The NY Times and other media have been accused by the Vatican in recent days of a smear campaign against the Pope. In fact, Italian media have been very harsh on the Vatican. So what wonder that the Vatican seized on a New York Times report to try to shift the blame to media outside Italy. Now the Times is reporting that in Italy "The center-left daily newspaper La Repubblica wrote, without attribution, that 'certain Catholic circles' believed the criticism of the church stemmed from 'a New York Jewish lobby.'"
By coincidence, the New York Times is located in: New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/world/europe/03church.html?hp=&pagewanted=allNumerous news organizations, meanwhile, are covering the story of the Pope's own preacher, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, comparing the Pope's victimhood at the hands of the cruel world over his alleged complicity in the pedophile scandal to the sufferings of the Jews. The preacher, in a speech delivered in the Pope's presence with the Pope neither disagreeing nor walking out, claimed to be reading from a letter sent to him from a Jewish friend whose identity he did not name. The letter, with the preacher quoting directly, described Catholics as "the faithful," normally not a term a Jew would use for Catholics as it is not their religion and it is more a term Catholics would use among themselves.
The preacher quoted the letter as saying the attacks on the church over the sex abuse scandal reminded the letter writer of "the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism." Just out of curiosity, are there aspects of anti-Semitism that are NOT particularly shameful? Is the letter real or was it a bald-faced attempt to associate ridicule of the Pope with Jewish victimhood in order to put the troubling thought of THE JEWS into the minds of the wavering faithful?
The Vatican was quick to dissociate from the comparison of the Pope's victimhood with Jewish suffering but that is Vatican standard procedure to let subordinates do the dirty work while keeping one's own hands clean. The Pope was right there. He said nothing. He also did not walk out.
Cantalamessa used quotes from the letter to argue that groups should not be blamed for the actions of individuals, even though, in fact, the Pope, as cardinal, was personally intimately involved in overseeing Vatican response to the abuse scandal over the years, which included classifying abuse cases as falling under threat of excommunication for anyone who blabbed, including the abuse victims. So much for the actions of mere individuals far away, way down the totem pole.
But the floodgates have now opened. The media is now awash in allegations of Catholic priest-perpetrated child abuse in one country after another. In the US 200 deaf children were molested by a priest in Wisconsin in one expose that the Pope allegedly knew about for years as a high Vatican official and failed to address. Two hundred deaf boys, the ultimate symbol of vulnerability because they couldn't speak out. And the future pope deaf to the deaf who couldn't easily defend themselves against the predator because they couldn't speak, being deaf. Thirty million Americans have walked out of the Catholic Church according to Ted Schmidt of the New Catholic Times, who asked, "Are they deaf to this?" The National Catholic Reporter called the now international scandal "the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in Church history."
Worldwide the Catholic Church is being hit by financial crisis in the form of a pincer movement, loss of revenue from millions of people leaving the church on the one hand combined with lawsuits on the other hand sapping millions of dollars more in settlements and legal fees.
There are now allegations of Catholic priest abuse of children in Austria, Holland, Switzerland, Ireland, where a 2,000-page commission report called sexual abuse in Catholic boys institutions there "endemic," Italy, Spain, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, England, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Canada. It's all over the Pacific, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. It's all over Europe. It's all over Latin America. It's all over North America.
And virtually every Catholic diocese in the Pope's native Germany. Peter Wensierski of the German weekly Der Spiegel ("The Mirror"), a writer who has tried to break the church's silence on abuse for a decade, says that in recent weeks he has been getting calls from abuse victims every twenty minutes. He said, "I think it's the biggest crisis since the time of the Nazis in Germany, since the time of fascism when the Church was accused to go hand in hand with Hitler and his Nazis." Wensierski says of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, long a key figure in the Vatican and now the Pope, "He's the best-informed man in the Church because he is the head of the Faith Congregation since 1981, more than twenty years he was informed about sexual abuse all over the world, not only in Germany."
