Never Justifies More Callous Saddistic Suffering.
This past weekend, likely in keeping with the tone of "never forget" the Shoah, in New York and Connecticut stations ran an old movie called "Judgment at Nurenberg." It's an old classic featuring legends like Judy Garland, Marlena Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, and that guy who Catherine Hepburn had an affair with her whole life. There is even a cameo by a young Captain Kirk Shatner.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055031/
It's quite long. I had never seen it before. It is absolutely frightening- it was made in 1961. From the time the war ended until the making of that film we were still engaged in Nazi hunting old war criminals-and you see why here vividly. The most striking thing about the movie is that it has original footage of unbelievably gory scenes, like "World at War" scenes of the dead bodies in mass graves being bulldozed, the gas chambers, the shoes and gold teeth, and all the horrors you never want to believe actually happened and can hardly believe your eyes. [The Holocaust Museum should get this film and clip this footage and show this non-stop. ]
Yet, it did. An entire society so off it's collective rocker that they completely lost their souls- and self-justified the most massive evils of biblical proportion that we can barely conceive of it. Two-thirds of the entire Jewish populations in Europe were wiped out by a society gone mad driven by a demon leader-engaging in callous saddistic mass slaughter. --With half the country pulling a colonel klink "i know nuthink" --it was all the gestapo's fault.
I ordered this and will send it to the first Priest who asks for it (you know where to reach me) if he promises to show it to his church congregation. You can order it too off Amazon for $22.
You will understand after watching this how obscene and dangerous it is for any European Bishop or any cleric to call any Jewish person "deicidal" or "userous" or anything anti-semetic, or to offensively insanely liken the sex scandals to the persecution of the Jews.
Further, it should demonstrate to you how evil and wrong it is for us to use the saddistic suffering callously mass murdering innocent Jews in Europe to justify doing the same to Afghanis or Iraqis or Palestinians. It might explain better and justify the understandable paranoia but it also demonstrates that the solutions cannot be pre-emptively wiping out entire ethnicities or political parties without inspiring the same outrage and cyclical retribution that breeds nothing but more contemptous death.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
My Body My Bizness
Except When Its Someone Else's Body
Like your in-utero baby's body.
I used to watch Lassie on TV. I am that old. I loved it when Lassie did something that actually rescued or saved the life of his pal owner boy. I love it even more when I read stories about how a woman's life is saved by her baby- because for example a baby has a different genetic code than the mother provided by the fact that it partially came from genetic material of the 'baby daddy' so it can offer to the mother in the womb antibodies to fight diseases which antibodies the mother doesn't have absent the fetus. These are remarkable medical miracle stories- and prove true the biblical maxim that 'women are saved through childbearing'- look it up- it's in First Testament Scripture. The baby can literally save the mother.
The latest legal battle now being waged surrounds a new and evolving doctrine called "pain threshold" - which seeks to redefine when an abortion may be performed under state law- as the laws take a focus with renewed vigor in the stateside arenas. In Nebraaska for example, the legislature is seeking to outlaw abortions at a time when the fetus can feel pain by virtue of development of the neurological systems. After it can feel pain an abortion might be considered 'cruel and unusual' for constitutional considerations (as if it always isn't-for all concerned) and what death penalty is justified for merely existing inconveniently?
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/new-laws-restrict-abortion-in-nebraska-court-challenges-likely/19439125
Like your in-utero baby's body.
I used to watch Lassie on TV. I am that old. I loved it when Lassie did something that actually rescued or saved the life of his pal owner boy. I love it even more when I read stories about how a woman's life is saved by her baby- because for example a baby has a different genetic code than the mother provided by the fact that it partially came from genetic material of the 'baby daddy' so it can offer to the mother in the womb antibodies to fight diseases which antibodies the mother doesn't have absent the fetus. These are remarkable medical miracle stories- and prove true the biblical maxim that 'women are saved through childbearing'- look it up- it's in First Testament Scripture. The baby can literally save the mother.
The latest legal battle now being waged surrounds a new and evolving doctrine called "pain threshold" - which seeks to redefine when an abortion may be performed under state law- as the laws take a focus with renewed vigor in the stateside arenas. In Nebraaska for example, the legislature is seeking to outlaw abortions at a time when the fetus can feel pain by virtue of development of the neurological systems. After it can feel pain an abortion might be considered 'cruel and unusual' for constitutional considerations (as if it always isn't-for all concerned) and what death penalty is justified for merely existing inconveniently?
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/new-laws-restrict-abortion-in-nebraska-court-challenges-likely/19439125
Whatever Happened to That
Appollo Man on the Moon Program For Energy Independence?
Here is what we need to see. Seriously. Waiting, waiting, waiting....
A new commission on Energy Innovation. But not just a new commission-
a comprehensive program- grants in universities for cutting edge research, not just
subsidies to oil companies. Prizes in the millions offered for new technologies, brainstorming
scientists and bio-geeks, commissioned projects and programs, engineering student
tuition scholarships, etc.
How did we get a Man on the Moon and not know how to get ourselves off Fossil Fuels?
If I was President (don't tempt me buster) I would immediately announce the
O.F.F. Mission. - Off Fossil Fuel Mission. So in 10 years we will convert our energy needs away from Fossil Fuel completely without compromising our lifestyle.
OK. we will wean ourselves off at least half of it.
Now, get started! What are you waiting for!!
Here is what we need to see. Seriously. Waiting, waiting, waiting....
A new commission on Energy Innovation. But not just a new commission-
a comprehensive program- grants in universities for cutting edge research, not just
subsidies to oil companies. Prizes in the millions offered for new technologies, brainstorming
scientists and bio-geeks, commissioned projects and programs, engineering student
tuition scholarships, etc.
How did we get a Man on the Moon and not know how to get ourselves off Fossil Fuels?
If I was President (don't tempt me buster) I would immediately announce the
O.F.F. Mission. - Off Fossil Fuel Mission. So in 10 years we will convert our energy needs away from Fossil Fuel completely without compromising our lifestyle.
OK. we will wean ourselves off at least half of it.
Now, get started! What are you waiting for!!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
I Do Some Of My Best Thinking When I Am Asleep
And This is What I Dreamed
An Energy Plan:
1. Imagine- if all the sewage in a city were converted into energy. The plants that currently filter sewage from water systems could be converted/diverted into something that with an agent burned cleanly into something that is plugged into the town's electric grid- the US held the patent on the agent that burned cleanly. Imagine that in places like Haiti where raw sewage is forced into the streets because of the rains it could be diverted into a plant that converted it into electricity for the country. Imagine if all the city dumps in places like Rio and Guatemala City were converted into energy by cleanly burning and plugging back into the city's grid. And the US held the patents on how to cleanly burn that.
2. Imagine- if all the grasses from the Serenghetti were sustainably regrown in rapid speed as fast as they could be harvested to convert into biofuel and the US held the patent on the agent that burned that cleanly, and the exports of the Serenghetti grasses for conversion into energy could feed half the African continent.
3. Imagine- that roads were made in part of that superball plastic material that put mileage on a car because of the efficiency of the road improvements much like efficiencies in tire materials make the tires go faster and more smoothly and the US held the patents on the plastic mix material that is shipped all around the world.
Imagine. Imagine the Jobs in the US. Imagine the sustainable energy improvements. Imagine that the foreign oil dependency is eliminated bio-naturally and with efficiencies of production.
IMAGINE.
Imagine no one having to "drill baby drill" off the Coast of Avalon, New Jersey or Virginia Beach, Virginia, or Accokeek, or the Outer Banks or Fort Lauderdale.
IMAGINE.
An Energy Plan:
1. Imagine- if all the sewage in a city were converted into energy. The plants that currently filter sewage from water systems could be converted/diverted into something that with an agent burned cleanly into something that is plugged into the town's electric grid- the US held the patent on the agent that burned cleanly. Imagine that in places like Haiti where raw sewage is forced into the streets because of the rains it could be diverted into a plant that converted it into electricity for the country. Imagine if all the city dumps in places like Rio and Guatemala City were converted into energy by cleanly burning and plugging back into the city's grid. And the US held the patents on how to cleanly burn that.
2. Imagine- if all the grasses from the Serenghetti were sustainably regrown in rapid speed as fast as they could be harvested to convert into biofuel and the US held the patent on the agent that burned that cleanly, and the exports of the Serenghetti grasses for conversion into energy could feed half the African continent.
3. Imagine- that roads were made in part of that superball plastic material that put mileage on a car because of the efficiency of the road improvements much like efficiencies in tire materials make the tires go faster and more smoothly and the US held the patents on the plastic mix material that is shipped all around the world.
Imagine. Imagine the Jobs in the US. Imagine the sustainable energy improvements. Imagine that the foreign oil dependency is eliminated bio-naturally and with efficiencies of production.
IMAGINE.
Imagine no one having to "drill baby drill" off the Coast of Avalon, New Jersey or Virginia Beach, Virginia, or Accokeek, or the Outer Banks or Fort Lauderdale.
IMAGINE.
A Woman After My Own Heart
Said JESUS
Women are after the Heart of the Lord- what does he really want from his church?
Maureen Dowd breaks it down- and the boys better start paying attention.
Women are after the Heart of the Lord- what does he really want from his church?
Maureen Dowd breaks it down- and the boys better start paying attention.
It's a "GET REAL ALREADY" thing:
Monday, April 12, 2010
Worth Repeating
The Pope's Prayer Intentions for APRIL.
