Posted on 10/29/2005 6:07:22 AM PDT by Pharmboy
HOUSTON, Oct. 28 - When she was growing up in a small town in southern Colorado, an area where her ancestors settled centuries ago when it was on the fringes of the northern frontier of New Spain, Bernadette Gonzalez always thought some of the stories about her family were unusual, if not bizarre.
Her grandmother, for instance, refused to travel on Saturday and would use a specific porcelain basin to drain blood out of meat before she cooked it. In one tale that particularly puzzled Ms. Gonzalez, 52, her grandfather called for a Jewish doctor to circumcise him while he was on his death bed in a hospital in Trinidad, Colo.
Only after Ms. Gonzalez moved to Houston to work as a lawyer and began discussing these tales with a Jewish colleague, she said, did "the pieces of the puzzle" start falling into place.
Ms. Gonzalez started researching her family history and concluded that her ancestors were Marranos, or Sephardic Jews, who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and in Mexico more than four centuries ago. Though raised in the Roman Catholic faith, Ms. Gonzalez felt a need to reconnect to her Jewish roots, so she converted to Judaism three years ago.
"I feel like I came home," said Ms. Gonzalez, who now often uses the first name Batya. "The fingerprints of my past were all around me, but I didn't know what they meant."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
TQ: Well, if you can find Catholics that have been living a secret life for centuries at the risk of being burnt at the stake for their beliefs, that would be indeed a very worthy story to be published. I personally would be very much interested to learn about such cases. Religious Persecution in Ireland.
Sir T. Aquinas: England's Dark Intrigue
For a good deal of that time, England was Protestant. Catholics surrendered their faith, moved to the Continent or practiced their religion secretly in a country where the celebration of Mass was forbidden by law. Unbending Papists, known as recusants, were heavily fined. Jesuit priests were exiled or executed for treason if caught saying Mass.
Have you checked the dates of these events? Perhaps you should.
What is being discussed? That Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Gypsies, Blacks, Slavs, Zoroastrians were persecuted at one time or another in history? Of course not. That is obvious.
Here we have a current event, wherein a religious group has managed to preserve traditions for centuries, even after migration, up to now
Any such phenomenon is worthy to be known. The above-mentioned Zoroastrians, numbering now less than 100,000, survive in India (without persecution). The Jewish community in China is a similarly miraculous phenomenon, (although there, too, it was not subjected to persecution --- I do not know that for certain).
The phenomenon described in the article is even more rare --- again, regardless of which group of people it involves. Any other similar situation is worthy to be written about, which is why I said: "if you can find Catholics that have been living a secret life for centuries at the risk of being burnt at the stake for their beliefs, that would be indeed a very worthy story to be published."
How are you links related to the issue? In no way at all.
You should ask yourself, however, what moves you to equate phenomena that have no similarity? I would submit to you that what you want to do is to deny the uniqueness of Jewish experience. Jews are unique not in the extent of persecution --- that happened to great many people throughout history --- but in that despite that persecution they still exist.
The only other group that compares is Roma (Gypsies): they have been subjected to murder (in France, at some time one was supposed to kill on the spot whenever encountering one on French territory), expulsion (together with the Jews by Isabella in 1492, for instance), slavery (in Romania until 1880s) to EXACTLY the same extent as Jews. Even Hitler was after the Roma as the Jews: no less than complete extermination would do. The difference is very slight and unimportant by now: it is the duration of persecution, which is about 500 or 800 years, depending on location, in the case of Roma and millennia in the case of the Jews. Neither people had a country and was regularly expelled from the places they did consider their homes.
How does the Catholic experience compare to that? Does being rulers of the Roman Emprire, the entire "civilized world" for 1200 years, compare to the Jewish and Romani experience? Does that empire qualify as a home, a nice home, perhaps?
What is that that moves you to deny the uniqueness of Jewish and Romani experience? When you hear of a woman being raped, do you also say to yourself, "Well, miseries happen: I scratched my elbow yesterday, for instance."
As I said, when you find crypto-Catholics that survive in secret somewhere, please publish that stuff --- in a peer review journal, please, for historians will be falling over themselves to learn about such a case. In the meantime, reflect on my questions, if you care.
Thank you very much. Such things rarely happen on any forum.
For the record, I tend to sympathize with the judgement of a OKC Catholic bishop who wrote a history of Mexico: "Faith frequently marched across Spain without good works for companion."
I think you have too much time on your hands.
Oh, please don't worry about me: it's the purity of your own soul that you should've thought about when reading my post.
Have a good day.
I don't think one has to be politically correct to say that torture, mass murder and forced conversions are morally lacking.
Repeatedly, and this is indicated in enormous depth within the documentary record, there were debates between various factions about how best to deal with different kinds of non-Christians. Invariably, those who pushed the most extreme forms of coercion viz. the Indians and viz. Jews won. That's wrong, and it is strange that you won't admit it.
"Now get over it before you alienate people whose sympathies lie with the Jews in this modern era."
Threats? Nice! Jews don't need friends who think the expulsion was not forcible conversion, who seek to minimalize the wrongs done to Jews in the past. I especially love threats that suggest that you and yours will revert to anti-Semitism if Jews don't put up and shut up. That era is over.
