Mel's 'Passion'-ate defense gives offense

New York Daily News ^ | 9/06/03 | Rush & Molloy

[EternalVigilance]

Mel Gibson says of Rich, "I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. ... I want to kill his dog." (Rich told us, through a Times spokeswoman, "I don't have a dog.")

Whoa! Did he really say that?!?!

I want him to run for Governor! LOL..

[DB]

Now that would have been something.

He's too smart to want the job.

[EternalVigilance]

LOL...you're probably right.

But I would have loved his campaign slogan:

FREEDOM!!

[.45MAN]

ping

[laconic]

Where were the same endlessly complaining critics when the Brooklyn Art Museum displayed a vicious piece of trash showing the Virgin Mary smeared with human waste? I'll bet they rose to the defense of "freedom of the arts".

[Caipirabob]

Where were the same endlessly complaining critics when the Brooklyn Art Museum displayed a vicious piece of trash showing the Virgin Mary smeared with human waste? I'll bet they rose to the defense of "freedom of the arts".

Good point, my mind just sort of "shuts down" when I think about that incident and compare it to the "hissy fit" of the left when it comes to actually producing art promoting the life of Jesus.

[ultima ratio]

Foxman is full of it. There has been an effort on the part of Jewish intellectuals to lay the blame for Hitler on the Catholic Church. Revisionist articles and books by Jewish scholars have underscored the thesis that Christianity itself was to blame for the Holocaust, that the religious clashes that characterized relations between Christians and Jews in the past led logically to the Holocaust. In this effort, there has been a deliberate suppression of the facts of Christian heroism in World War II on behalf of Jews. Yet millions escaped the Holocaust due to these brave Catholics and Protestants. This relentless hostility is what is really inflammatory--not Gibson's dramatization of the Crucifixion.

[dennisw]

Hhehehehe... Lotsa choice quotes here. The fireworks have commenced.

[dennisw]

   

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375406239/ref=pd_sxp_f/102-9565079-9145744?v=glance&s=books

The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism
by David I. Kertzer

Look inside this book

 

 

 

 

 

 

[onyx]

Brooklyn Museum vs mel's film. Good point.

Frank Rich's vile criticism of Mel, not just his film, was truly out of line, and I'm happy to read Mel is hitting him back, and below the belt to boot.

[Gil4]

Romans 9:31-33
But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because [they sought it] not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; As it is written, Behold, I lay in Zion a stumblingstone and rock of offense: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

Still tripping over the "stumblingstone"/"rock of offense"

[keats5]

The article says Gibson reluctantly took out a scene in which Caiaphas, a Jewish high priest, says of Christ, "His blood be on us, and on our children." The passage, from the Gospel of Matthew, has been interpreted by some as implicating the Jewish people in Jesus' Crucifixion.

"I wanted it in," Gibson tells Boyer. "But, man, if I included that in there, they'd be coming after me at my house, they'd come kill me."

How chilling that, in the USA, a remarkably brave man fears for his family for quoting the unedited Bible.

[ultima ratio]

This is anti-Catholic propaganda of the first order. No one denies there were injustices visited on the Jews for not converting to Christianity. But this was an era in which far more brutality was visited by Christians upon Christians. It was not a time noted for enlightenment on religious matters. In Germany alone over 130,000 peasants were slaughtered in a religious civil war, for instance--just around the same time Jews were being pushed into the Roman Ghetto--a ghetto, by the way, that had existed since the days of the Caesars and is still in existence. The actual persecution of Jews waxed and waned in Rome for about two hundred years and includes stories of unsavory personal attacks on individuals. But there were no wholesale massacres of any kind. Italy, in fact, eventually became one of the least anti-semitic of European countries--a fact Jewish scholars are at pains to explain, since it is in the heart of Catholic Europe.