From the VIS, official Vatican Information Service
VATICAN CITY, 31 MAR 2010 (VIS) - Pope Benedict's general prayer intention for April is:
"That every tendency to fundamentalism and extremism may be countered by constant respect, by tolerance and by dialogue among all believers". His mission intention is: "That Christians persecuted for the sake of the Gospel may persevere, sustained by the Holy Spirit, in faithfully witnessing to the love of God for the entire human race".
The ENTIRE HUMAN RACE- that means including you. The Pope has your back.
From the VIS, official Vatican Information Service
VATICAN CITY, 31 MAR 2010 (VIS) - Pope Benedict's general prayer intention for April is:
"That every tendency to fundamentalism and extremism may be countered by constant respect, by tolerance and by dialogue among all believers". His mission intention is: "That Christians persecuted for the sake of the Gospel may persevere, sustained by the Holy Spirit, in faithfully witnessing to the love of God for the entire human race".
The ENTIRE HUMAN RACE- that means including you. The Pope has your back.
Pope Blogger
Not Just A Pretty Face--Yes, the Pope Blogs- or at least his PR Team does.
The Vatican Blog is found here: http://www.visnews-en.blogspot.com
It's not often you will see the reference, see, Pope at blogspot.com
but now that you have the real deal, the right whack-a-doodle interpretation of Vatican musings may be left aside for the actual text. Believe me, it's less crazy than the spin. This, you could learn to love.
The Vatican Blog is found here: http://www.visnews-en.blogspot.com
It's not often you will see the reference, see, Pope at blogspot.com
but now that you have the real deal, the right whack-a-doodle interpretation of Vatican musings may be left aside for the actual text. Believe me, it's less crazy than the spin. This, you could learn to love.
CONFLICT SOLUTIONS INTERNATIONAL
1629 K St., N.W., Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20006
202-349-3972
Email: info@csiorg.org
A Special Event with Conflict Solutions International:
Prisoners as Political Pawns: Diplomacy, Prisoner Exchanges, and Hostage Negotiations
Prisoners as Political Pawns: Diplomacy, Prisoner Exchanges, and Hostage Negotiations
With so many political prisoners around the world, CSI is offering a glimpse at the harsh reality of prisoners exchanges and hostage negotiations. CSI will also present its own conflict resolution platform and current initiative titled Freedom Exchange. This initiative is now focused on Cuba, but will be extended to other regions in the future.
When:
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010, 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Address and Directions:
The Charles Sumner School
1201 17th Street (On the corner of M Street), N.W., Washington, DC
Nearest metro stops: Dupont Circle (Red line) and Farragut West (Blue and Orange line).
The Charles Sumner School is an 1872 National Register landmark and is part of the DC Public Schools and Archives. We are grateful for their generous hospitality for this event.
Cost:
The event is free with a minimum donation of $5 for those attending the reception. Press, speakers and CSI volunteers are not required to make a donation.
All proceeds will go toward event costs covered by CSI, a 501(C)(3) non-profit. Donations are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by law.
For more information on the foundation please visit our website at:
http://www.csiorg.org/
Dress Code:
Business attire or dignified casual.
**RSVP by Monday, April 19th to:**
CSIEVENTSDC@GMAIL.COM
With your full name, number of guests, phone number and email address.
Your RSVP is necessary to notify you in the event of changes or cancellations.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Cantelmessa's Mejor Messas
From A Catholic Theologian Who Has Had Enough.
The anti-semitism comparison that Franciscan Friar Cantelmessa made last week was highly disturbing on a number of levels- most notably because it fails to appreciate that Jews did NOTHING to justify their massive persecutions and mass murder while we are talking about catholic sexual perversions and assaults on minors- and the response of the hierarchy to criminal acts that people as high up as the current Pope himself were aware of. The office he held at head prefect of the Congregation of the Faith was actually previously the same office of Inquisition that historically had a serious role in the persecution of Jews and even the inspiration of pograms that mass murdered many Jewish communities. There could not have been a more insensitive misplaced reference- hence one of the rare times that you ever see an Apology issue from the Holy See. The comment was really shocking. There is something beyond unseemly for the Pope and surrogates to play the Victim card against the backdrop of their deliberate intentional and/or negligent deeply wounding actions- Insurance companies don't pay people 2 billion dollars for nothing. You can't even get them to pay for your car repairs- can you imagine the destruction that has been inflicted by this sweep under the carpet mentality?
A Catholic theologian believes that there is much healing that needs to take place in the Catholic-Jewish relationship- it is such a good article I reproduce it in full and thank Tikkun for sending it.
Unfinished Teshuvah
The Deepest Wound: Why the Catholic Church Needs to Heal its Anti-Jewish Legacy - Now!
By David A. Sylvester
To read the headlines this week, you'd think that this past Easter weekend was more about the Roman Catholic Church itself than the Christian message of hope and new life. A chorus of Church leaders used the Easter services to rally around Pope Benedict XVI for his handling of the scandal over the sexual abuse of children by priests. During Easter Sunday ceremonies at St. Peter's Square, Cardinal Angelo Sodano called the pope "the unfailing rock of the Holy Church of Christ" and obliquely referred the growing anger over the scandal as "gossip of the moment." Elsewhere, the archbishop in Mexico City said the pope was facing "defamation and attacks of lies and vileness," and the archbishop of Paris complained of a "smear campaign" that aims at "destabilizing the pope, and through him, the church." [1]
To a lay Catholic who loves the Church, the cases of abuse and the reactive defensiveness of the leaders were distressing enough, but another remark actually sent shivers down the spine, because it revealed the terrible reality of another, more profound and persistent crisis within the Church. And this is the crisis over Christian identity left in the wake of the Holocaust, a crisis that haunts the soul of the ordinary Catholic in the pews, whether he or she is conscious of it or not.
This realization was triggered, fittingly enough, on Good Friday, a day remembered by Christians for Jesus' ultimate sacrifice of love for all humanity and remembered by Jews for the rampages through Jewish communities by the church-goers leaving their services. With Pope Benedict XVI sitting before him at the service in St. Peter's Basilica, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa tried to speak words of sympathy to him that had come from an unidentified Jewish friend. This friend, Fr. Cantalamessa said, had written a letter with the following:
" 'I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole world,' " Fr. Cantalamessa said, quoting the friend. " 'The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.' " Then in his own words, Fr. Cantalamessa said that Jews "know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms."[2]
Perhaps his Jewish friend was exaggerating through an excess of sympathy for the pope, but Fr. Cantalamessa was obligated to respond to him with the obvious: There is no comparison between the "collective violence" of 1,800 years of systematic persecution and destruction of Jews - a role in which Catholic Christians played their own shameful role -- with the "collective justice" that is now sought by the victims of pedophile priests and their protectors, whether deliberate or unintentional. The use of stereotypes and collective guilt are the methods of propagandists everywhere, but anti-Semitism is a historically unique and murderous form of propaganda.
For such a high Church leader forget this distinction, especially on Good Friday, was a painful reminder how little the understanding of the Holocaust has changed among Catholic Christians, especially the understanding of how it was made possible historically by Catholic anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism. It showed that the work of repentance and penance, teshuvah if you will, is still incomplete for the Church and that even after 65 years, the Church has not fully faced the meaning of the failures of many Catholic leaders and members during the catastrophe.
Why does this still matter, you might ask? Isn't this now history that should recede into the past? Isn't it time to move on from what might be seen as a preoccupation with the horrors of the Holocaust? My answer is no, it matters a great deal, and it's an illusion to think we can move on unless the past is healed enough to enable us to move on. In coming to terms with any past of oppression, it can be argued that the individual today is not responsible for the sins of the ancestors. But the individual today is completely responsible for the extent to which his or her identity is still shaped by those sins and his or her behavior still reflects that distorted identity. And that is exactly the problem reflected in Fr. Cantalamessa's obtuse remarks.
They show that the Christian identity today still suffers from the Church's insufficient response to an essential moral imperative: How can I be a good Christian without being anti-Jewish? If Jesus calls on us to accept him as the Messiah, how do we understand those good and holy people who disagree? How do we hear the Gospel accounts, the Church confessions and the great spiritual writings when we know that some of them were used to justify centuries of persecution and destruction? Have we really changed the way we live to account for the horrific mirror that the Holocaust held up to the Christian world?
This coming Sunday is Yom HaShoah, the day of remembrance of the Holocaust, and it would be well for Christians to consider that the Holocaust showed how un-Christian the majority of Christians can be. It showed that in failing to honor and defend the divinity in anyone, Christians failed to see Christ in everyone. In this way, the Shoah is still questioning the meaning of the churchy words that we claim to live by. As Rabbi Irving Greenberg has rightly said, no one can say anything about their religious life that isn't credible before the cries of those 1.5 million Jewish babies, burned alive by the Nazis to save the cost of killing them with poison gas.[3]
If Fr. Cantalamessa had been remembering those cries, he never would have said what he said last Good Friday at St. Peter's Basilica. Later, he showed his lack of understanding when he later apologized; he did not mean to "hurt the feelings of Jews and victims of pedophilia." But the problem really isn't about hurt "feelings." It isn't about attacks on the Pope or the stability of the Roman Catholic Church. And it isn't about rebutting the usual anti-Catholic demagoguery and ignorance[4] that often surfaces in times like these, reviving those old slanders against the Church as "the whore of Babylon" and the Pope as the "Anti-Christ."[5]
It's about justice and the duty of the Church to stand with "the least" among us and feel "the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially those who are poor or afflicted in any way."[6] By its own Sacrament of Reconciliation, it is called upon to confess its sin of "missing the mark," take action of penance with " a firm resolve to amendment" and take the actions necessary to "avoid the near occasion of sin" in the future. In other words, it needs to change.
