modern Catholic Church and the Jews--2

[AlliJer288]

EUROPEAN BACKLASH VS. JEWS, WHO FORM LOBBIES TO SEEK RIGHTS: The real
impact of the Damascus affair lay in Europe, where it led to a formidable
backlash against Jews, the greatest in years. Jews found themselves completely
unprepared for the tribulations they suffered but learned from this tragedy to
organize and lobby, and from that came the first stirrings of modern Jewish
solidarity, the basis of the formidable institutions that followed.
In August of 1840, together with French lawyer Adolphe Cremieux, Sir
Moses Montefiore led a delegation to Turkey and secured the release of the
captives of the Damascus blood libel. He also persuaded the Sultan of Turkey to
issue an edict forbidding the circulation of blood libels. Banker James de
Rothschild, the Austrian consul in Paris, also protested against the
persecution of Jews in Damascus, especially as he feared that the "blood libel"
might spread all over Palestine and its large Jewish communities there. When
the French authorities turned a deaf ear to James de Rothschild -- they were
more interested in building up their puppet rulers in Damascus -- Rothschild
cleverly managed to leak stories of the uncivilized atrocities to the European
press. Only the Vatican refused to take the side of the suffering Jews,
contending that the blood libel accusations were justified in the light of many
previous similar "crimes" committed by Jews. [No wonder that a few years later
the Vatican showed the same stone-hard hatred for Jews and Judaism when the
Church kidnapped the Mortara child, who was then converted to Christianity
against the protest of the civilized world. On that occasion, Montefiore's
intervention was met with utter contempt and disdain by the Vatican and the
Pope himself.] James de Rothschild was even able to move the famous Count von
Metternich, Chancellor of Austria, to order his ambassadors in Egypt and Turkey
to intervene for the suffering Jews. In his letter Metternich described how
utterly absurd it would be to accuse Jews of the use of blood for the Passover,
as "it would be totally against the nature of Jews..."
Thus, France and the Vatican supported the persecutors of the Jews,
taking up the cause of alleged "Christian victims of the Jews," with Austria
and England aiding the persecuted Jews. In fact the French press whipped up
anti-Semitic hatred. (This was half a century before they did the same against
Captain Dreyfus, who was innocently accused of treason and haunted and attacked
by the anti-Semitic French press.) Meanwhile, the British public was fully
informed of the outrageous persecution of innocent Syrian Jews. By now the
Jewish concerns were heeded in England by Lionel Rothschild, the nephew of
Montefiore. Combining his financial acumen with diplomatic skill, Lionel
Rothschild was able to convince the British government that the "Affair"
offered Britain a rare opportunity to penetrate into the Middle East,
politically as well as religiously, for the benefit of missionaries active in
Muslim countries. Britain and Austria joined forces, and the joint Jewish
delegation headed by Montefiore and the French-Jewish leader Cremieux traveled
to Alexandria with the Rothschilds funding the enterprise. Received by Mohamed
Ali in Alexandria, Egypt, on August 5, the delegation demanded the total
abrogation of all accusations against the Jews, their liberation from jails,
and the granting of civil freedom. Although Mohamed Ali was anti-British in his
policies, circumstances at this particular moment forced him to give in to the
British demands to stop the persecution of Jews. He offered all the orders and
instructions needed to free the Jews of Damascus still in prison, the return of
the refugees to Damascus, and retraction of all absurd "blood libel" charges.
The petition for the liberation of Syrian Jews was signed by 13 European
countries and the American diplomat in Alexandria. It was the first time that
the young United States had entered the diplomatic scene in the Middle East.
Much to its credit, the young republic lined up in staunch support of the Jews
suffering under Arab rule. These diplomatic endeavors also resulted in the
abolishing of the barbaric torture instruments that the Syrian Arabs had used
until then.
Thus, the "Damascus Affair" awakened among all civilized Western Europe
an interest in persecuted Jews. Montefiore and the Rothschilds intervened at
the highest level to protect Jews in Syria, Jews from many parts of the world
united in a campaign to help their suffering brethren for the first time in
Diaspora history. Montefiore's efforts on behalf of the Jews in Palestine (of
which Damascus was then a part) were certainly an indispensable part of the
preparation for the settlement of Jews everywhere in the Holy Land. The
successful end of this complicated international tragedy established for the
first time a diplomatic presence of Jews in the Middle East. Without military
power of their own, the Jews had won their victory through financial might,
religious piety and idealism and their impeccable reputation.
