Christian Answers to Two Roman Catholic Questions on “Catholic Answers”

The show that calls itself “Catholic Answers,” recently featured a Missouri Synod Lutheran caller as highlighted on a recent Dividing Line. In response to the caller, the hosts began asking him some questions. I wouldn’t be surprised if you get these same questions from some of your Roman Catholic friends and acquaintances, particularly those who listen to “Catholic Answers.”

Short Answer: John 20:31 says, “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” And many other verses.

Brief Explanation: John’s statement implies that a person could pick up John’s gospel, read it, believe it, and receive eternal life in that way. Moreover, John’s statement at least hints at the fact that the other gospels have a similar purpose – they are written for us to read, believe, and have eternal life.

Response: The sola or only of “Sola Scriptura” is simply a negative claim – in other words, it’s saying that Scripture is unique – there’s nothing else like Scripture. If you want some verses that emphasize the unique character of Scripture, those also exist.

For example, Romans 3:4 says “God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, “That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.’ (Psalm 51:4)” This emphasizes the crucial distinction between God’s word and mens’ words.

“ Deuteronomy 13:1-5 If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, “Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them;” thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.

The point to take away from that passage is that even if someone has authority that appears to be attested by working wonders, the person’s message should be judged by the Scriptures (in this case, by the Pentateuch).

Paul similarly warns the Galatians: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:8) Someone may object that “preached” could refer to the gospel Paul delivered orally. Nevertheless, we have that gospel in written form today.

Likewise, the Bereans are commended for subjecting the apostles’ own preaching to a comparison with the Scriptures: “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)

Short answer: 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:” If that is true, then it follows that all Scripture has one divine author even if it has many human authors.

Longer answer: Indeed, we have examples of Scripture interpreting itself explicitly, such as the quotation from John 20:31, above, which provides a purpose for the book of John, and more broadly for Scripture. Other examples include the citation of Old Testament passages in the New Testament, together with explanations of what they meant or how they were fulfilled in Christ. Indeed, sometimes the New Testament includes Jesus’ own explanation of his parables. Numerous other examples could be provided.

Rejoinder: But even if we had no answer, can the matter seriously be doubted? Does the person asking the question really think that the Bible is either incomprehensible or should not be understood by taking one part in relation to another?

Even the Roman Catholic “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” puts it this somewhat poetic (and consequently imprecise) way (CCC 102):

“ Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely: You recall that one and the same Word of God extends throughout Scripture, that it is one and the same Utterance that resounds in the mouths of all the sacred writers, since he who was in the beginning God with God has no need of separate syllables; for he is not subject to time.

We understand that Rome wishes to deny Christians the ability to judge her doctrines by Scripture, but surely it cannot be denied that Scripture does interpret Scripture. How else would one read it? As just isolated statements each possibly meaning anything at all? The very notion seems bizarre.-TurretinFan

Adolf Hitler, as quoted in Phyllis Petty, "Christian Hatred and Persecution of the Jews"

That is only one source. Here are some better sourced statements.

“the legislation enacted in the 1930s by the Nazis in their Nuremberg Laws and by the Italian Fascists with their racial laws—which stripped the Jews of their rights as citizens—was modeled on measures that the [Roman Catholic] Church itself had enforced for as long as it was in a position to do so” (9).

In 1466,

in festivities sponsored by Pope Paul II, Jews were made to race naked through the streets of the city. A particularly evocative later account describes them: “Races were run on each of the eight days of the Carnival by horses, asses and buffaloes, old men, lads, children, and Jews. Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them, and at the same time, more amusing for the spectators. They ran from the Arch of Domitian to the Church of St. Mark at the end of the Corso at full tilt, amid Rome’s taunting shrieks of encouragement and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily. Two centuries later, these practices, now deemed indecorous and unbefitting the dignity of the Holy City, were stopped by Clement IX. In their place the Pope assessed a heavy tax on the Jews to help pay the costs of the city’s Carnival celebrations.

But various other Carnival rites continued. For many years the rabbis of the ghetto were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the streets to the jeers of the crow, pelted by a variety of missiles. Such rites were not peculiar to Rome. In Pisa in the eighteenth century, for example, it was customary each year, as part of Carnival, for students to chase after the fattest Jew in the city, capture him, weigh him, and then make him give them his weight in sugar-coated almonds.