Right now, the poor and afflicted who are crying out are those where were sexually abused as children and young adults. Yes, this day of reckoning is uncomfortable. Yes, the pope is taking a lot of heat - but this is surely no surprise, considering the magnitude of the crimes. In Ireland alone, some 30,000 boys and girls were tormented, beaten, molested and at times raped in Catholic orphanages and reformatories over a period of six decades. And no one reported this or was prosecuted. Elsewhere, thousands of other young people, mostly between the ages of 11 and 14, have been molested in Catholic churches in the United States, Canada, Australia, and now from new cases surfacing, in France and Germany. Worst of all, church officials ignored reported and allowed the pedophile priests to continue in parishes.
The issue requires much more than a pastoral letter or a conference of bishops to resolve. It may well require a thorough re-examination of a host of difficult social, ethical and doctrinal questions. To get to the bottom of the problem and make the necessary changes, nothing should be left off the table: priestly celibacy, church teachings on homosexuality, screening and supervision of priests, traditions of secrecy, and assumptions of authority that can lead to authoritarianism and models of domination. And it may also require the insights from spiritual disciplines, such as fasting and penitence, as Fr. Cantalamessa himself suggested to the pope in 2006.[7] Ultimately, the Church must face the awful failings of its priests, the culture that permitted the abuse and the changes that are needed to eliminate the "near occasion for sin" in the future.
However, as this crisis is being resolved - and it must be - the Church must also listen to the cries of a less audible group of poor and afflicted, those babies who suffered agonizing deaths in self-professed "Christian" Europe. This is a deeper, more uncomfortable self-confrontation, but one that is desperately needed, because it's clear that the efforts during the past decades by Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II to repair the past have not been enough.
In the spirit of constructive dialogue to help resolve a painful wound shared by lay members and leaders alike, I think the Catholic Church needs to consider at least three important changes. First, it must re-examine more thoroughly and reject more cogently its anti-Judaic theology dating back centuries. Second, it must permanently ban the mention of the "perfidious Jews" at any Good Friday Mass, an insulting remnant of anti-Judaism that has been revived recently by reactionaries in the Church. And third, it needs to own up to the hidden contribution that Christian anti-Semitism has made toward the catastrophe of the Palestinian people. Why? Because Israel's intransigent and ruthless policies towards its neighbors only make sense in the light of historical trauma, including the centuries' of European persecution that made possible the widespread abandonment of Jews and collusion in their destruction by self-professed Christians throughout Europe during the Holocaust.
Let's examine these one by one. First, and most importantly, too often Christianity has taught an implicit rejection of Judaism that has led to contempt for Jews and a gross misunderstanding of rabbinic Judaism. This anti-Judaic theological tradition, known as adversus Judaeos, began in the polemical debates against Jews during the early formation of the Catholic Church. This early history contributed to shaping a European anti-Semitism that became a complex blend of Christian theology, folk culture, ignorance and fear-driven superstition. After the Holocaust, this tradition must be identified and rooted out as false Christianity. As Christian theologian Clark M. Williamson has written: "The 'teaching of contempt' for Jews and Judaism was a necessary but not sufficient cause of the Holocaust. Now that we see the complicity of that teaching in making possible the Holocaust, we may not morally repeat it."[8]
It's true that since the Holocaust, the Catholic Church has taken considerable steps toward a reconsideration of its past. In 1965, the landmark declaration of Nostra Aetate, the first major re-thinking of its relations with non-Christian religions, the Church took the most basic step in rejecting any collective blame for Jesus' death on Jews in general. It affirmed the "common spiritual heritage" shared by Jews and Christians and condemned "all hatreds, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time or from any source."[9] In 1998, a papal commission issued its reflection on the Holocaust entitled "We Remember," in which it expressed "sorrow for the tragedy" of the Holocaust, and admitted the "heavy burden of conscience" and the "call to penitence" for Christian behavior.
However, these admissions were far from enough. The statement was rife with euphemisms and equivocations. It only mentioned "the errors and failures of those sons and daughters of the Church," not the actual writings of Church thinkers. It pointed with pride to those Catholics who risked their lives to defend Jews during the Nazi terror but then added that "the spiritual resistance of other Christians was not that which might have been expected by Christ's followers," -- an utterly insufficient characterization of the actual events.
Moreover, the Church statement inaccurately lumped the Holocaust together with other genocidal outbreaks, such as "the massacre of Armenians" or the "countless victims of the Ukraine in the 1930s, or the "genocide of the Gypsies." [10] In the 4th Century, C.E., St. Gregory of Nyssa was not referring to the Armenians when he was excoriating the "slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, enemies of God," and "advocates of the devil, brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, folk of darkened minds." It was not the Ukrainians that in the 13th Century, C.E., Pope Innocent III called a people of Cain, protected from death so that "yet as wanderers upon the earth they must remain, until their countenance be filled with shame and they seek the name of Jesus Christ the Lord." And St. Thomas Aquinas did not mean keeping Gypsies confined, "because of their crime, in perpetual servitude" and their possessions "as belonging to the State" as long as they are not deprived of "things necessary to life."[11]
No, the Holocaust was a uniquely anti-Jewish genocide in a Europe conditioned by centuries of Catholic Christian theological teachings that targeted, marginalized, ghettoized and persecuted the Jews as Jews. At the same time, it is wrong to think the Nazi catastrophe as primarily an outcome of Catholic anti-Judaism. The Church has accurately identified the Holocaust as an outgrowth of "a thoroughly modern neo-pagan regime" that involved the deifying the nation-state. Also, it's true that Nazi anti-Semitism exploited historical Christian anti-Jewish feelings but in the end, "had its roots outside of Christianity"[12] - a characterization that Jewish scholars have largely agreed with.[13] And certainly, some key Catholic figures were remarkably courageous in their efforts, such as the future Pope John XXIII who saved thousands of German and Slovakian Jews during the war and issued false baptismal certificates and visas to protect thousands of Hungarian Jews.
But the heroism of a few doesn't clear the conscience of the many. Perhaps the best summation of the Christian role in the Nazi catastrophe comes from historian Saul Friedlander: Anti-Semitism and its theological anti-Judaism created in Europe the dry underbrush that was only waiting for the flame of Hitler, the arsonist, to catch fire. "Without the arsonist the fire would not have started; without the underbrush it would not have spread as far as it did and destroyed an entire world." [14]
What, then, is to be done? Besides a rethinking of its theology and history, the Catholic Church should require a corrective teaching at every Good Friday service about the responsibility of everybody, Jew and Gentile, aristocrat and commoner, the rulers and ruled - and the disciples too -- in the death of Jesus. The Church cannot rest until every single one of its members understands that the charge of deicide, that "the Jews killed Christ" is a false understanding of Jesus' death. It was heartening to hear exactly this preached in my own parish, Our Lady of Lourdes in Oakland, California, when Fr. Tom Weston called on Christians to examine their own violent behavior. At the very least, Christians might follow Christ by not killing other Christians, he said.[15] "We are always looking for someone to blame," he said. "We blamed the Jews. But let's be clear: Gentiles and Jews joined in the death of Christ." In some churches, it is the congregation itself who shouts "Crucify him, Crucify him" during the crowd's response at Jesus' trial to underscore the universal human participation in the destruction of life that comes through human sin.
Rabbi Michael Lerner thinks the Church should go much farther and broaden its educational efforts. He proposes that it could require every students in Catholic high school and college as well as priests in every seminary to learn about the history of the Church's role in creating and fostering anti-Semitism, perhaps by studying Edward Flannery's classic The Anguish of the Jews or some other comparable work. In addition, it could devote one Sunday a year, perhaps on Yom HaShoah, for teaching lay members too. "This would begin to help Catholics understand that anti-Semitism was not some mysterious phenomenon that popped up from nowhere, but rather a product of a systematic anti-Judaism that was already being built into the Gospels by those who wrote them, and then expanded upon dramatically once the Church took power in Rome," Rabbi Lerner has said.
In the very least, a more immediate second effort is also needed to eliminate a festering remnant of anti-Judaism. Pope Benedict XVI needs to prohibit the Good Friday prayer in the Tridentine Latin service for the conversion of the "perfidis" Jews. This Latin word is most accurately translated as "non-believing" but has been often rendered into English as "perfidious," meaning treacherous. Pope John XXIII ordered this word removed in 1960, and actually stopped a Mass in 1963 when he heard it and ordered the prayer repeated without it. Through Vatican II, the modernized Mass changed the offensive prayer. But the Latin Mass, including this word, has been revived by some Catholic ultra-traditionalists who have defied Vatican II. Instead, the pope needs to defend his predecessor's legacy by making sure this word is never again heard in any Roman Catholic Church.
Finally, the Catholic Church enter into a dialogue with Jewish leaders over what changes in Christian teachings could help relieve some of the trauma that Jews have carried with them to Israel. In a way, we might say that Christians are the unindicted co-conspirator in the suffering of the Palestinian people. How so? It seems to me that Israeli policies towards the Occupied Territories reflects a community suffering from the results of severe trauma - a distrust of all other nations, a fanatic determination for safety and security, a terror for its existence in spite of overwhelming military superiority. Israel is behaving as if it always expects to be alone, persecuted and endangered - a fairly accurate assessment of the historical position of the Jewish people throughout Christian Europe. On top of this, Israel seems to be re-enacting the trauma of the medieval ghetto by erecting of its Wall through Palestine against a sea of surrounding enemies, a physical embodiment of the psychological walls that victims of severe trauma establish after repeated violation. Rabbi Lerner has correctly noted the signs of a communal post-traumatic stress disorder in Israel's policies,[16] and traces the trauma to terrorism, the 1948 war and the Holocaust. But he could go further back to centuries of Christian discrimination and its "dry underbrush" of anti-Semitism that was ignited during the Holocaust.
