catholicism and the Jewish people - a test case for authority

I wanted to continue a discussion from several other threads, and hopefully this will be a
useful exercise.

My earlier post dealt with how the catholic doctrine of transubstantiation was
historically intertwined with mass murder, and is reproduced below.:
Historically, this doctrine has been the direct cause of untold suffering and bloodshed.
While the doctrine may have been around before 12?? when it was officially proclaimed,
it does seem that at this time a special effort was made to impress the doctrine on the
faithful. I am speaking about the so-called ‘Host Desecrations’. From the thirteenth to the
eighteenth centuries, claims were made across Europe that Jews had broken into
churches in order to once more abuse the body of Christ. During these occasions, the
wafer was said to variously shed tears, grow wings and try to escape by flying around the
room, beg for mercy, and bleed human blood. (see M. Hay. 1975). In claiming that the
Jews did such things, the claimants were attributing to the Jewish people Catholic
beliefs, and the faithful who heard about these things went away with a hightened
awarness of the reality of transubstantiation.

For example, in 1555 Bishop Lippomano (whom the pope sent as papal Inquisitor to
Poland) brought charges of host desecration against a Jewish girl and three Jewish men.
These were then executed “on charges of having maltreated a stolen wafer until it had
begun to bleed”. Before their deaths, these Jewish people declared; “It never occurred to
us to pierce the host, for we could never believe that it was the body of God. God is
incorporeal, just as a wafer is bloodless”. Acting from their own mythology, the Christian
judges did not believe this claim, and ordered the executioner to “ram burning torches
into the victims’ mouths”. Thousands of Jews died across Europe in similar
circumstances. For example, in 1243 the entire Jewish population of Berlin was burned
alive for allegedly torturing a wafer. Likewise, in 1389, three thousand Jews were killed
in Prague on a similar charge.

In the village of Deggendorf, up into the 1930s, each year approximately 10,000 visitors
attended week long celebrations and a play written by a Benedictine monk,
commemorating the appearance of “a lovely child” from a consecrated wafer allegedly
stolen and tortured by the town’s Jews on September 30, 1337. In response to the
“incident,” the chroniclers of the time reported that on the same day, acting out of
“legitimate zeal, pleasing to God,” the citizens of Deggendorf massacred the entire
Jewish population of the town. One of the town churches has a picture of the massacre,
and under it an inscription reading: “that our fatherland be forever free from this hellish
scum.”

Interestingly for you, Carson, the Franciscan reformer John Capistrano (who recieved the
title “the scourge of the Jews” from the pope, in recognition of his hard work for the
humiliation of the Jews in Sicily), in his capacity as Inquisitor for the Jews in Germanic
and Slavonic countries, staged a Host descecration trial in Breslau, during which the
entire Jewish population of Breslau was imprisoned. Capistrano presided as Chief
Inquisitor, personally supervising the torture of some of the accused. He won the trial, 40
Jews were burnt to death, their children torn from the community to be raised as
“Christians”, with the rest of the community being bannished.

As bread does not weep, fly or bleed, John (like hundreds of other priests across Europe
for the next 300 years) lied in open court, in his official capacity as a catholic church
official, to confirm the belief in transubstantiation, and with the result that Jews were murdered, expelled or kidnapped. John of Capistrano was later made a “saint” of the
Catholic church. Either lying and murder of Jews was a good thing, or, for a man named by the pope as “scourge of the Jews”, it was too unimportant to worry about. They should have arrested him and charged him with mass murder, but they chose rather to make him a saint.

So Carson, you like to trace the history of your beliefs. In the hands of catholic priests,
the belief in transubstantiation has been directly responsible for the torture and murder of
thousands. A guy who did this was officially promoted to sainthood! - does all of this
concern you? A tree is judged by its fruit.

After Carson replied, I wrote; Thaks for replying, Carson. I was not trying to be
offensive, but my life has ben devoted to Jewish evangelism. Im glad you know of John of Capistrano. How can a guy like that still be a saint? This remains a genuine and
understandable cause of offense to Jewish people to this day. Why doesn't the church desaint him? Do you pray to him?

