"Pope Benedict XVI yesterday became the first Pope to contradict personally the teaching of Jewish ''blood guilt'', releasing excerpts from a book to be published next week. That teaching, used to justify and perpetuate hatred culminating in the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, was formally rebutted by the 1960s Vatican Council, but the Pope's personal endorsement was welcomed yesterday by Jewish leaders as a landmark attack on the foundation of anti-Semitism."
We're living in the year 2011AD, and the Church is still making it's mind up over whether someone born yesterday can be guilty of something that is alleged to have happened two millennia ago....
What does God's Rottweiler do for an encore? Turn back the pages of the Inquisition? Erase the Holocaust? Undo 2 thousand years of persecution and pogroms? Raise millions of innocent victims Lazarus-like from the dead? What the Rottweiler did does nothing for me. I still hear the snarls through the iron bars of history.
ReplyDeleteah, I just stumbled in here from somewhere else..... I really really really like the video of Naomi Klein that you posted there....it was great. Thanks&stuff
ReplyDeleteOcto, if Jewish leaders - whoever they are - welcome it then I guess it means something to someone.
ReplyDeleteBut I'd be hard pressed to think of a more evil and genocidal concept than "blood guilt". How can there be this much dithering over whether it is an incorrect position?
I'd go so far as to say that if any adult individual - Catholic or no - cannot of their own reasoning work out that "blood guilt" is a hideous and deeply wrong idea, then there is something mentally wrong with them.
And millions upon millions of people look to this Church for guidance...
We live in the most complex technological civilisation the world has ever known and this bunch of frocks are still mastering the ethical equivalent of potty training while reserving the right to tell others how they should live.
okjimm, thanks for dropping by.
I can never get enough of Naomi.
Magpie,
ReplyDeleteI received criticism for the above comment from some colleagues at the Zone who thought my words were disrespectful of religion and overly harsh on historical revisionism. A clarification: Generally, I do not consider myself intolerant on matters of faith; in fact, there is Catholic and Jewish ancestry in my background. Nevertheless, those ancestors who did not migrate to the U.S. in the early 1990s did not survive WWII, and this fact prefigures in my attitudes and thinking. If there are Jewish leaders who welcome the announcement, perhaps after millennia of persecution and pogroms, they are salivating over crumbs (no pun intended).
You have nothing whatsoever to apologise for Octo...
ReplyDeleteIt's not you that has been holding onto the notion that an entire swath of humanity is damaged goods, or criminal by tradition.
What? Are we all just going to be 'diplomatic and polite' about asserting that "blood guilt" is an evil, genocidal doctrine?
Not this little black and white bird...
It's wrong. It was always wrong. It will always be wrong.
Why can't the Church just say it?
What else are we to conclude in answer other than that they still believe it?
My position on religion is pretty simple:
If someone likes to go to church on Sunday and sing nice songs and raise money for charities and socialise, or have ceremonies and festivals... etc etc that hurt no-one, I have absolutely no problem with that.
Go. Enjoy. Be merry. Very nice.
But as soon as you take religion anywhere else, though - school, politics, science - bad things happen. And it all ultimately amounts to someone believing themselves superior and more deserving than people who are different.
That's the long of it, the short of it, and everything in between.
Here's the deal: Even if this guy says he figured out how to cure cancer, who would believe him enough to even try it out? Who gives a damn what he has to say?
ReplyDeleteNow, if he grovelled in the dirt and wailed for forgiveness, just for being the pig he is, I might watch it on U-Tube. Otherwise, get lost, Benny. You and your buddies have done enough to the world.