The idea that Christianity somehow led to the Holocaust is, in fact, a smear of the first order. Hitler's "anti-semitism" was of a far different order and to lump the religious antagonisms of Christians and Jews--an antagonism which was mutual and based on religious and cultural differences--with the Nazi Holocaust based on an outlandish racial myth of Aryan superiority is sheer anti-Christian bigotry. Hitler, in fact, hated Christianity and Nazism was a phenomenon opposed by the Church from the outset--particularly for its racial claims and policies. And the widespread heroism of Catholics and Protestants across Europe who risked their own lives to save thousands of Jews is as yet an unheralded story of Christian heroism in the face of evil. The Jewish community gives scant credit to these faceless heroes. Instead, in the last few decades there has been an accelerated pace of revisionist claims that Christianity itself is somehow to blame for what happened to the Jews in 1940s.

[ultima ratio]

MAJOR CREDIT FOR THE RESCUE OF ITALY'S JEWS
GOES TO CATHOLIC CLERGY, YAD VASHEM SAYS


lthough the Vatican was justifiably criticized for its deafening silence during the Nazi deportation of Jews, a loud chorus of refugee assistance resonated in its monasteries, convents and churches. A large number of priests, monks and nuns sheltered and fed desperate Jewish men, women and children, a chapter in the Holocaust that too many historians have over-looked or minimized.

In Italy, the clergy played a major role in rescue activity, according to Mordecai Paldiel, research chief of Israel’s Yad Vashem, which uses stringent standards to honor Holocaust heroes. Paldiel, who himself was hidden as a child by Father Simon Gallay of France, says that much of the credit for the rescue of most of Italy’s 45,000 Jews is due to the clergy.

"There can be little doubt that the rescue of 85 percent of Italy’s Jews," he says, "can be safely attributed to the massive support extended to fleeing Jews by the overwhelming majority of the Catholic clergy (without in most cases even waiting for clearance by their superiors) as well as of persons from all walks of life, even of officials and militiamen within the more intensely Fascist Salo regime."

These are powerful words of recognition and support from an authority with impeccable credentials, and a revelation that should have inspired a mini-series, if not a mega-series, on TV. And is even worthy of a major motion picture by Hollywood. But so far their response has been as deafening as Vatican’s reported silence.

Despite the Vatican’s official aloofness from the Holocaust question, many were surprised to learn after the war that 450 Jews were hidden in its vast enclaves during the Nazi occupation. And hundreds of priests and bishops throughout the Italian peninsula put their lives in jeopardy to shelter, feed and clothe the countless refugees.

One of the earliest organized rescue efforts unfolded in Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order. Shortly after the Nazis occupied Italy, Padre Ruffino Niccacci of the Damiano monastery received an unusual assignment from his bishop: Find homes and hiding places for more than 300 Jews who just arrived from Trieste.

Padre Niccacci, a peasant turned priest, managed to have many of the refugees sheltered in buildings on the monastery grounds and dressed them as monks and nuns to hide their true identities during frequent Nazi searches. Others were placed in parishioners’ homes and blended into the community. He also provided them with false credentials to speed their journey to other monasteries and convents, where it been reported the nuns prepared kosher meals for their Jewish guests. Not a single refugee was captured while staying at Assisi.

Maria Benedetto (known as Father Marie Benoit when he was in Marseilles) transformed his monastery in Rome into a way station and rescue center to aid hundreds of Jewish and anti-Nazi refugees. When Delasem (Delegazione Assistenza Emigranti Ebrei), the highly-efficient Jewish service agency, had to go underground during the Nazi occupation, it carried out operations from Father Benedetto’s monastery. Here, Delasem stored its archives, held meetings, processed refugees and provided hiding places. In just 12 months, the number of refugees receiving shelter and meals at the monastery swelled from a few hundred to over 4,000.


In the strategically located city of Turin, Monsignor Vincenzo Barale conducted rescue activity for Jews streaming into Italy from France. The refugees received food and money and were assisted by priests from surrounding villages. However, one refugee who had received aid, informed on him. Monsignor Barale was arrested and thrown into jail.

