More Catholic than the Bishops

When I wrote Liberal Jews and Religious Liberty, my goal was to demonstrate how conservative proponents of expansive religious liberty exemptions would prevent liberal religious claimants from accessing those same protections. For example, I predicted that conservatives would challenge the authenticity of Jewish religious commitments insofar as they were liberal (and thus presumptively non-religious in a universe where true religion = conservative Christianity).

With that in mind, this is a great story about brewing contretemps between the Attorney General of Florida, James Uthmeier, and the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops over the subject of vaccine mandates in schools. Florida law requires that private schools in the state's voucher program to allow parents to religiously exempt their children from school vaccine mandates. As an expression of their own religious commitments, however, Florida's Catholic schools do not want to permit such an exemption, as part of its pursuit of the "common good" and ensuring that its schools are safe havens for the elderly and children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.

In a fit of extraordinary arrogance, Uthmeier (who is himself Catholic) simply asserted that the bishops had "no legitimate religious reason" for denying vaccine exemptions. When the bishops replied that it was not for a state official to tell the Catholic Church what its religious commitments are, Uthmeier whined that vaccine mandates would represent a "completely new teaching." There were a lot of theological/antisemitic reasons why I felt Jews would be especially vulnerable to this sort of authenticity-policing, but it is striking to see that even the Catholic Church can have the authenticity of its religious views questioned when it speaks in a more liberal voice.

Uthmeier also questioned "whether a private school that doesn’t follow state laws protecting parental rights and deeply held beliefs should still be permitted to participate in state programs and receive state funding." This is, indeed, the million-dollar question that will arise again and again now that the Supreme Court has detonated historical barriers between church and state in allowing (and in many cases compelling) state funding of religious schools (and this very controversy illuminates why government "entanglement" with religion was historically seen as such a threat to religious liberty). 

Of course, the question Uthmeier raises is not intrinsically partisan -- in other cases, the variant will be a religious school that wants to discriminate against LGBTQ kids in defiance of state laws requiring equal treatment. But this situation represents a particularly weak case for denying a religious exemption to the church, since the entire premise of the Florida law is about protecting rights of conscience. It can't hold that out as a paramount interest and then withdraw it for religious claimants who express the "wrong" view.

Nonetheless, resolving these cases will be inherently messy, which leaves a lot of room for bias, which leaves ample opportunity for religious and political favoritism. So my baseline prediction remains that conservative adjudicators will grant the exemptions when it favors conservative beliefs (you can discriminate against the gay kids), and will not when it doesn't (you can't have a vaccine mandate). Either the Supreme Court didn't intend for that sort of religious preferentialism to be the consequence of its new free exercise jurisprudence -- or it did.

The Anti-Anti-Racism Conspiracy in Oregon

This is an infuriating story on many levels:

The principal at The Madeleine School, a private Catholic school in Northeast Portland, summoned Portland police to the campus in late March when the parents of a Black student demanded to know her plan of action after their fourth grade son reported being called a racist slur on the playground.

Just 72 hours later, the school expelled the boy, effective immediately, saying his parents — Moda Health executive Karis Stoudamire-Phillips and renowned jazz musician Mike Phillips, both prominent Black Portlanders with long histories of volunteering both citywide and in Portland’s tight-knit Catholic school community — had violated the school’s code of conduct for parents.

The students accused of hurling the slur denied it, but the boy's account was corroborated by at least one other witness.

There are a couple of different layers here. One is that the Archbishop of Portland has had a tense relationship with the Catholic school community here, stemming from his effort to enforce conservative gender orthodoxy over the objections of many students, parents, and lay leaders. This appears to be part of a broader intrusion of right-wing culture war shibboleths, which helps make more sense of this part of the story:

According to that child’s father, who did not want to be named to protect his child’s privacy, Principal Tresa Rast told him and his wife that she suspected that their son had made up the entire incident and recommended that the child see a therapist so he could be “deprogrammed” from the anti-racist training he’d received while previously attending public school in Portland.

From what I can tell in the article, the child had been attending the Madeleine school since Kindergarten, so it's unclear when he would have been "programmed" by Portland Public Schools at all.