After World War II the Vatican had an operation sneaking Nazis out of Europe to Latin America, known as the "Rat Line." Now there is a Pope named Ratzinger who was a member of the Hitler Youth as a child, with witness claims that he was really into it. And now critics of the Vatican's response to the abuse scandal are calling him "the Vatican rat" and posting pictures of him on YouTube with whiskers and rodent teeth. What wonder that there is a need to divert attention.
The taboos against discussing the issue outside the United States have been broken. There are allegations of hundreds of perpetrator priests, being described as a pedophile "mafia," and thousands of victims, with a massive international cover-up directed right from the Vatican, raising charges of racketeering. And while Cantalamessa blamed mere individuals, in linking the Pope's victimhood to Jewish victimhood he stood there as more than an individual but as a church spokesman, speaking in the presence of the Pope himself, who acquiesced by his presence and silence.
Meanwhile the official Vatican newspaper, LOsservatore Romano, published Cantalamessa's remarks. So much for disassociation.
The same preacher, Cantalamessa, in the same speech, also said that, why, by golly, by gum, it occurred to him that this year Easter fell at the same time as the Jewish holiday of Passover (whose dating from year to year varies from the civil calendar as it conforms to the Jewish calendar).
This just happened to OCCUR to him, you know what, come to think of it, as a matter of fact!
This is innuendo.
See, it's all very suspicious. There must be SOME reason why everyone is getting on the Vatican's case. And NOW IT CAN BE TOLD. Passover falling this year on Easter was JUST TOO BIG A COINCIDENCE TO BE CHANCE. Without ever saying it, and while claiming to be merely making a comparison between Jewish innocent suffering and the suffering of the Pope over charges of his complicity in the abuse scandal, the preacher is pointing a finger at the Jews while pretending not to. It's almost inevitable that Jewish leaders will object to the comparison Cantalamessa made, which trivializes the Holocaust and Jewish suffering. Bingo, instant clash between Catholics and Jews to rally the faithful around the Pope. He's a victim of the Jews!
Cantalamessa also claimed that the letter writer had referred to criticism of the Vatican as violence against the church, as if mere words criticizing the Vatican's inaction and worse on the abuse scandal could in any way be compared to the physical violence against Jews in the Holocaust and pogroms through the ages. The poor Vatican with its magnificent palace, sovereign territory, military and security police. The poor Pope who is waited on hand and foot and protected by the Pontifical Guard and has all his needs provided for him, food, clothing, shelter, communication, transportation and healthcare. How he SUFFERS like a persecuted ghetto Jew. Hitler, incidentally, was born to Catholic parents. He was never excommunicated. And the Vatican has long been accused of complicity in the Holocaust and atrocities against Jews for centuries. But no. Criticizing the Pope is anti-Semitic-style VIOLENCE. And we got us a Jew who said so!
Here's the deal. Blame the liberal media. When that doesn't work, start sleazing your way over to blaming the JEWISH media and the Times, AKA "The Jewish lobby in New York." Wasn't the Jewish lobby supposed to be based in Washington? Forget that. Now it's based in New York. Everything can be swept under the rug with the usual diversion to the Jewish scapegoat. Just like in the good old days. And with anti-Semitism resurging across Europe nowadays it is extremely irresponsible for the leadership of a billion Catholics to play this card.
More links:
AFP report:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iJSS2_d9ujivbC3DlvZCioRJZIAABBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8601084.stmHaaretz has the story with comments by Jewish leaders:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1160706.htmlJerusalem Post, with more comments by Jewish leaders:
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=172337Some of the reader comments there are scathing, including one calling Rev. Cantalamessa, "Cantomessup."
Video reports:
BBC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2JgRF7uA4EWolf Blitzer/Situation Room:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK3FRW2MS7wMore Vatican-Jewish friction, videos:
Vatican lifts excommunication of Holocaust denying bishop who said there were no gas chambers and defended the Protocols of the Elders of Zion anti-Semitic tract:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXIiWx1gm0Y&NR=1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exp4iSHWBs4&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zzKOqhOKEo&feature=related
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
