In a press conference at the Vatican, Monsignor Cyril Salim Bustros, a Greek Melkite archbishop from Boston and president of the Church’s Commission for the Message, launched a blistering attack against the very foundation of Jewish belief.
“The Holy Scriptures,” Bustros declared, “cannot be used to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians, to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands.”
Not stopping there, he went on to state that “we Christians cannot speak of the ‘promised land’ as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people... There is no longer a chosen people.”
One cannot help but wonder: What Bible is the Vatican reading? Whichever one it is, it must be missing a few pages, as even a cursory glance at the Scriptures makes clear that the Jewish people’s right to the Land of Israel is indisputably ordained.
Take, for example, Isaiah 14:1-2: “The Lord will have compassion on Jacob; once again He will choose Israel and will settle them in their own land.” Or how about Jeremiah 11:5, where God says: “I will fulfill the oath I swore to your forefathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey...” And then there’s Ezekiel 34: 11-13. And Hosea 3:4-5. And Amos 9:14-15. And Obadiah 1:17, Zephaniah 3:19-20 and Zechariah 8:7-8.
But somewhere along the line the Catholic Church just does not get it. Then, the Vatican spokesman waited two days before issuing a mealy-mouthed statement which did little to calm the storm. His statement is as follows, “If one wants a summary of the synod’s position, attention must currently be paid to the ‘Message,’ which is the only written text approved by the synod in the last few days,” the Vatican’s Father Federico Lombardi said. “There is also a great richness and variety in the contributions made by the fathers, but which as such should not all be considered as the voice of the synod as a whole.”
No matter what they say, there is no getting around the fact that this convocation of bishops was called by the pope himself. The perception around the world seems that the Vatican had officially delegitimized Israel while assaulting Judaism itself.
As the Catholic writer William Doino Jr. noted: “In a statement meant to be fully and intensely Christian, Israel was singled out for blame and criticism. That’s not fair, much less Christian.”
Indeed, this entire episode is little more than a cheap bit of politics wrapping itself in the robes of religion. Bustros and his colleagues clearly have a political ax to grind with the Jewish state, and they shamefully do not hesitate to invoke the sacred for this most profane of goals.
No one can or will find the words “Palestine” and “Palestinians” in the New Testament. So the learned bishops could not have come up with the idea of the “occupation of Palestine” while attending Sunday school.
The founder of Christianity would also have to be considered an “occupier” and a “settler,” for according to Christian belief, Jesus the Jew was born and raised in Bethlehem, the very same Bethlehem that Bustros would now like to see become part of a Palestinian state.
If this unbridled insult and hatred to Israel and the Jewish people is allowed to stand and not denounced and corrected soon, more of the Israel’s enemies will stir more hatred.
To go one step further, and given the Catholic Church’s long and dark history of anti-Jewish persecution, it is only fitting that the pope himself speak out loudly and clearly on this issue.
One again wonders how this would take place when on this date 45 years ago, on October 28, 1965, that the Second Vatican Council approved a document known as Nostra Aetate, which heralded a sea change in the Church’s position toward Jews.
When it comes to its attitude toward the Jews, the church still has a long way to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment