The Excommunication of St. Paul the Apostle by the Inmates of the Asylum known as the Post-Conciliar Roman Catholic Church
By Michael Hoffman • www.revisionisthistory.org
Catholics "cannot hold" to St. Paul's declaration in 1 Thessalonians 2: 14-16 "without falling out of communion with the Catholic Church"
For you, brethren, are become followers of the churches of God which are in Judea, in Christ Jesus: for you also have suffered the same things from your own countrymen, even as they have from the Jews, Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are adversaries to all men...
From Mike Hoffman, here.
10 comments:
What utter nonsense.
Nowhere does St. Paul claim the Jews are corporately responsible for the death of Jesus. He would have to include himself if he were saying that.
Nowhere does the USCCB document deny that individual Jews were responsible for Christ's death, (and the persecution of Christians) starting with Judas, the Sanhedrin, the hostile crowds, etc.
There is no issue here except in the minds of the willfully obtuse, so desperate to smear the Church they're willing to resort to Dawkins-style logic.
I'm all for abolishing Bishops' conferences, but this is just silly.
As much a Liberal as Cardinal Newman was, even he interpreted this passage the way Micheal Hoffman is.
Why are we bending over backwards for these people? The history of our mutual peoples isn't a one-sided affair and I resent the way that they bribed and intimidated the Fathers to get Notra Aetate. Is it possible to annul Vatican II based on the manipulation of Jewish pressure groups?
Who bribed or intimidated the council fathers to pass Nostra Aetate? Yes, Abraham Hershel (for one) spoke with Paul VI. I do not believe that the rabbi tried to bribe the pope. Also, no one rabbi or even one Jewish organization represents all Jewish people. If you can prove otherwise, do let me and your readership know about the conspiracy.
Nostra Aetate, along with Dignitatis Humanae, frees our church to confront its role in the pogroms, forced conversions, and ghettos that have scarred European history. It's rather pathetic that many of my fellow traditional Catholics prefer to hold up inquisitions and pogroms as a high point in Catholic history. These are shameful and not glorious periods.
The old rite can grow beyond its anti-semitic past if only we all commit to greater relations with Jews and Judaism. We must commit ourselves to charity and justice even if we receive nothing in return from some in the Jewish community.
Anti-Semitism is a very sticky label, but it's not as fashionable as heretic, or anti-Catholic bigot.
AIPAC did indeed have a role in intimidating the Council Fathers regarding Nostra Aetate with the help of ++Augustine Bea among others. This is well-founded.
http://www.forward.com/articles/3117/
By most standards of Canon Law, this would invalidate the Council because the thing was forced through by intimidation and threats involving an agency that had an agenda opposed to the Catholic Church.
Perhaps when all of this is brought to light, we can, in a certain way, return to the fullness of the Gospel while working and praying, as Cardinal Newman once said, for the softening of the hearts of the perfidious Jew.
http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/2010/09/cardinal-newman-and-jews.html
And more pointedly, here's the article from Look Magazine of 1966 by Joseph Roddy: http://www.angelqueen.org/articles/07_05_martin_how_the_jews.shtml
It's good that the various Jewish groups pressured the Vatican! It's about time we read the Gospels, and particularly St. John's Gospel, in the light of history. The deicide charge is a gross distortion of "John"'s (or "John"'s disciples') record of Jesus' last moments.
the words οἱ ἰουδαῖοι/Judaei has a double meaning. Either could mean "[the] Jews" or "[the] Judeans" depending on context. In important to remember that Jews did not only live in Judea, the Galilee, and Samaria, but also throughout the Empire. Paul, for example, was a Jew from Tarsus in Asia Minor, but not a Judean.
So, when John uses οἱ ἰουδαῖοι he could well refer only to those Jews of Judea, i.e. "Judeans". Example outside of the passion narrative (John 8, Passion Sunday):
57 εἶπον οὖν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι πρὸς αὐτόν· πεντήκοντα ἔτη οὔπω ἔχεις καὶ Ἀβραὰμ ἑώρακας; 58 εἶπεν αὐτοῖς Ἰησοῦς· ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί. 59 ἦραν οὖν λίθους ἵνα βάλωσιν ἐπ᾽ αὐτόν. Ἰησοῦς δὲ ἐκρύβη καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ.
οἱ ἰουδαῖοι is inferred at 10:59.
57 Dixerunt ergo Judaei ad eum : Quinquaginta annos nondum habes, et Abraham vidisti ? 58 Dixit eis Jesus : Amen, amen dico vobis, antequam Abraham fieret, ego sum. 59 Tulerunt ergo lapides, ut jacerent in eum : Jesus autem abscondit se, et exivit de templo.
Judaei is inferred at 10:59
Are all Jews, even Jews in diaspora, willing to stone Jesus at this point? Or is it perhaps a small number of those in the Jerusalem community, "Judeans" proper, willing to stone Jesus? Is it possible to assert a metaphysical-typological reading to this text, insofar as every child of Israel after Sinai is united behind the actions of a very few?
This is one reason why a translation of οἱ ἰουδαῖοι as "[the] Jews" is particularly troublesome. Common sense dictates that only a few Judeans of Jerusalem were willing to kill Jesus. There is no way to expand this in a typological sense.
Within the context of the passion narratives, it's important to remember that from a historical standpoint the temple authorities and the Sanhedrin were completely deponent to Roman rule. The temple authorities not only had no right to execute, but had little power to prevent desecration. Previous procurators had already desecrated Jewish religious sites with pagan Roman statues and iconography. Pilate planned to do the same with the Temple, and was only prevented by successive Judean uprisings.
John's Gospel speaks of the struggles of the Jerusalem Jesus followers as they tried to distinguish themselves from the greater Judean Jewish community. The inevitable divorce of the original context from the everyday lives of later Christians fueled misinterpretation and periodic violence.
