The Pope and the Vatican Should Be Confronted about Traditional Catholic Stances against Israel
Instead of rejecting Israel as the Vatican does, evangelical leaders should do what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did
By Julio
Severo
WorldNetDaily
chief Joseph Farah accurately pointed the latest Vatican tragedy against Israel
by saying that it is a “one-sided hostile action against Israel.” He said,
Pope Francis
announced an agreement had been reached with the barbaric leadership of the
Palestine Liberation Organization recognizing “Palestine.”
It’s a
barbarous act of political and historical tone deafness by the pope that puts
the beleaguered Jewish state, the only reliable refuge for outnumbered,
forgotten and abandoned Middle East Christians, deeper into the cross-hairs of
international busybodies.
The Vatican’s
deal was brokered with Mahmoud Abbas, the organizer of the Munich Olympics
terrorist attack on Israeli athletes, a man who wrote his doctoral thesis
denying the Holocaust – and still denies the Jewish death toll to this day.
The Vatican’s
statement calls for the new Palestinian state to have its capital in Jerusalem
– Israel’s capital since the time of King David. It calls for the Palestinian
state, run by the same people who have overseen the destruction of Jewish
religious and historical sites in its own territories, to be responsible for
holy sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere.
What the Vatican
did here was declare its unilateral and unconditional support of the terrorist
Palestine Liberation Organization founded by Yasser Arafat.
There’s no
other way to interpret this except as a one-sided hostile action against
Israel.
Yet,
this is not the first Catholic hostility against Israel. Jewish
writer Janet Levy reports a number of anti-Jewish cases from the Vatican in her
review of the book “The Vatican Against Israel: J’Accuse,” written
by Catholic writer Giulio Meotti, who explores the theological foundation for
1,700 years of Catholic enmity toward Jews that led to manifold persecutory
actions and atrocities through the centuries and how it continues to play out
in the Catholic Church policy toward the Jewish State today.
Mr.
Meotti explains how the Catholic Church has continued to undermine Jews through
its politics, statements, and contemptuous relationship with the state of
Israel. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the Vatican has consistently worked
against the best interests of the Jewish state and aided and abetted its
enemies.
This
extensive, historical Vatican enmity toward the Jews and the attendant
atrocities have led to today’s shocking alliance with Islam and, even more
surprisingly, has prevented the Catholic Church from aiding persecuted
Catholics throughout the Muslim world. By disavowing Jewish roots and
forging a strategic Muslim-Catholic alliance, the Catholic Church has embarked
on a precarious path for the future of Christendom.
In
“The Vatican Against Israel,” the author examines how the Catholic Church has
continued to be a willing and eager partner in the destruction of the Jewish
people in the modern era.
The
Catholic Church helped promulgate the anti-Semitic hoax of a Jewish plan for
global domination as set forth in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, largely
used by Nazis to justify their crimes against the Jews. The first translation
of this damaging blood libel was translated by Arab Catholics and published by
a periodical of the Catholic Community in Jerusalem in 1926.
When
Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany, the Vatican was the first state to
formally recognize the legitimacy of the Third Reich and it maintained
diplomatic relations with the Nazi government through the very end of the war.
Pope
John Paul II granted several audiences to Yasser Arafat, the father of modern
terrorism and the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), who
had ordered and carried out attacks against Jewish civilians and was seeking
publicity and legitimacy on the world stage. While openly proclaiming hatred of
the Jews and plans to annihilate Israel, Arafat and his henchman were granted
respectability by the Catholic Church.
In
1974, the Vatican formally recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
It wasn’t until 1993, almost 20 years later, that the Catholic Church
recognized the State of Israel.
When
PLO Chairman Arafat died in 2004, the Pope John Paul II eulogized the terrorist
as a great leader in this “hour of sadness” and spoke fondly of his closeness
to the Arafat family.