As penance for its past, the Catholic Church should convey three-way talks with Jewish and Muslim leaders and examine the religious roots of the violence in the Middle East. One reason that political efforts at peace have been ineffective, apart from the violent nature of nation-states based on military power, is that in their hearts of hearts, Jews, Christians and Muslims still see each other as "infidels." Ultimately, these three Abrahamic peoples will have to find some way to recognize and appreciate the validity of each other's religion without surrendering their own religious identity - perhaps an impossible task for mere humans but not for the healing spirit of God. The Catholic Church would go a long way by calling upon Christians throughout the world to ensure the safety of Jewish communities threatened with violence and discrimination. Muslims would need to recognize the Jewish right to return to its land as an integral understanding of its relationship with God. And Jews would need to live up to covenantal relationship not to wrong or oppress the strangers in its land "for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."[17]
If all this seems far afield of the tempest of the moment, I would beg to disagree. It is precisely at the moment of moral challenge, whether from the suffering of the sexually abused or the victims of anti-Jewish genocide, that the Catholic Church has the opportunity to show its true self. It has the powerful spiritual tools of prayer and Gospel values for uncovering the roots of the errors of the past and making the necessary changes. It is my faith and conviction that this will - and must - happen. This is why the sturm und drang of the moment does not disillusion me. The best in the Catholic tradition reflects a pilgrim Church on the journey of growth and change. Who could predict the miracle of Vatican II, instigated by the pope at top of the hierarchy? Who cannot admire the courage of martyred bishops, like Monseñor Oscar Romero in El Salvador and Monseñor Juan Gerardi in Guatemala, who gave their lives standing up for the poor and afflicted? Who can not respect the sacrifice of Catholics like Maximilian Kolbe died in place of a Jewish brother at Auschwitz in spite of his own anti-Jewish past? Those who mock and deride the Catholic Church right now for its obvious human failings and weaknesses are only seeing its surface, its exterior shell of statues and stone. You have to love it to see its inner power and beauty, to understand its heart. If you did, you'd know this is a church capable of amazing transformation for itself and compassion for the victims of this world. You'd know that no matter how it trips over its robes and gets waylaid in the labyrinths of its palaces, it will eventually find its way out and bring comfort, hope and new life to the slums and shantytowns in this world, and in those rejected places in the human heart where people go to cry out silently, shivering, alone, wounded and afraid.
David A. Sylvester, a dedicated lay Roman Catholic, has worked as a journalist and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area for 25 years. In 2009, he received a Master's in Theological Studies from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. He is now studying Catholic-Jewish relations at the master's program at the Graduate Theological Union's Center for Jewish Studies in Berkeley. He can be reached at da_sylvester@yahoo.com
[1] "Vatican's Easter Message is Support for Pope" By Daniel J. Wakin, New York Times, Monday April 5, 2010, pg. A1. [2] Wakin, New York Times, April 5, 2010. [3][3] Quoted in: Clark Williamson, A Guest in the House of Israel: Post-Holocaust Church Theology, (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993) pg. 13. [4] One good example of ignorance in the service of prejudice: "Abuse Charges Mount against Catholic Church" by Bill Underwood, April 3, 2010, San Francisco Examiner, which says this about religious identity: "People seem to equate 'being Catholic' with, I don't know, being blonde or Guatemalan or diabetic…as though it's something you're born with that can't be changed." http://www.examiner.com/x-17373-Phoenix-Signs-of-the-Times-Examiner~y2010m4d3-Abuse-charges-mount-against-the-Catholic-Church [5] For a glimpse at the ugly history of anti-Catholic propaganda, see: Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons: The Papal Worship, proved to be the worship of Nimrod and his wife, The mark of the Beast Revealed 666, (A&B Publishers Group, Brooklyn, N.Y., reprint of original 1858 edition.) [6] Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Vatican II, Dec. 7, 1965. [7] In an Advent sermon on Dec. 15, 2006, Fr. Cantalamessa urged the pope to declare a day of fasting and penitence for the victims of the sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy, "to publicly express repentance before God and solidarity with the victims". He called on the Church "to weep before God, to do penance, as God himself has been abused; to do penance for the offense against the body of Christ and the scandalizing of the 'least of his brothers,' more than for the damage and dishonor that has been brought upon us." http://www.cantalamessa.org/en/predicheView.php?id=77 [8] Williamson, pg. 13. [9] Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Second Vatican Council, Oct. 28, 1965. Section 4. [10] We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, March 16, 1998. Pontifical Commission for Relations with the Jews. Section IV. [11] Adapted From Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews (Paulist Press, 1985) in "An Outline of the History of Jewish-Christian Relations," Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. [12] We Remember, Section III. [13] Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity, National Jewish Scholars Project, Baltimore, MD., Sept. 10, 2000. "Without the long history of Christian anti-Judaism and Christian violence against Jews, Nazi ideology could not have taken hold nor could it have been carried out. Too many Christians participated in, or were sympathetic to, Nazi atrocities against Jews. Other Christians did not protest sufficiently against these atrocities. But Nazism itself was not an inevitable outcome of Christianity." [14] Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.), pg. xix. [15] Fr. Tom Weston: "We are a violent species, and blame/kill/torture/wound easily. The Vatican Council II specifically taught that "the Jews killed Christ" is a false and dangerous reading of history and the Gospel. And as Mr. Gandhi said: Christians are the only ones who have not yet noticed that Jesus was non-violent." [16] Michael Lerner, "Israel at 60," in Tikkun Magazine, May/June 2008 pgs 19-21. [17] Exodus 22:20-21 "You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
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The anti-semitism comparison that Franciscan Friar Cantelmessa made last week was highly disturbing on a number of levels- most notably because it fails to appreciate that Jews did NOTHING to justify their massive persecutions and mass murder while we are talking about catholic sexual perversions and assaults on minors- and the response of the hierarchy to criminal acts that people as high up as the current Pope himself were aware of. The office he held at head prefect of the Congregation of the Faith was actually previously the same office of Inquisition that historically had a serious role in the persecution of Jews and even the inspiration of pograms that mass murdered many Jewish communities. There could not have been a more insensitive misplaced reference- hence one of the rare times that you ever see an Apology issue from the Holy See. The comment was really shocking. There is something beyond unseemly for the Pope and surrogates to play the Victim card against the backdrop of their deliberate intentional and/or negligent deeply wounding actions- Insurance companies don't pay people 2 billion dollars for nothing. You can't even get them to pay for your car repairs- can you imagine the destruction that has been inflicted by this sweep under the carpet mentality?
A Catholic theologian believes that there is much healing that needs to take place in the Catholic-Jewish relationship- it is such a good article I reproduce it in full and thank Tikkun for sending it.
Unfinished Teshuvah
The Deepest Wound: Why the Catholic Church Needs to Heal its Anti-Jewish Legacy - Now!
By David A. Sylvester
To read the headlines this week, you'd think that this past Easter weekend was more about the Roman Catholic Church itself than the Christian message of hope and new life. A chorus of Church leaders used the Easter services to rally around Pope Benedict XVI for his handling of the scandal over the sexual abuse of children by priests. During Easter Sunday ceremonies at St. Peter's Square, Cardinal Angelo Sodano called the pope "the unfailing rock of the Holy Church of Christ" and obliquely referred the growing anger over the scandal as "gossip of the moment." Elsewhere, the archbishop in Mexico City said the pope was facing "defamation and attacks of lies and vileness," and the archbishop of Paris complained of a "smear campaign" that aims at "destabilizing the pope, and through him, the church." [1]
To a lay Catholic who loves the Church, the cases of abuse and the reactive defensiveness of the leaders were distressing enough, but another remark actually sent shivers down the spine, because it revealed the terrible reality of another, more profound and persistent crisis within the Church. And this is the crisis over Christian identity left in the wake of the Holocaust, a crisis that haunts the soul of the ordinary Catholic in the pews, whether he or she is conscious of it or not.
This realization was triggered, fittingly enough, on Good Friday, a day remembered by Christians for Jesus' ultimate sacrifice of love for all humanity and remembered by Jews for the rampages through Jewish communities by the church-goers leaving their services. With Pope Benedict XVI sitting before him at the service in St. Peter's Basilica, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa tried to speak words of sympathy to him that had come from an unidentified Jewish friend. This friend, Fr. Cantalamessa said, had written a letter with the following:
" 'I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole world,' " Fr. Cantalamessa said, quoting the friend. " 'The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.' " Then in his own words, Fr. Cantalamessa said that Jews "know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms."[2]
Perhaps his Jewish friend was exaggerating through an excess of sympathy for the pope, but Fr. Cantalamessa was obligated to respond to him with the obvious: There is no comparison between the "collective violence" of 1,800 years of systematic persecution and destruction of Jews - a role in which Catholic Christians played their own shameful role -- with the "collective justice" that is now sought by the victims of pedophile priests and their protectors, whether deliberate or unintentional. The use of stereotypes and collective guilt are the methods of propagandists everywhere, but anti-Semitism is a historically unique and murderous form of propaganda.
For such a high Church leader forget this distinction, especially on Good Friday, was a painful reminder how little the understanding of the Holocaust has changed among Catholic Christians, especially the understanding of how it was made possible historically by Catholic anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism. It showed that the work of repentance and penance, teshuvah if you will, is still incomplete for the Church and that even after 65 years, the Church has not fully faced the meaning of the failures of many Catholic leaders and members during the catastrophe.
