Syria, the Vatican and the Jews

I was reading "A Strike in the Dark. What did Israel bomb in Syria?" by Seymour M. Hersh in the New Yorker. Hersh is usually a lot clearer about issues. He muddles through this one, wanting to say that whatever Israel bombed in Syria, it was not a nuclear threat. Yet we all assume that it was a preemptive strike on a nascent nuclear plant.

Then some neurons and synapses in my brain crackled and I was thinking all of a sudden about the Pope's reinvention of the antiSemitic Tridentine Mass. The Conservative rabbinical association was getting ready to condemn this, according to the Times yesterday, "Conservative Rabbis to Vote on Resolution Criticizing Pope’s Revision of Prayer."

In the mind of this educated Jew, what the Pope appears to be doing is starting up a new threat to the Jews -- a new antisemitic program. To me the specter of a wave of antisemitism sponsored by the Catholic Church loomed as a mortal threat to the Jewish people worldwide -- just like the specter of a nuclear armed Syria loomed as a mortal threat to Israel and the Jews there.

That's why I do not hesitate to preemptively criticize the Pope and the Vatican.

We Jews need to stop this renewed mortal threat from the Church before the reactor of its antisemitism reaches "critical mass."