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."
Thank you for that, Dr. E. I know you’ll be hung out to dry by those who WILL NOT see. I had heard this myself years ago but never actually saw it in writing like this.
God put the U.S. and Israel together. He’s adamant about our protecting Israel because we are probably the only ones who do. Now, if we get a democrat in, Israel will be thrown to the wolves. If a republican gets in, whether or not you like him, Israel has a better chance. I don’t think anyone’s theology bothers God as much as our failure to stick up for His blessed people.
It’s the Baptists who do that (smile).
Our church also has a number of ex-Catholics, including hubby and our former senior pastor. Good folks!
Who is Brian McLaren? I hadn’t heard of him before.
Oh, no, of course it’s not intended against protestants...
Well, I’m sure he’d be in solid support of anyone who wasn’t a democrat or a liberal.
So what??? So he helped some Jews in Rome when he saw the handwriting on the wall??? How does that discredit Cornwell??? Did the help he gave to some Jews late in the war make up for the millions of Jews and Serbs and others who died at the hands of the one brought to power by Pacelli's 1933 Concordat with Hitler.
Did the chief rabbi know about the Vatican Ratlines in Pacelli's Vatican??? If he had more information in his hands that came to the fore years later he probably would have sung a different song.
McLaren is the author of some spiritual snake oil books and a leader in the movement known as the Emergent Church. He has devoted his life to leading Christians away from orthodox Christian doctrines. He and his cohorts are very bad news. He is a theological and political liberal on a mission to convert both theological and poltiical conservatives. He calls it being missional. He has had some surface success, though I would say he is inadvertently being used to expose false faith among church goers. People are waking up and having to choose between love for God (true love that obeys) and love for the world. If a man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him....friendship with the world is emnity towards God.... So painful as it is to see, exposure is good. In the end it will purify the true church. Still, we all must prepare ourselves for this spiritual battle. It is far from over.
Jas 4:4 - Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Thank you. M
Just like Hagee’s isn’t intended against Catholics.
Learned how this works right here on this thread.
Woods: “You point out that Cornwell has modified his views to some extent since the publication of Hitler’s Pope. How so?”
Dalin: “In his recent book “The Pontiff in Winter”, published in the United States in late 2004, Cornwell acknowledged that he had erred in his book Hitler’s Pope. He was wrong to have ascribed evil motives to Pius and now found it “impossible to judge” the wartime pontiff [Cornwell, The Pontiff in Winter, p. 193]. Cornwell’s about-face, however, received only slight notice in the liberal media, which of course had completely ignored previous scholarly refutations of Hitler’s Pope.
Rabbi David Dalin: “Despite allegations and misrepresentations to the contrary, it can now be documented conclusively that Pope Pius XII was responsible for saving hundreds of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. Although the villainous “silence” of the Pope has been repeatedly alleged since the early 1960’s, there is much historical evidence to confirm that he was not silent, that before and after he became Pope he spoke out against Hitler and that he was almost universally recognized, especially by the Nazis themselves, as an unrelenting opponent of the Nazi regime.
Pius XII publicly and privately warned of the dangers of Nazism. Throughout World War II, he spoke out on behalf of Europe’s Jews. When Pius learned of the Nazi atrocities in Poland, he urged the bishops of Europe to do all they could to save the Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution. On January 19, 1940, at the Pope’s instruction, Vatican radio and L’Osservatore Romano revealed to the world “the dreadful cruelties of uncivilized tyranny” that the Nazis were inflicting on Jewish and Catholic Poles. The following week, the Jewish Advocate of Boston reported the Vatican radio broadcast, praising its “outspoken denunciation of German atrocities in Nazi [occupied] Poland, declaring they affronted the moral conscience of mankind.”