Why does this still matter, you might ask? Isn't this now history that should recede into the past? Isn't it time to move on from what might be seen as a preoccupation with the horrors of the Holocaust? My answer is no, it matters a great deal, and it's an illusion to think we can move on unless the past is healed enough to enable us to move on. In coming to terms with any past of oppression, it can be argued that the individual today is not responsible for the sins of the ancestors. But the individual today is completely responsible for the extent to which his or her identity is still shaped by those sins and his or her behavior still reflects that distorted identity. And that is exactly the problem reflected in Fr. Cantalamessa's obtuse remarks.
They show that the Christian identity today still suffers from the Church's insufficient response to an essential moral imperative: How can I be a good Christian without being anti-Jewish? If Jesus calls on us to accept him as the Messiah, how do we understand those good and holy people who disagree? How do we hear the Gospel accounts, the Church confessions and the great spiritual writings when we know that some of them were used to justify centuries of persecution and destruction? Have we really changed the way we live to account for the horrific mirror that the Holocaust held up to the Christian world?
This coming Sunday is Yom HaShoah, the day of remembrance of the Holocaust, and it would be well for Christians to consider that the Holocaust showed how un-Christian the majority of Christians can be. It showed that in failing to honor and defend the divinity in anyone, Christians failed to see Christ in everyone. In this way, the Shoah is still questioning the meaning of the churchy words that we claim to live by. As Rabbi Irving Greenberg has rightly said, no one can say anything about their religious life that isn't credible before the cries of those 1.5 million Jewish babies, burned alive by the Nazis to save the cost of killing them with poison gas.[3]
If Fr. Cantalamessa had been remembering those cries, he never would have said what he said last Good Friday at St. Peter's Basilica. Later, he showed his lack of understanding when he later apologized; he did not mean to "hurt the feelings of Jews and victims of pedophilia." But the problem really isn't about hurt "feelings." It isn't about attacks on the Pope or the stability of the Roman Catholic Church. And it isn't about rebutting the usual anti-Catholic demagoguery and ignorance[4] that often surfaces in times like these, reviving those old slanders against the Church as "the whore of Babylon" and the Pope as the "Anti-Christ."[5]
It's about justice and the duty of the Church to stand with "the least" among us and feel "the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially those who are poor or afflicted in any way."[6] By its own Sacrament of Reconciliation, it is called upon to confess its sin of "missing the mark," take action of penance with " a firm resolve to amendment" and take the actions necessary to "avoid the near occasion of sin" in the future. In other words, it needs to change.
Right now, the poor and afflicted who are crying out are those where were sexually abused as children and young adults. Yes, this day of reckoning is uncomfortable. Yes, the pope is taking a lot of heat - but this is surely no surprise, considering the magnitude of the crimes. In Ireland alone, some 30,000 boys and girls were tormented, beaten, molested and at times raped in Catholic orphanages and reformatories over a period of six decades. And no one reported this or was prosecuted. Elsewhere, thousands of other young people, mostly between the ages of 11 and 14, have been molested in Catholic churches in the United States, Canada, Australia, and now from new cases surfacing, in France and Germany. Worst of all, church officials ignored reported and allowed the pedophile priests to continue in parishes.
The issue requires much more than a pastoral letter or a conference of bishops to resolve. It may well require a thorough re-examination of a host of difficult social, ethical and doctrinal questions. To get to the bottom of the problem and make the necessary changes, nothing should be left off the table: priestly celibacy, church teachings on homosexuality, screening and supervision of priests, traditions of secrecy, and assumptions of authority that can lead to authoritarianism and models of domination. And it may also require the insights from spiritual disciplines, such as fasting and penitence, as Fr. Cantalamessa himself suggested to the pope in 2006.[7] Ultimately, the Church must face the awful failings of its priests, the culture that permitted the abuse and the changes that are needed to eliminate the "near occasion for sin" in the future.
However, as this crisis is being resolved - and it must be - the Church must also listen to the cries of a less audible group of poor and afflicted, those babies who suffered agonizing deaths in self-professed "Christian" Europe. This is a deeper, more uncomfortable self-confrontation, but one that is desperately needed, because it's clear that the efforts during the past decades by Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II to repair the past have not been enough.
In the spirit of constructive dialogue to help resolve a painful wound shared by lay members and leaders alike, I think the Catholic Church needs to consider at least three important changes. First, it must re-examine more thoroughly and reject more cogently its anti-Judaic theology dating back centuries. Second, it must permanently ban the mention of the "perfidious Jews" at any Good Friday Mass, an insulting remnant of anti-Judaism that has been revived recently by reactionaries in the Church. And third, it needs to own up to the hidden contribution that Christian anti-Semitism has made toward the catastrophe of the Palestinian people. Why? Because Israel's intransigent and ruthless policies towards its neighbors only make sense in the light of historical trauma, including the centuries' of European persecution that made possible the widespread abandonment of Jews and collusion in their destruction by self-professed Christians throughout Europe during the Holocaust.
Let's examine these one by one. First, and most importantly, too often Christianity has taught an implicit rejection of Judaism that has led to contempt for Jews and a gross misunderstanding of rabbinic Judaism. This anti-Judaic theological tradition, known as adversus Judaeos, began in the polemical debates against Jews during the early formation of the Catholic Church. This early history contributed to shaping a European anti-Semitism that became a complex blend of Christian theology, folk culture, ignorance and fear-driven superstition. After the Holocaust, this tradition must be identified and rooted out as false Christianity. As Christian theologian Clark M. Williamson has written: "The 'teaching of contempt' for Jews and Judaism was a necessary but not sufficient cause of the Holocaust. Now that we see the complicity of that teaching in making possible the Holocaust, we may not morally repeat it."[8]
It's true that since the Holocaust, the Catholic Church has taken considerable steps toward a reconsideration of its past. In 1965, the landmark declaration of Nostra Aetate, the first major re-thinking of its relations with non-Christian religions, the Church took the most basic step in rejecting any collective blame for Jesus' death on Jews in general. It affirmed the "common spiritual heritage" shared by Jews and Christians and condemned "all hatreds, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time or from any source."[9] In 1998, a papal commission issued its reflection on the Holocaust entitled "We Remember," in which it expressed "sorrow for the tragedy" of the Holocaust, and admitted the "heavy burden of conscience" and the "call to penitence" for Christian behavior.
However, these admissions were far from enough. The statement was rife with euphemisms and equivocations. It only mentioned "the errors and failures of those sons and daughters of the Church," not the actual writings of Church thinkers. It pointed with pride to those Catholics who risked their lives to defend Jews during the Nazi terror but then added that "the spiritual resistance of other Christians was not that which might have been expected by Christ's followers," -- an utterly insufficient characterization of the actual events.
Moreover, the Church statement inaccurately lumped the Holocaust together with other genocidal outbreaks, such as "the massacre of Armenians" or the "countless victims of the Ukraine in the 1930s, or the "genocide of the Gypsies." [10] In the 4th Century, C.E., St. Gregory of Nyssa was not referring to the Armenians when he was excoriating the "slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, enemies of God," and "advocates of the devil, brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, folk of darkened minds." It was not the Ukrainians that in the 13th Century, C.E., Pope Innocent III called a people of Cain, protected from death so that "yet as wanderers upon the earth they must remain, until their countenance be filled with shame and they seek the name of Jesus Christ the Lord." And St. Thomas Aquinas did not mean keeping Gypsies confined, "because of their crime, in perpetual servitude" and their possessions "as belonging to the State" as long as they are not deprived of "things necessary to life."[11]
No, the Holocaust was a uniquely anti-Jewish genocide in a Europe conditioned by centuries of Catholic Christian theological teachings that targeted, marginalized, ghettoized and persecuted the Jews as Jews. At the same time, it is wrong to think the Nazi catastrophe as primarily an outcome of Catholic anti-Judaism. The Church has accurately identified the Holocaust as an outgrowth of "a thoroughly modern neo-pagan regime" that involved the deifying the nation-state. Also, it's true that Nazi anti-Semitism exploited historical Christian anti-Jewish feelings but in the end, "had its roots outside of Christianity"[12] - a characterization that Jewish scholars have largely agreed with.[13] And certainly, some key Catholic figures were remarkably courageous in their efforts, such as the future Pope John XXIII who saved thousands of German and Slovakian Jews during the war and issued false baptismal certificates and visas to protect thousands of Hungarian Jews.
But the heroism of a few doesn't clear the conscience of the many. Perhaps the best summation of the Christian role in the Nazi catastrophe comes from historian Saul Friedlander: Anti-Semitism and its theological anti-Judaism created in Europe the dry underbrush that was only waiting for the flame of Hitler, the arsonist, to catch fire. "Without the arsonist the fire would not have started; without the underbrush it would not have spread as far as it did and destroyed an entire world." [14]
What, then, is to be done? Besides a rethinking of its theology and history, the Catholic Church should require a corrective teaching at every Good Friday service about the responsibility of everybody, Jew and Gentile, aristocrat and commoner, the rulers and ruled - and the disciples too -- in the death of Jesus. The Church cannot rest until every single one of its members understands that the charge of deicide, that "the Jews killed Christ" is a false understanding of Jesus' death. It was heartening to hear exactly this preached in my own parish, Our Lady of Lourdes in Oakland, California, when Fr. Tom Weston called on Christians to examine their own violent behavior. At the very least, Christians might follow Christ by not killing other Christians, he said.[15] "We are always looking for someone to blame," he said. "We blamed the Jews. But let's be clear: Gentiles and Jews joined in the death of Christ." In some churches, it is the congregation itself who shouts "Crucify him, Crucify him" during the crowd's response at Jesus' trial to underscore the universal human participation in the destruction of life that comes through human sin.