In 1779, Pius VI resurrected some of the Carnival rites that had been neglected in recent years. Most prominent among them was the feudal rite of homage, in which ghetto officials, made to wear special clothes, stood before an unruly mob in a crowded piazza, making an offering to Rome’s governors.

It was this practice that occasioned the formal plea from the ghetto to Pope Gregory XVI in 1836. The Jews argued that such rites should be abandoned, and cited previous popes who had ordered them halted. They asked that, in his mercy, the Pope now do the same. On November 5, the Pope met with his secretary of state to discuss the plea. A note on the secretary of state’s copy of the petition, along with his signature, records the Pope’s decision: “It is not opportune to make any innovation.” The annual rites continued.

“When all is said and done, the [Roman Catholic] Church’s claim of lack of responsibility for the kind of anti-Semitism that made the Holocaust possible comes down to this: The Roman Catholic Church never called for, or sanctioned, the mass murder of the Jews. Yes, the Jews should be stripped of their rights as equal citizens. Yes, they should be kept from contact with the rest of society. But Christian Charity and Christian theology forbade good Christians to round them up and murder them.”

See more in part 5 of a series (1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5, 6 .

Cum nimis absurdum was a papal bull issued by Pope Paul IV dated 14 July 1555. It takes its name from its first words:^[1] "Since it is absurd and utterly inconvenient that the Jews, who through their own fault were condemned by God to eternal slavery..."

The bull revoked all the rights of the Jewish community and placed religious and economic restrictions on Jews in the Papal States, renewed anti-Jewish legislation and subjected Jews to various degradations and restrictions on their personal freedom.

The bull established the Roman Ghetto and required the Jews of Rome, which had existed as a community since before Christian times and numbered about 2,000 at the time, to live in it. The Ghetto was a walled quarter with three gates that were locked at night. Jews were also restricted to one synagogue per city. Under the bull, Jewish males were required to wear a pointed yellow hat, and Jewish females a yellow kerchief (see yellow badge). Jews were required to attend compulsory Catholic sermons on the Jewish shabbat.

The bull also subjected Jews to various other restrictions such as a prohibition on property ownership and practising medicine among Christians. Jews were allowed to practice only unskilled jobs, as rag men, secondhand dealers ^[2] or fish mongers. They could also be pawnbrokers.

Paul IV's successor, Pope Pius IV, enforced the creation of other ghettos in most Italian towns, and his successor, Pope Pius V, recommended them to other bordering states. The Papal States ceased to exist on 20 September 1870 when they were incorporated in the Kingdom of Italy, but the requirement that Jews live in the ghetto was only formally abolished by the Italian state in 1882. Though the Roman and other ghettos have now been abolished, the bull has never been revoked.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cum_nimis_absurdum

If RC want to invoke Luther and the Jews regarding his latter exasperated negativity, then they need to see to your own house. And Rome has been too partial toward the Muslims as regards the Promised land.

Meanwhile, though RCs imagine we look to Luther as a pope, evangelicals are the strongest supporters of the Jews, not simply or because of how they fit into a rapture expectation.

Portuguese Inquisition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Inquisition)...was formally established in Portugal in 1536 at the request of the King of Portugal, João III. Manuel I had asked for the installation of the Inquisition in 1515 to fulfill the commitment of marriage with Maria of Aragon, but it was only after his death that Pope Paul III acquiesced. In the period after the Medieval Inquisition, it was one of three different manifestations of the wider Christian Inquisition along with the Spanish Inquisition and Roman Inquisition.

The major target of the Portuguese Inquisition were those who had converted from Judaism to Catholicism, the Conversos, also known as New Christians or Marranos, who were suspected of secretly practising Judaism. Many of these were originally Spanish Jews, who had left Spain for Portugal. The number of victims is estimated around 40000.[1]

Spanish Inquisition

On November 1, 1478, Pope Sixtus IV published the Papal bull, Exigit Sinceras Devotionis Affectus, through which he gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors in their kingdoms...In 1482 the pope was still trying to maintain control over the Inquisition and to gain acceptance for his own attitude towards the New Christians, which was generally more moderate than that of the Inquisition and the local rulers.

In 1483, Jews were expelled from all of Andalusia. Though the pope wanted to crack down on abuses, Ferdinand pressured him to promulgate a new bull, threatening that he would otherwise separate the Inquisition from Church authority.[21][22] Sixtus did so on October 17, 1483, naming Tomás de Torquemada Inquisidor General of Aragón, Valencia and Catalonia. ...

