Two Crosses

Here is Foreign Mnister Abba Eban meeting Pope Paul VI in 1969:

It was 1969 in the Vatican.

The Pope has his cross prominently displayed. Eban is in a business suit. No Jewish identification.

Three years later, Geulah Cohen was visiting Italy. Her younger brother was an emissary there and it so happened that a visit for an interview with the Venice's Patriarch, Albino Luciani, was arranged.

She asked how to dress and was told that, among other things, the Cardinal would be wearing a cross as part of his attire and she shouldn't be surprised.  Geulah asked how large and was told it was big.

She immediately headed off for a Jewish souvenir store and purchased the largest Magen David she could find.

The result:

Six years later, that Cardinal became the Pope, John Paul I, if for only 33 days.

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What Does the Papal State Share with the PLO?

Read it here, comment #2.

Riskin Crucified, Well, At Least Pinned to the Wall

Jewish Israel has a damaging report out on him, on his aide and on Pope Pius's canonization.

Read it.

Pope, Jews, Hitler

From The UK Telegraph:

Pope Pius XII told senior bishops that should he be arrested by the Nazis, his resignation would become effective immediately, paving the way for a successor, according to documents in the Vatican's Secret Archives.

The bishops would then be expected to flee to a safe country – probably neutral Portugal – where they would re-establish the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church and appoint a new Pontiff.

...On 6 September 1943 – days after Italy signed the September 3 armistice with the Allies and German troops occupied Rome – Pius told key aides that he believed his arrest was imminent.

General Karl Otto Wolff, an SS general, was told to "occupy as soon as possible the Vatican, secure the archives and art treasures and transfer the Pope, together with the Curia so that they cannot fall into the hands of the Allies and exert a political influence."

Hitler ordered the kidnapping, according to historians, because he feared that Pius would further criticise the Nazis' treatment of the Jews.

He was also afraid that the Pontiff's opposition could inspire resistance to the Germans in Italy and other Catholic countries.

Some historians have claimed that General Wolff tipped off the Vatican about the kidnap plans and that he also managed to talk the Fuhrer out of the plot because he believed it would alienate Catholics worldwide.

The latest revelations will be seen by some observers as a further attempt by the Vatican to bolster the case for Pius XII being declared a saint.

Pius has been accused of being anti-Semitic and of harbouring sympathies for the Nazi regime, most notably in the 1999 book Hitler's Pope, by British author John Cornwell.

But other Catholic and Jewish historians contend that in fact Pius was loathed by the Nazis for speaking out about the Holocaust and for behind-the-scenes efforts to save Italian Jews who otherwise would have been sent to death camps...

Bye-bye, Pope

Mario Kaiser is a journalist based in Berlin.

He is the grandson of two very different men.

One came from a family that raised the swastika flag on the tallest building in my hometown. The other was a tailor who secretly sewed suits for Jews. They both disappeared in the trenches of World War II. Maybe that is why I'm sensitive when it comes to discussing the Holocaust. Part of my family has blood on its hands, and the part that doesn't was killed anyway.

And since he is sensitive, he wrote an op-ed and informed us that he

walked into a courthouse and divorced myself from the Catholic Church. That is what you have to do as a German if you want to leave the church. I was waiting for the pope to hold me back. I was waiting for him to tell me that it never should have happened. I was waiting for him to correct his mistake. But he kept me waiting.

Why?

When I first heard that the pope had welcomed a once-excommunicated bishop who denies the Holocaust back into the church, I didn't believe it. I thought that the truth was probably more complicated...And then he lost me. The man he had virtually absolved, Bishop Richard Williamson, was known to be a notorious denier of the Holocaust.

Only weeks before, Williamson...dressed in a black robe, a large cross hanging from his neck, he nodded his head and said, in a soft, grandfatherly voice, what he believes. "I believe there were no gas chambers," he said.

...This is the man who, after being excommunicated by a pope more than 20 years ago, was reinstated as a bishop of the Catholic Church - by a German pope who has been to Auschwitz.

After days of unbearable silence and outrage around the world, Benedict finally spoke, and that is when he lost me. He didn't actually speak: The Vatican issued a statement demanding that Williamson "distance himself from his positions on the Shoah."