More generally, this history is relevant when you ask us to accept the Catholic church's history and practice as a revelation of God's will. If it can be shown that the official teachings, doctrine, Papal rulings, ecclesiastical laws etc have been a source of profound sin over 1700 years, then the very history in which catholics boast becomes evidence against you.

Are Catholics taught to check everything against the standard of the Bible, God’s Word
to us, or are they taught that the Bible is only one of several equally valid authorities,
church history and tradition being equally important, and indeed, as it was church
councils that determined the Bible, their authority is perhaps even greater (as a catholic
on Phatmas wrote)? Equally, the Bible is hard to understand, not a matter of private
interpretation anyway, and as it is only one of several authorities, why not just go to your
priest, as he has his finger on all the authorities, and do what ever he tells you? Ed wrote of the virtues of blind obedience to the Catholic church on another thread, but if you are
not taught to question, to check everything against the holy Word of God, then how will
you know if the church commands you to sin against God? It is a thought pattern that
goes against what you have been taught.

To quote from your catechism, “Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at
seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service,
Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of
faith and morals.” So, if a Catholic, by obeying the direct and clear instructions of his
priests, bishops, councils, Popes and saints, sins as a result, your system is shown to be a
lie. I wish it wasn’t, that Christianity did not apostacise, but it did, and it is harmful to
pretend otherwise. You cant in one breath quote Cardinal Newman(?) “to study history is
to be a Catholic”, and in the next, dismiss all negative history as either irrelevant, minor
or say, “yes, but look at protestant history.”

How do you see it?
Take care, Colin

 

Hi there, Grant. We are talking about habitual abuse here, repeatedly confirmed by the highest catholic officials, saints and legal rulings. The question remains, should catholics obey their leaders, or can such obedience directly cause them to sin? Cane Catholic rulings contain errors (sin) re doctrine and morals?

Jewish populations were expelled from numerous european lands 1000-1500AD, at the urging of the Catholic church in these lands. In Spain, 400,000 Jews were expelled (many to slavery) at the urging of the Inquisitor General, Torquemadan. Likewise the French expulsions were seen as proof that the king was a good catholic. The English bishops of Oxford, in 1222, issued an injunction forbidding Christians, under pain of excommunication, to sell any provisions to the Jews; but the king refused to sanction this proposal. In 1290, the king did however expell all Jews from England.

After the policy of expulsins, the catholic church lurned to ghettoes, prisons for all Jews- and this remained their official policy for over 400 years. On March 5, 1233, Pope Gregory XI wrote to the archbishops and bishops of Germany complaining that the German Jews were not living in “the state of complete misery to which they had been condemned by God.”

Thomas Aquinas had agreed with this, and preached the idea that Jews must be compelled to live in perpetual slavery. Pope Innocent III re-stated this in a letter to the Archbishop of Seus and the Bishop of Paris (15 July 1205): “The Jews are condemned to eternal slavery.” A Papal legate presided over the Council of Breslau in 1266. This
council decreed that Jews must not live side by side with Christians, and advised special
quarters for Jews who must also wear pointed hats and a red badge. A year later, in 1267 the Council of Vienna urged the total separation of Jews from society. Their exclusion from the common law of humanity was explicitly affirmed in 1268, by the Jewry-law of Brunn, where it was written: “The Jews are deprived of their natural rights and condemned to eternal misery for their sins.” In 1516 the first Ghetto was established in
Venice. In 1555 Pope Paul IV, in his bull, cum nimbis abserdum, confirmed that Jews had been condemned by God to eternal slavery, decreed the establishment of “Ghettos” throughout Europe.

In 1775, Vatican edicts further isolated the Jews:

The Jews may not play, nor eat nor drink nor have any other familiarity or conversation with Christians, nor Christians with Jews, whether in buildings, houses, or vineyards, nor on the street, or in inns, taverns, stores or elsewhere.
And innkeepers, bartenders and storekeepers shall not permit conversation between Christians and Jews.