Henry Kamen estimates that, of a population of approximately 80,000 Jews, about one half or 40,000 chose emigration.[27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_de_Torquemada: The Pope went on to appoint a number of inquisitors for the Spanish Kingdoms in early 1482, including Torquemada. A year later he was named Grand Inquisitor of Spain, which he remained until his death in 1498. In the fifteen years under his direction, the Spanish Inquisition grew from the single tribunal at Seville to a network of two dozen 'Holy Offices'.[12] As Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada reorganized the Spanish Inquisition (originally based in Castile in 1478), establishing tribunals in Sevilla, Jaén, Córdoba, Ciudad Real and (later) Saragossa. His quest was to rid Spain of all heresy. The Spanish chronicler Sebastián de Olmedo called him "the hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the savior of his country, the honor of his order".

Under the edict of March 31, 1492, known as the Alhambra Decree, approximately 200,000 Jews left Spain. Following the Alhambra decree of 1492, approximately 50,000 Jews took baptism so as to remain in Spain; however, many of these—known as "Marranos" from Corinthians II, a contraction of anathema—were "crypto-jews" and secretly kept some of their Jewish traditions.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition) In some parts of Spain towards the end of the 14th century, there was a wave of violent anti-Judaism, encouraged by the preaching of Ferrand Martinez, Archdeacon of Ecija. In the pogroms of June 1391 in Seville, hundreds of Jews were killed, and the synagogue was completely destroyed. The number of people killed was also high in other cities, such as Córdoba, Valencia and Barcelona.[32]

One of the consequences of these pogroms was the mass conversion of thousands of surviving Jews. Forced baptism was contrary to the law of the Catholic Church, and theoretically anybody who had been forcibly baptized could legally return to Judaism. However, this was very narrowly interpreted. Legal definitions of the time theoretically acknowledged that a forced baptism was not a valid sacrament, but confined this to cases where it was literally administered by physical force. A person who had consented to baptism under threat of death or serious injury was still regarded as a voluntary convert, and accordingly forbidden to revert to Judaism.[33] After the public violence, many of the converted "felt it safer to remain in their new religion."[34] Thus, after 1391, a new social group appeared and were referred to as conversos or New Christians.

King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile established the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. In contrast to the previous inquisitions, it operated completely under royal Christian authority, though staffed by clergy and orders, and independently of the Holy See. It operated in Spain and in all Spanish colonies and territories, which included the Canary Islands, the Spanish Netherlands, the Kingdom of Naples, and all Spanish possessions in North, Central, and South America. It primarily targeted forced converts from Islam (Moriscos, Conversos and secret Moors) and from Judaism (Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Marranos) — both groups still resided in Spain after the end of the Islamic control of Spain — who came under suspicion of either continuing to adhere to their old religion or of having fallen back into it.

In 1492 all Jews who had not converted were expelled from Spain, and those who remained became subject to the Inquisition

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Inquisition.html: While many people associate the Inquisition with Spain and Portugal, it was actually instituted by Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) in Rome. A later pope, Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition, in 1233, to combat the heresy of the Abilgenses, a religious sect in France.

In the beginning, the Inquisition dealt only with Christian heretics and did not interfere with the affairs of Jews. However, disputes about Maimonides’ books (which addressed the synthesis of Judaism and other cultures) provided a pretext for harassing Jews and, in 1242, the Inquisition condemned the Talmud and burned thousands of volumes. In 1288, the first mass burning of Jews on the stake took place in France.

In 1481 the Inquisition started in Spain and ultimately surpassed the medieval Inquisition, in both scope and intensity. Conversos (Secret Jews) and New Christians were targeted because of their close relations to the Jewish community, many of whom were Jews in all but their name. Fear of Jewish influence led Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to write a petition to the Pope asking permission to start an Inquisition in Spain. In 1483 Tomas de Torquemada became the inquisitor-general for most of Spain, he set tribunals in many cities. Also heading the Inquisition in Spain were two Dominican monks, Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin.

First, they arrested Conversos and notable figures in Seville; in Seville more than 700 Conversos were burned at the stake and 5,000 repented. Tribunals were also opened in Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia. An Inquisition Tribunal was set up in Ciudad Real, where 100 Conversos were condemned, and it was moved to Toledo in 1485. Between 1486-1492, 25 auto de fes were held in Toledo, 467 people were burned at the stake and others were imprisoned. The Inquisition finally made its way to Barcelona, where it was resisted at first because of the important place of Spanish Conversos in the economy and society.