High level Catholic officials as well as ordinary clerics extended a helping hand. Monsignor Quadraroli, a secretary at the Vatican, issued countless false IDs to refugees and sent them to the convent on Via Cicerone to be fed and sheltered. And in northern Italy, Abraham Cohen, on the run from the Nazis, recalled the assistance he received from unknown clerics: "The Catholic Church helped me a lot. They found a place for me to stay and a priest went with me from Ivrea to Azeglio on a bicycle. . . There we found another priest who arranged a place for me to hide."

Susan Zuccotti, Holocaust historian, gives a very balanced view in assessing the overall picture: "When the Germans finally retreated from Rome after nine months of occupation, at least 1,700 Jews arrested in Rome had been deported. Over 10,000 had survived. Every survivor owed his life to one, and usually to several, heroic non-Jewish supporters. But except for those caught in that first, unexpected roundup in October, most deportees could also trace their tragedy to non-Jews who had, in the last analysis, failed to provide support."

However, there’s no denying that the network of Catholic institutions played a significant role in providing asylum for Jewish refugees.

"In no other occupied Catholic country," says Paldiel of Yad Vashem, "were monasteries, convents, shrines, and religious houses opened to the fleeing Jews, and their needs attended to, without any overt intention to steer them away from their ancient faith, solely to abide by the preeminent religious command of the sanctity of life. Through this, they epitomized the best and most elevated form of religious faith and human fidelity."


©1998 Holocaust Heroes, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Send Comments or Suggestions To: webmaster@holocaust-heroes.com

[dennisw]

The book I gave you a link for is from a previous era that you are 100% incapable of addressing. I doubt you read one word in that link as you stay in denial.

[ultima ratio]

HOLOCAUST HEROES is a recently launched site devoted to honoring the brave men and women who risked their lives to rescue and shelter Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi reign of terror. A major thrust of its mission will be to recognize the rescue activity of the many church groups whose work has been marginalized by too many Holocaust writers and historians.

The bravery of those who dared to defy the Nazis to save Jews is generally muted by Holocaust chroniclers. But the incidents of countless non-Jews who risked their lives to protect people of another faith were as real as the ovens of Nazi death camps. This section will examine the reluctance to acknowledge and honor these heroes.

The Catholic church played a major role in rescuing refugees in Italy, says Mordecai Paldiel, research chief of Yad Vashem. "Much of the credit for the rescue of Italy’s 45,000 Jews is due to the clergy," he says.

Church groups spoke with a louder voice in France and turned the nation’s monasteries and convents into clandestine factories for turning out false ID documents, birth certificates, baptism and marriage certificates.

This recently created segment gives former refugees, survivors and hidden children an opportunity to mention their rescuers by name and express their thanks for saving them. Suggested by an e-mail response to this site, new names of rescuers will be added without charge to the Holocaust Wall of Remembrance.
(updated Feb 16, 2000)

This new page pays homage to the countless Holocaust heroes and heroines whose names never appeared in print nor on TV, but whose deeds of courage cry out for recognition.

A number of Protestant and Catholic clergy protested Hitler's racial decrees and the rising tide of intolerance in Nazi Germany, but paid the price. Too many Germans, seduced by a new sense of nationalism, were unmoved by the arrest of pastors and priests who spoke out. It was this moral apathy that fueled Hitler's war plans for the conquest of Europe.

The name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the few clergymen who spoke out against Hitler and assisted in the rescue of 14 Jews, is still missing from Yad Vashem's honor roll of heroes. Eberhard Bethge, German author who has made a life-time study of the pastor's risk-taking efforts, tells why Bonhoeffer deserves to be recognized as a "Righteous Gentile."

There was "room at the inn" at the hundreds of convents, monasteries and other church institutions throughout occupied Europe for refugees escaping Nazi terror. For the first time, this segment reveals the magnitude of the large-scale rescue activity by the church. Just in Rome alone, more than 150 church institutions provided shelter for 4,300 Jewish refugees.