But of course, searching for logic misses the point. Rast appears to have an understanding where "racism" is something entirely made up -- so made up that Black children need to be "programmed" into believing its existence so they can foist false charges upon innocent White children. It isn't hard to draw a line here to the MAGA demand to suppress any and all American history tellings that accurately recount our nation's racial past (and present) -- the entire theory is that all such stories simply are lies concocted to assert control. It is a classic conspiracy theory (which is why Rast could jump to the absurdist notion that the child needed "deprogramming" -- an outrageous claim even if the child had been a regular PPS attendee).

And we also shouldn't lose sight of the fundamental cruelty this politics inevitably inflicts. Here is how the school handled the expulsion of the child:

“It has become clear that the relationship of trust and confidence that is necessary for a collaborative partnership between parent and school officials for the good of your child no longer exists,” Rummell wrote. “Our partnership is hereby immediately terminated as of the end of the day, April 3. This decision is final and from our perspective this matter is now concluded.”

Their son was allowed to return to campus one more time, Stoudamire-Phillips said, to say goodbye to his teachers.

“There wasn’t a dry eye in the classroom,” she said. “Teachers from all over the school were coming in to say bye to him. He knows that he is loved by that community. He just doesn’t understand why these two leaders keep making decisions that have hurt him.”

"He doesn't understand why these two leaders keep making decisions that have hurt him" Juxtapose that against the brusqueness of his dismissal, of the ripping of this child from a community he had been enmeshed in and valued. It's heart-wrenching. And it emerges from people who prioritize of national kulturkampf demands over the interests and humanity of the children in their care. This, above else, is what characterizes the current MAGA orientation towards so many children -- they pour out hatred and disdain and scorn, because hurting the kids matters less to them than cleaving to their own fantastical tales of resistance to "wokeness".

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXXVIII: Their Own Pedophilia

No, this isn't going to be a post about "Bernie Bernstein". That's people blaming the Jews for exposing pedophilia. Big difference.

No, this is about a Catholic priest, recently convicted of sexually abusing children, who reportedly told them that when he was fondling their testicles, it was actually "an old Jewish ritual."

Putting aside the inherent horror of the crime, there's something extra abhorrent about a Catholic priest trying to communicate to his victims that it all actually traces back to Jews and Jewish ritual -- an attempt which has horrible echoes of a long line of Christian antisemitism sowing lies and slander about Jewish religion and practices. Nope. Nope, nope nope.

Catholicism ... WOW!

This looks like a really great document released by the Vatican:

The new document, titled “The Gifts and Calling of God are Irrevocable,” discussed at length how Christianity is rooted in Judaism. Because of this, it said, the Church is “obliged to view evangelization to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views.” 

It added, “In concrete terms this means that the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews.” 

Goals in Jewish-Catholic dialogue, according to the document, include “joint engagement throughout the world for justice, peace, conservation of creation, and reconciliation” in a way that would make the religious contribute toward world peace. “Religious freedom guaranteed by civil authority is the prerequisite for such dialogue and peace,” it said. 

“In Jewish-Christian dialogue the situation of Christian communities in the state of Israel is of great relevance, since there — as nowhere else in the world — a Christian minority faces a Jewish majority,” the document said. “Peace in the Holy Land — lacking and constantly prayed for — plays a major role in dialogue between Jews and Christians.” 

Among other goals, the document said, were “jointly combating all manifestations of racial discrimination against Jews and all forms of anti-Semitism, which have certainly not yet been eradicated and re-emerge in different ways in various contexts.” It particularly stressed the need for “unceasing vigilance and sensitivity in the social sphere” and called for tangible joint Jewish-Catholic cooperation, such as in charitable activity to help “the poor, disadvantaged and sick.”

 Sounding the right notes for me.

Friendly Reminders

I'm not sure how I feel about this:

Sounds like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a lovely meeting with Pope Francis.

They talked for about a half-hour, focused on peace talks and touched on Iran. Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, encouraged Francis to visit Israel. And Netanyahu gave the pope a book with the inscription, “To his Holiness Pope Franciscus, a great shepherd of our common heritage.”

The one slightly uncomfortable part may have been that the book was about one of the worst things the Catholic Church has ever done to the Jews.

Awkward!