Even
today, many Vatican Catholic pilgrimage and tourist tour maps fail to mention
Israel. Instead, the area is labeled “Holy Land” or “Palestine.”
To make
things worse, evangelical leaders show that they deserve when the leftist media
lump them together with the old Catholic hostility against Israel, even
suggesting anti-Jewish Inquisition was not distinctively Catholic, but
“Christian,” as if all Christians were equally involved in torturing and slaughtering
Jews.
Even
though U.S. evangelical leaders in the early America embraced the Jews and
condemned the Vatican, times have changed. Today, mainline Protestant churches
in U.S. embrace the Vatican and condemn Israel.
U.S. evangelicals
have increasingly lost their prophetic voice about Israel and against enemies
of the Jews, especially Muslims. So it is no wonder that when they meet the pope,
they fail to voice their condemnation about the historic and current Catholic
hostility against Israel. They also fail to condemn the Vatican alliances with
Islam.
The
Jewish Journal says that “The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century
Spain,” a scholarly magnum opus and in-depth tome on the Spanish Inquisition,
describes how the Catholic Church persecuted, and often executed, masses of
Jewish converts to Catholicism who were accused of secretly practicing Judaism.
The
Business Insider notes that “it is important to think of the context of the
book, which is written by Netanyahu's father Ben-Zion Netanyahu, a
well-regarded historian who worked at both Hebrew University of Jerusalem and
Cornell University.”
CBS
News says, “Netanyahu’s father, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, was an Israeli historian… A
Zionist activist who opposed partitioning Palestine between Arabs and Jews, he
was best known in academic circles for his research into the Catholic Church's
medieval inquisition against the Jews of Spain.”
The
Business Insider said that “the book argues, the persecution of the Jews was
not truly based on religious grounds, but on a racial prejudice and financial
envy that would be echoed years later in the Holocaust.”
This
“envy” has been too expensive for the Catholic Church. In a fascinating piece
titled “Jews
prove critical to founding of America,” WorldNetDaily shows how Jews
had a fundamental role in the early America’s building. Most Jews in the early
America had fled Brazil, expelled, under death threats from the Inquisition and
from the Catholic government. Eventually, they founded the early banking system
in America. If Catholic Brazil, or even the Vatican, had embraced these Jews,
they would be living today the financial hegemony enjoyed by the U.S.
But
anti-Jewish Catholic culture hindered them from it. This culture was
predominant in Catholic nations even recently.
As a
Brazilian, I remember a boy who was ostracized by other students at a public
school in São Paulo. He was a Jew and other students talked about him as some
kind of “plague.” I could empathize with him. As an evangelical, I was often
taunted because I did not get involved with Catholic celebrations or other
inappropriate behavior at the school. So probably I was the only student that
could keep a normal contact with the Jewish student.
The
anti-Jewish feeling from the other students came from the culture of Brazil,
the largest Catholic nation in the world. In contrast, respect for Catholicism
was supreme.
I do
not know what could be done to change the Catholic culture against Israel, but
U.S. and Brazilian evangelicals should follow the courageous example of Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who confronted an anti-Jewish Catholic
culture just with weapon: a book on the Inquisition.
Every
evangelical leader should embrace Israel and its exclusive right to the Promised
Land. They should not reject Israel for the sake of the Vatican and its traditions.
And
they should also give the pope books on the Inquisition and remind him that it
is past time for the Catholic Church to stop being against Israel.
Yet,
if they keep embracing the Vatican at the expense of Israel, all of them should
also be given books on the Inquisition by courageous Netanyahus.
Without
perceiving, Netanyahu became a prophetic inspiration for evangelicals in their
relationship with the Vatican.
With
information from the WorldNetDaily, Business Insider, Israel National News,
Janet Levy, CBS News and the Jewish Journal.
Portuguese
version of this article: O papa e o Vaticano precisam ser
confrontados acerca de posturas católicas tradicionais contra Israel
Source: Last Days Watchman
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