God Hates the Jews
St. John Chrysostom
We didn’t want to go back over the Church just yet, but Benedict XVI is turning out to be nearly as able as Silvio Berlusconi in forcing us to write about him even when we would rather not.
As many other observers have pointed out, the present Pope is energetically engaged in rolling back the clock on the “errors” committed by the Roman Catholic Church in attempting to come to grips with the Modern World. We have written about a number of these actions, but the clearest and neatest of all was his “because I said so” (motu proprio) decision to bring the Latin Mass back into current usage.
(We know that “rolling back” clocks is a whatever, some kind of elegant error whose name escapes at the moment, but our generous editorial standards permit it…)
“Upper Italy” has already discussed the return to the so-called Tridentine Mass (here), but, since we are not on the whole trouble makers, did not go over what we thought was probably one of the silly bits: the fact that the old mass still contained the special Easter prayers for the conversion of the “perfidious” Jews. This had mostly been cleaned up and was usually pronounced as “Let us pray for the Jews,” stop and full stop.
To nearly universal astonishment, the Church announced two days ago that, while at least the “perfidious” reference will not be brought back to life, the prayer to convert the Jews and save them from their error in not becoming Roman Catholics will be fully revived. This is a translation (ours, but fair) of the new text:
“Let us pray also for the Jews, so that our Lord God may enlighten their hearts, so that they may recognize Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all men… (some getting up and down has been cut here) Eternal and omnipotent God, you who wish all men to be saved and to come to know the Truth, concede that with the entry of all the peoples into Your Church all of Israel be saved. For Christ Our Lord. Amen”
Since we have a very classy readership, we are also going to offer that in Latin so that you can genuflect at the appropriate moment:
“Oremus et pro Iudaeis Ut Deus et Dominus noster illuminet corda eorum, ut agnoscant Iesum Christum salvatorem omnium hominum. Oremus. Flectamus genua. Levate. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui vis ut omnes homines salvi fiant et ad agnitionem veritatis veniant, concede propitius, ut plenitudine gentium in Ecclesiam Tuam intrante omnis Israel salvus fiat. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen”
As has hardly been forgotten by the Jews or anyone else, the Church has a spotty track record in converting the peoples of Israel, the most memorabile of these occasions being the forced conversion of Spain’s Sephardic Jews under the reign of Queen Isabella, with the close technical assistance of the Spanish Inquisition.
Why then, after the solid work done over the last fifty or sixty years to take some of the sting out of the nasty blot of traditional Catholic anti-semitism, has this been done?
Part of the answer likely has to do with the man whose portrait floats just above this note, Saint John Chrysostom, usually considered the greatest preacher of the early Church. The Greek surname he was given, Chrysostomos, means in fact “golden mouth.” You can find a slightly generous view of him (here). This instead is what Benedict XVI has recently said about him:
“His is an exquisitely pastoral theology, in which there is constant concern for the coherence between the thought expressed by the word and lived existence. It is this, in particular, the common thread of the splendid catecheses, with which he prepared the catechumens to receive baptism. Just before he died, he wrote that man’s value is found in the ‘exact knowledge of true doctrine and in rectitude of life’ “
That would be OK, Upper Italy is all for exact knowledge and true doctrine. Unfortunately, Chrysostom found that part of his exact knowledge was the matter that he summed up in the catchy phrase “God hates the Jews,” a concept he refined in his extremely influential “Six Homilies.” We are going to quote at length here, since this is important and John, at least, was not a dull writer:
“How dare Christians have the slightest doings with Jews, those most miserable of all men! They are lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious bandits, pests of the universe. Indeed, an entire day would not suffice to tell of all their rapine, their avarice, their deception of the poor, their thievery, and their huckstering. Are they not inveterate murderers, destroyers, men possessed by the devil? Jews are impure and impious, and their synagogue is a house of prostitution, a lair of beasts, a place of shame and ridicule, the domicile of the devil, as is also the soul of the Jew. As a matter of fact, Jews worship the devil: their rites are criminal and unchaste; their religion a disease; their synagogue an assembly of crooks, a den of thieves, a cavern of devils, an abyss of perdition! Why are the Jews degenerate? Because of their hateful assassination of Christ. This supreme crime lies at the root of their degradation and woes. The rejection and the dispersion of the Jews was the work of God and because of His absolute abandonment of the Jews. Thus, the Jew will live under the yoke of slavery without end. God hates the Jews, and on Judgement Day He will say to those who sympathise with them: “Depart from me, for you have had doings with My murderers!” Flee, then, from their assemblies, fly from their houses, and, far from venerating the synagogue, hold it in hatred and aversion.” [St John Chrysostom: “Six Homilies Against the Jews”]
The text is famous and many attempts have been made to explain it away. Modern Catholic apologists usually attempt to suggest that the Saint was “really” attacking members of his own flock who still felt the call of their old faith. That may be, but hardly seems to make much difference. Whatever John thought he was trying to do or say, this is where Roman Catholicism has been “coming from” since the Fifth Century in its view of the Jews.
It is never wise to try and go back on stage after truly overheated dialogue, but we still feel called upon to sum up: What on Earth is going on in the Vatican? What are these people thinking of? Has everyone gone out of their minds?