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The Church
and anti-Semitism—again
Kevin MacDonald
February 2,
2009
Recently there
has been a media uproar about the reinstatement of the Society of Saint Pius X
(SSPX), a traditionalist Catholic group, that broke off from the Church after
the reforms of Vatican II. Jewish groups are furious that there would be any attempt to
reconcile these traditionalists to the Church. This is not surprising since the
issue that led to the schism was the reform of the Church initiated by the
Second Vatican Council and its declaration on Judaism, anti-Semitism, and
non-Christian religions.
The man behind
the schism was Marcel Lefebvre.
Lefebvre not only objected to
the changes wrought by Vatican II but also opposed Muslim immigration to Europe.
As noted in the National Catholic
Reporter,
A troubled
history with Judaism has long been part of the Catholic traditionalist movement
associated with … Lefebvre — beginning with Lefebvre himself, who spoke
approvingly of both the World War II-era Vichy Regime in France and the far-right National Front, and who identified the contemporary
enemies of the faith as “Jews, Communists and Freemasons” in an Aug. 31, 1985,
letter to Pope John Paul II.
Within the
past year, a priest of the SSPX stated that the Jews were “co-responsible”
for the death of Christ.
All this
raises once again the issue of anti-Semitism and the Church. Visiting St.
Peter’s in Rome last summer I noticed that there was a fairly large and
prominent crypt of St. John Chrysostom. There is also a large statue of
Chrysostom as part of the Altar of the Chair of St.
Peter by Bernini, as
well a statue on the colonnade. Chrysostom was certainly an important Doctor of
the Church. But he is also one of history’s most well-known
anti-Semites:
Although such
beasts [Jews] are unfit for work, they are fit for killing . . . fit for
slaughter. (I.II.5)
[The Synagogue] is not merely a lodging place for robbers and cheats but also for demons. This is true not only of the synagogues but also of the souls of the Jews. (I.IV.2)
Shall I tell
you of their plundering, their covetousness, their abandonment of the poor,
their thefts, their cheating in trade? (I.VII.1) (St. John Chrysostom,
Adversus Judaeos)
Or consider
St. Jerome: “If you call [the synagogue] a
brothel, a den of vice, the devil’s refuge, Satan’s fortress, a place to deprave
the soul, an abyss of every conceivable disaster or whatever else you will, you
are still saying less than it deserves.”
Or St. Gregory of Nyssa: [Jews are] murderers of the Lord,
assassins of the prophets, rebels against God, God haters, . . . advocates of
the devil, race of vipers, slanderers, calumniators, dark-minded people, leaven
of the Pharisees, sanhedrin of demons, sinners, wicked men, stoners, and haters
of righteousness.
I wrote
a chapter on this in Separation and Its
Discontents,
proposing that the Catholic church in late antiquity
[4th–6th century AD] was in its very essence a powerful
anti-Jewish movement that arose out of resource and reproductive competition
with Jews. This idea of mine hasn’t received much attention — perhaps because it
leads to some basic questioning about our beliefs and our culture. Darwin really
did have a dangerous idea. But since the issue is topical right now, I thought
that I would use this opportunity to summarize the argument there, followed by
some further comments on anti-Jewish attitudes in Catholicism.
·
The 4th and 5th
centuries were a time of increased anti-Jewish attitudes at all levels of Roman
society. Preachers and bishops like Chrysostom portrayed the Jews very
negatively and attempted to erect walls between Jews and
non-Jews.
·
Jews had become economically
prosperous during this period even though the society as a whole was losing
population and declining economically. Accusations of Jewish greed, wealth, love
of luxury and of the pleasures of the table became common. Jews were prominent
in certain sectors of the economy, including the slave trade, banking, national
and international trade, and the law. Jews had also developed monopolies in
specific industries, including silk, clothing, glassware, and the trade in
luxury items. Jews were seen as wealthy, powerful, and aggressive.
·
Church actions against the Jews and
the anti-Jewish rhetoric of the Church Fathers struck a deep resonance with
popular attitudes. A historian noted that “if the Christian populace so many
times threw itself into the attack on synagogue after synagogue, it was not
because it passively accepted orders given from above. … If the anti-Jewish
polemic was so successful, it was because it awakened latent hatreds and
appealed to feelings that were already there.”
· Emperor Constantine, who established
the Church as the religion of the Empire, had bishops in his entourage who held
strongly anti-Jewish attitudes. Constantine himself stated that the Jews are “a
people who, having imbrued their hands in a most heinous outrage [i.e., killing
Christ], have thus polluted their souls and are deservedly
blind.”