Remote villages in Europe attracted refugees who found safety and support in their isolated settings. The close-knit villages also offered a shield of silence and protection. Le Chambon, a Protestant village in central France, provided a safe haven for more than 5,000 Jewish refugees, many of them children, escaping Nazi terror.

The Quakers, only one of two churches which extended help to Jewish refugees in distress as a formal church policy, won a Nobel Prize for their humanitarian efforts during World War II.

©1998 Holocaust Heroes, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Send Comments or Suggestions To: webmaster@holocaust-heroes.com
This site was last updated on Wednesday, February 16, 2000

[dennisw]

This is anti-Catholic propaganda of the first order. No one denies there were injustices visited on the Jews for not converting to Christianity. But this was an era in which far more brutality was visited by Christians upon Christians. ...............

UNTRUE! But then you would have to read or skim the book to find out.

[dennisw]

The actual persecution of Jews waxed and waned in Rome for about two hundred years and includes stories of unsavory personal attacks on individuals. But there were no wholesale massacres of any kind>>>>>>>


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375406239/ref=pd_sxp_f/102-9565079-9145744?v=glance&s=books
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

Powerful and persuasive, February 11, 2003
Reviewer: Jordan Magill (see more about me) from Sacramento, CA USA
Pope John Paul II recently unveiled the study, "We Remember: reflections on the Shoah," which in effect exonerated the Catholic Church from any culpability for the Holocaust or the hatred that caused it. Kertzer, in this thoughtful and evocative examination of the Church's relationship with Jews, persuasively demonstrates that no reasonable reading of the history could conclude that the Church was so blameless. Indeed, Kertzer's main evidence comes from the Church's own archives, carefully examining several hundred years of the Church's ongoing persecution of the Jews.

The work focuses on two distinct periods, the first when the Church ruled the Papal States, an area of Italy where the Pope exercised temporal as well as ecclesiastical control. This region was almost certainly the most backward and oppressive towards Jews outside of Czarist Russia. While the other European powers embraced modernity, the Church insisted on denying Jews basic civil rights and protections, forcing them to live in Ghettos, wear distinctive yellow stars, banned them from the professions and universities, and bared them from universities. The Nazi Reich adopted all of these rules when it came to power in the 20th century. Kertzer also examines how the Church hierarchy saw liberation and equality for Jews as one of modernity's great evils that should be thwarted all costs, even as it turned out, if it cost the Pope his temporal kingdom.

Kertzer then goes on to examine how after Italian unification denied the Pope his state, the church turned with a vengeance on Jewry, laying out in Catholic papers much of what would become the standard charges of modern anti-Semitism. Jews are portrayed as bent on the murder of Christians to use their blood in satanic rituals. These Catholic papers further claim Jews are in a conspiracy bent on world domination and that Jews, an oppressed minority in Europe for over 1000 years, are actually the rulers of the continent. Again, as with the rules limiting Jewish Freedoms, many of these famous canards became incorporated into modern Anti-Semitic propaganda in the 20th century.

[ultima ratio]

I read the excerpt and say--so what? Place the thing in its appropriate historical context. It was not a time of enlightenment. And Christians were slaughtering Christians all over Europe over religious disputes at this same time. So how can this bit of intolerance, typical for that age, equate with what Hitler did? It is vile and pernicious to even think so. Hitler's racial theories had nothing to do with the religious and cultural clashes which characterized anti-semitism in Europe. It's been a mutual animosity for centuries--based on religion primarily--just as now a Jewish leader like Foxman can virtually guarantee a Christian backlash to his own expressed hostility toward the New Testament--which he will then decry as a new outbreak of anti-semitism! What hogwash! If you get in somebody else's face, OF COURSE there will be resentment and a hostile reaction--you're inviting it! It has nothing to do with our being Christians per se and everything to do with human nature. But keep Hitler and the Holocaust out of it!