Rabbi Michael Lerner thinks the Church should go much farther and broaden its educational efforts. He proposes that it could require every students in Catholic high school and college as well as priests in every seminary to learn about the history of the Church's role in creating and fostering anti-Semitism, perhaps by studying Edward Flannery's classic The Anguish of the Jews or some other comparable work. In addition, it could devote one Sunday a year, perhaps on Yom HaShoah, for teaching lay members too. "This would begin to help Catholics understand that anti-Semitism was not some mysterious phenomenon that popped up from nowhere, but rather a product of a systematic anti-Judaism that was already being built into the Gospels by those who wrote them, and then expanded upon dramatically once the Church took power in Rome," Rabbi Lerner has said.
In the very least, a more immediate second effort is also needed to eliminate a festering remnant of anti-Judaism. Pope Benedict XVI needs to prohibit the Good Friday prayer in the Tridentine Latin service for the conversion of the "perfidis" Jews. This Latin word is most accurately translated as "non-believing" but has been often rendered into English as "perfidious," meaning treacherous. Pope John XXIII ordered this word removed in 1960, and actually stopped a Mass in 1963 when he heard it and ordered the prayer repeated without it. Through Vatican II, the modernized Mass changed the offensive prayer. But the Latin Mass, including this word, has been revived by some Catholic ultra-traditionalists who have defied Vatican II. Instead, the pope needs to defend his predecessor's legacy by making sure this word is never again heard in any Roman Catholic Church.
Finally, the Catholic Church enter into a dialogue with Jewish leaders over what changes in Christian teachings could help relieve some of the trauma that Jews have carried with them to Israel. In a way, we might say that Christians are the unindicted co-conspirator in the suffering of the Palestinian people. How so? It seems to me that Israeli policies towards the Occupied Territories reflects a community suffering from the results of severe trauma - a distrust of all other nations, a fanatic determination for safety and security, a terror for its existence in spite of overwhelming military superiority. Israel is behaving as if it always expects to be alone, persecuted and endangered - a fairly accurate assessment of the historical position of the Jewish people throughout Christian Europe. On top of this, Israel seems to be re-enacting the trauma of the medieval ghetto by erecting of its Wall through Palestine against a sea of surrounding enemies, a physical embodiment of the psychological walls that victims of severe trauma establish after repeated violation. Rabbi Lerner has correctly noted the signs of a communal post-traumatic stress disorder in Israel's policies,[16] and traces the trauma to terrorism, the 1948 war and the Holocaust. But he could go further back to centuries of Christian discrimination and its "dry underbrush" of anti-Semitism that was ignited during the Holocaust.
As penance for its past, the Catholic Church should convey three-way talks with Jewish and Muslim leaders and examine the religious roots of the violence in the Middle East. One reason that political efforts at peace have been ineffective, apart from the violent nature of nation-states based on military power, is that in their hearts of hearts, Jews, Christians and Muslims still see each other as "infidels." Ultimately, these three Abrahamic peoples will have to find some way to recognize and appreciate the validity of each other's religion without surrendering their own religious identity - perhaps an impossible task for mere humans but not for the healing spirit of God. The Catholic Church would go a long way by calling upon Christians throughout the world to ensure the safety of Jewish communities threatened with violence and discrimination. Muslims would need to recognize the Jewish right to return to its land as an integral understanding of its relationship with God. And Jews would need to live up to covenantal relationship not to wrong or oppress the strangers in its land "for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."[17]
If all this seems far afield of the tempest of the moment, I would beg to disagree. It is precisely at the moment of moral challenge, whether from the suffering of the sexually abused or the victims of anti-Jewish genocide, that the Catholic Church has the opportunity to show its true self. It has the powerful spiritual tools of prayer and Gospel values for uncovering the roots of the errors of the past and making the necessary changes. It is my faith and conviction that this will - and must - happen. This is why the sturm und drang of the moment does not disillusion me. The best in the Catholic tradition reflects a pilgrim Church on the journey of growth and change. Who could predict the miracle of Vatican II, instigated by the pope at top of the hierarchy? Who cannot admire the courage of martyred bishops, like Monseñor Oscar Romero in El Salvador and Monseñor Juan Gerardi in Guatemala, who gave their lives standing up for the poor and afflicted? Who can not respect the sacrifice of Catholics like Maximilian Kolbe died in place of a Jewish brother at Auschwitz in spite of his own anti-Jewish past? Those who mock and deride the Catholic Church right now for its obvious human failings and weaknesses are only seeing its surface, its exterior shell of statues and stone. You have to love it to see its inner power and beauty, to understand its heart. If you did, you'd know this is a church capable of amazing transformation for itself and compassion for the victims of this world. You'd know that no matter how it trips over its robes and gets waylaid in the labyrinths of its palaces, it will eventually find its way out and bring comfort, hope and new life to the slums and shantytowns in this world, and in those rejected places in the human heart where people go to cry out silently, shivering, alone, wounded and afraid.
David A. Sylvester, a dedicated lay Roman Catholic, has worked as a journalist and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area for 25 years. In 2009, he received a Master's in Theological Studies from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. He is now studying Catholic-Jewish relations at the master's program at the Graduate Theological Union's Center for Jewish Studies in Berkeley. He can be reached at da_sylvester@yahoo.com
[1] "Vatican's Easter Message is Support for Pope" By Daniel J. Wakin, New York Times, Monday April 5, 2010, pg. A1. [2] Wakin, New York Times, April 5, 2010. [3][3] Quoted in: Clark Williamson, A Guest in the House of Israel: Post-Holocaust Church Theology, (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993) pg. 13. [4] One good example of ignorance in the service of prejudice: "Abuse Charges Mount against Catholic Church" by Bill Underwood, April 3, 2010, San Francisco Examiner, which says this about religious identity: "People seem to equate 'being Catholic' with, I don't know, being blonde or Guatemalan or diabetic…as though it's something you're born with that can't be changed." http://www.examiner.com/x-17373-Phoenix-Signs-of-the-Times-Examiner~y2010m4d3-Abuse-charges-mount-against-the-Catholic-Church [5] For a glimpse at the ugly history of anti-Catholic propaganda, see: Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons: The Papal Worship, proved to be the worship of Nimrod and his wife, The mark of the Beast Revealed 666, (A&B Publishers Group, Brooklyn, N.Y., reprint of original 1858 edition.) [6] Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Vatican II, Dec. 7, 1965. [7] In an Advent sermon on Dec. 15, 2006, Fr. Cantalamessa urged the pope to declare a day of fasting and penitence for the victims of the sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy, "to publicly express repentance before God and solidarity with the victims". He called on the Church "to weep before God, to do penance, as God himself has been abused; to do penance for the offense against the body of Christ and the scandalizing of the 'least of his brothers,' more than for the damage and dishonor that has been brought upon us." http://www.cantalamessa.org/en/predicheView.php?id=77 [8] Williamson, pg. 13. [9] Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Second Vatican Council, Oct. 28, 1965. Section 4. [10] We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, March 16, 1998. Pontifical Commission for Relations with the Jews. Section IV. [11] Adapted From Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews (Paulist Press, 1985) in "An Outline of the History of Jewish-Christian Relations," Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. [12] We Remember, Section III. [13] Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity, National Jewish Scholars Project, Baltimore, MD., Sept. 10, 2000. "Without the long history of Christian anti-Judaism and Christian violence against Jews, Nazi ideology could not have taken hold nor could it have been carried out. Too many Christians participated in, or were sympathetic to, Nazi atrocities against Jews. Other Christians did not protest sufficiently against these atrocities. But Nazism itself was not an inevitable outcome of Christianity." [14] Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.), pg. xix. [15] Fr. Tom Weston: "We are a violent species, and blame/kill/torture/wound easily. The Vatican Council II specifically taught that "the Jews killed Christ" is a false and dangerous reading of history and the Gospel. And as Mr. Gandhi said: Christians are the only ones who have not yet noticed that Jesus was non-violent." [16] Michael Lerner, "Israel at 60," in Tikkun Magazine, May/June 2008 pgs 19-21. [17] Exodus 22:20-21 "You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
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http://www.tikkun.org/
A Rare and Beautiful Day
Thank You to those Presbyterian Singers at Western Pres
In my typical ecumenical spirit, I try to hit a variety of Churches each Sunday, catholic and protestant. I have mixed heritage and am comfortable everywhere as a result which I consider a blessing while more narrow minded folks can't quite understand it and probably deem me heretical in all directions. Nevertheless.....
This past Sunday I went to a church that has a remarkably lot of former Catholics in the congregation- more times than I can count people told me "I used to go to Catholic church but now I go here" - Western Presbyterian Church. I haven't given up totally on them- so I do both Catholic and Protestant. My mother is Presbyterian and I was first confirmed Presbyterian. So sue me.
The Easter Service was particularly beautiful because aside from the amazing array of Easter lilies given by the Congregation in remembrance of loved ones, the music was off the hook spectacular. It might be because they are so close to the Kennedy Center that half the Congregation knew by heart Handel's Messiah's Hallelujah chorus which the entire congregation sang with gusto, or may just be because of that peculiarly intense Presbyterian understanding of music as worship that the congregation really felt Saint Augustine's "singing is praying twice" this Easter. Let me tell you that there are few things more uplifting than an entire congregations belting out by heart Handel's Messiah's Hallelujah Chorus like they meant it.
The Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth.
And We Aren't Kidding.
In my typical ecumenical spirit, I try to hit a variety of Churches each Sunday, catholic and protestant. I have mixed heritage and am comfortable everywhere as a result which I consider a blessing while more narrow minded folks can't quite understand it and probably deem me heretical in all directions. Nevertheless.....