In his 1940 Easter homily, Pius XII condemned the Nazi bombardment of defenseless citizens, aged and sick people, and innocent children. On May 11, 1940, he publicly condemned the Nazi invasions of Belgium, Holland, and Luxemburg and lamented “a world poisoned by lies and disloyalty and wounded by excesses of violence.” In June 1942, Pius spoke out against the mass deportation of Jews from Nazi-occupied France, further instructing his Papal Nuncio in Paris to protest to Marshal Henri Petain, Vichy France’s Chief of State, against “the inhuman arrests and deportations of Jews from the French occupied zone to Silesia and parts of Russia.”
The London Times of October 1, 1942, explicitly praises him for his condemnation of Nazism and his public support for the Jewish victims of Nazi terror. “A study of the words which Pope Pius XII has addressed since his accession,” noted the Times, “leaves no room for doubt. He condemns the worship of force and its concrete manifestations in the suppression of national liberties and in the persecution of the Jewish race.”...
http://forums.hannity.com/archive/index.php/t-20450.html
Do you think I'm calling for government censorship, or disputing Hagee's legal right to call the Catholic Church the whore of Babylon, or your legal right to call Brian McLaren a tool of Satan?
Not at all. Nobody is going to send the Sensitivity Police over to bloody anybody's nose, revoke their broadcasting license or suspend their FR account. What I am asserting (using the precepts of Jesus and of Paul to back me up) is that this is no way for a Christian to talk.
As I said before, this is one of those rare instances where Jesus makes a clear distinction between the propriety of His using this kind of dramatic and inflammatory invective, and the propriety of our using it. After all, the term "Whore of Babylon" originates in the Bible (Ezekiel) and the concept reappears in Revelation, with a theological meaning. The Holy Spirit, speaking through the prophets, can say that Israel is "whoring" with Assyria or Egypt. Jesus can say that the Pharasees are "sons of hell" (Matthew 23). Fine.
But we are not to say such things because Jesus commanded us not to. We are not even to say "Raca" or "You fool."
If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Romans 12:18
We can certainly judge actions to be good or bad, or opinions to be right or wrong, or words to be true or false. We are obliged to make such judgments. What we are not to do is use insultingly abusive speech.
Why? Because Jesus says not to. Do I need another reason?
Pius the Good
The brief for a much-maligned pope.
EVER SINCE THE GERMAN PLAYWRIGHT Rolf Hochhuth produced The Deputy—a long, unwatchable 1963 production that depicted Pope Pius XII as indifferent to the Holocaust—the notion that the Vatican bears a large portion of the guilt for Hitler’s murder of six million Jews has waxed and waned. But it seemed mostly to be fading away, one of the sillier ventures in historical misunderstanding.
And then, suddenly in the late 1990s, it was back—and back with a vengeance. James Carroll published a long essay in the New Yorker in 1997 called “The Silence,” setting up his 750-page book, Constantine’s Sword, using Pius XII to indict all things Catholic...
World War II began only months after Pacelli became pope in March 1939, and his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, is a searing condemnation of racism and totalitarianism. The new pope immediately made contacts with the anti-Nazi Resistance and actually approved a plot to assassinate Hitler..
Pius’s reaction to the Nazi round-up of Rome’s Jews is at the heart of the campaign against him, and in The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, Dalin is emphatic, demolishing the attack with hard facts and firsthand testimonies. Pius’s anti-Nazi activities so enraged Hitler that he planned to kidnap the pope, eliminating him as an obstacle to global domination. During his pontificate, Pius was as strong an opponent of evil as John Paul II was in time: For good reason John Paul called Pius XII “a great pope.”..
Dalin slams those authors who have tried to explain these tributes away as mistaken or manufactured in order to promote good Jewish-Catholic relations and reduce anti-Semitism. The idea that Jews manipulate events in their own interests is a motif of classic anti-Semitism, and Dalin confronts Pius’s detractors with their own bigotry: To “dismiss and deny the legitimacy of their collective gratitude to Pius XII is tantamount to denying the credibility of their personal testimony and judgment about the Holocaust itself. To so deny and delegitimize their collective memory and experience of the Holocaust . . . is to engage in a subtle yet profound form of Holocaust denial.”..
