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Luther has no more excuse then those who said like things before him.

Luther at the beginning sought the welfare of Jews, but their intractable hardness, pride, acts and blasphemies finally exasperated him, while Luther was never one to mince words and use acerbic speech at times. The Jews of old provoked even Moses "spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips," (Psalms 106:33) but Luther was wrong in advising worse things than conservative want to be done to illegal immigrants.

Yet many things are charged with inciting antisemitism. Paul himself stated by the Holy Spirit,

For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost. (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16)

But Paul was willing to be damned for them.

And

Patristic bishops of the patristic era such as Augustine argued that the Jews should be left alive and suffering as a perpetual reminder of their murder of Christ. Other Church Fathers, such as John Chrysostom went longer in their condemnation. Ephraim the Syrian wrote polemics against Jews in the 4th century, including the repeated accusation that Satan dwells among them as a partner. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_antisemitism#The_Church_Fathers

Yet Hitler's use of things to justify the holocaust must be understood as one aspect of his deception.

Listen to this speech:

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice…

And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed.”

[Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich on April 12, 1922, countering a political opponent, Count Lerchenfeld, who opposed antisemitism on his personal Christian feelings. Published in "My New Order", quoted in Freethought Today April 1990]

What guile!

I would reword one sentence as " Luther at the beginning sought the welfare of Jews, but" his own hatred finally overcame him and left us his legacy The Jews and Their Lies, and the horrific implementation of it by a wicked generation of his nation.
If we try to blame the Jews as a people for not accepting Lutheranism in the 16th Century by comparing them to the Jews of Moses and Paul's day, it perhaps has the side effect of making out the Jews as a race to have a perpetual defects due to their perpetual unwillingness to change their religion. This has tended all through history to be the ource of their persecution. Do I blame previous Catholics for such persecution ? Absolutely ! Yet I see that frail old MSN walking to the Western Wall, putting a prayer note into a crack, on behalf of the Catholic Church, asking for forgiveness for mistreating the Jews and not doing enough to help them, my heart just melts. I forgive. Moses and Paul were both willing to share the fate of their brethren rather than enter the kingdom without them. That shows me they had God's love and mercy. I don't see that in Luther, and of course not those who used his words in that generation of monstrous wickedness. I would agree that the Scriptures teach blindness to Messiah (which is not Lutheranism) has happened to Israel in part, until the fullness of the Gentiles come in, and then all Israel will be saved. What a glorious time that will be !
Your post of Hitler's speech was brilliant, as well as brave. It reminds us how easily a man can be corrupted who strays from sound doctrine and makes up his own religion, using and twisting the Bible toward an unbalanced and evil end. The Jews always seem to be the target of the adversary, in every generation. Knowing that Messiah has already conquered sin and death, the adversary was left with the strategy of destroying the remnant of Israel to perhaps thwart the prophecy and inflict the most pain and suffering on he apple of God's eye.

MSN = man

It reminds us how easily a man can be corrupted who strays from sound doctrine and makes up his own religion, using and twisting the Bible toward an unbalanced and evil end. ...and STILL be leading GOD's True Church all the while!!!

Pope Stephen VI (896–897), who had his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber.^[1]

Pope John XII (955–964), who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people, and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife.

Pope Benedict IX (1032–1044, 1045, 1047–1048), who "sold" the Papacy

Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who is lampooned in Dante's Divine Comedy

Pope Urban VI (1378–1389), who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured.^[2]

Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503), a Borgia, who was guilty of nepotism and whose unattended corpse swelled until it could barely fit in a coffin.^[3]

Pope Leo X (1513–1521), a spendthrift member of the Medici family who once spent 1/7 of his predecessors' reserves on a single ceremony^[4]

Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), also a Medici, whose power-politicking with France, Spain, and Germany got Rome sacked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bad_Popes

(I've a LONG way to go in repeatedly posting this info in this thread if I am going to catch up to as many times as LUTHER has been mentioned herein.)

Thank you for a civil and interesting perspective; a few points: I would reword one sentence as " Luther at the beginning sought the welfare of Jews, but" his own hatred finally overcame him and left us his legacy The Jews and Their Lies, and the horrific implementation of it by a wicked generation of his nation.

But where is the historical perspective RCs demand in seeking to engage in damage control for the Inquisitions, and in this case the Jews overall had evidently made themselves rather unlovable, as i suspect they were in 1930's Germany, yet which does not excuse the treatment that Luther and popes and other Catholics advocated.

Do I blame previous Catholics for such persecution ? Absolutely ! Yet I see

But why the standard ambiguous blaming of "Catholics" when this was seen from the top, as well as reasons like as Luther invoked?

