boycott of German goods at a time when they were already on their knees; (2) that they collaborated with the governments of Germany and the US before the war to close off opportunities for immigration anywhere but Palestine; and (3) they worked in post-war Europe for the same end.
70 or 85 million died during that war. At the hands of Germans, Japanese, Brits and our own nation's military.
Yet, the jewish narrative is that the jewish community has long been persecuted, not for any fault of their own, but because they are the perpetual victims in any and every scenario.
Well if Alison Weir is to be believed (and her compelling, well cited case persuades me), it was zionist organizers who condemned many Eurpoean jews to the horrors of WWII, and left them no choice but to join the zionist project, in spite of a broad anti-zionist movement in the pre-war European jewish community.
Sixty-one years ago, the Jewish press claimed victory over the clergy's declaration while ignoring its nuanced construction and historical context, or even that V2 was not actually about them. How do we know this? Catholics are still discussing the wisdom of abandoning the latin mass, just one of many reforms seen in the church as a result of those flights to Rome, an internal conflict us non-catholics see show itself in public from time to time. Still, the Catholic construction of events was immaterial. The zionists already had a narrative which served their ends, the colonization of Palestine, the consolidation of global power. And demonizing the 'papists' was a part of it.
The zionist trope of anti-semitism continues to be hurled about with ever more vigor as the zionists' genocidal project continues, live-streamed to the devices in our palms. Its not just members of the likkud and aipac and adl, either. The casual abuse of this charge serves neither the safety of jewish folks, nor the cause of peace, nor a clearly informed strategy for dismantling the structures of power and privilege which seeks to enslave us all. Just as the villagers in Aesop's fable, many of us are refusing to be fooled again. At least one translation of the Greek story-teller ends: "Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth."
Still even anti-zionist, pro-Palestine, pro-peace jews, and their performative allies reflexively reach for it, mindless of the damage they do in our communities and institutions every time they do.
https://ifamericansknew.org/
https://againstourbetterjudgment.com/
https://read.gov/aesop/043.html
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documen…
https://dn710207.ca.archive.org/0/items/bearing-false-witness-rodney-st…