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G.L. (15) The Pope and the Jews

THE POPE AND THE JEWS

These are Moscow-endangering times, as everybody knows; times when unity of the believers in the enjoyment of rights with which God endowed man is most urgent. No doubt this was in the mind of our Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, when he issued a call during Christmas time for all dissidents to return to the Church that is the one, and the only unified, world-wide spiritual force that stands unwaveringly for the enjoyment of these human rights, the free exercise of which Moscow threatens. 

This appeal of a "Father who loves, toils, suffers, prays and hopes for the good and happiness of all his children," continues to be discussed in a condemnatory spirit. The Oxnamic attitude of Protestants who have expressed their opinion of the Holy Father's appeal is well known; but not the offensive attitude of the rabbis. One of the latest attacks upon this appeal, syndicated by the Jewish Telegraph Agency, appeared in the Jewish Advocate of Boston (Feb. 2nd). In it Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath, President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, addressing the representatives of the Reform temples and synagogues, gathered in Milwaukee from Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin, said:---"As for the Jews, we will require greater justification for the demand that we forsake the faith of our fathers, tried and active through the centuries and not found wanting ... We would not join with a Church which has stood virtually silent in the face of the most blasphemous denial of religion in our generation. We Jews will not forget the official Concordat between Rome and the Nazi regime, between the official spokesman of Catholicism and the most brutal, bestial mass murderers of history." 

Bitterness of spirit, hatred of the Catholic Church, alone can account for this tirade, the like of which, published in the Catholic press against Jews, would have caused the Jewish Advocate, and other Jewish papers that published the offense, to rightly charge the author and publication with being anti-Semitic. Every intelligent, unbiased person knows that a Concordant is an agreement of the Vatican with a sovereign power in the interest of freedom in matters of a religious nature, and not an endorsement of the government. The German Concordant, entered into between Vice Chancellor von Papen and Cardinal Pacelli, was no more an endorsement of Hitler or his Nazism, than was the treaty of President Roosevelt and Ambassador Litvinoff an endorsement of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, or Stalin's "most brutal, bestial mass murders," that outnumbered the murderous Hitler's murders, and continues to add to his Satanic record. To declare that the Catholic Church was "virtually silent in face of the most blasphemous denial of religion in our generation" is a monstrous disregard of the many occasions when Pope Pius XI and the bishops, including Cardinal Faulhaber in Germany, took Hitler and Mussolini to task for their Nazism and Fascism, including the vicious, murderous treatment of Jews. The Vatican Station broadcast to Germany warned Hitler and his stooges of the injustice of their treatment of Jews, reminding them that "God was born into a specific race and family. The Lord was no shiftless cosmopolitan, but a true-blooded Jew. Very likely he even had the physical features of His Mother and her ancestors." 

Pope Pius XI issued two powerful Encyclicals, one---Non Abbiamo Bisogno (June 1931)---against Fascism; and the other---Mit Brennender Sorge (March 1937)---in defense of the Jews in Germany, saying in part: "We shall continue without failing, to stand before the rulers of your people, as defenders of violated rights, and in obedience to Our conscience and Our pastoral mission, whether we be successful or not, to oppose the policy which seeks, by any secret means, to strangle rights ... None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, or a national religion." 

While the Catholic Church considers the souls of Jews to be as precious in the sight of Our Lord as are the souls of other peoples, and therefore desires that they become part of Mystical Body of their Messiah, the Church; only twenty of the nearly six thousand words in the Pope's Christmas appeal were directed to Jews, viz: "For all those who adore Christ "not excluding those who sincerely but vainly await His coming promised by the Prophets and still to come"---we open the Holy Door." 

It is interesting to note that these words were addressed to Jews who believe and pray, as did their forbears in pre-Christian times, for the coming of the Messiah, the Christ, and not to the reform rabbis and members of the temples and synagogues addressed by the President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, who are not Jews in the Old Testament sense of the term. While Reform Jews believe in the One True God, as do Mohammedans and Christians, they deny belief in a personal Messiah, as well as revelation in the traditional sense; and regard not the Bible as the eternal, unchangeable Word of God. 

Their Reform Judaism, sometimes called Liberal or Progressive Judaism, was "transplanted in America" from Germany where it originated in the beginning of the 19th century. Its "famous Pittsburgh Platform" (1885) is "the standard of classic American Reform Judaism." This "Platform" is a denial of basic religious belief adhered to by Catholics as well as Orthodox Jews. When it was announced as "The Jewish declaration of independence," the Jewish critics asked, rhetorically, "Independence of what?" and answered, "independence of Judaism" (p. 387, The Jews: Their History, Culture and Religion, Phila. 1949). 

Rabbi Israel Tabak of Baltimore "condemned the corrosive influence" of Reform Judaism, which is the Judaism of the most popular rabbis in our country, saying that it "is threatening the future of Judaism in the United States." In a prepared address delivered as President of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council, assembled in Boston on January 30, 1949, he contended that "Jews leaving the Orthodox fold and going into Reform temples are taking the first step toward assimilation." 


It was with Christlike sympathy that our Holy Father appealed to the Orthodox Jews to come to Our Lord in His Church, who "vainly await" His coming, when He had already come, having been born in the city of David over nineteen centuries ago, of a Daughter of the house of David, as foretold by the prophets.