This past Sunday I went to a church that has a remarkably lot of former Catholics in the congregation- more times than I can count people told me "I used to go to Catholic church but now I go here" - Western Presbyterian Church. I haven't given up totally on them- so I do both Catholic and Protestant. My mother is Presbyterian and I was first confirmed Presbyterian. So sue me.
The Easter Service was particularly beautiful because aside from the amazing array of Easter lilies given by the Congregation in remembrance of loved ones, the music was off the hook spectacular. It might be because they are so close to the Kennedy Center that half the Congregation knew by heart Handel's Messiah's Hallelujah chorus which the entire congregation sang with gusto, or may just be because of that peculiarly intense Presbyterian understanding of music as worship that the congregation really felt Saint Augustine's "singing is praying twice" this Easter. Let me tell you that there are few things more uplifting than an entire congregations belting out by heart Handel's Messiah's Hallelujah Chorus like they meant it.
The Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth.
And We Aren't Kidding.
Truth is Free
So Here's My Two Cents Worth
Probably the most significant Religious Freedom Case to come down the Supreme Court pike in a decade will be heard on April 19th: Christian Legal Society (CLS) v. Martinez. I should write a law review article but no time to publish before April 19th-maybe later.
CLS is a national organization of lawyers, judges, and law students who self describe themselves as Christians- of all denominations. Until recently it was headed by a Catholic who now holds an Executive Position with Advocates International. He is a fantastic fellow and personal friend. In the interest of fuller disclosure, I here state I even crash the DC chapter meetings of lawyers once in a while for more than the free sodas and they let me. It meets Thursdays (today) once a month at the DC offices of Winston and Strawn. Remind me to pay dues.
Hastings law school in California had a Chapter of CLS. Like most law schools, it hosts a lot of organizations that are related to law and some other discipline, topic or affiliation to get law students to think about how law serves in the wider community. There is a La Rasa chapter, for hispanics, a BALSA chapter (Black Law Students Association), pro life and pro choice groups seeking to apply the law to their various viewpoints, etc. It is what is called a Free Marketplace of ideas. They each participate in obtaining funding through the pool of student activities funding. They each get access to various school provided benefits like the student email listserv to post announcements, meeting space, etc.
The school has a non-discrimination policy that says that the orgs may not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, etc. Hopefully the non-discrimination policy also precludes discrimination on the basis of religion- but that oddly isn't what is at issue here as currently framed. (I will challenge that as you will see below) What is at issue is that the school has revoked the ability of CLS to get student group funding because it did something that the other orgs didn't fess to- it admitted essentially it discriminated against- all persons who are sexually active outside marriage-of any persuasion or orientation. It maintains what some people consider conservative and what a generation ago would have been main line thinking that sexual activity outside marriage is wrong as is "fornication" or worse, "adultery", possibly even "sodomy" and other forms of prurient licentiousness and unchastity. It only discriminates for leadership criteria. Anyone can come- they are not in violation of any "All comers" policy if one actually in practice as opposed to stipulation exists, but if you want to be on the leadership Board you have to subscribe to the By Laws of the Charter which hold that you can't be known as someone shacking up with anyone, or engaged in regular sex or even irregular sex if you are not married. They believe chastity is a doable virtue. It's part of a religious creed.
La Rasa can have only Hispanics as leaders, Balsa can have only blacks, the Pro Life groups aren't going to put someone who works at Planned Parenthood on their board, and the Pro-Choicers aren't going to put a "feminist for Life" on their board. No one challenges that- that's what makes the identity of the organization coherent. The university has an interest in promoting the 'marketplace of ideas' that promote people making informed choices. CLS did something different though. They admitted their exclusion and exclusivity policy.
So who in the world is most upset about this? CLS and the school had a show down when CLS refused to affirm that it was compliant with the school's anti-discrimination policy and became a focal point in the culture war in a state that has swung back and forth on gay marriage laws and referenda. The current state of the law in California is that Gay marriage is not allowed/legal, thus the CLS policy effectively discriminates against any active homosexuals for leadership positions. This is the same battle raging through the Christian world now tearing the Episcopal communion in two, and splitting the Presbyterian leadership.
Here is the question in this context and why it has Constitutional import.
On the one hand (as they are fond of saying in law school) you have the US Constitution's First Amendment Freedom of Association, Assembly, and Speech, with a strong Non-Establishment of Religion statement- coupled with the "Free Exercise" clause. Time to resurrect the Free Exercise clause.
On the other hand you have a valid government interest in equality generally, Equal Protection principles, non-discrimination against anyone for any reason at a school that is publicly funded. The student activities fund is the government funding at issue. The school revoked CLS' eligibility for funding when it said it's Charter/By-laws were in fact discriminatory -against those unchaste, fornicating, adulterers, and people engaging in sodomy or homosexual activity for leadership positions.
Is there something else at play in this clash of the titans? The people most angry about this, appear to be the gay rights community- although one gay organization filed I believe an Amicus in support of CLS because they Gay law students group probably don't want to have to admit rabid gay-bashers on their Board either. Each of the campus orgs has an exclusivity element in practice.
Here is the question I hope gets asked: What is a 'Religion' for purposes of the Establishment clause? How 'organized' does it have to be? It is that they can identify belief constructs? The gay rights people have a set of belief constructs- you can isolate what they are regardless of whether they are codified anywhere. They consist of the "I am what I feel like and have a right to whatever I feel like sexually outside any external moral constraint construct" "my body my business" "I was born this way" etc. Do they have to have a central leadership? Jewish people don't have one main pope figure-but lots of "rabbis"- gay rights groups have leadership, like the Human Rights watch groups promoting gay rights as human rights.
What is the difference between ideology and religion for purposes of protection under the Establishment clause? Some gay rights rhetoric has cult-like zeal in it's self promotion. The people who hold that gay rights are human rights and analogous to racial equality or gender equality hold that view as a religious tenet and foundational faith principle- others quite disagree.
Aren't we really talking about competing religions, competing for government funds? The school wants to discriminate against a religion that discriminates against unchaste people. Isn't the view that unchaste people shouldn't be discriminated against essentially a religious view stemming from a belief construct that considers unchastity something worthy of equal protection status?
The law in California is that gay marriage is not legally recognized (unless it took place before the law changed.) What is the government's interest in promoting a policy that runs counter to it's legislative intent by undermining a religious org that supports the law of the State in this regard and only giving funding to orgs that hold the opposite of what the law states?
I confess that here I hope that on public policy grounds CLS wins- you probably gathered.
I don't think all Christians are nice, and all their leadership isn't always kind, intelligent or even Christian. I have seen some of the more vicious insane aspects of exclusionary religious practices and been hurt and offended by them. But the point is that the US Constitution can't protect one religion over another without running afoul of the Establishment Clause, and it cannot give funds just to one side of the debate to the impingement of another's Free Exercise of it's religious principles- which Hastings is trying to do by taking away funding and other perks of an on campus organization that has a policy it disagrees with.
There is nothing stopping anyone from forming a Log Cabin Christian Legal Society, or a Gay Jewish Legal League or a Transgender Rustafarian Legal Clinic- and all these orgs should benefit from the marketplace of ideas supported by the student activities funding. The Christian Legal Society has an idea of what "Christian" means to them, and they are entitled to it.
It's a Free Country.
Probably the most significant Religious Freedom Case to come down the Supreme Court pike in a decade will be heard on April 19th: Christian Legal Society (CLS) v. Martinez. I should write a law review article but no time to publish before April 19th-maybe later.
CLS is a national organization of lawyers, judges, and law students who self describe themselves as Christians- of all denominations. Until recently it was headed by a Catholic who now holds an Executive Position with Advocates International. He is a fantastic fellow and personal friend. In the interest of fuller disclosure, I here state I even crash the DC chapter meetings of lawyers once in a while for more than the free sodas and they let me. It meets Thursdays (today) once a month at the DC offices of Winston and Strawn. Remind me to pay dues.
Hastings law school in California had a Chapter of CLS. Like most law schools, it hosts a lot of organizations that are related to law and some other discipline, topic or affiliation to get law students to think about how law serves in the wider community. There is a La Rasa chapter, for hispanics, a BALSA chapter (Black Law Students Association), pro life and pro choice groups seeking to apply the law to their various viewpoints, etc. It is what is called a Free Marketplace of ideas. They each participate in obtaining funding through the pool of student activities funding. They each get access to various school provided benefits like the student email listserv to post announcements, meeting space, etc.
The school has a non-discrimination policy that says that the orgs may not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, etc. Hopefully the non-discrimination policy also precludes discrimination on the basis of religion- but that oddly isn't what is at issue here as currently framed. (I will challenge that as you will see below) What is at issue is that the school has revoked the ability of CLS to get student group funding because it did something that the other orgs didn't fess to- it admitted essentially it discriminated against- all persons who are sexually active outside marriage-of any persuasion or orientation. It maintains what some people consider conservative and what a generation ago would have been main line thinking that sexual activity outside marriage is wrong as is "fornication" or worse, "adultery", possibly even "sodomy" and other forms of prurient licentiousness and unchastity. It only discriminates for leadership criteria. Anyone can come- they are not in violation of any "All comers" policy if one actually in practice as opposed to stipulation exists, but if you want to be on the leadership Board you have to subscribe to the By Laws of the Charter which hold that you can't be known as someone shacking up with anyone, or engaged in regular sex or even irregular sex if you are not married. They believe chastity is a doable virtue. It's part of a religious creed.
La Rasa can have only Hispanics as leaders, Balsa can have only blacks, the Pro Life groups aren't going to put someone who works at Planned Parenthood on their board, and the Pro-Choicers aren't going to put a "feminist for Life" on their board. No one challenges that- that's what makes the identity of the organization coherent. The university has an interest in promoting the 'marketplace of ideas' that promote people making informed choices. CLS did something different though. They admitted their exclusion and exclusivity policy.