· Several of the Church Fathers,
including Chrysostom, came from areas where there was a long history of conflict
between Jews and non-Jews. Chrysostom describes Jews as numerous and wealthy and
seems to have seen Judaism more as an economic force than as a religious
organization. He often compared Jews to predatory beasts and accused them of
virtually every evil, including economic crimes such as profiteering. St. Jerome
also refers to Jews as encircling Christians and seeking to tear them apart.
Jerome complained about the Jews’ love for money in several passages. And he
complained that the Jews were multiplying “like vermin” — a comment that clearly
suggests a concern with Jewish reproductive success.
·
Outspoken anti-Jewish attitudes were
typical of many who rose in the Church hierarchy and among many prominent
Christian writers of the 4th and 5th century (e.g., Eusebius, St. John
Chrysostom, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St.
Gregory of Nyssa). In the Eastern Church during this period, the monks were
“militant anti-Semites” who had considerable influence among the Church
hierarchy. The suggestion is that anti-Semitism was of prime importance in
attaining positions of power and influence in the Church during this period.
Individuals exhibited their anti-Semitism openly, as a badge of honor, and were
made saints of the Church after their death.
·
A
significant percentage of all Christian writings during the period are
essentially anti-Jewish. These writings are attempts define an ingroup
fundamentally opposed to Jews. Christians saw the Old Testament and the New
Testament as fundamentally opposed: “The adversos Judeaos tradition
represents the overall method of Christian exegesis of the Old Testament. . . .
It was virtually impossible for the Christian preacher or exegete to teach
scripturally at all without alluding to the anti-Judaic theses.”
·
This rhetoric was meant to apply not
only to the Jews of the Old Testament but also to their descendants in the
contemporary world. According to Chrysostom, Jewish responsibility for killing
Christ and their many other vices had been passed to the descendants of the
ancient Jews as inherited traits.
· Anti-Jewish references occurred in
Christian liturgy and rites, especially those surrounding Holy Week emphasizing
the role of the Jews in the crucifixion of Christ. Prayers intended for use by
the masses of Christians contained reproaches against the Jews. Christian
holidays and periods of fasting were set up to be directly opposite to Jewish
ones and to act as anti-Jewish commemorations. For example, the Christian Holy
Week originally coincided with the Jewish Passover, but the Christian liturgy
emphasized Christian mourning for the Jewish act of deicide at a time of Jewish
rejoicing. Friday became a fast day commemorating the crucifixion, whereas for
Jews, Friday was a joyous time prior to the Sabbath. Anti-Jewish attitudes were
deeply ingrained in the important documents of the religion and closely
connected to expressions of Christian faith.
·
The culmination of this perceived
Jewish evil is, of course, the rejection and killing of Christ. According to
Eusebius — an important Christian
theoretician, by rejecting Christ as the Messiah, the Jews rejected God and
forfeited their status as the Chosen People. Their punishment for this rejection
can already be seen by their defeats at the hands of the Romans, their loss of
secular power, and the loss of their priesthood.
· The result was a very potent
anti-Jewish ideology. Christian anti-Semitism was not only intellectually
respectable, it also developed an emotionally compelling anti-Jewish liturgy.
With the political success of the Church, society as a whole became organized
around a monolithic, hegemonic, and collectivist social institution defined by
its opposition to Judaism.
·
Christian writers, such as Eusebius,
described Judaism as an ethnic entity, but they saw Christianity as a
universalist religion that would eventually include all of mankind. Eusebius
repeatedly contrasts the universalist message of Christianity versus the
religion of the “Jewish race.” The new covenant is “not for the Jewish race
only” but “summons all men equally to share together the same good things.”
Eusebius thought of Jews as biological descendants of Abraham who have rejected
the universal message of Christianity, which remains open to them if only they
would see the light.
· This Christian ideology was accompanied by an increase in anti-Jewish actions sanctioned and even encouraged by the Church. Monks “stirred up mobs of Christians to pillage synagogues, cemeteries, and other property, seize or burn Jewish religious buildings, and start riots in the Jewish quarter.” Christians were able to destroy synagogues with virtual impunity and with the tacit or open approval of the Church. The Church pressured the government to forgive anti-Jewish acts.
·
A
number of anti-Jewish laws were enacted, including laws against Jews owning
Christian slaves, laws discouraging social contact and intermarriage with Jews,
and laws regulating economic relationships between Jews and non-Jews. Jews were
barred from the legal profession and government service, and they were
prohibited from making accusations against Christians or even testifying against
them in civil or criminal legal proceedings.
·
The government was often reluctant to
pursue these anti-Jewish restrictions and did so only as a result of
ecclesiastical and popular pressure. The Church was active and influential in
changing imperial legislation regarding the Jews, and the wording of the laws
often betrays extreme hostility to the Jews. The Church developed the ideology
that it was superior to the emperors — clearly a necessary condition if the
Church was to be an instrument of anti-Semitism rather than having only a
spiritual function.