From a SSPV site (http://www.romancatholicism.org/popes-jews.html). I do not have the time to verify and examine all quotes as is my practice:

Pope Martin V: “However, we received a short time ago through credible reports knowledge to our great alarm, that various Jews of both sexes in Cafas and other cities, lands and places overseas, which fall under the jurisdiction of Christians, are of obstinate mind and, in order to conceal swindling and wickedness, wear no special sign on their clothing, so that they are not recognisable as Jews. They are not ashamed to give themselves out as Christians before many Christians of both sexes of these cities, districts and places mentioned, who could not in fact identify them, and consequently commit shameful things and crimes.” (Sedes Apostolica)

Pope Eugene IV: “We decree and order that from now on, and for all time […] All and every single Jew, of whatever sex and age, must everywhere wear the distinctive dress and known marks by which they can be evidently distinguished from Christians.”

Pope Saint Pius V: “In order to make an end of all doubt concerning the colour of the cap and the sign of the women, we declare that the colour must be yellow.” (Romanus Pontifex)

Pope Innocent III: “The Jews, by their own guilt, are consigned to perpetual servitude because they crucified the Lord.” (To the Archbishops of Sens and Paris)

Pope Innocent IV: “And that you [King Saint Louis IX] order both the aforesaid abusive books [The Talmud] condemned by the same doctors and generally all the books with their glosses which were examined and condemned by them to be burned by fire wherever they can be found throughout your entire kingdom, strictly forbidding that Jews henceforth have Christian nurses or servants, that the sons of a free woman may not serve the sons of a bondwoman, but as slaves condemned by the Lord, whose death they wickedly plotted, they at least outwardly recognize themselves as slaves of those whom the death of Christ made free and themselves slaves. So we may commend the zeal of your sincerity in the Lord with due praises.” (The Wicked Perfidy of the Jews)

Pope Saint Martin I: “If anyone shall teach a slave, under pretext of piety, to despise his master and to run away from his service, and not to serve his own master with good-will and all honour, let him be anathema.”

Pope Benedict XIV: “It is fitting for Jews to serve Christians, but not for Christians to serve Jews. On the contrary, the Jews, as slaves rejected by that Saviour Whose death they wickedly contrived, should recognize themselves in fact and in creed the slaves of those whom the death of Christ has set free, even as it has rendered them bondmen.” (Quoting Pope Innocent III, “Etsi Judaeos”)

Pope Gregory IX: “They ought to know the yoke of perpetual enslavement because of their guilt. See to it that the perfidious Jews never in the future become insolent, but that they always suffer publicly the shame of their sin in servile fear.” (Epistle to the Hierarchy of Germany)

Pope Alexander III at the Third Lateran Ecumenical Council: “We declare that the evidence of Christians is to be accepted against Jews in every case, since Jews employ their own witnesses against Christians - and that those who prefer Jews to Christians in this matter are to lie under anathema, since Jews ought to be slaves to Christians.” (Canon 26)

Pope St. Pius V expelled all
Jews from the papal realms

Pope Saint Pius V: “With full understanding and in exercising of the apostolic powers, we withdraw from the Jews and their rule (and recognize no right or claim) all properties, which the Jews have in their possession in this city Rome or other places of our domain of rule.” (Cum Nos Super)

Pope Paul IV: “It is too absurd and pointless that the Jews, whom their own guilt condemns to slavery, under the pretence that Christian piety suffers and tolerates their coexistence, pay back [with wickedness] the mercy received from Christians.” (Cum Nimis Absurdum)

Pope Leo VII: “Let the Gospel be preached unto them and, if they remain obstinate, let them be expelled.”

Pope Innocent III: “The Lord made Cain a wanderer and a fugitive over the earth, but set a mark upon him, making his head to shake, lest anyone finding him should slay him. Thus the Jews, against whom the blood of Christ calls out, although they ought not to be wiped out, nevertheless, as wanderers they must remain upon the earth until their faces are filled with shame and they seek the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Epistle to the Count of Nevers)

Pope Saint Sylvester I at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea: “Concerning the prohibition of usury and base gain by the clergy; and concerning the prohibition against conversing or eating with the Jews. No priest shall set money out at interest or take unfair profit or be friendly or sociable with Jews; nor should anyone take food or drink with the Jews; for if this was decreed by the holy apostles, it is incumbent upon the faithful to obey their command; and the synod shall excommunicate any one who does not comply with this order.”