SOME MODERN POPES AND THE JEWS-- PIUS IX, THE MORTARA AFFAIR: was deeply
conservative, and the last pope to wield temporal power: he rejected papal
reconciliation with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization, championed
papal infallibility. Papal States of central Italy were taken from papal
control beginning with the unification process in 1848-- unification finally
brought full equality to Jews in Italy, and many Jews were prominent in the
unification movement. Pius IX started as a liberal, planning to abolish the
walls and gates of the ghetto-- but after nationalists killed his prime
minister and forced the pope to flee Rome until restored by French troops in
1850, Pius, citing Jewish support for the nationalists, in his Papal States
reconsigned Jews to the ghetto, stripped them of property rights, and barred
them from secondary and higher education.
2000-- A collective of major U.S. Jewish groups criticized Pope John
Paul's plans to beatify Pope Pius IX, saying the 19th century pontiff ordered
the kidnapping of a Jewish child so he could be raised as a Roman Catholic.
Pius IX ``perpetuated centuries-old Church contempt and hatred of Jews,'' wrote
Seymour Reich, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for
Interreligious Consultations, in a letter to the Vatican. The move by the IJCIC
follows objections lodged earlier this summer by Italian Jews, who said that
Pius IX had arranged for Jewish children to be baptized into the Catholic faith
against their parents' wishes. Pius IX led the Church from 1846 to 1878, the
longest reign by a pontiff. The U.S. group pointed to the case of
eight-year-old Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish boy abducted, baptized and educated as
a Roman Catholic. Mortara was ordained a priest in 1873 and died in Belgium in
1940-the incident occurred in pope-controlled Bologna in 1858: seized from his
family by papal guards under papal orders after a servant told a priest she had
secretly baptized the boy when he was an infant. Intent was to bring the boy
up as a Catholic-- a wave of international protests followed, including from
Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and Napoleon III-- His family's unsuccessful
attempts get him back sparked letters of protest from world leaders. Arguing
that Pius IX's actions could not be excused as a practice of the times, Reich
said: ``If saintliness is seen as the goodness, wisdom and courage to behave
righteously and right wrongs regardless of when they occur, then Pius IX's
conduct falls far short of saintliness.'' The Israeli government itself
expressed ``deep sorrow,'' especially in light of the progress John Paul's
22-year papacy has made in Catholic-Jewish relations.
John Paul acknowledged and dismissed the rancor, calling Pius ``much
loved, but also hated and slandered.'' ``Beatifying a son of the church does
not celebrate particular historic choices that he has made, but rather points
him out for imitation and for veneration for his virtue,'' said John Paul,
repeatedly stressing Pius' faithfulness to the church rather than his actions
toward the world outside of it. Coming only months after the current Pope
traveled to Israel to apologize for past wrongs committed by the church,
observers said the beatification of Pius IX is a curious move, and could shed
doubt on the motives for his Jewish-Catholic reconciliations. The move led to
questions about the intention and sincerity behind John Paul's official formal
moves toward reconciliation with Jews-- John Paul has stubbornly resisted
international calls to reverse the decision. Pius IX's candidacy for
beatification is long-standing: a miracle had been certified to him, but John
Paul feared provoking anticlerical sentiment in Italy. A pro-Church magazine
defends the Mortara incident, stating that Pius IX was "persuaded that saving
this boy's soul was worth braving the criticism of all Europe" and that his
anti-Jewish measures were "acts of self-defense" and "prove only that he was a
prudent temporal ruler." Wartime pope Pius XII, equally controversial, was
intended to be the conservative counter-balance to John XXIII, but the
anti-Pius XII storm led to shelving of those plans and the in-your-face
substitution of a pope equally distasteful to Jews, Pius IX-- internal Church
politics being more important than Jews.
Rome fell to Italian freedom fighters in 1870-- Pius IX until then kept
Jews confined to the ghetto, under wretched conditions and severe restrictions.