· As with the official Muslim position,
Jews were allowed to exist within Christian societies, but, as a condemned
people, their life was to be miserable. With this type of ideology it is easy to
see that Christian religious ideology would be inconsistent with Jewish wealth,
political power, and reproductive success.
·
I
suggest that the reason for Christian universalism was that the Empire had
become a polyglot, ethnically diverse “chaos of peoples” (quoting race theorist
Houston Stewart
Chamberlain). The
world became divided into Jews and non-Jews. The Jews remained an ethnic group,
while the non-Jews developed a religious identification as Christians.
· The result was that ethnicity had no
official place in Christian religious ideology. This in turn had a number of
important consequences in later centuries. On the one hand, there is no question
that Catholicism was able to serve as a viable institution of ethnic defense in
other historical eras, notably the Middle Ages when, as James C. Russell notes, the Church was influenced by
German culture. On the other hand, the strands of Christian universalism can
lead to compromising the ethnic interests of Christians. Indeed, since Vatican
II, Catholicism has become part of the culture of Western suicide. In the US, it
is in the forefront of the open borders movement. It is
therefore not at all surprising that Jewish organizations would be dismayed by
any retreat from Vatican II.
Fundamentally, the Catholic traditionalists seem to desire a return to an older form of Catholicism capable of defending the West as a cultural entity and perhaps implicitly as an ethnic entity. Indeed, it is interesting to read the article on Judaism in The Catholic Encyclopedia from 1910 — during the papacy of Pius X. The article shows that Catholic attitudes on Jews had not changed much in the 16 centuries since Eusebius. Jews in the time of Jesus are described as a "race" that rejected the call of Jesus for repentance, showing no sorrow for sin, unfit for salvation and rejecting the true kingdom of God in favor of earthly power: "Jesus justly treated as vain the hopes of His Jewish contemporaries that they should become masters of the world in the event of a conflict with Rome."
[The Kingdom of God] is the Christian Church, which was able silently to leaven the Roman Empire, which has outlived the ruin of the Jewish Temple and its worship, and which, in the course of centuries, has extended to the confines of the world the knowledge and the worship of the God of Abraham, while Judaism has remained the barren fig-tree which Jesus condemned during His mortal life. ...
[After the resurrection of Jesus,] the Church ... took the independent attitude which it has maintained ever since. Conscious of their Divine mission, its leaders boldly charged the Jewish rulers with the death of Jesus, and freely "taught and preached Christ Jesus", disregarding the threats and injunctions of men whom they considered as in mad revolt against God and His Christ (Acts 4).
The article portrays Church laws against Jews, such as laws against Jews having Christian slaves and forcing Jews to live in ghettos, as necessary to protect the Christian faith. And it accurately portrays the Church in later centuries as at times protecting Jews against popular anti-Jewish actions. However, it asserts that the causes of popular anti-Semitism included real conflicts between Jews and non-Jews and are not only due to Christian religious ideology. In particular, the causes of anti-Semitism are described as follows:
The deep and wide racial difference between Jews and Christians which was, moreover, emphasized by the ritual and dietary laws of Talmudic Judaism;
the mutual religious antipathy which prompted the Jewish masses to look upon the Christians as idolaters, and the Christians to regard the Jews as the murderers of the Divine Saviour of mankind, and to believe readily the accusation of the use of Christian blood in the celebration of the; Jewish Passover, the desecration of the Holy Eucharist, etc.;
the trade rivalry which caused Christians to accuse the Jews of sharp practice, and to resent their clipping of the coinage, their usury, etc.;
the patriotic susceptibilities of the particular nations in the midst of which the Jews have usually formed a foreign element, and to the respective interests of which their devotion has not always been beyond suspicion.
These ideas on the causes of popular anti-Semitism are pretty much the same as the ones I emphasize in my overview of historical anti-Semitism.
The Catholic Church has played the role of ethnic and cultural defense in the past. It is certainly not surprising that Jewish organizations are alarmed by any suggestion that it might be returning to its historic self-conception. Indeed, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a quasi-Jewish organization that is the epicenter of leftist intolerance of any remnant of the traditional culture of the West, has also targeted traditional Catholics using its familiar methods of disinformation and intimidation (see The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Hate Mongers).
Let's hope the traditionalists don't give in to what will be a furious onslaught to prevent any glimmer of the resurgence of traditional Catholicism.
Kevin
MacDonald is a professor of psychology at
California State University–Long Beach.
Permanent URL:
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-SSPX.html
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