More than 13,000 Conversos were put on trial during the first 12 years of the Spanish Inquisition. Hoping to eliminate ties between the Jewish community and Conversos, the Jews of Spain were expelled in 1492..

The next phase of the Inquisition began in Portugal in 1536: King Manuel I had initially asked Pope Leo X to begin an inquisition in 1515, but only after Leo's death in 1521 did Pope Paul III agree to Manuel's request. Thousands of Jews came to Portugal after the 1492 expulsion. A Spanish style Inquisition was constituted and tribunals were set up in Lisbon and other cities. Among the Jews who died at the hands of the Inquisition were well-known figures of the period such as Isaac de Castro Tartas, Antonio Serrao de Castro and Antonio Jose da Silva. The Inquisition never stopped in Spain and continued until the late 18th century.

By the second half of the 18th century, the Inquisition abated, due to the spread of enlightened ideas and lack of resources. The last auto de fe in Portugal took place on October 27, 1765. Not until 1808, during the brief reign of Joseph Bonaparte, was the Inquisition abolished in Spain. An estimated 31,912 heretics were burned at the stake, 17,659 were burned in effigy and 291,450 made reconciliations in the Spanish Inquisition. In Portugal, about 40,000 cases were tried, although only 1,800 were burned, the rest made penance.

The Inquisition was not limited to Europe; it also spread to Spanish and Portugese colonies in the New World and Asia. Many Jews and Conversos fled from Portugal and Spain to the New World seeking greater security and economic opportunities. Branches of the Portugese Inquisition were set up in Goa and Brazil. Spanish tribunals and auto de fes were set up in Mexico, the Philippine Islands, Guatemala, Peru, New Granada and the Canary Islands. By the late 18th century, most of these were dissolved.

Goa Inquisition From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Inquisition)

The Goa Inquisition was the office of the Portuguese Inquisition acting in Portuguese India, and in the rest of the Portuguese Empire in Asia. It was established in 1560, briefly suppressed from 1774–1778, and finally abolished in 1812.[1] Based on the records that survive, H. P. Salomon and I. S. D. Sassoon state that between the Inquisition's beginning in 1561 and its temporary abolition in 1774, some 16,202 persons were brought to trial by the Inquisition. Of this number, it is known that 57 were sentenced to death and executed; another 64 were burned in effigy. Others were subjected to lesser punishments or penance, but the fate of many of those tried by the Inquisition is unknown.[2]

The Inquisition was established to punish apostate New Christians—Jews and Muslims who converted to Catholicism, as well as their descendants—who were now suspected of practising their ancestral religion in secret.[2]

Frankly I was not the first to mention him. It is always a Catholic coming on these threads mentioning Luther. Prots just point out how enamored Catholics are with him.

Now on Luther’s writings on the Jewish.

Perhaps you missed this history?

306 The Council of Elvira decrees that Christians and Jews cannot intermarry, have sexual intercourse, or eat together.

325 Conversation and fellowship with Jews is forbidden to the clergy by the Council of Nicea.

c. 380 St. Gregory of Nyssa refers to the Jews as “murderers of the Lord, assassins of the prophets, rebels and detesters of God,. . . companions of the devil, race of vipers, informers, calumniators, darkeners of the mind, pharisaic leaven, Sanhedrin of demons, accursed, detested,. . . enemies of all that is beautiful”.

388 A mob of Christians, at the instigation of their bishop, looted and burned the synagogue in Callinicum, a town on the Euphrates. The Emperor Theodosius wants those responsible punished and the synagogue rebuilt at the expense of the bishop, but St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, pressures him to relent and condone the action.

400 St. Augustine writes: “the Church admits and avows the Jewish people to be cursed, because after killing Christ they continue to till the ground of an earthly circumcision, an earthly Sabbath, an earthly passover, while the hidden strength or virtue of making known Christ, which this tilling contains, is not yielded to the Jews while they continue in impiety and unbelief, for it is revealed in the New Testament. While they will not turn to God, the veil which is on their minds in reading the Old Testament is not taken away. . . the Jewish people, like Cain, continue tilling the ground, in the carnal observance of the law, which does not yield to them its strength, because they do not perceive in it the grace of Christ”.

c. 400 Calling the synagogue “brothel and theater” and “a cave of pirates and the lair of wild beasts,” St. John Chrysostom writes that “the Jews behave no better than hogs and goats in their lewd grossness and the excesses of their gluttony”.