So who in the world is most upset about this? CLS and the school had a show down when CLS refused to affirm that it was compliant with the school's anti-discrimination policy and became a focal point in the culture war in a state that has swung back and forth on gay marriage laws and referenda. The current state of the law in California is that Gay marriage is not allowed/legal, thus the CLS policy effectively discriminates against any active homosexuals for leadership positions. This is the same battle raging through the Christian world now tearing the Episcopal communion in two, and splitting the Presbyterian leadership.
Here is the question in this context and why it has Constitutional import.
On the one hand (as they are fond of saying in law school) you have the US Constitution's First Amendment Freedom of Association, Assembly, and Speech, with a strong Non-Establishment of Religion statement- coupled with the "Free Exercise" clause. Time to resurrect the Free Exercise clause.
On the other hand you have a valid government interest in equality generally, Equal Protection principles, non-discrimination against anyone for any reason at a school that is publicly funded. The student activities fund is the government funding at issue. The school revoked CLS' eligibility for funding when it said it's Charter/By-laws were in fact discriminatory -against those unchaste, fornicating, adulterers, and people engaging in sodomy or homosexual activity for leadership positions.
Is there something else at play in this clash of the titans? The people most angry about this, appear to be the gay rights community- although one gay organization filed I believe an Amicus in support of CLS because they Gay law students group probably don't want to have to admit rabid gay-bashers on their Board either. Each of the campus orgs has an exclusivity element in practice.
Here is the question I hope gets asked: What is a 'Religion' for purposes of the Establishment clause? How 'organized' does it have to be? It is that they can identify belief constructs? The gay rights people have a set of belief constructs- you can isolate what they are regardless of whether they are codified anywhere. They consist of the "I am what I feel like and have a right to whatever I feel like sexually outside any external moral constraint construct" "my body my business" "I was born this way" etc. Do they have to have a central leadership? Jewish people don't have one main pope figure-but lots of "rabbis"- gay rights groups have leadership, like the Human Rights watch groups promoting gay rights as human rights.
What is the difference between ideology and religion for purposes of protection under the Establishment clause? Some gay rights rhetoric has cult-like zeal in it's self promotion. The people who hold that gay rights are human rights and analogous to racial equality or gender equality hold that view as a religious tenet and foundational faith principle- others quite disagree.
Aren't we really talking about competing religions, competing for government funds? The school wants to discriminate against a religion that discriminates against unchaste people. Isn't the view that unchaste people shouldn't be discriminated against essentially a religious view stemming from a belief construct that considers unchastity something worthy of equal protection status?
The law in California is that gay marriage is not legally recognized (unless it took place before the law changed.) What is the government's interest in promoting a policy that runs counter to it's legislative intent by undermining a religious org that supports the law of the State in this regard and only giving funding to orgs that hold the opposite of what the law states?
I confess that here I hope that on public policy grounds CLS wins- you probably gathered.
I don't think all Christians are nice, and all their leadership isn't always kind, intelligent or even Christian. I have seen some of the more vicious insane aspects of exclusionary religious practices and been hurt and offended by them. But the point is that the US Constitution can't protect one religion over another without running afoul of the Establishment Clause, and it cannot give funds just to one side of the debate to the impingement of another's Free Exercise of it's religious principles- which Hastings is trying to do by taking away funding and other perks of an on campus organization that has a policy it disagrees with.
There is nothing stopping anyone from forming a Log Cabin Christian Legal Society, or a Gay Jewish Legal League or a Transgender Rustafarian Legal Clinic- and all these orgs should benefit from the marketplace of ideas supported by the student activities funding. The Christian Legal Society has an idea of what "Christian" means to them, and they are entitled to it.
It's a Free Country.
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
18 minutes before sunset repeat after me......
Blessed are you Lord of the Universe
BLESSED are You Lord of the Universe, Who has made us Holy By Your commandments, and commanded us to kindle the lights of your Holy Sabbath.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/110394/jewish/Guidelines.htm
BLESSED are You Lord of the Universe, Who has made us Holy By Your commandments, and commanded us to kindle the lights of your Holy Sabbath.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/110394/jewish/Guidelines.htm
The Innocent By-Standers, the Good Samaritan
And That French Dude Who Jumped in the East River.
The American "innocent by-stander rule" as I learned it law school held essentially that there was no affirmative duty to assist someone you saw in need, for example, some random car accident victim you happened upon the road, but if you do attempt to assist you had an affirmative duty to do so non-negligently, i.e. don't drag someone with a broken neck by the hair to a guerney.
This is the Anti-Good Samaritan rule -the Good Samaritan rule holds essentially you should morally feel compelled to do what you would want done to you-i.e. help retrieve them to safety even when it costs you.
The now famous French guy who saw a toddler fall in the river and jumped in after her is the model of the later ethic. It didn't matter to him who she was, or how she got there- all he saw was some toddler plummetting into a cold river and bobbing like a lifeless doll. He didn't blink -he jumped in to save her.
If you understand the ethical difference in the response here you might better grasp the cultural divide between the Europeans and American Tea-party folks who are really ticked off that they are required to shoulder any burden of universal health care coverage.
I'm sure that the French guy had a dry cleaning bill to pay too.
The American "innocent by-stander rule" as I learned it law school held essentially that there was no affirmative duty to assist someone you saw in need, for example, some random car accident victim you happened upon the road, but if you do attempt to assist you had an affirmative duty to do so non-negligently, i.e. don't drag someone with a broken neck by the hair to a guerney.
This is the Anti-Good Samaritan rule -the Good Samaritan rule holds essentially you should morally feel compelled to do what you would want done to you-i.e. help retrieve them to safety even when it costs you.
The now famous French guy who saw a toddler fall in the river and jumped in after her is the model of the later ethic. It didn't matter to him who she was, or how she got there- all he saw was some toddler plummetting into a cold river and bobbing like a lifeless doll. He didn't blink -he jumped in to save her.
If you understand the ethical difference in the response here you might better grasp the cultural divide between the Europeans and American Tea-party folks who are really ticked off that they are required to shoulder any burden of universal health care coverage.
I'm sure that the French guy had a dry cleaning bill to pay too.
Monday, April 05, 2010
The Anti-Giada
I love Lidia
http://lidiasitaly.com/ I also love Giada DiLorentis for different reasons- but Lidia is just a great cook-not a So-Cal movie ikon heiress sex symbol who pays as much attention to her hair as her dishes- she's just authentic-and authentically Italian, and comes complete with a real Italian grandmother who sings old Italian songs with her in the Kitchen.
She is the best advertisement for Catholic Charities that I know of. Catholic charities should find ten such life stories and put together a documentary on what they do and people would leave all the bishops alone.
Interspersed with her cooking techniques (I am going to remake her apple strudel soon) she shows old photographs of her life as a teenager in Italy.
The Italians, recall were on the wrong side of WWII officially, while the population was divided in loyalties. Lidia's family found themselves after WWII in a part of Italy that was divided and sectioned off and given as part of Tito's Yugoslavia. Her father, not wanting to raise this devotedly religious family under the Godless communists (they suppressed language, religion and worship) took himself, her mother and herself and escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs to Italy near Trieste. There they were housed as refugees, these Italians who were involuntarily expatriated as Yugoslavs- in a building that previously served the Germans as a concentration camp during the war. She lived in this horror house building for two years. There she learned to cook for large numbers of people as the Sous Chef to the Nuns who ran the refugee center.
The family waited on restrictions loosening for immigrants to come to America. They were penniless. It took until Eisenhower was in office for this to happen.
Catholic Charities paid all their passage to America, they relocated them to New Jersey, they found the father a real job eventually and the family eventually got on their feet financially, brought other relatives from Italy -even grandma, who makes a mean Gnocci.
http://lidiasitaly.com/ I also love Giada DiLorentis for different reasons- but Lidia is just a great cook-not a So-Cal movie ikon heiress sex symbol who pays as much attention to her hair as her dishes- she's just authentic-and authentically Italian, and comes complete with a real Italian grandmother who sings old Italian songs with her in the Kitchen.
She is the best advertisement for Catholic Charities that I know of. Catholic charities should find ten such life stories and put together a documentary on what they do and people would leave all the bishops alone.
Interspersed with her cooking techniques (I am going to remake her apple strudel soon) she shows old photographs of her life as a teenager in Italy.
The Italians, recall were on the wrong side of WWII officially, while the population was divided in loyalties. Lidia's family found themselves after WWII in a part of Italy that was divided and sectioned off and given as part of Tito's Yugoslavia. Her father, not wanting to raise this devotedly religious family under the Godless communists (they suppressed language, religion and worship) took himself, her mother and herself and escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs to Italy near Trieste. There they were housed as refugees, these Italians who were involuntarily expatriated as Yugoslavs- in a building that previously served the Germans as a concentration camp during the war. She lived in this horror house building for two years. There she learned to cook for large numbers of people as the Sous Chef to the Nuns who ran the refugee center.
The family waited on restrictions loosening for immigrants to come to America. They were penniless. It took until Eisenhower was in office for this to happen.
Catholic Charities paid all their passage to America, they relocated them to New Jersey, they found the father a real job eventually and the family eventually got on their feet financially, brought other relatives from Italy -even grandma, who makes a mean Gnocci.
Now, don't you want to know more about what Catholic Charities does in the world? Don't you want to go get her cookbook?
If as much PR went into explaining what fantastic things Catholic Charities actually does, people would understand better what the church means and is in the world.
Can I get an Amen?
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