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/012/301kfkum.asp?pg=2
“When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.”
-Golda Meir’s telegraph to the Vatican on Pius’s death in 1958
Trashing Hagee exposes malicious intent for Hagee trashs many protestant venues as well.. especially the ones that are synthetic roman catholics..
Beyond that, is it any way for a Christian to talk? Well, it is the Christianity he believes in. Is it better for him to lie?
If we are not to confront false teachings and false prophets, why did Jude do it? Here is an example of what he said about others:
Jude: 11 Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam's error; they have been destroyed in Korah's rebellion. 12 These men are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm--shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted--twice dead. 13 They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever. 14 Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men....
Now again, I am not addressing the substance of what Hagee said. I would have to take a long look at it. I am only moving my argument a little, from whether McCain should denounce him to whether a Christian should ever use such strong language against anyone. Jude is just one example. Paul did it a lot. Just off the top of my head, Oh foolish Galatians, what magic has hypnotized you and cast its evil spell on you...
Here is another example from Paul in 2 Peter 2: They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish. 13 They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you. 14 With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed--an accursed brood! 15 They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved the wages of wickedness. 16 But he was rebuked for his wrongdoing by a donkey--a beast without speech--who spoke with a man's voice and restrained the prophet's madness. 17 These men are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. 18 For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. 19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity--for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him. 20 If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21 It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22 Of them the proverbs are true: "A dog returns to its vomit," and, "A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud."
Obviously it is Peter in 2 Peter and not Paul. LOL! I can find some Paul examples if you want me to. That Peter example is pretty solid all by itself.
But you aren’t Hagee, D-fendr. tit for tat?
In this context, Pacelli's urgency in attempting to strengthen the autonomy of Catholic institutions (particularly schools) in Germany via a Concordat, must be seen --- and was seen at the time --- as a way to limit the totalitarian claims of the German State. You got a problem with that?
Pacelli's aversion for Nazism was so well known that the weekly of the Communist International, La Correspondance Internationale, wrote that 'In calling to succession the one who had demonstrated energetic resistance against the fascists' totalitarian ideas that tend to eliminate the Catholic Church, (and) Pius XI's most direct collaborator, the Cardinals made a demonstrative gesture by placing, as head of the Church, a representative of the Catholic resistance movement'."
Cornwell did not publish reports written by the Gestapo against the Catholic Church and the Pope, nor did he take note of what the US, English, French, and Dutch newspapers were saying about Pius XII's resistance against the Nazis.
Cornwell also overlooked the fact that Dr. Robert Kempner, former attorney at the Nuremberg Tribunal concerned with war crimes, having consulted the documents in the control of the Secret Services and of Hitler's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, revealed that Pius XII and the Catholic Church had sent a great number of protests, both direct and indirect, diplomatic and public, secret and explicit, to which the Nazis never responded.
Somehow, DR. Eckleburg, you never get around to analyze the refutations of Cornwell's tendentious interpretation of the Concordat and of Papacy's later activities, although even Cornwell himself admitted five years later here in Economist (UK), in retrospect, that his book was indeed unbalanced.
Instead, you choose to multiply ad-hominem insults against Jews who defended Pius XII (i.e. Rabbis Pinchas Lapide, Daniel Dalin, Ellio Toaff, and Israel Zoller, plus statesmen and patriots David Ben-Gurion, Gold Meir, Isaac Herzog, Moshe Sharett, and Chaim Weizmann, whom you dismiss as "a few Jewish politicians who still covet the Vatican's recognition.")
I must say this reflexive contempt for Jewish testimony does not enhance your credibility as someone who cares for the Jews --- or for the accuracy of the historic record.
I was raised Catholic, and we didn’t even use Bibles back then. Even today, the Catholics I know think a Bible study in their church is a novel idea.
Hagee is adamant in his support of Israel, and teaches strictly out of the Bible. He is probably the most non-politically correct preacher out there; he offends other faiths, gays, abortionists and others equally.
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