>All the pope did was to state clearly that the Jewish descendants of those directly involved in the crucifixion of Christ have NO inherited guilt for it. Big difference. Your headline was a distortion. The mainstream media were capable of mangling the facts then as now...<
Why did he feel the need to do it?Why was it front page news? Simple answer it was a commonly held heresy within the Catholic Church.
The problem was not passion plays but how they were staged with Jews portrayed as ogres and inherantly evil.
It was a "somewhat" commonly held erroneous belief. It was not all-pervasive, and it was not even implied in Church doctrine. Meanwhile, you may be surprised to know that the belief was hardly restricted to Catholics. Examples abound, but I'll just point out that the KKK was simultaneously anti-Catholic AND anti-Semitic, and the latter prejudice was due largely to their adherence to the charge of "Christ-killers" for the Jews. These guys were not Catholic. Neither were the folks at Ivy League schools like Harvard who systematically blocked Jews from their campuses right into the middle of the 20th Century.