Sen. John McCain / Rev. John Hagee
Posted on 03/01/2008 6:21:35 AM PST by NYer
.- The endorsement of Senator John McCain by a Catholic-bashing Texas minister won swift rebuke from the president of the Catholic League and a Jewish leader concerned about his “vicious and inflammatory” anti-Catholicism.
Both compared the minister to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
On Wednesday Pastor John Hagee endorsed Senator John McCain’s bid to become the Republican presidential candidate in the 2008 election.
Senator McCain responded to the endorsement by calling Hagee “the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement,” praising Hagee’s pro-Israel stance.
President of the Catholic League Bill Donohue harshly criticized the endorsement.
“There are plenty of staunch evangelical leaders who are pro-Israel, but are not anti-Catholic. John Hagee is not one of them,” Donohue said on Thursday. “Indeed, for the past few decades, he has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system’.”
Donohue said that in Pastor Hagee’s latest book the minister claimed Hitler was a Catholic who murdered Jews while the Catholic Church did nothing. “The sell-out of Catholicism to Hitler began not with the people but with the Vatican itself,” wrote Hagee, according to Bill Donohue.
Donohue criticized the remarks, saying, “For the record, Hitler persecuted the Catholic Church and was automatically excommunicated in 1931—two years before he assumed power—when he acted as best man at Joseph Goebbel’s Protestant wedding. Hitler even bragged about his separation from the Church. As for doing nothing about the Holocaust, Sir Martin Gilbert reminds us that Goebbel denounced Pope Pius XII for his 1942 Christmas message criticizing the Nazis (the New York Times lauded the pope for doing so in an editorial for two years in a row). Much to Hagee’s chagrin, Gilbert also says that Pius XII saved three quarters of the Jews in Rome, and that more Jews were saved proportionately in Catholic countries than Protestant countries.”
Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, echoed Donohue’s criticisms. In a Friday statement, Rabbi Kula said, “Just as Jews and other people of good will have appropriately demanded that Barack Obama unambiguously renounce and reject the endorsement of Minister Louis Farrakhan because of his bigotry and rabid anti-Semitism so Jews and other people of good will should demand that John McCain renounce and reject the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee because of his vicious and inflammatory anti-Catholicism.”
Rabbi Kula said Pastor Hagee’s position on Israel “does not mean he should be given carte blanche to denigrate and malign another religion.” He continued, saying, “Barack Obama showed his integrity when he rejected Minister Farrakhan’s hate whatever the political costs and sensitivities. John McCain is also a man of integrity. He needs to similarly reject Pastor Hagee’s hate whatever the political calculations and consequences.”
In a Friday statement Bill Donohue said Senator McCain’s opponent for the nomination, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, had expressed “disappointment and surprise” that Hagee had not chosen him. Donohue also compared Hagee to Louis Farrakhan, wondering why the candidates were fighting over the endorsement of such a figure.
Donohue also called on McCain to shun Hagee’s endorsement.
“Just this week, McCain repudiated the remarks of talk radio host Bill Cunningham,” Donohue said. “He should now repudiate Hagee’s long record of bashing Catholicism. After all, George W. Bush apologized for speaking at Bob Jones University, and Hagee makes Jones look like a lightweight in the ring of bigotry."
You are completely changing the context. What did God call Israel in the Old Testament? A whore. It is in that sense, I believe (I don't speak for him, actually) that he meant it. He is specifically referring to the reference to the great whore in Revelation. Now I can certainly see why Catholics are upset. But don't make it different than it is. A religious whore is a biblical concept. It has a theological meaning. It wasn't chosen just to be hateful.
Just today I posted something about this awful "post-evangelical" doofus named Brian McLaren. I said he was a deceiver, just like his boss. Now tell me, isn't that a very similar thing? It is my strongly held belief that McLaren is a modern Judas, a false teacher, a heretic, a son of Satan.....pick the term that is the worst. I am not threatening his physical life or his freedom to be a snake. Neither is Hagee a threat to Catholics other than they have to stand up and defend their faith. That is what we call religious freedom. Politicians had better not start taking sides or it will be death to those freedoms.
He does not have "strong theological views". Do not sugar coat what John Hagee says. He says that Catholics were in league with Hitler, and that Catholicism is a "false cult", and that the Church is the anti-Christ. That is not the reasoned theological view of a pastor. That is a bigot.
John McCain wants to be president, and he did show a preference. He showed a preference for a bigot and against Catholics.
I am not a fan of Bill Donahue, but I thought that what the Catholic League highlighted as a leader taking an anti-bigoted stance (President Bush) and the stance that John McCain has taken is really telling.