Pope Eugene IV: “We decree and order that from now on, and for all time, Christians shall not eat or drink with the Jews, nor admit them to feasts, nor cohabit with them, nor bathe with them. […] They cannot live among Christians, but in a certain street, separated and segregated from Christians, and outside which they cannot under any pretext have houses.”

Pope Alexander III: “Our ways of life and those of the Jews are utterly different, and Jews will easily pervert the souls of simple folk to their superstition and unbelief if such folk are living in continual and intimate intercourse with them.” (Ad Haec)

Pope Saint Pius V: “Besides usury, through which Jews everywhere have sucked dry the property of impoverished Christians, they are accomplices of thieves and robbers.” (Hebraeorum Gens)

Pope Benedict XIV: “Furthermore, by means of their particular practice of commerce, they amass a great store of money and then by an exorbitant rate of interest utterly destroy the wealth and inheritance of Christians.” (A Quo Primum)

Pope Clement VIII: “All the world suffers from the usury of the Jews, their monopolies and deceit. They have brought many unfortunate people into a state of poverty, especially the farmers, working class people and the very poor. […] Their ethical and moral doctrines as well as their deeds rightly deserve to be exposed to criticism in whatever country they happen to live.”

Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Ecumenical Lateran Council: “The more the Christian religion is restrained from usurious practices, so much the more does the perfidy of the Jews grow in these matters, so that within a short time they are exhausting the resources of the Christians. Wishing therefore to see that Christians are not savagely oppressed by Jews in this matter, we ordain by this synodal decree that if Jews in the future, on any pretext, extort oppressive and excessive interest from Christians, then they are to be removed from contact with Christians until they have made adequate satisfaction for the immoderate burden. Christians too, if need be, shall be compelled by ecclesiastical censure, without the possibility of an appeal, to abstain from commerce with them. We enjoin upon princes, not to be hostile to Christians on this account, but rather to be zealous in restraining Jews from so great oppression.”

Pope Innocent III: “When Jews are admitted out of pity into familiar intercourse with Christians, they repay their hosts, according to the popular proverb, after the fashion of the rat hidden in the sack, or the snake in the bosom, or of the burning brand in one’s lap.”

Pope Gregory IX: “Ungrateful for favours and forgetful of benefits, the Jews return insult for kindness and impious contempt for goodness.” (Epistle to the Hierarchy of Germany)

Pope Stephen III: “With great sorrow and mortal anxiety, We have heard that the Jews have in a Christian land the same rights as Christians, that Christian men and women live under the same roof with these traitors and defile their souls day and night with blasphemies.” (Epistle to the Bishop of Norbonne)

Pope Innocent IV: “The wicked perfidy of the Jews - from whose hearts Our Saviour did not remove the veil because of their enormous crimes but caused them justly to continue in their blindness, commit acts of shame which engender astonishment in those who hear, and terror in those who discover it.” (The Wicked Perfidy of the Jews)

Pope Saint Gregory the Great: “Furthermore, I must tell you that I have been led to praise God the more for your work by what I have learnt from the report of my most beloved son Probinus the presbyter; namely that, your Excellency having issued a certain ordinance against the perfidy of the Jews, those to whom it related attempted to bend the rectitude of your mind by offering a sum of money; which your Excellency scorned, and, seeking to satisfy the judgment of Almighty God, preferred innocence to gold.” (Epistle to Rechared, King of the Visigoths)

Pope Saint Gregory VII: “We exhort your Royal Majesty [King Alfonse VI of Castile], not to further tolerate, that the Jews rule Christians and have power over them. For to allow that Christians are subordinated to Jews and are delivered to their whims, means to oppress the Church of God, means to revile Christ himself.” (Regesta IX. 2)

Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Ecumenical Lateran Council: “They shall not appear in public at all on the days of lamentation and on passion Sunday; because some of them on such days, as we have heard, do not blush to parade in very ornate dress and are not afraid to mock Christians who are presenting a memorial of the most sacred passion and are displaying signs of grief. What we most strictly forbid however, is that they dare in any way to break out in derision of the Redeemer.”

Pope Gregory IX: “We order all our brother bishops absolutely to suppress the blasphemy of Jews in your dioceses, churches, and communities, so that they do not dare raise their necks, bent under eternal slavery, to revile the Redeemer.”

Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Ecumenical Lateran Council: “We therefore renew in this canon, on account of the boldness of the offenders, what the Council of Toledo providently decreed in this matter: we forbid Jews to be appointed to public offices, since under cover of them they are very hostile to Christians.”