The book was “The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain,” the scholarly magnum opus written by the prime minister’s late father, Benzion. The in-depth tome on the Spanish Inquisition describes how the church persecuted, and often executed, masses of Jewish converts to Catholicism who were accused of secretly practicing Judaism.

Pope Francis strikes me as the sort who would not take offense. But it's not like Bibi is exactly Mr. Deft Touch when it comes to diplomacy.

Midweek Roundup

Going to Chicago next weekend, Minnesota next week. Lot's of good stuff on my browser, which I don't have as much to say on as I should.

* * *

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League issues a warning: "Jews had better not make enemies of their Catholic friends, since there are so few of them." He attributed the comment to former NYC mayor Ed Koch, but Koch denies saying it.

Arizona SoS, already under fire for being birther-curious, gives the conspiracy a new spin -- Obama was born in Hawaii but lied about being born in Kenya to get into college.

Kieran Healy gives a satirical statement from UVA's Board of Visitors.

The National Review bringing aboard unrepentant racist David Yerushalmi prompts Ta-Nehisi Coates to write two great posts on "politically correct conservatism", where the most offensive thing you can say is that anyone, anywhere is a bigot -- even someone who wants to criminalize being a Muslim with a 20 year prison sentence.

Interesting study on how the triumphs and failures of male and female Olympic athletes are described by commentators.

Big Boxing Weekend Roundup

This weekend has a lot of great action. Not to mention game two of the Stanley Cup Finals.

* * *

I posted this on my Facebook wall, but it's good enough for a double-dip -- David Hirsh does a beautiful job discussing the BDS campaign's treatment of Jews parallel to Shylock as BDSers tried to sabotage an Israeli production of The Merchant of Venice.

Peter E. Gordon has a fascinating review of a book detailing the history of the Catholic Church's Nostra Aetate.

"Memes are ridiculous!", he said, while unironically citing a meme.

The latest reports are that Stuxnet was a joint American/Israeli project aimed at sabotaging Iranian nuclear capacity.

Nancy Leong asks if diversity is for White people. She's got a cool paper coming out in the Harvard Law Review arguing that the diversity rationale has the effect of commodifying non-White racial identity. She thinks that's a bad thing, I am more circumspect about it.

J.J. Goldberg looks at several Jewish polls (including the one I discussed yesterday), finds that they're all saying very similar things (to wit, Jews are very liberal).

It's Grading Time!

Grading exams. Really, my first time out (obviously I graded last term too, but I only had six students and four of them did reaction papers throughout the term). This, hopefully, explains my silence.

* * *

All-boys Catholic school forfeits league championship rather than play baseball against a (*gasp*) girl.

Shorter Joshua Trevino: Physically assaulting people who look weird is what I look for in a candidate.

Jonah Goldberg is a moron: A closer look.

Out in Florida, one entrepreneur is selling a Trayvon Martin gun range target (George Zimmerman's attorney, unsurprisingly, harshly condemned this).

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on marriage equality.

Interfaith Dialogue: The Good and the Bad

The good: An interesting conference brought together various Imams and Rabbis to explore the commonalities between Shariah and Halacha.

The bad: The Vatican's new liaison to the Jewish community is very much getting off on the wrong foot.

"The Liberty To Do What We Ought."

New York state appears on the verge of recognizing gay marriage, and that has put opponents of LGBT equality in a bit of a panic. Take New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan:

Dolan equated the move to allow same-sex marriage to life in China or North Korea, where "government presumes daily to 'redefine' rights, relationships, values and natural law."

"Please, not here!," Dolan wrote. "We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought."

Legalizing gay marriage is precisely akin to living under North Korean totalitarianism -- of course. But I'm more interested in that last line, that "true freedom" is not "license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought."

Can you think of a more Orwellian definition of freedom? It is a definition of liberty that could only appeal to a tyrant. Indeed, it bears far more in common with the standards of "liberty" in places like North Korea than marriage equality ever could. After all, Articles 62-86 of the North Korea constitution contain many putative protections for human freedom and liberty, but all are circumscribed by various restrictions which demand that any such "liberty" be in furtherance of the normative principles of North Korean socialism (see, e.g., Articles 63, 64, 68, 81, 82, 84, and 85). The effect, of course, is that they don't have freedom or liberty at all.