Here is a link:
http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1395
and here is an excerpt:
“Bush said he did not approve of ‘the anti-Catholic and racially divisive views associated with that school.’ He added, ‘Such opinions are personally offensive to me, and I want to erase any doubt about my views and values.’ Moreover, Bush opined that ‘I reject religious intolerance—because faith is defined by grace and hope, not fear and division.’
One man, President Bush, showed leadership and rejected bigotry. One man, John McCain, could not wait to tell the world how proud he was to associate and have the approval of a bigot.
Nope. Nothing there about the RCC preferring divorced Catholics go to Methodist Churches.
Why not, Protestantism is free to call anything it wants scripture and follow any interpretation no matter how bizarre; all part of its plan. It's a false cult in league with Islam and Hagee is the antiChrist.
No slander intended against protestants, mind you.
Mainstream? My behind. Hagee sounds like a lunatic. This Conservative can do just fine without association with the likes of him. So should McIdiot.
Many religious points of view disagree with my own, but as long as they don't seek to use the government to silence me or kill me, my response is always to discuss the disagreement, sometimes more vehemently.
I think there is vitriol on all sides from time to time. I also know that the Hagee types are very much against liberals such as Obama and both Clintons, but are in solid support of John McCain.
he was excommunicated in 1931 — he came to power in ‘33 and the final solution started in the ‘40s. He was already practically non-Catholic before the ‘20s
Nothing Great was ever achieved by consensus-Margart Thatcher. Neville Chamberlin did a great job of containing Hitler and the ignorance, hatred, and bigotry of Hagee must be stopped. You don't contain evil by sleeping with the devil
It is this: God is perfectly entitled to His anger. Whether He calls down firey doom on Sodom and Gomorrah, or floods the entire earth so that every living thing on itis destroyed, what He has done is right because He is the owner and operator of the Universe; and if the prophets, speaking under His direct impetus, call people whores or the spawn of demons, or monsters or fools, they are right because God's words are both true and saving: He is telling His creatures the exact truth as only He can, that His purposes may be fulfilled.
It is quite different with ordinary human beings. We would never, even if wwe thought we wre acting onm His behalf, be justified in annihilating an entire citry together with its inhabitants, nor in wiping out all life on earth; nor even in speaking words of utter rejection which sends a soul to hell.
Jesus dealt with all this, quite specifically, to His disciples. When they wanted (in Luke 9) to call down fire on a Samaritan town even as Elijah did(!), Jesus rounded on them angrily, and not only refused to do it, but rebuked them: "You know what manner of spirit you have: the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." Likewise the Lord said (Matthew 5:22):
But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca, ' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell."
And then again in James, "The wrath (or anger) of man does not accomplish the righteousness desired by God."
This is an infallibly wise teaching and also a solemn warning. God's anger is righteous and perfect, his fire holy and destructive, his rejection perfect and justified. But it is not for us to use this. We are not wise enough, truthful enough, or holy enough.
Multiple times (so many time it would take me an hour to look up and qute it all) we ar told to live in peace, to be patient, to bless, and specifically to bless our enemies.
This doesn't mean that Hagee can't say "the Catholics are in serious error." Let his say it. Let him prove it, if he can.
But don't call my Mother a whore.
Yeh Eugenio Pacelli, this Pope who sold out the Catholics in Germany and Germany itself:
"After Hitler came to power in January 1933, he made the concordat negotiations with Pacelli a priority. The negotiations proceeded over six months with constant shuttle diplomacy between the Vatican and Berlin. Hitler spent more time on this treaty than on any other item of foreign diplomacy during his dictatorship.
"The Reich Concordat granted Pacelli the right to impose the new Code of Canon Law on Catholics in Germany and promised a number of measures favorable to Catholic education, including new schools. In exchange, Pacelli collaborated in the withdrawal of Catholics from political and social activity. The negotiations were conducted in secret by Pacelli, Kaas, and Hitler's deputy chancellor, Franz von Papen, over the heads of German bishops and the faithful. The Catholic Church in Germany had no say in setting the conditions.
"In the end, Hitler insisted that his signature on the concordat would depend on the Center Party's voting for the Enabling Act, the legislation that was to give him dictatorial powers. It was Kaas, chairman of the party but completely in thrall to Pacelli, who bullied the delegates into acceptance. Next, Hitler insisted on the "voluntary" disbanding of the Center Party, the last truly parliamentary force in Germany. Again, Pacelli was the prime mover in this tragic Catholic surrender. The fact that the party voluntarily disbanded itself, rather than go down fighting, had a profound psychological effect, depriving Germany of the last democratic focus of potential noncompliance and resistance: In the political vacuum created by its surrender, Catholics in the millions joined the Nazi Party, believing that it had the support of the Pope. The German bishops capitulated to Pacelli's policy of centralization, and German Catholic democrats found themselves politically leaderless.