In 1823, one of the first acts of the new pope, Leo XII, was to order the Jews back into
the ghetto: “to overcome the evil consequences of the freedom [they] have enjoyed.” Leo
also asked the Office of the Inquisition to make sure that all of the ancient restrictions on
Jews were being enforced. Following their report, the Vatican issued orders that Jews
were not to be permitted to leave the ghetto for even a single day without a written permit from the Criminal Tribunal. Fear of disease led in 1836 to the public health commission sending Prince Odescalchi to investigate conditions within the ghetto of Rome. He reported that the inhabitants lived in “untold misery.” There was no hospital in the ghetto, and Jews were not allowed by the Vatican to become doctors. They were also forbidden to open bookstores, or go to public schools. This was the mercy of the
popes towards the Jews in the mid 1800s.

In 1843, Prince Metternich of Austria, whose troops had again helped the Vatican retake
the Papal states, asked the pope if he could cease his policy of re-ghettoisation. Coming
from such an important backer, the prince’s request was answered by the pope himself.

The prohibitions on the Jews, forbidding them from employing Christian servants or wetnurses, from owning real estate ... from living outside [ghetto] walls mixed in and confused with Christians, are prohibitions founded in the sacred Canon. These ... command the separation of Christians and Jews. The pope went on to note: “the scandal of seeing Jews pretending to be living the same as others.” Jews living outside of the ghetto, the pope concluded: “cannot be tolerated in the
Ecclesiastical State, because they are openly contrary to the most sacrosanct principles of
the Ecclesiastical laws.” A year later, the pope called on parish priests to ensure that
their parishioners had no social contact with Jews. In 1849, Rome itself was liberated by
Garibaldi’s forces. The pope fled, the ghetto was opened and Jews were given equal rights. In 1850, Pius IX was returned to Rome by the troops of France. He then abolished the proclamation of Jewish civil equality and ordered the Jews back into the ghetto. When informed that Tuscany was considering allowing the emancipation to stand, to
pope called this “a true crime.” By 1861, only Rome remained under papal rule, and only Rome retained its ghetto. In 1870 the pope was forced to retreat into the Vatican, and Romes’ Jews were finally emancipated. In 1871, the pope told a Catholic women’s organisation that Jews were “dogs.” He continued: “We have today in Rome
unfortunately too many of these dogs, and we hear them barking in all the streets, and
going around molesting people everywhere.”

The Vatican objection to Jewish freedom did not go away. In 1890 the Civilta Cattolica
was calling for the abolition of “civic equality” and for the segregation of Jews from the
rest of society. This article was also included in a pamphlet of reprints that the Civilta
Cattolica published in 1891 on “The Jewish Question.” In 1898 the editor of Civilta
Cattolica again spoke out against the granting of citizenship to the Jewish people. Likewise, L’Osservatore Romano wrote in 1898 that Jews “cannot and must not live among others.” This was a mere 35 years before Hitler would take power in Germany.

So, did catholics who obeyed the direct orders of their popes and church councils, and persecuted and imprisoned their Jewish neighbours, thereby breaking God's commandments to love your neighbour, and to do good to the stranger in your midst, sin? Are the rulings of popes and church councils free from errors of doctrine and morals? Remember, a pope ordered these sins on the basis of "sacred canon" and ecclesiastical laws.

Take care, Colin

 

Hi again,
This thread is basically looking at the question, "can catholics sin by obeying their church synods and authorities?" As someone committed to Jewish evangelism, I am taking the example of that history to demonstrate that ordinary magesterium is not free from errors in morals. Only God's word is pure and infallable.
A number of more recent examples of church synods recomending sin are given below. Thank God that such rulings are no longer catholic policy, but historically, blind obedience to the church was a recipe for sin.

In May, 1939, at a national Catholic convention of Hungary, attended by the Synod of Bishops, Cardinal Seredi and government ministers, one of the speakers, the deputy chairman of Actio Catholica, stated in an address entitled Christianity and Social Justice: “It is not enough to remove Jews from economic positions of power. We are obliged to introduce a true Christian spirit and Christian morality as well into each field of our lives.” Actio Catholica was supported by the Synod of Bishops, and led by a bishop. A prominent leader of it wrote an article in 1939 for the paper Magyarsag. In it, he noted the anti-Jewish prohibitions of the Popes and church councils over the centuries. He then stated: “These papal decrees and synod resolutions have never been abrogated. Consequently, they all these decrees are valid to this day.” Cardinal Seredi likewise noted that he considered it “very important to limit the activities of the Jews and to remove the Jewish spirit from the public and economic domains, as well as from additional walks of life.” No one at the synod spoke against the idea of anti-Jewish legislation, the Bishop of Szekesfehervar stressing that “the synod of bishops was unanimous in its desire to put an end to Jewish destructiveness” and the apostolic delegate of Rozsnyo demanding that “additional, very firm steps be taken to remove the Jewish spirit.” At the same time, the ecclesiastical paper, Namzeti Ujsag carried an article which asked:

Does anti-Semitism contradict Catholicism? Not at all! Ever since the inception of Christianity, a struggle with no compromise has been waged unceasingly between the church and Judaism. Our Lord Jesus began this struggle on a practical level when he drove out at a whip’s end the moneychangers from the Temple ... the popes and church councils, year after year, generation after generation, have engaged in legislating laws to limit the rights of Jews and to issue decrees aimed at achieving this goal.

The writer went on to list many of these laws and decrees, and concluded: “No one has ever cancelled these papal edicts and church laws. And so they are all valid in our day as well.” This article appeared while the second anti-Jewish bill was being debated in
parliament. Note also that in this debate, Bishop Glattfelder also spoke with approval of former popes and church leaders who had enacted numerous anti-Jewish laws.

Was the official catholic church of Hungary anti-semitic? The Polish church was at least as bad, leading the campain to boycott all Jewish stores. In a synod of Polish bishops resolved in 1937 to demand that Jewish children be segregated in schools, and that Jews be prohibited from teaching Polish children. In 1936 the Polish episcopate and the primate of Poland endorsed a student pilgrimage to the town of Czestochowa, the site of the holiest Catholic shrine in Poland. Sixty percent of the entire university student population of Poland attended, and issued a declaration that “We will not rest until the last Jew, alive or dead, has left Polish soil.”

In April 1942, the Catholic episcopate of Slovakia issued a pastoral letter. It declared that the Jews were a cursed people because of their deicide: "Also, in our eyes has the influence of the Jews been pernicious. .. Not only economically, but also in the cultural and moral spheres, they have harmed our people. The church cannot be opposed, therefore, if the state with legal actions eradicates the dangerous influence of the Jews." The 'legal actions' here refered to the deportation of Slovakia's Jews to Poland.

If you were a good catholic in these lands, by obeying your synod of bishops, you would have committed sin. God commanded us to love our neighbours, and to do good to the stranger in our midst.

Take care, Colin

 

To quote from your catechism, “Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals.”
Grant, your church officially, for hundreds of years taught the persecution of Jews. It is not infallable in the area of morals. Your shepherds did not have the charisma of infallability in moral areas.

Your setting up of church history and tradition as an authority equal to that of the Bible is proved by your church's own history and tradition to be wrong. People who believed this sinned as a result.
Take care, Colin

 

Hi there, Carson,
I assumed it meant that if you followed the official teachings of your church, you were guarenteed that you would not sin by so doing. My understanding is that the pope has an office of oversight re national synods, would he correct them if they were wrong?
I would be happy for you to explain it to me.
My sources for the above posts have been catholic historians and achademic texts.

I note with sadness that not one catholic reply has begun with any expression of sorrow or grief that such sufferings could have been inflicted in the name of your church.

Take care, Colin

 

Hi Ed,
are papal bulls, popes quoting canon law, the official words of synods of bishops, the deeds of saints etc meaningless and pointless to catholics? Is Jewish suffering meaningless and pointless to catholics?

Have a cold shower and answer nicely. From memory, you are the guy who told me the virtues of blind obedience to the catholic church leaders. Im the guy who pointed out that such an attitude would have led you to sin.

Do take care, Colin

 

Hi thess,
in general, baptists have avoided persecuting, believing in seperation of church and state, and the freedom of people to choose their own beliefs. Equally clearly, baptist history is far from perfect! That is just my point!! We know we are fallable, we know we are just forgiven sinners clinging to Jesus. We would not presume to preach our own history as an infallable guide to morals. We know we need to conform all our behaviour to the inspired God breathed words of Scripture, and accept nothing of ourselves as equal to that.

Take care, Colin