In North Korea, they have only "the liberty to do what they ought." In America, we've charted a different path.

You'd Think the Church Would be Deemphasizing the Centrality of its Priests' Genetalia

I think Christian denominations have every right to define their own theology and religious practices, free from my interference. Nonetheless, I find the latest Catholic defense of barring women from priesthood to be a little baffling:

Barring women from being Catholic priests is not the result of sexism 2,000 years ago, it's because women cannot fulfill a basic function of the priesthood, "standing in the place of Jesus," a leading British Catholic thinker argued Monday.

"This teaching is not at all a judgment on women's abilities or rights. It says something about the specific role of the priest in Catholic understanding - which is to represent Jesus, to stand in his place," argued Father Stephen Wang in a statement sent out by the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales.
[...]
The bottom line is that Jesus chose 12 men - and no women - to be his apostles, Wang argues.

The choice was "deliberate and significant, not just for that first period of history, but for every age," Wang says.

Men and women are equal in Christianity, he continues, but "this does not mean that our sexual identity as men and women is interchangeable. Gender is not just an accident."

He compared the role of a priest to that of an actor playing King Arthur or British soccer star Wayne Rooney in a movie.

"No one would be surprised if I said I wanted a male actor to play the lead," he said, admitting the analogy was "weak."

But, he said, "it shouldn't surprise us if we expect a man to stand 'in the person of Christ' as a priest, to represent Jesus in his humanity - a humanity that is not sexually neutral."

Indeed, that analogy is weak. But more fundamentally, I have to think one can believe that sex is not interchangeable while still not considering a critical component of Jesus' human representation to be his penis (why not his height or -- let's have some fun, shall we? -- skin color? Would you hire George Clooney to play Magic Johnson? On second thought, don't answer that). If I were a Christian, I'd find that message to be incredibly degrading. The essential Jesus: universal love, global salvation, and a cock.

But whatever. I'm an interested spectator in this fight, no more.

Back in the Swing Roundup

Go to school, read a book, be a lawyer/
Hell yeah, man, I'm all for the cause.

* * *

New study reveals parents believe all teens but their own to be hyper-sexual (their own teens are entirely asexual).

Fox News is annoyed that President Obama didn't gratuitously insult American Jews (the Jewish community appreciated the gesture). I know exactly how committed the conservative Christian movement is to fully including Jews in the fabric of America.

Statements of Avrom Krengel (chair of the South African Zionist Federation) and Richard Goldstone after their recent meeting.

Lebanon delays asking Hezbollah to disarm.

The Judeosphere predicts a fall into obscurity for Walt & Mearsheimer (the latter's work on neo-realism will not soon be forgotten, but hopefully his ill-considered forays into the study of domestic lobbying and Mideast politics will be).

More evidence of the Catholic Church shuffling around predator priests.

Phoebe Maltz on literature and anti-Semitism.

Of Anti-Semitism and "Collective Guilt"

Still reeling from sexual abuse allegations that have implicated the entire Church, up to and including the Pope, the Vatican is now claiming that public attacks against it are reminiscent of classic anti-Semitism:

As the pope listened, Cantalamessa read the congregation a part of a letter he received from a Jewish friend, who said he was "following with disgust the violent and concentric attacks against the Church, the pope..."

"The use of stereotypes, the shifting of personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," he quoted from the letter.

Of course, it is true that the shift from personal to collective responsibility is a hallmark of anti-Semitism.* But that's not what's going on here. The allegations against the Catholic Church are that the body's institutional hierarchy, including then-Cardinal Ratzinger, has been complicit in the perpetuation of massive amounts of sexual abuse against children. It doesn't stop being "personal guilt" because lots of people are guilty. Many institutional actors in the Catholic Church were aware of this abuse, in a position to respond, but failed to do so. For that, they are guilty. And unlike Jews, who lack a formal corporate organization, Catholicism organizes itself as a unified hierarchy, which does mean that, insofar as the organization was aware of this behavior, the organization can rightfully be seen as carrying some measure of responsibility.

I don't apologize for saying that. And I think it neither anti-Catholic, nor reminiscent of anti-Semitism, to say so.