"After the Reich Concordat was signed, Pacelli declared it an unparalleled triumph for the Holy See. In an article in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican-controlled newspaper, he announced that the treaty indicated the total recognition and acceptance of the church's law by the German state. But Hitler was the true victor and the Jews were the concordat's first victims. On July 14, 1933, after the initialing of the treaty, the Cabinet minutes record Hitler as saying that the concordat had created an atmosphere of confidence that would be "especially significant in the struggle against international Jewry." He was claiming that the Catholic Church had publicly given its blessing, at home and abroad, to the policies of National Socialism, including its anti-Semitic stand. At the same time, under the terms of the concordat, Catholic criticism of acts deemed political by the Nazis, could now be regarded as "foreign interference." The great German Catholic Church, at the insistence of Rome, fell silent. In the future all complaints against the Nazis would be channeled through Pacelli. There were some notable exceptions, for example the sermons preached in 1933 by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, the Archbishop of Munich, in which he denounced the Nazis for their rejection of the Old Testament as a Jewish text.
" The concordat immediately drew the German church into complicity with the Nazis. Even as Pacelli was granted special advantages in the concordat for German Catholic education, Hitler was trampling on the educational rights of Jews throughout the country. At the same time, Catholic priests were being drawn into Nazi collaboration with the attestation bureaucracy, which established Jewish ancestry. Pacelli, despite the immense centralized power he now wielded through the Code of Canon Law, said and did nothing. The attestation machinery would lead inexorably to the selection of millions destined for the death camps.
" As Nazi anti-Semitism mounted in Germany during the 1930's, Pacelli failed to complain, even on behalf of Jews who had become Catholics, acknowledging that the matter was a matter of German internal policy. Eventually, in January 1937, three German cardinals and two influential bishops arrived at the Vatican to plead for a vigorous protest over Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church, which had been deprived of all forms of activity beyond church services. Pius XI at last decided to issue an encyclical, a letter addressed to all the faithful of the world. Written under Pacelli's direction, it was called Mit Brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety), and it was a forthright statement of the plight of the church in Germany. But there was no explicit condemnation of anti-Semitism, even in relation to Jews who had converted to Catholicism. Worse still, the subtext against Nazism (National Socialism and Hitler were not mentioned by name) was blunted by the publication five days later of an even more condemnatory encyclical by Pius XI against Communism."[Hitler's Pope; Cornwell]
You have provided a thorough and detailed account of the Church’s history and actions during this period of Nazi power and I appreciate your sharing it. There are some who are so indoctrinated with the “evils of Rome” that the facts make no difference, but having them available is important nonetheless.
Kenneth Woodward, Newsweek's religious editor, found that some of the historians quoted (and acknowledged in his introduction) by Cornwell, quickly disavowed and refuted the fraudulent use to which he put their work. Historians Pier Blet and Antonio Spinosa disproved Cornwell's account of the Concordat, and Ronald J. Rychlak, Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law and the author of Hitler, The War and The Pope confirms that Cornwell wrote a comic-book approach to Church history, ignoring, above, all, contemporaty Jewish voices thanking Pope Pius XII for his unwavering support of the Jews.
The 1943-44 American Jewish Yearbook reported that Pope Pius XII "took an unequivocal stand against the oppression of Jews throughout Europe."
Dr. Rafael Cantoni, head of the Italian Jewish Assistance Committee said: "The Church and papacy have saved Jews as much and in as far as they could save Christians...Six million of my co-religionists have been murdered by the Nazis, but there could have been many more victims, had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII."
Shortly after World War II, Grand Rabbi Isaac Herzog of Jerusalem wrote: "I express my thanks as well as deep appreciation...of the invaluable help given by the Catholic Church to the Jewish people in its affliction."
Were Pope Pius XII's contemporary Jewish admirers somehow mistaken?
Or themselves secretly in league with Adolf Hitler?
Before you embarrass yourself further by quoting Cornwell, you should look into a number of other sources, such as Rabbi David G. Dalin's revealing book, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope.Here is a wealth of refutation, far too long to list, but much of it cited in the amazon.com page on Rabbi Dalin's book, and in the above links.
But posting refutations next to their smears is a good and necessary thing. Only by constant objection and refutation was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion rejected as fraud, and so too might it be with Cornwell's slanderous missive.
My comparison in my last post to you still stands. I stated very strongly my belief that Brian McLaren is a tool of satan. That's a similar form of criticism to Hagee's. Am I anti-heretic? You bet! Anti-emergent church? Proudly! That doesn't mean I am a threat to his physical well-being or his right to refute my statement. I think his ideas should lose, that they lead people straight to hell. Even at that, I do not think it is the role of a politician to condemn him.
If I can't say what I really believe, there is no religious freedom. Government doesn't go around condemning people's religious beliefs.
Rome is never introspective nor self-correcting. Rome is always...Rome.