"It is a blind fanatic who holds 500-year-old sins against living men."
Your entire post is a distortion. Where did I ever claim to hold anything against "living men?"
And you still haven't answered my question, what did the Pope apologize for?
The truth, I suspect, is that you did not like that apology one bit, many Catholics didn't, but you are not honest enough to admit it.
The truth is also that those low numbers you claim are total BS.
I think the lovely post #110 was meant for you.
dsc is a little confused by all the bs he is spreading. It's hard to keep it straight.
The defense of the indefensible reminds me of an old joke. A man died who was widely disliked because he was a real SOB. Nevertheless at his funeral per custom someone got up to eulogize him. At a loss what he could possibly say about this guy, he blurted "his brother was worse."
Thank you. It's a good one, too.
"Well, these threads are a good reminder that anti semitism is not exclusively within the province of the Left."
Your implication is as despicable as it is false.
I agree with you.
Sorry, it is not pronounced Jesus, it is pronounced Hesus.
Isn't exactly the same meaning for me.
"That's wrong, and it is strange that you won't admit it."
I admit to things that are true, but not to things that are not.
You continue to exaggerate, using terms such as "invariably," and remain deaf to the truth regarding "forced conversions."
I don't see much use in continuing these futile attempts to have a rational discussion with you.
"Threats?"
Get a grip.
"Jews don't need friends who think the expulsion was not forcible conversion"
So, you don't need any friends who fail to exaggerate the wrongs done Jews to irrational extremes? You don't need friends who seek the truth, rather than reflexively casting everything in the worst possible light, accurate or not?
Well, fortunately, I know Jewish people who are not so blind in their rejection of history.
"who seek to minimalize the wrongs done to Jews in the past."
Another distortion. Rejecting inaccurate exaggerations in favor of historical fact is in no way "minimalizing" anything.
"I especially love threats that suggest that you and yours will revert to anti-Semitism if Jews don't put up and shut up."
If nothing else did, that hysterical rant shows clearly that you are not capable of rational thought on this subject. There has been no such suggestion anywhere on this thread, nor anywhere that I have seen on FR.
"Your entire post is a distortion. Where did I ever claim to hold anything against "living men?"
You don't have to claim it explicitly, it comes through clearly in your writing.
You don't see Christians highjacking every thread on Rome, trying to turn it into a guilt-fest over Roman persecution of Christians. Oh, yeah, that happened, but we don't have to bring it up every three minutes.
"And you still haven't answered my question, what did the Pope apologize for?"
I did answer your question. What I did not do was walk into the trap you were trying to set.
"The truth, I suspect"
The best I can see, you don't suspect any part of the truth.
"The truth is also that those low numbers you claim are total BS."
The figures of 3,000 to 5,000 executed by the Inquisition over 350 years are not only accurate, but accepted as accurate by historians.
That's a good example of the sort of exaggeration that feeds your fanaticism.
The Inquisition destroyed or turned upside down hundreds of thousands of lives by torture, execution, expulsion, confiscation of property, hersy trials, etc. It happened to Protestants as well as Jews. People who minimize the Inquisition have no more credibility than those who minimize the Holocaust.
"dsc" uses as his authoritative source documents found on www.catholic.net as a credible unbiased source? LOL!
"I think the lovely post #110 was meant for you. dsc is a little confused"
I'm confused? Post #110 is from you to me.
"The defense of the indefensible"
Despite the disgust I feel for your willful irrationality, I'm going to try to explain things once again.
According to you, if a man were accused of 100 murders but had actually committed only 5, a person who insisted on the true number would be saying that murder is "okay."
That is the essence of your argument. Either one joins the lynch mob falsely accusing him of 100 murders, or one is "minimalizing" the crimes of the accused.
Never mind that one is perfectly willing to see the accused tried for the 5 murders he actually committed; either accuse him of 100 or you are "pro-murder." And if the 5 people killed were Jews, you either accuse him of 100 or you are "anti-semitic."
It doesn't matter at all that one deplores the 5 murders actually committed. One is not permitted even to contest the exaggerated figure of 100 murders, lest one be labled anti-semitic.
And if one resents being badgered to accept a lie, and says so, then he is threatening to "revert to anti-semitism."
That sort of blind fanaticism is truly offensive.
My #136 pretty much says everything I have to say to you.
I'll just point out one of the inaccuracies upon which your position rests: you accuse the Inquisition of "expulsion." The Inquisition was not responsible for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
My bad. Inquisitors were primarily only involved in the nice stuff--torture, execution, confiscation of property, etc.
It is neither an implication nor false, IMO.
FWIW, I am generally an admirer of the Catholic Church including especially the Jesuit Order.
dervish: Where did I ever claim to hold anything against "living men?"
dsc: You don't have to claim it explicitly, it comes through clearly in your writing.
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And you claim I distort history; you distort the present.
I hold nothing against present day Catholics as a group. And I am an admirer of Pope John Paul.
If I said you give Catholics a bad name I would be giving you too much credit. I am confidant you don't represent the religion.
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