The passion and resurrection narratives teach us about the paschal mystery of Christ, the mystery of our salvation. The context of John's narrative do not command us to hate Jews or set them up as our other or adversary. This interpretation is simply incongruent with contemporary late antique Hellenistic-Roman history.
We as Catholics have chosen to hate Jews for no other reason than pure prejudice. There are no scriptural or doctrinal blocks to peace and tolerance.
You can stick with the unanimity of the Church Fathers and the Saints, or you can go with what a couple of Marxist and Zionist terror cells are promoting.
On the one hand, you have the constant teaching of the Catholic Church going back to the Apostles John and Paul.
On the other hand, you have something concocted in the 20th Century and shoved down our throats by bribery and extortion.
Since the AIPAC did that, they may have inadvertently invalidated the Council. Cooler heads have long thought that Vatican II was a robber Council. We'll see.
We are apparently meant to be terribly impressed by the linguistic legerdermaine of "Anonymous" who lectures us patiently about the true meaning of the Gospels, a meaning that has escaped the Church for over 2,000 years. I am impressed, and we should thank Anonymous for pointing out the errors of countless Saints, Popes, Fathers, Doctors of the Church, etc., all of them ignoramuses who have been finally corrected by the brilliance and radiance of Vatican 2! I sure wish God hadn't kept us Catholics in the dark for two millenia.
Allow me to share a few thoughts of some personages who would, no doubt, invite the maledictions of Anonymous...
St Ephrem: "The Jews, therefore, not only made themselves strangers to the covenants, but also dishonored the Father and killed the Son in envy. The Prophet invites the congregation of the House of Israel to praise Him, but they went about to kill Him and hastened to do evil."
St John Chrysostum: "We should the Jew mourn, not believing in Christ, has assigned his soul to perdition...The Jews have crucified the Son and rejected the Holy Ghost, and their souls are the abode of the devil."
Pope St Leo the Great: "O Jews! Your impiety has served our salvation. The death of Christ liberates us; it accuses you. You alone, by right, lack that which should be lost to everyone."
Padre Pio: "The Jews are enemies of God and foes of our holy religion."
St Alphonsus Maria Liguori: "Poor Jews! You invoked a dreadful curse upon your own heads in saying 'His blood be upon us and our children'; and that curse, miserable race, you carry upon you to this day, and to the End of Time you shall endure the chastisement of that innocent blood."
St Augustine: "Judaism, since Christ, is a corruption; indeed, Judas is the image of the Jewish people: their understanding of Scripture is carnal; they bear the guilt for the death of the Savior, for through their fathers they have killed Christ. The Jews held Him; the Jews insulted Him; the Jews bound Him; they crowned Him with thorns and dishonored Him by spitting upon Him; they scourged Him; they heaped abuses upon Him; they hung Him upon a tree."
And the words of one more poor, benighted soul...
St John (1:11): "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not."
...to be continued...
...previous post continued:
To my friend Anonymous I say we must work not to assuage the hurt feelings of our Jewish friends by denying the truths of the Faith and the obvious historical record, but by converting them to Catholicism, the only thing that will save them. When you go on Youtube and watch videos of Israeli soldiers urinating on the walls of Catholic churches in the Holy Land, when you watch more videos of Israeli youths cursing the name of our Lord and proclaiming "We crucified Him once and we'll be glad to do it again" you need to come to the realization that the rather harsh words I have quoted for you from famous Catholics ring quite true. You can split all the hairs you want, you can create all the new interpretaions of Scripture that you desire (wresting them to your own damnation?) but you cannot deny the reality of the blindness of these poor, tragic people. Don't confirm them in their hatreds - which is what you are doing; try to convert them instead.
"We as Catholics have chosen to hate Jews for no other reason than pure prejudice." What unmitigated arrogance for you to suggest that we hate Jews...or hate them out of prejudice. This calumny is typical of those who devote their lives to refashioning the Catholic Church to their own liking. You, anonymous, know perfectly well that it is considered a sin to hate Jews because of their ethnicity. You know that, yet you hurl this calumny with gay abandon. You also should know perfectly well that the Church teaches us not to hate Jews but to fight their perfidy. Fighting their lies and falsehoods and evils is not hating them, it is helping them. And if you don't understand that then you are kidding yourself if you think you are a Catholic.
Base your argument on the scriptures, not the quotes of saints, the actions of AIPAC, or stories of IDF soldiers peeing on churches. These conspiracies and actions are peripheral to the scriptural genesis of anti-Judaism in Catholicism.
There's another reason why I chose that passage from John 8 -- a reason that strikes at the very core of who Jesus is and challenges the notion of perfidy even outside the context of passion narratives. Dodging anti-Judaism by "denouncing" anti-Semitism is a dishonest rhetorical technique. Why not engage the argument I've placed forth, rather than create detours around it? If you can't read Greek or Latin, you can just as easily read the passage from an English Bible translation. If you can read Greek and Latin, let's break down the passage line-by-line and connect the ramifications of this passage to other Johannine statements. Don't call my work "legerdermaine" (sic) if you cannot perform a philological analysis. The quotations are exact. There is no deceit there.
Anti-semitic and and anti-Jewish Catholics fear the higher Biblical criticism and late antique hellenistic history because it betrays a factual world that cannot support the weight of their counter-factual prejudices. Resort to the testimony of saints who lived in different times and places than the late antique hellenistic world does not answer to this history. Also, prooftexting saints does not necessarily explain the historical circumstances behind their hatreds (in this case, St. John Chrysostom especially).
Anti-Judaism does not exist in an atemporal sphere which a person can warp and twist to meet modern and not-so-modern conspiratorial agendas.
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