So we have the clear writing of history which can be read and understood by anyone with any high school textbook in order to know "who" did "what" "when." The "why" is always a little more difficult to grasp, but with some effort, it all becomes clear.
We've come to expect that on this topic we will be trashed personally with vile denunciations by those cut-and-paste Catholic apologists who offer discredited quotes from anonymous sources; from NY Times guest editorials by Catholics rather than NY Times news stories (there's a BIG difference); from a few Jewish politicians who still covet the Vatican's recognition of Israel's right to even exist; and from a lucky and well-connected name or two that Pacelli managed to help get out of the country before they met the same deadly end that six million Jews eventually endured. An end that was clearly spelled out in Hiter's "Mein Kamp" a full eight years before the Concordat was signed and the fate of millions of Jews was sealed in death camps and ovens, as promised.
The defense of Pacelli's "benevolence" to Jews is similar to what Stanley Kubrick said about Steven Spielberg's movie, "Schindler's List," -- "Six million Jews died and he makes a movie about the 600 who lived."
No, Rome doesn't change. And so the history books are wrong. The Vatican's own research documents are wrong. Statistics are wrong. Our lying eyes are wrong.
And John Cornwell, a born, raised and practicing Roman Catholic, is wrong, and a "liar."
I would bet none of these apologists have read Cornwell's book. They may have read the hysterical, self-serving rebuttals. But none who reads Cornwell's book can come away confident in his church's actions before and during WWII. It was appeasement; it was complicity; it was tragically immoral. And it was intentional.
So we Protestants say to our RC FRiends, read the book for yourselves. At least read the short version in "Vanity Fair."
Not so coincidentally, this is what we also urge them to do with the Bible -- read it for yourselves.
One evening several years ago when I was having dinner with a group of students, the topic of the papacy was broached, and the discussion quickly boiled over. A young woman asserted that Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, the Pope during World War II, had brought lasting shame on the Catholic Church by failing to denounce the Final Solution. A young man, a practicing Catholic, insisted that the case had never been proved. Raised as a Catholic during the papacy of Pius XII - his picture gazed down from the wall of every classroom during my childhood - I was only too familiar with the allegation. It started in 1963 with a play by a young German author named Rolf Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) which was staged on Broadway in 1964. It depicted Pacelli as a ruthless cynic, interested more in the Vatican's stockholdings than in the fate of the Jews. Most Catholics dismissed Hochhuth's thesis as implausible, but the play sparked a controversy which has raged to this day. Disturbed by the anger brought out in that dinner altercation, and convinced, as I had always been, of Pius XII's innocence, I decided to write a new defense of his reputation for a younger generation. I believed that Pacelli's evident holiness was proof of his good faith. How could such a saintly pope have betrayed the Jews? But was it possible to find a new and conclusive approach to the issue? The arguments had so far focused mainly on his wartime conduct; however, Pacelli's Vatican career had started 40 years earlier. It seemed to me that a proper investigation into Pacelli's record would require a more extensive chronicle than any attempted in the past. So I applied for access to archival material in the Vatican, reassuring those who had charge of crucial documents that I was on the side of my subject. Six years earlier, in a book entitled, "A Thief in the Night," I had defended the Vatican against charges that Pope John Paul I had been murdered by his own aides. Two key officials granted me access to secret material: depositions under oath gathered 30 years ago to support the process for Pacelli's canonization, and the archive of the Vatican Secretariat of State, the foreign office of the Holy See. I also drew on German sources relating to Pacelli's activities in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, including his dealings with Adolf Hitler in 1933. For months on end I ransacked Pacelli's files, which dated back to 1912, in a windowless dungeon beneath the Borgia Tower in Vatican City. Later I sat for several weeks in a dusty office in the Jesuit headquarters, close to St. Peter's Square in Rome, mulling over a thousand pages of transcribed testimony given under oath by those who had known Pacelli well during his lifetime, including his critics. By the middle of 1997, I was in a state of moral shock. The material I had gathered amounted not to an exoneration but to an indictment more scandalous than Hochhuth's. The evidence was explosive. It showed for the first time that Pacelli was patently, and by the proof of his own words, anti-Jewish. It revealed that he had helped Hitler to power and at the same time undermined potential Catholic resistance in Germany. It showed that he had implicitly denied and trivialized the Holocaust, despite having reliable knowledge of its true extent. And, worse, that he was a hypocrite, for after the war he had retrospectively taken undue credit for speaking out boldly against the Nazi persecution of the Jews..." (Long-buried Vatican files reveal a new and shocking indictment of World War II's Pope Plus XII: that in pursuit of absolute power he helped Adolf Hitler destroy German Catholic political opposition, betrayed the Jews of Europe, and sealed a deeply cynical pact with a 20th-century devil.)...
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