* Fun thought experiment: Here's a way to reveal how much you think anti-Semitism disappeared. Let's say a DA started getting pretty aggressive in subpoenaing Church officials (including potentially the Pope), and filing indictments against the guilty actor. Do you think it would be seen as relevant if the DA was Jewish? Because I certainly do -- and it's a fact that would not be presented in a benign way.

UPDATE: The pastor has apologized to both Jews and pedophilia victims.

Sins of the Mother

A Catholic school is refusing to enroll a student because her parents are lesbians.

It's not that there is zero rationale for this within a Catholic framework that views homosexuality as immoral. And I admit I have a hard time putting myself in the shoes of those who view homosexuality as contrary to God's law. But it still strikes me as deeply wrong, what the school is doing. To effectively banish the child from your community, because one disapproves of her parents, seems like a corruption of Christianity to me. I could be wrong, and I'm not Christian or Catholic, so it's not ultimately up to me how they interpret their doctrines. But this does offend me even a step further than "normal" anti-gay prejudice does. The corruption of blood angle seems to push it that extra mile.

UPDATE: The Daily Camera has more, including a rather stunning statement by Rev. William Breslin arguing that the community has "ample love" but "a scarcity of discipleship" (hence his decision to, in his words, "be on the side of what was lacking"). I should note that I don't really buy the argument that because the parents are becoming part of the community of the school, the decision is really one against the parents. Obviously, the child is the one experiencing the deprivation, hence, I think it is perfectly fair to characterize the act as being against the child.

Element of Understanding

The Guam Catholic Archdiocese adopts the Dinesh D'Souza line of argument and says laws promoting gay rights show Islamic terrorists have an "element of truth" to their claims about American society:

The culture of homosexuality is a culture of self-absorption because it does not value self-sacrifice. It is a glaring example of what John Paul II has called the culture of death. Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture. That is why they repress such behavior by death. Their culture is anything but one of self-absorption. It may be brutal at times, but any culture that is able to produce wave after wave of suicide bombers (women as well as men) is a culture that at least knows how to value self-sacrifice. Terrorism as a way to oppose the degeneration of the culture is to be rejected completely since such violence is itself another form of degeneracy. One, however, does not have to agree with the gruesome ways that the fundamentalists use to curb the forces that undermine their culture to admit that the Islamic fundamentalist charge that Western Civilization in general and the U.S.A. in particular is the “Great Satan” is not without an element of truth. It makes no sense for the U.S. Government to send our boys to fight Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, while at the same time it embraces the social policies embodied in Bill 185 (as President Obama has done). Such policies only furnish further arguments for the fundamentalists in their efforts to gain more recruits for the war against the “Great Satan.” ...

Wowzers. I find it particularly noteworthy that the archdiocese clearly finds Islamic terrorists to be morally superior to gays and lesbians. Not good people, but clearly superior. That's some cross-cultural understanding I'd rather not get behind. But it does follow a noted (and despicable trend) by which gay rights will "destroy the earth", are a graver threat than slavery, and are worse than child rape.

Stay in Place

The comments to the post I flagged earlier this week are one of the clearest examples of what happens when Jews refuse to take a subservient position before their Christian fellows. For noting that the Catholic Church hardly has clean hands with regards to the Holocaust (particularly from its source as a wellspring of European anti-Semitism for literally millennia), I'm told that the Jews should apologize for communism and (obviously) for killing Christ. It's amazing just how shallow the old views lie buried.

Christians today respect Jews precisely as far as they have in the past: namely, they respect Jews who don't assert any Jewishness. In the past, we had to convert. Today, we simply have to shut up and not assert any theological or social autonomy. The minute Jews try and resist bogus "Judeo-Christian" claims made in our name, or imply that Christian practice might not actually be religion perfected (particularly in how it treats Jews), or note our own experiences being oppressed and persecuted by Christians, all that talk of fellowship flies out the window. There is never -- never -- any acknowledgment that there might a problem on their end. It's always Jewish something -- neurosis, obstinacy, stubbornness, bloodlust, avarice, whatever the slur d'jour -- that is to blame. Jews have no active role in this worldview.

