JEWISH INQUISITIONS
My Dear Mr. Solomon:---I am deeply sorry that your judgment regarding Spain, as related to the Catholic Church, has been marred by falsifiers of history who, in the words of Homer, "think one thing and tell another." My heart, like his, "detests them as the gates of Hell." They try to put the other fellow, the Church, and country on the defensive by uttering, and reuttering, anti-Spanish charges, which are true only in a minor degree, compared to the guilt of their accusers.
The Protestant anti-Catholic England of Elizabeth, Edward VI, James First, with their Cromwells, was foremost in charging Spain with inhumanities, which were few compared to the number of atrocities England inflicted upon Catholics.
The condemnation-of-Spain tactic is being pursued today by the Communists who, having failed to Sovietize Spain, want to keep her weak and discredited for future invasion.
Moscow leads today in this blacken-the-reputation-of the other-fellow tactic, by making charges of "aggression," "imperialism," etc., against the United States: charges that Moscow, and its satellites behind the Iron Curtain, are guilty of to a major degree.
This same tactic has been, and is being used against the Catholic Church in relation to the Spanish Inquisition. That injustices have at times been perpetrated against Jews in Spain, no informed, truthful person will deny. Save in minor instances, they were committed by the State, and not by the Church. These instances, continually harped upon, becloud the realization of the traitorous actions of the Marranos; and the gross injustices Jews have imposed upon others.
For instance, attempts have been and are being made to excuse the Spanish Jews who presented themselves for Baptism on the spurious ground of their being compelled to choose Baptism or death. This charge, centered against the Catholic Church, has poisoned the minds of a multitude of Jews. It lurks behind your query: "How can you, a Jew, belong to a Church that persecuted the Jews in Spain during the Inquisition?"
Perhaps you know not that the Jewish Church, and not the Catholic Church, has the stain of forced conversions on its soul. This historic fact is recorded in Jewish writings of the highest authoritative standing. Yet I know not, nor do I believe that you know, of a single occasion when Jews were condemned by Catholics, or Judaism judged, by the forced conversions to Judaism of which Jewry is guilty.
This gross injustice was imposed upon the Idumeans, who were given the choice of submitting to circumcision or being driven out of their native cities. The difference between attempts at forced conversions by persons who were Catholic in name rather than in spirit, and the forced conversions imposed by the Jews, is that the popes condemned the action, whereas it was the Jewish Pope, High Priest Johanan Hyrcanus, Prince of the Hasmoneans, who led in the infliction of this gross injustice. This was in the Year 130 B.C., when the Jewish Church was the one, and the only Church of God, as the Catholic Church has been since Old Testament Judaism ceased to exist.
You will find evidence of this in Graetz's History of the Jews (Vol. I, p. 424); in the Encyclopedia of Jewish Knowledge (p. 130); and in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews (Book XIII, Chap. IX), from which I quote:---"Hyrcanus also took Dora, and Marissa, cities in Idumea; and subdued all the Idumeans: and permitted them to stay in that country, if they would accept the rite of circumcision, and make use of the laws of the Jews. And they were so desirous of living in the country of their forefathers, that they submitted." Josephus also tells of the cities that were "utterly destroyed," because "the inhabitants would not bear to change their religious rites for those peculiar to the Jews" (Book XIII, C. XV).
These forced conversions of the people of Edom brought a painful experience to Jewry from which it never recovered. It robbed the Jews of more than Esau (of whom the Idumeans were descendants) robbed his brother Jacob. It gave Jewry the Herods (Idumeans) who ruthlessly ended the Judean Maccabean dynasty and its Hasmonean high priestly family. The Herods, usurping authority, appointed the high priests (Caiphas and Annas) and took over the government of the Jews, as Josephus tells us in Book XV, Chap. I. Finally Herod lined up with Titus in the siege of Jerusalem, when the prediction of Jesus Messiah was fulfilled, not a stone being left upon a stone of the Temple, which contained the last altar upon which the Mosaic sacrifices were offered to God (St. Matt. 24:2).
Now back to Spain proper. The Kingdom of Spain united through the marriage of Ferdinand of Granada with Isabella of Castile fought its final eight hundred year battle for nationhood in Granada, where the Moors met defeat. National unity was endangered by the Marranos, who having "Christianity on their lips, and Judaism in their hearts," had infiltrated Government offices, aye, even the Royal Court. Besides, their blasphemous, unpatriotic actions received Synagogue absolution in advance, through Kol Nidre, which declared their pledges "shall not be binding ... Our vows shall not be vows: Our bonds shall not be bonds; And our oaths shall not be oaths."
Drastic action was deemed necessary, and Spain resorted to it by expelling the Jews from the Kingdom. "The ports of Carthagena, Valencia and Barcelona were provided with ships to take the fugitives where they would," says the Jewish Encyclopedia.
Severe as was the deportation of the Jews from Spain, the action of the Marranos, and their supporters, seems to have given warrant for it. No condemn-Spain tactic can becloud the fact that the Zionists of our day are guilty of a more unwarranted injustice against the Arabs of Palestine than Spain is charged with in having deported an estimated 160,000 Jews. 900,000 Arabs have been reduced by the Zionists to the status of "refugees on the relief rolls" of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the Agency that reported "two-thirds of whom are housed in Mosques, dilapidated buildings and other emergency quarters."
I'll be looking for you again next week, my dear Mr. Solomon, through page four of the Public Library copy of The Pilot.