I looked at these words and wondered why, in the eyes of the Vatican, denying the Holocaust was a "position." I wondered why all it required for a Holocaust-denying bishop to remain a bishop was to "distance himself" from his words.

I couldn't understand why Benedict didn't distance himself and the Catholic Church from Williamson in the same way he had associated himself with him, with the stroke of a pen. So I distanced myself from the pope.

...The pope is not an anti-Semite and has never condoned anti-Semitism. But he chooses to retreat at a time when he should lead, and that, to me, is not an option for a German pope in the face of anti-Semitism.

Maybe I judge him too harshly. I hope so. That's the beauty of being born in a country with a Nazi past. I can hold him to a higher standard.

That is a man of faith (see here for my reference)

Will the Pope Poop the Patriarch?

Sr. Ruth Lautt, OP, National Director of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East is dismayed by Latin Patriarch's statement.

She points out that "Jews, like any other people, defined in terms of a shared ethnicity, language, history, culture and/or religion, have the right to constitute an autonomous, sovereign political community. We have been very concerned about recent attacks on the legitimacy of a Jewish state. It is dismaying to see Patriarch Sabbah jump on this bandwagon and take the position that a Jewish state is somehow inherently discriminatory."

...Rev. Dr. Bruce Chilton, the Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College asks, "We must be careful to distinguish between the Jewish people and the Jewish religion.  Presumably His Beatitude supports the creation of a state for the Palestinian people.  Why would he deny this same fundamental right to the Jewish people? " asks

Fr. James Loughran, S.A., Director of the Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute adds   "When the modern Jewish state was created in 1948 there was a recognition that Jews were entitled to a homeland.  To now attack that Jewish homeland as per se 'discriminatory'  seems itself motivated by discriminatory intent.  Especially in light of the fact that Israel is known to respect freedom of all religions."

Pope Has Pooped II

Jewish leaders and community groups criticised Pope Benedict XVI strongly yesterday after the head of the Roman Catholic Church formally removed restrictions on celebrating an old form of the Latin mass which includes prayers calling for the Jews to 'be delivered from their darkness' and converted to Catholicism.

In a highly controversial concession to traditionalist Catholics, Pope Benedict said that he had decided to allow parish priests to celebrate the Latin Tridentine mass if a 'stable group of faithful' request it - though he stressed that he was in no way undoing the reforms of the Sixties Second Vatican Council which allowed the mass to be said in vernacular languages for the first time.

Source.

A Jew and A Pope

I am a Bob Dylan fan, from way back.

And I thoroughly enjoyed this item:-

Bob Dylan and the Pope were an unlikely double act for a rendition of the 1970s anthem Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. But even the crowd of pop fans who were brought to their knees by the appearance of Pope John Paul II alongside Dylan could scarcely have imagined the rift that it caused.

The Pope’s chief aide, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was so appalled at the prospect of the pontiff sharing a platform with the “self-styled prophet of pop” that he tried his utmost to stop the spectacle. The Pope overruled him.

The cardinal, now Pope Benedict XVI, says in a book to be published next week that while he agreed with his predecessor on most matters, he did not share his liking for pop music.

At the concert in Bologna, attended by 300,000 people in 1997, Dylan – who was born into a Jewish family in Minnesota but later flirted with Christianity – sang Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, his antiwar classic, with Forever Young as an encore.

He did not sing his 1963 hit Blowin’ in the Wind, but John Paul II – who was known for his showmanship and media skills – showed his familiarity with the song and based his homily on it in an effort to connect with the audience.

“You say the answer is blowing in the wind, my friend,” he said. “So it is: but it is not the wind that blows things away, it is the breath and life of the Holy Spirit, the voice that calls and says, Come!” This brought the house down. The Pope added: “You ask me how many roads a man must walk down before he becomes a man. I answer: there is only one road for man, and it is the road of Jesus Christ, who said, ‘I am the Way and the Life’.”

Pope Benedict says that he “doubts to this day whether it was right to let this kind of so-called prophet take the stage” in front of the Pope. He admits that John Paul did get across a spiritual message that was otherwise largely “ignored by the entertainment industry”.