As far as I can see it, the relationship the Christian community (left and right) wants with the Jews is completely hierarchical. They are the enlightened, and we are the damned; they are the teachers, and we are the pupils; they are master, and we are the servant. I'd say it has to change if there is to be any improvement in Jewish-Christian relations. But honestly, I don't see any impetus for Christians to change the ways -- they've shown no inclination that they think the current state of affairs is remotely problematic, and when Jews try to raise their voices to speak out, we're ignored, shunned, or labeled the problem.

It's moments like this when I get full-on separatist. There is simply no indication that Christians feel like listening, learning, or stepping back from the unbelievable arrogance which has characterized their relationship with Jews for centuries. There are individuals who have broken from the mold, and I salute them, but they're few and far between, and might as well be completely absent against the broader backdrop of the Christian community, which continues to organize itself in a fundamentally anti-Semitic, imperialistic fashion. Well forget that. If they feel like having a conversation as equals, they know where to find me. In the meantime, they can know that as far as I'm concerned, they're implicated in an anti-Semitic agenda top to bottom.

Master of the Jews

So the Jews who attended Pope Benedict XVI's Holocaust memorial speech were not too pleased, hoping that the Pope would take the opportunity to express regret on behalf of the Church for its role in the Shoah. The Pope refrained to do so, and Israelis are disappointed. For his part, Alberto Hurtado is, shall we say, "outraged by the outrage", in a spectacularly arrogant post entitled "The Catholic Church has to Apologize???" (yes, with the three question marks).

Hurtado claims that "the Church SAVE[D] more Jews than any other organization (possibly outside the Allied Forces)". Let's ignore the absurd parenthetical (the Allies and Russians together are responsible for saving every Jew who survived). I'm pretty well versed in Holocaust history and literature. In the class I took several years ago, "Moral and Theological Implications of the Holocaust", we had a substantial unit on the role of the Catholic Church in the atrocities. The interpretation of the historical events are disputed, but all told the story is hardly one of absolution.

It is not true to say that the Church ignored or endorsed the genocide occurring around it -- it did provide some safe havens, and did at times speak out against the atrocities. But by and large its diplomatic position was of studious neutrality, and would refuse to pass judgment on many discriminatory policies passed against Jews by German occupiers or even specifically endorsed them as not in conflict with Catholic teachings. We also can't ignore the fact that the Catholic Church was a primary historical source for the deep, vicious European anti-Semitism that was the only reason the Holocaust was possible in the first place. Even if the current Papal leadership was more enlightened by 1940, "on the ground" there was still plenty of Catholic anti-Semitism that was decidedly lethal to Jews (something which Pope Benedict, who attempted to reverse the excommunication of a Holocaust denier, should be more attuned to than most). Some Jews were saved by the shield of the Catholic Church in Rome, many more were skewered by the sword of the Catholic polity in Poland. Just as it has been for most of its existence, the Catholic Church as a totality was an institution that held much peril for Jews during WWII.

Ultimately, even as an institution the Catholic Church was quite cautious in how it opposed the Holocaust, rarely taking particularly bold moral or political stands and doing little that might threaten its own power or influence. We might say the Church exhibited an enlightened neutrality, and we might also say that this was a great cry better than many of its neighbors. But it still carries its own share of culpability, historically and contemporaneously, and that deserves apology.

But amazingly, this wasn't the most offensive part of Hurtado's post. While I find the Catholic (really, Gentile) defensiveness over their complicity in past and present anti-Semitic practices unbelievably annoying, it is alas hardly anything new or notable. Where Hurtado crosses from "masseuse of history" into "unbelievable asshole" is when he starts lecturing Jews about how they don't understand their own theology. He actually writes the following passage, which made me honestly wonder if I was reading a parody: "[A]s a master Theologian I can tell Benedict's speech is incredibly sensitive to Jewish theology." He then talks for awhile about how important "names" and "memory" are in "Old Testament" models, and concludes:

So if the Pope invokes the perpetual reality of remembering and “knowing” the victims “names” he is in fact paying the victims of the Holocaust the highest theological complement he can give.

I’m really sick of this drummed up pettiness.

I am just baffled by the lack of awareness here. I really am. If we didn't take Pope Benedict's statement well, it isn't because we're misinterpreting our own traditions. Jews get to decide what we find theologically complimentary.

