Did a Hitler-Youth-Pope Enable Child Molesters? Is this what religion is all about? Apparently so.Why is any record at the Vatican a secret? What are they trying to hide? That they were Nazi sympathizers or child-molester-protectors? Apparently so.
The Telegraph reports:
Germany is fighting to keep sealed the Adolf Eichmann files detailing the years the Holocaust chief logistical organiser spent on the run before he was captured by Mossad agents.According to the Times:
Those hoping to have a 50-year secrecy order overturned believe the government is embarrassed by details within that may prove German and Vatican officials colluded in his escape and freedom.
In an unsigned editorial on Thursday, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, criticized The Times for an article published Thursday on the abuse issue. The Italian editorial said that Benedict had always handled such cases with “transparency, purpose and severity,” and accused the news media of acting “with the clear and ignoble intent of trying to strike Benedict and his closest collaborators at any cost.”Just show us some real authentic "transparency, purpose and severity" - saying it is not the same as doing it. Open the Vatican records and let us see all the good you have done for the world - if that is what the record will show. Or not.
Is this not full out enabling? Per the Times:
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope and archbishop in Munich at the time, was copied on a memo that informed him that a priest, whom he had approved sending to therapy in 1980 to overcome pedophilia, would be returned to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment. The priest was later convicted of molesting boys in another parish.This is the Church that burned our Talmud. Why we are really big fans of Popes. Per Wikipedia:
An initial statement on the matter issued earlier this month by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising placed full responsibility for the decision to allow the priest to resume his duties on Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy, the Rev. Gerhard Gruber. But the memo, whose existence was confirmed by two church officials, shows that the future pope not only led a meeting on Jan. 15, 1980, approving the transfer of the priest, but was also kept informed about the priest’s reassignment.
In 1242, The French crown burned all Talmud copies in Paris, about 12,000, after the book was "charged" and "found guilty" in the Paris trial sometimes called "the Paris debate". This burnings of Hebrew books were initiated by Pope Gregory IX, who persuaded French King Louis IX to undertake it. He was followed by subsequent popes. The Church and Christian states viewed the Talmud as a book hateful and insulting toward Christ and gentiles. The most ferocious haters of Judaism and Jewish books among them were Innocent IV (1243–1254), Clement IV (1256–1268), John XXII (1316–1334), Paul IV (1555–1559), Pius V (1566–1572) and Clement VIII (1592–1605). They almost succeeded in stamping out Jewish books entirely.Maybe it is time to burn some other books
.
This is the Church that burned our Talmud
ReplyDeleteThe Jewish communities of medieval Europe lived within a politico-religious federation of peoples known collectively as "Christendom". As its name suggests, this was a realm whose kings publicly acknowledged Jesus Christ as their Lord.
As far as I know, the only non-Christians permitted to reside and practise their religion within Christendom were the Jews. They obviously thought it worth settling in Christian lands and cannot have been unaware of their unique status - there were no Muslim ghettoes.
To put it bluntly, they were there on sufferance, strangers in a Christian society, guests of people who worshipped Jesus.
I wonder how they thought the Christian authorities would react on discovering that one of their most revered texts referred to Jesus as the bastard son of a whore who tried to lead Israel astray and was punished for his blasphemies by being condemned to writhe eternally in boiling excrement?
Surely it's a no-brainer?
we agree on the no brains part. the talmud had been excised of such passages way before it was then burned - cited in the books is 90% of the tanakh - so the church burned that as well. not sure how airing your picture of history makes any sense. you describe a culture of evil as if it is ho-hum normal. it leads to the holocaust. ho-hum?
ReplyDelete"As far as I know, the only non-Christians permitted to reside and practice their religion within Christendom were the Jews."
ReplyDeleteActually this statement is factually incorrect. The 11th and 12th century Norman kingdoms of Sicily and Southern Italy, although politically extremely restrictive, had vibrant Muslim and Jewish communities that fully participated in civic life.
The emphasis should be on the word "permitted". Throughout the middle ages and all the way up to the middle of the twentieth century, Jews were the punching bag of Christian Europe. The permission of their existence, probably lies in the fact that Jews fulfilled an economic niche, not allowed by Christians, such as banking and various trades. A two thousand year ordeal of being relegated to living in ghettos, with limited to no rights, would hardly endear them to Jesus and his message.
tzvee:
ReplyDeletewe agree on the no brains part.
Well I'm often guilty of stupidity but assertions of intellectual superiority ill befit a liberal. Even a Jewish liberal.
the talmud had been excised of such passages way before it was then burned
I was under the impression that censorship was a later development than wholesale burning. Can you give a specific example of a censored Talmud being burned?
cited in the books is 90% of the tanakh - so the church burned that as well.
Again, can you provide a source for that assertion? I've never heard anything remotely like it before.
you describe a culture of evil as if it is ho-hum normal.
Don't know about normal (whatever that means) but I would say that medieval Christendom did more honour to God & man than the diabolical simulacrum of civilization that goes under the name of liberal secular modernity.
I'm not so stupid as to pretend the Middle Ages were some kind of Christian utopia. Inevitably medieval Christian society failed to live up to the ideals of the Gospels, not least in some aspects of its treatment of the Jews.
However to describe Christendom as a "culture of evil" characterised by unremitting, purposeful, one-sided brutality against the Jews is a grotesque distortion. At the very least it tells only one side of the story.
it leads to the holocaust. ho-hum?
Last I heard Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists led to the Holocaust.
Richard:
The 11th and 12th century Norman kingdoms of Sicily and Southern Italy, although politically extremely restrictive, had vibrant Muslim and Jewish communities that fully participated in civic life.
I stand corrected. I would guess that was a marginal and untypical situation, perhaps explained in part by the region's past as land conquered by the Moslems.
Throughout the middle ages and all the way up to the middle of the twentieth century, Jews were the punching bag of Christian Europe. ... A two thousand year ordeal of being relegated to living in ghettos, with limited to no rights, would hardly endear them to Jesus and his message.
I think it's safe to say the Jews were not exactly endeared to Jesus and His message long before Christians acquired any measure of political power.
How did the Church’s first martyr St Stephen die?
What was Saul up to before he saw the light?
What happened to those Christians who refused to support the false messiah Bar Kochba?
How many Jews distinguished themselves by sheltering Christians from their Roman persecutors? (I honestly don’t know the answer to that last one – I’d be fascinated to know if there’s any historical account of Jewish responses to Roman persecution of Christians.)
Oh and what about the Jewish massacre of thousands of Jerusalem Christians in AD 614? Why has that disappeared down the memory hole?