Pius IX was the last pope to have temporal power over parts of Italy and
presided over the loss of the Papal States when the country was unified in
1870. It was also Pius IX who condemned modernism and declared papal teachings
in matters of faith and morals infallible. Pius allegedly referred to Jews as
``dogs'-- declaring that ``of these dogs, there are too many of them present in
Rome.'' Rome had Europe's last enforced Jewish ghetto until the Nazi era-- the
gates of which were locked at night. Jews were banned from secondary education,
could hold no occupation other than shopkeeper, could not own property and had
to pay a special tax to fund forced conversion centers. Evidence given by a Jew
in court was deemed to be invalid.
Noble-born Italians, of which Pius IX was one, gave him the name ``The
Last King Pope.'' Pius had condemned emerging civil rights in a 1864
encyclical, and presided over a Vatican council in which Pius enshrined the
dogma of papal infallibility-- the First Vatican Council declared the Pope
infallible in matters of theology and morality. The decision was reversed at
the Second Vatican Council. After Italy was unified in 1870, and the Papal
States taken, Pope Pius IX became a voluntary prisoner of the Vatican, until
the end of his reign. One of Pius's favorite phrases was ``I am the Church. I
am the tradition.'' Pius IX banned Catholic involvement in politics. Pius,
born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti in 1792, blamed Rome's 1848 uprising on a
Protestant-Jewish conspiracy to overthrow the papacy, and brought in
anti-Semitic laws, the severity of which wouldn't be seen again in Italy until
1938 under Benito Mussolini's fascism. Pius's own biographers refused to
endorse his beatification early in the 20th century. On his death in 1878, an
angry mob of Romans seized his coffin and tried to hurl it into the Tiber-- a
group of nationalists, angry at his opposition to Italian unity.

ZIONISM AND THE CHURCH: 1904-- Pius X rejected Herzl's request to support
the Zionist movement. Relations between the Vatican and modern-day Zionism date
to the turn of the 19th Century, when Herzl sought Rome's blessing on Jewish
aspirations to reclaim their ancient land. Central to these relations has been
the Vatican's concern for the preservation of Christianity's "holy sites" in
Jerusalem, and the upholding of unrestricted access to them. On January 25,
1904, Herzl was received in audience by Pius X. Nine years before, as he penned
The Jew State, Herzl had shown his sympathetic awareness of Roman Catholic
concerns, and formulated Zionist policy regarding them: "The sanctuaries of
Christendom would be safeguarded by assigning to them extra-territorial status
such as is well known in the law of nations. We should form a Guard of Honor
about these sanctuaries, answering to the fulfillment of this duty with our
existence." Despite this sensitivity to Christian sensibilities, and the
subsequent inclusion into central Zionist thinking of this sense of
responsibility towards Christendom's shrines, Herzl failed to secure a papal
blessing on his great venture. "The Jews have not recognized our Lord,
therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people," Pope Pius X told him bluntly.
The papal rebuff did not take Herzl completely by surprise. Three days earlier,
Pius's secretary of state had warned him that "as long as the Jews deny the
divinity of Christ we certainly cannot side with them … How then can we agree
to their regaining possession of the Holy Land?"
This attitude was to change during World War I when the Zionist
leadership, working to secure allied support for the transfer of Palestine to
British administration in the event of Turkey's defeat, demonstrated its
consideration for the Vatican's concerns, and sent a senior representative to
meet with Pope Benedict XV. In an audience on May 10, 1917, Nahum Sokolow
sought and received Benedict's enthusiastic endorsement of the principle of a
Jewish national home in Palestine under a British administration. "The revival
of Israel through the people of Israel!" exclaimed the pontiff. "Nineteen
hundred years ago Rome destroyed your homeland, and today, when you seek to
rebuild it, you have chosen a path which leads via Rome… Yes this is the will
of Divine Providence, this is what the Almighty desires."
Notwithstanding this ebullient response, Catholic fears persisted, and the
Zionists took pains to address them regularly in the years between the issuance
of the Balfour Declaration and the passing of the United Nations partition vote
on Palestine. 1919-- the Vatican warns of some dangers of a Jewish state in the
Mideast.