413 A group of monks sweep through Palestine, destroying synagogues and massacring Jews at the Western Wall.

414 St. Cyril of Alexandria expels Jews from his city.

538 The Third Synod of Orléans decrees that Jews cannot show themselves in the streets during Passover Week.

681 The Synod of Toledo orders the burning of the Talmud and other books.

768 Pope Stephen IV decries ownership of hereditary estates by “the Jewish people, ever rebellious against God and derogatory of our rites”.

c. 830 Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, writes anti-Jewish pamphlets in which he refers to Jews as “sons of darkness”.

c. 937 Pope Leo VII encourages his newly appointed archbishop of Mainz to expel all Jews who refuse to be baptized.

1010-1020 In Rouen, Orléans, Limoges, Mainz, and probably also in Rome, Jews are converted by force, massacred, or expelled.

1050 The Synod of Narbonne decrees that Christians are not permitted to live in Jewish homes.

c. 1070 Pope Alexander II warns the bishops of Spain to prevent violence against the Jews because, unlike the Saracens, they “are prepared to live in servitude”.

1078 The Synod of Gerona decrees that Jews must pay the same taxes as Christians to support the church.

1081 Pope Gregory VII writes to King Alphonso of Spain telling him that if he allows Jews to be lords over Christians, he is oppressing the Church and exalting “the Synagogue of Satan”.

1096 Massacres of Jews takes place in the First Crusade, destroying entire Jewish communities in Mainz, Speyer, Worms, Cologne and other cities. The Jewish chronicler reports: “The enemies stripped them naked and dragged them off, granting quarter to none, save those few who accepted baptism. The number of the slain was eight hundred in these two days.” The chronicler Guibert de Nogent reports that the Rouen Crusaders said: “We desire to go and fight God’s enemies in the East; but we have before our eyes certain Jews, a race more inimical to God than any other”.

1182 Jews are expelled from France, all their property is confiscated, and Christians’ debts to them are cancelled with the payment of one-fifth of their value to the treasury.

1190 The Third Crusade, led by Richard the Lion-Heart, stirs anti-Jewish fervor and results in the mass suicide of the York Jews in Clifford’s Tower on March 16.

1215 The Fourth Lateran Council decrees that Jews are to wear distinctive clothing, and on the three days before Easter they are not to go out in public.

1222 The Council of Oxford prohibits the construction of new synagogues.

1227 The Council of Narbonne orders Jews to wear a round patch.

1234 The Council of Arles orders Jews to wear a round patch.

1246 The Council of Béziers orders Jews to wear a round patch.

1254 The Council of Albi orders Jews to wear a round patch.

1260 The Council of Arles orders Jews to wear a round patch, but not when traveling.

1267 The Synod of Vienna decrees that Christians cannot attend Jewish ceremonies, and Jews cannot dispute with simple Christian people about the Catholic religion.

1267 The Synod of Breslau decrees compulsory ghettos for Jews.

1279 The Synod of Ofen decrees that Christians cannot sell or rent real estate to Jews.

1284 The Council of Nîmes orders Jews to wear a round patch.

1289 The Council of Vienna orders Jews to wear a round patch.

1290 Jews are expelled from England and southern Italy.

1294 Jews in France are restricted to special quarters of the cities.

1294 Jews are expelled from Bern.

1298 The Jews of Röttingen, charged with profaning the Host, are massacred and burned down to the last one.

1320 The “Shepherds’ Crusade.” A Christian chronicler records: “The shepherds laid siege to all the Jews who had come from all sides to take refuge. . . the Jews defended themselves heroically. . . but their resistance served no purpose, for the shepherds slaughtered a great number of the besieged Jews by smoke and by fire. . . The Jews, realizing that they would not escape alive, preferred to kill themselves. . . They chose one of their number (and) this man put some five hundred of them to death, with their consent. He then descended from the castle tower with the few Jewish children who still remained alive. . . They killed him by quartering. They spared the children, whom they made Catholics by baptism”.

1326 The Council of Avignon orders Jews to wear a round patch, but not when traveling.

1347-1350 During the Black Death, Jews are accused of poisoning wells in order to overthrow Christendom, and many thousands of Jews are killed.

