Thoughts on Catholic anti-Semitism

In this e-mail discussion from April 2005, Paul Gottfried discusses Jewish misconceptions about Christian anti-Semitism, and I offer a perhaps idiosyncratic explanation of Catholic anti-Semitism.

Paul Gottfried wrote:

Larry’s reminder is correct about the real history of anti-Jewish actions and diatribes coming from the Catholic Church. But what is interesting to me is the failure of Jewish organizations to draw proper distinctions between Protestant Churches, which have never laid a hand on their Jewish populations, and Catholic and Orthodox authorities, which have indeed persecuted Jews in other times and places. Listening to Jewish leaders, one has the impression that it was American Evangelicals who massacred Jews in the Rhineland during the Crusades. I was also shocked (perhaps I should not have been) that that worm Ralph Reed agreed with the ever obnoxious Abe Foxman (this is in my book on multiculturalism) that the Religious Right is not sufficiently contrite about the Spanish Inquisition, which was obviously the work of English Baptists. But what I would not deny, and what Larry documents, is the persistently unkind attitudes that the Catholic church displayed toward Jewish minorities in the past.

LA wrote:

Hare are two articles I posted last night and this morning about Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758): The interesting papacy of Benedict XIV (1740-1758) and 18th century pope saw Polish Jews as total enemies. He wrote a very anti-Jewish encyclical, but was interesting in a variety of ways.

Also, Paul’s point about Protestants and Catholics is correct and important and should be made again and again. It’s simply unbelievable how the professional Jews equate American Protestants with medieval Catholics.

On the Church’s role, the popes and bishops did issue from time to time warnings against anti-Jewish persecution, but (so it seems to me), this was never sufficient to stop the overall persecution stemming from the Church’s own attitutude. I mean, the irony of Benedict XIV, who was otherwise a very cultivated man, making these blanket attacks on the Jews, and then saying, “but don’t kill them, keep them alive as a reminder of how their ancestors rejected Christ,” is both sad and laughable.

But, again, the situation is not a simple one. It was also during this period that the Church rejected the idea of Jewish guilt for the Crucifixion. But, once again, it wasn’t sufficient, there wasn’t enough follow-through. Not until Vatican II.

Paul Gottfried wrote:

I agree with Larry and E. about the differing confessional histories in relation to the Jews of the Catholics and Protestants. One of the shocking facts that I’ve discovered in this regard is the horrible record of Catholic anti-Semitism in Italy, among a people who have never shown the slightest natural inclination toward that prejudice and who in fact look and act like Jews. Although I have nothing but utter contempt for the Left’s war on the Catholic Church and its current admirable pope [Benedict XVI], the history of Catholic anti-Semitism is appalling. And the record of tolerance toward Jews generally seems correlated to how far Protestants distance themselves from medieval Catholic culture and values. Having said that, I can also find much to admire in that culture, despite its anti-Jewish fixation.

E. wrote:

“One of the shocking facts that I’ve discovered in this regard is the horrible record of Catholic anti-Semitism in Italy, among a people who have never shown the slightest natural inclination toward that prejudice and who in fact look and act like Jews.”

Yes, I was always surprised at medieval anti-Semitism in Italy and the fact that anti-Semitism disappeared after the Resorgiomento (I hope I spelled that right) shows that the source of Jew-hatred in Italy came from the Vatican. I’ve also read in Nicholas Farrell’s marvelous new biography of Mussolini that fascists like Balbo and Federzoni opposed his concordat with the Church because they were disgusted and ashamed of its anti-Semitism.

LA wrote:

I’m not knowledgeable in this area, but I would suggest as a theory that the Catholic anti-Semitism is a function of a core trait of the Church that is seen in many other areas as well, namely, its hyper-rationalism. It’s never enough for the Church just to assert something, it’s got to lay out the reasons to the nth degree. For example, it’s not enough simply to repeat Jesus’ words in the institution of the Eucharist, “This is my body, do this in remembrance of me.” (In the Anglican tradition, for example, Jesus’ words are accepted as true, and what more does one need? See note below.*) No, the Church has got to rationalize Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist and come up with this detailed argument that the priest at a specific moment in the liturgy transforms the bread into the body of Jesus, which is actually there with its cells and corpuscles, hidden under the external form of the host.

The same with sex. Given their hyper-rational reasoning from a teleological basis, they saw sex between a husband and wife as only directed toward reproduction. Even the notion of love and happiness between husband and wife in the sex act was rejected, until very recent times.

Same way with Vatican II’s efforts at evangelization. They couldn’t simply try to reach out more to the modern world, they had to justify it at the highest rational level, which led to the horror of Vatican II’s embrace the “cult of man, modern man who cares only about himself,” etc.

What does this have to do with the Jews? Given its hyper-rationalism, the historical Church (not the modern church) had to push to the nth degree the notion of supercession, the idea that the Church had taken over the Covenant from the Jews. This made the Jews utter aliens and outcasts from the world order, basically having no place or legitimacy in the scheme of things at all. Just as Church’s hyper-teleological way of thinking led to the rejection of pleasure in marital sex, its hyper-supercessionism led to the demonization of the Jews.

* Exemplifying the intuitively direct and commonsensical approach that Anglicans take to the Eucharist, Queen Elizabeth I, on being questioned about her beliefs about the Eucharist, famously said:

Christ was the word that spake it.
He took the bread and break it;
And what his words did make it
That I believe and take it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 25, 2006 10:48 AM | Send