The Pope is on a Roll!
Pope’s remarks about Jews ‘unwise in current climate’
John Hooper in Rome
Monday September 18, 2006
The GuardianHaving just stirred up a global storm by quoting from a text fiercely critical of Islam, it might have been expected that Pope Benedict would steer well away from anything alluding to another religion that could be open to misinterpretation.
Yet only minutes after saying that he was “deeply sorry” about the reaction to his earlier remarks, he cited a passage from the New Testament highlighting the gulf between Christian and Jewish attitudes to the crucifixion of Jesus.He said that, before leading the crowd in the traditional midday prayer known as the Angelus, he wanted to comment on two recent Roman Catholic festivals relating to the crucifixion. What, the Pope asked, was the point of exalting the cross – a tool of execution?
In reply to his rhetorical question, he quoted a verse from St Paul, the New Testament author most often accused of anti-semitism.
In the Italian translation, used by the Pope, it runs as follows: “We preach the crucified Christ – a scandal for the Jews, a folly for the pagans”.
He works pretty damn fast!
Barely having appologized to Muslims (not a real apology, he’s sorry for “The Reaction” to his comments not the comments themselves) he’s moved on to Jews.
He picks something which places Jews as worse than pagans and implies them to be Christ killers.
Now on to Hinduism?
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This guy is a one-man show. Maybe he should just give up his Pope status and start a punk band in order to freely rant about all the religions in the world.
Being a Jew, I have a sneaky suspicion that my faith will take a deep breath and shout out “Big F**king Deal”
Not that we aren’t sensitive to this type of thing, but cmon… have you seen what we are up against lately? Compared to the Mein Kamp grade crap being taught in Arab school textbooks, this is almost a compliment!
Maybe, just maybe, the ADL will issue a strongly worded letter. Jews are a people who like to fight through exclamation points
That wouldn’t really reflect your faith. I don’t think people would consider that kind of reaction as a, “oh look, Jews are grown ups!” and if anyone resorts to that, that would be pretty darn silly.
You need to give thought to the cultures and states that these few angry Muslims are representing, not the faith itself.
Learn to speak for yourself Jordan.
I love it… sooo funny yet true.!! The Pope is on a role but what I don’t understand and maybe it’s just me but does he not have advisors or people around him to tell him to BE QUIET????
“Now on to Hinduism?”
He has done that already. he gave a lecture to the Indian ambassador on the secular Indian constitution 6 months ago. he was worried that the new anti-conversion bills will stop the mafia like activities of the different church groups seeking converts among the poor in India.
Melissa, if we witness any violent reaction to the Pope’s words against the Jews, I promise I will buy you a steak!
Cmon, this is no big deal! I don’t even see it being covered in any of the Israeli newspapers.
Esra’a – “You need to give thought to the cultures and states that these few angry Muslims are representing, not the faith itself.”
I can’t believe we are so tied down by extreme political correctness that we are forbiden from anylizing and criticing “faith”. We go to such increadible efforts to deny the facts on the ground. Its poverty, its social issues, its culture, its history… its everything BUT a set of religious ideas that are driving violence in the name of religion.
When did reason become a bad word?
Here is an interesting take by the “South Park Conservative” Andrew Sullivan (best blogger ever!)
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/09/hitch_on_ratz.html
“…Of course, what Benedict has said about Muslims is positively benign compared to what he has said about homosexuals. But somehow, I don’t think we’ll get an apology. After all, we don’t threaten to kill people.”
Its absolutely true that political correctness is directly proportional to reactionary violence.
In an ironic world, we reward voilence far more than we reward restraint.
Jordan, I’m not sure many would agree with you when you trace everything back to faith, even when you claim it’s “reason.” Who said anything about PC? Religions are offended all the time – we’re talking about the difference between blaming the religion itself, as opposed to a few of its followers, especially when you blame an entire religion for something so misrepresented and over-exaggerated in the media.
You’re assuming that society plays no role. Politics plays no role. Culture and traditions play no role. Socialization plays no role. Educational institutions play no role. Media selectivity and representation plays no role.