1394 The expulsion of Jews from France, begun in 1306, is completed with an edict promulgated on the Jewish Day of Atonement.

1420 Jews are expelled from Mainz by the archbishop.

1434 The Council of Basel decrees that Jews cannot obtain academic degrees.

1456 Pope Callistus III bans all social communication between Christians and Jews.

1462 Jews are expelled from Mainz following a conflict between two candidates for the archepiscopal seat.
1475 The entire Jewish community in Trent, northern Italy, is put to death on the allegation that it had murdered a boy for religious purposes.

1492 After forcing many Jews to be baptized and then referring to them as Marranos (swine), and after an Inquisition in which some 700 Marranos were burnt at the stake for showing signs of “Jewish” taint, Spain expels all Jews from the country.

1553 Cardinal Carafa instigates a public burning of copies of the Talmud and other Jewish religious works in a square in Rome.

This didn’t stop after Luther either....

1555-1559 Pope Paul IV restricts Jews to ghettos and decrees that they are to wear distinctive headgear.

1566-1572 Pope St. Pius V expels Jews from the Papal States, allowing some to remain in Rome’s ghettos and in Ancona for commercial reasons.

1592-1605 Pope Clement VIII includes a ban on all Jewish books in the expanded Index of Forbidden Books.

1826 Pope Leo XII decrees that Jews are to be confined to ghettos and their property is to be confiscated.

1858 Edgardo Mortara, 6-year old son of a Jewish family in Bologna, is abducted by the papal police and brought to Rome. He had been secretly baptized five years earlier by a domestic servant who thought he was about to die. The parents try to get the boy back, and there is a universal outcry, but Pope Pius IX rejects all petitions submitted to him.

1904 In an interview with Zionist leader Theodor Hertzl, Pope St. Pius X says: “I know, it is disagreeable to see the Turks in possession of our Holy Places. We simply have to put up with it. But to sanction the Jewish wish to occupy these sites, that we cannot do. . . The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people. . . If you go to Palestine and your people settle there, you will find us clergy and churches ready to baptize you all”.

1919 Newly independent Poland passes a law making Sunday a compulsory day of rest in Poland. The law is intended to force Jews to observe the Christian sabbath in addition to their own.

1921 Speaking for Pope Benedict XV, a Vatican spokesman informed representatives of the Zionist Movement that they did not wish to assist “the Jewish race, which is permeated with a revolutionary and rebellious spirit” to gain control over the Holy Land.

1925 At a conference of Catholic academicians in Innsbruck, Austria, Bishop Sigismund Waitz calls the Jews an “alien people” who had corrupted England, France, Italy, and especially America.

1933 In a series of Advent sermons, Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich defends the Old Testament against Nazi attacks but emphasizes that it is not his intention to defend contemporary Jewry, saying that a distinction has to be drawn between Jews living before and after the crucifixion of Jesus.

1933 In a pastoral letter on January 23, Bishop Johannes Maria Gföllner of Linz, Austria, declares that while the radical anti-Semitism preached by Nazism is completely incompatible with Christianity, it is the right and duty of Christians to fight and break the harmful influences of Jewry in all areas of modern cultural life. The Austrian episcopate condemns the letter in December for causing racial hatred and conflict.

1933-1939 The general consensus among the Catholic papers in Poland is that Jewish influence should be reduced in all areas of life, that the Polish and Jewish communities should be separated as much as possible, and that the most desirable option is mass emigration of the Jews from Poland. St. Maximilian Kolbe is an active promoter of antisemitic literature.

1935-1936 The Polish Catholic Church gives full support to a government policy encouraging Jewish emigration from Poland.

1937 Austrian bishop Alois Hudal publishes a book defending Nazi racial ideology, supporting laws preventing a flood of Jewish immigrants, and criticizing the “Jewish” press for playing off Austrians against Germans. His book receives the support of Archbishop (later Cardinal) Theodor Innitzer of Vienna.

1939 Josef Tiso, a Catholic priest with a doctorate in theology, became president of independent Slovakia. An extremist hater of Jews, he allied Slovakia with Nazi Germany and, with strong objections from the Vatican, deported most Slovakian Jews to their deaths in the camps. He declared: “It is a Christian action to expel the Jews, because it is for the good of the people, which is thus getting rid of its pests.” Monsignor Tiso was executed after the war as a war criminal.

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