We're looking at a major dose of Christian conceit which aggregates to itself the right to tell Jews what their own religion is. One might think, for example, that post-Holocaust Jewish theology might be relevant to this discussion, but it doesn't show up anywhere (indeed, I'm curious if Hurtado has any familiarity with it) -- I suspect because Christians are heavily invested in a model of Judaism that says the tree bears no more fruit: Everything there is to know about Judaism can be deduced from Biblical texts written prior to the coming of Jesus. After Jesus, Judaism ceased to be a "live" religion, and became a relic or fossil. Does Hurtado understand just how flagrantly anti-Semitic this all is? Probably not -- if his views on the Holocaust are any indication, everything the Catholic Church does short of active participation in killings is a-okay.

If one wants to understand why Jewish/Catholic relations are at a nadir right now, this post is Exhibit A. The current incarnation of the Vatican has continually dealt with legitimate Jewish concerns with an attitude of airy dismissal. Of all the institutions that has zero right to take such a position towards the Jewish community, the Catholic Church ranks quite high. Their position seems to be because they aren't actively encouraging mass killings of Jews (anymore), they've satisfied all their obligations. I'm sorry, but I don't grade anti-Semitism on a curve.

Break Out Session

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (not to be confused with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) is announcing a full court press for Jewish-Muslim dialogue. Noting the efforts at rapprochement with the Catholic Church after Pope Benedict XVI's recent missteps, they say that while that relationship is important, the most opportunity avenue for dialogue is no longer Judeo-Christian but Judeo-Muslim.

So far, so good. But then we get to the concluding graf:

"The battle will be uphill, the struggle difficult, the discomfort inevitable, but Muslim leaders have the opportunity to echo the historic declaration of the Vatican's Nostra Aetate," [Rabbi Marc] Schneier said, referring to the Catholic Church's official repudiation of the age-old accusation of deicide against the Jews.

Two problems. First, this implies that the only purpose of Judeo-Muslim dialogue is for Muslim leaders to see the light and issue a declaration recanting past anti-Semitism. There is no indication that Jews, too, will have to make any concessions or indeed, have anything to learn at all.

Second, if the point of this article was to break beyond the strictures of Jewish-Catholic discourse, this is a really foolish statement. Unlike Catholics, there is no centralized Islamic religious hierarchy which could issue a statement like the Nostra Aetate -- or for that matter, one which is promulgating the sort of anti-Semitic ideology that required that proclamation in the first place. The dialogue between Jews and Muslims is going to be more akin to Jewish-Protestant dialogue, which recognizes the factionalism and decentralization of the parties and doesn't expect some broad statement of consensus at the end. Jews and Protestants continue to talk even though some Protestants continue to harbor extreme anti-Semitic views. Jews and Muslims will have to proceed in dialogue the same way. The decision on which particular persons and groups we talk to and which we ignore is, of course, up for discussion -- but it's not going to be that similar to how Jews and Catholics worked this endeavor.

Benedict 180s

Pope Benedict has made an abrupt turn-around on the Richard Williamson scandal, demanding that he repudiate his Holocaust-denial if he is to be readmitted into the church. This comes after a furious reaction by the Jewish community to the rehabilitation of Mr. Williamson, who was to be readmitted to the Catholic religious body as a gesture of reconciliation with its radically conservative wing. Previously, the church had brushed aside the outrage, with Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone saying he considered the matter "closed" after Benedict denounced Holocaust deniers last week.

It is good to see the Vatican take this step. It would have been better if they hadn't so badly screwed up in the first place, then tried to airily dismiss the legitimate complaints of the Jewish community. But late is better than never. It'll be interesting to see what Williamson does.

Cutting Loose

Israel's chief rabbinate cuts ties with the Vatican (this is separate from Israel's diplomatic ties with the Vatican, which remain unchanged). It's unfortunate, but the Catholic Church's decision that bringing a fringe group of conservatives back into the flock was so important so as to require diluting its position against anti-Semitism is one that needed response. I'm glad, frankly, that Israel's Jewish community is standing up for itself in this respect.

I'm not going to pretend the Jewish community is powerful enough to change the Catholic Church's decision, or even really influence it. But we are powerful enough so that we can ignore them if they demonstrate they don't give a fig about what we think.