It’s ALL faith! And you implied in your initial comment, “guess what? Jews are better for not reacting!” Or DID they react and not get reported? Reactions, no reactions. What does that say anything about Islam, what does it say about Judaism, what does it say about the role of the media in constructing public opinion?
Who knows? Who cares?
Buy Melissa a steak anyways and let’s all just simmer down. Hooray.
Esra, first I should say that I value this back and forth… I LOVE a good debate specially with polite individuals. Kudos.
But I still disagree. Yes, circumstances as you described do have mitigating factors but societies are successful not because their location or dare I say people, but rather because of the ideas those societies subscribe to. Some ideas create never-ending war and famine on fertile soil, while other ideas build tractors to end hunger and put a man on the moon.
Regarding the typical Jewish response, I would like to refer to the Iranian holocaust denial cartoon contest. The Jews in Israel did the only thing they knew how… they held their OWN holocaust denial cartoon contest.
This response was not because Jews are somehow genetically better, because they are not. This is because the IDEAS free societies subscribe to versus self-identified Islamic/Communist/Fascists states.
Culture, religion, laws, free press… call it what you wish but in the end, they are simply the end product of sets of ideas.
And I hate to say it, some ideas are better than others.
For us to put the cover over our heads and ignore the obvious facts on the ground, with some exceptions, within 58 Muslim majority countries will perhaps make us feel like good non-judgemental anti-racist human beings, but it is dishonest and allows the extremists to thrive in silence.
Incedently, I am just as hard, if not harder, on communist states where IDEAS and ideas alone led to the death of 100 million people. Even though many communists were wonderful kind individuals, communism was still the worst idea to ever plague humanity.
Thank you for the debate!
Actually Jews tried to protest and sabotage the cartoon contest.
“The Israel News Agency is asking every SEO advertising marketing professional to create Web pages and optimize the keywords: “Iran Holocaust Cartoon Contest” in order to prevent the Iran newspapers, the enemies of Israel, the Jews, the Christians and Western democracy from attaining a high Google and Google News position”
http://www.israelnewsagency.com/iranholocaustcartoonsisraelseo48480207.html
“UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been asked by a leading American Jewish group to speak out against Iran’s Holocaust cartoon exhibition when he travels to Tehran next week”
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-09-02T004621Z_01_N01174533_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAN-CARTOONS-ANNAN.xml&archived=False
ETC.
Here you go:)
http://www.kosherclub.com/category.asp?catid=29
The Jews in Israel have way more political and social liberties that many Muslims can only dream of. I think that really answers the question of why they reacted in that particular way and why others in more sheltered societies resorted to more violent means.
I agree.
What exactly are you suggesting? Because it seemed as though you suggested that it’s a problem with a particular faith as opposed to how certain people choose to practice it, and the role society plays in inspiring or influencing these actions isn’t really that large.
I mean, surely faith has something to do with it, but I think you outlined a good response that state why it’s not a problem merely with faith but rather the ideas inspired in less free societies where the public plays almost no role in policy-making and political discourse. I think out of those 58 Muslim majority states (I didn’t know there were that many, this is interesting) a lot of them don’t include or consider the public when forming decisions, and are more or less corrupt.
Unfortunately, these will be the countries that you will often see representing Islam in the media.
Hi,
I love this site and am so glad to read all the posts here. I do want to say that I am NOT Catholic, but don’t think that the Pope was calling Jews “Christ Killers” here. What this section of scripture means is that the non-religious people don’t believe in Jesus because the idea that God sends his Son to die for humans’ sins just sounds foolish, and that Jews don’t believe in Jesus because the idea that the Messiah would die on a cross is scandalous. Nothing scary, or mean, or violent here. Please, Joel, don’t go “Christ Killer” route on us, you’ve misunderstood the text and are imposing your own meaning on it.
Amy
“you’ve misunderstood the text ”
Perhaps, maybe he is just saying that the existence of Christianity is “a scandal for the Jews”.
Nor quite as bad, but also inappropriate.