Pope Saint Gregory I: “It has come to my ears that certain men of perverse spirit have sown among you some things that are wrong and opposed to the holy faith, so as to forbid any work being done on the Sabbath day. What else can I call these but preachers of Antichrist, who, when he comes, will cause the Sabbath day as well as the Lord’s day to be kept free from all work. For, because he pretends to die and rise again, he wishes the Lord’s day to be had in reverence; and, because he compels the people to judaize that he may bring back the outward rite of the law, and subject the perfidy of the Jews to himself, he wishes the Sabbath to be observed.” (Epistles, Book XIII:1)

Pope Innocent IV: “We who long with all our hearts for the salvation of souls, grant you full authority by these present letters to banish the Jews, either in your own person or through the agency of others, especially since, as we have been informed, they do not abide by the regulations drawn up for them by this Holy See.” (To the King of France)

Pope Saint Pius V: “The Jewish people fell from the heights because of their faithlessness and condemned their Redeemer to a shameful death. Their godlessness has assumed such forms that, for the salvation of our own people, it becomes necessary to prevent their disease. Besides usury, through which Jews everywhere have sucked dry the property of impoverished Christians, they are accomplices of thieves and robbers; and the most damaging aspect of the matter is that they allure the unsuspecting through magical incantations, superstition, and witchcraft to the Synagogue of Satan and boast of being able to predict the future. We have carefully investigated how this revolting sect abuses the name of Christ and how harmful they are to those whose life is threatened by their deceit. On account of these and other serious matters, and because of the gravity of their crimes which increase day to day more and more, We order that, within 90 days, all Jews in our entire earthly realm of justice - in all towns, districts, and places - must depart these regions. After this time limit shall all at the present or in the future, who dwell or wander into that city or other already mentioned, be affected, their property confiscated and handed over to the Siscus, and they shall becomes slaves of the Roman Church, live in perpetual servitude and the Roman Church shall have the same rights over them as the remaining [worldly] lords over slaves and property.” (Hebraeorum Gens)

Christians agreed with the Church and the Jews were expelled in the following instances.

1. 250: Carthage;

2. 415: Alexandria;

3. 554: Diocese of Clement (France);

4. 561: Diocese of Uzzes (France);

5. 612: Visigoth Spain;

6. 642: Visigoth Empire;

7. 855: Italy;

8. 876: Sens;

9. 1012: Mayence;

10. 1181: France;

11. 1290: England;

12. 1306: France;

13. 1348: Switzerland;

14. 1349: Hielbronn (Germany);

15. 1349: Hungary;

16. 1388: Strasbourg;

17. 1394: Germany;

18. 1394: France;

19. 1422: Austria;

20. 1424: Fribourg & Zurich;

21. 1426: Cologne;

22. 1432: Savory;

23. 1438: Mainz;

24. 1439: Augsburg;

25. 1446: Bavaria;

26. 1453: Franconis;

27. 1453: Breslau;

28. 1454: Wurzburg;

29. 1485: Vincenza (Italy);

30. 1492: Spain;

31. 1495: Lithuania;

32. 1497: Portugal;

33. 1499: Germany;

34. 1514: Strasbourg;

35. 1519: Regensburg;

36. 1540: Naples;

37. 1542: Bohemia;

38. 1550: Genoa;

39. 1551: Bavaria;

40. 1555: Pesaro;

41. 1559: Austria;

42. 1561: Prague;

43. 1567: Wurzburg;

44. 1569: Papal States;

45. 1571: Brandenburg;

46. 1582: Netherlands;

47. 1593: Brandenburg, Austria;

48. 1597: Cremona, Pavia & Lodi;

49. 1614: Frankfort;

50. 1615: Worms;

51. 1619: Kiev;

52. 1649: Ukraine;

53. 1654: Little Russia;

54. 1656: Lithuania;

55. 1669: Oran (North Africa);

56. 1670: Vienna;

57. 1712: Sandomir;

58. 1727: Russia;

59. 1738: Wurtemburg;

60. 1740: Little Russia;

61. 1744: Bohemia;

62. 1744: Livonia;

63. 1745: Moravia;

64. 1753: Kovad (Lithuania);

65. 1761: Bordeaux;

66. 1772: Jews deported to the Pale of Settlement (Russia);

67. 1775: Warsaw;

68. 1789: Alace;

69. 1804: Villages in Russia;

70. 1808: Villages & Countrysides (Russia);

71. 1815: Lubeck & Bremen;

72. 1815: Franconia, Swabia & Bavaria;

73. 1820: Bremes;

74. 1843: Russian Border, Austria & Prussia;

75. 1862: Area in the U. S. under Grant's Jurisdiction;

76. 1866: Galatz, Romania;

77. 1919: Bavaria (foreign born Jews);

78. 1938-45: Nazi Controlled Areas;

79. 1948: Arab Countries.