Monthly Archive for December, 2010

To Recognize or Not to Recognize Israel: That is the Question.

Published on December 28, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

When it comes to the issue of Vatican non-recognition for the State of Israel, apologists for the actions—or lack thereof—of Pope Pius XII during the Second World War period often focus on the following things:

• The Vatican’s non-recognition for the right of the Jewish people to establish a homeland in their ancient land of Israel may have been influenced by concern with the safety of Christians in Arab lands
• Political and diplomatic issues
• Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli’s (later Pius XII) excitement at the prospect of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine
• Pope Pius’ refusal to recognize the State of Israel because he would have a preferred a state of religious Jews
• Pope Pius’ 1945 prediction to an audience of 80 Jewish survivors that “soon you will have a Jewish homeland.”
• Pope Pius pressured other Catholic countries to recognize the State of Israel

Let’s look at these explanations or justifications in more detail: the Vatican’s non-recognition for the right of the Jewish people to establish a homeland in their ancient land of Israel may have been influenced by concern with the safety of Christians in Arab lands, but given the small number of Christians in Arab lands one must wonder if this was sufficient for the Vatican to delay recognition until 1993. This theory doesn’t hold water.

Perhaps the Vatican was concerned with realpolitik issues. Maybe there were political or diplomatic issues, and maybe the Vatican, who always thinks of consequences to its actions in the long term, thought it imprudent to recognize the Jewish state right after its founding in 1948. But did the Vatican continue to feel it imprudent to refuse recognition for decades after most other countries ceased to have any qualms to do so? This theory does not hold water either.

It is possible that the Secretary of State under Pope Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli, had been excited at the prospect of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine during his tenure in the 1930s. If so, that would have been a jarring contradiction with the track record of previous Vatican officials who had opposed just that in the most callous ways. In any case, regardless of what Cardinal Pacelli may have thought about the prospect of establishing a homeland for the Jewish people, the Vatican refused to recognize Israel when the state was founded in 1948 and Pope Pius was in command of the secretariat of state and in a position to do this.

I find the assertion that Pope Pius refused to recognize the secular State of Israel because he would have a preferred a state of religious Jews sadly pathetic. Even if this was true, who did Pope Pius think he was to pretend to dictate to Jews the nature of their own state? If this had been the true reason for the refusal to recognize the state, this would be more proof of Christian contempt for Jews and, if anything, betrays the pope’s true feelings for Jews and Judaism.

Papal apologists sometimes claim that Pope Pius XII made a prediction to an audience of 80 Jewish survivors in 1945 that “soon you will have a Jewish homeland.” Can they be serious? What do they think that proves? What else do they think the Pope would have said in 1945, when the League of Nations mandated Britain in 1917 to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine? Do they find that statement particularly prophetic 28 years later in 1945? They say that the pope didn’t oppose the partition plan of 1947. Again, so what? Is this proof the pope supported the establishment of a Jewish homeland, or was he just accepting reality? Moreover, I find it particularly callous of Pius XII to have prodded Spain to recognize Israel in 1950, when he himself refused to do so at that time and the Vatican would continue to do so for another 43 years!

No, none of these things hold water or ring true. I will tell you the actual reason. It began long before Pope Pius XII. In 1904 Theodor Herzl, who was spearheading the Zionist dream of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, met with Pope Pius X with the intent of securing Vatican support for that effort. But Pope Pius X did not recognize the right of the Jews to exist as Jews: “The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people . . . The Jewish religion was the foundation of our own; but it was superseded by the teachings of Christ, and we cannot concede it any further validity.” And so he denied support. So did the Cardinal Secretary of State, who earlier had also denied support by saying, among other things, “But in order for us to come out for the Jewish people in the way you desire, they would first have to be converted.” Almost 40 years later, during the Nazi period, Undersecretary of State Tardini (under Pius XII) also opposed Jewish emigration to Palestine, the only place where Jews could have been saved from the Nazi onslaught: “The Holy See has never approved of the project of making Palestine a Jewish home . . . [because] Palestine is by now holier for Catholics than for Jews.” Pius’ Secretary of State Maglione also opposed the possibility of establishing a Jewish homeland there, because according to him Catholics had a right to the holy places, and their “religious feelings would be injured and they would justly feel for their rights if Palestine belonged exclusively to the Jews.” When we read these statements we must remember the historical context of when they were uttered. At that time, Jews were harassed, deprived of citizenship and their livelihood, physically attacked, economically disenfranchised, thrown into ghettos, and worse.

Just in case anyone wants to exculpate these individuals because perhaps they didn’t really know what was going on (they knew very well, but anyway…), after the horrors of the Holocaust became widely known and the State of Israel had been declared in 1948, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, which was the closest publication to the pope in the Vatican, felt necessary to declare, “Modern Israel is not the true heir of Biblical Israel, but a secular state . . . Therefore the Holy Land and its sacred sites belong to Christianity, the True Israel.” So, I think it’s important to call a spade a spade and recognize the real reasons why the Church and the Vatican acted the way they did vis-à-vis the Jews before, during and after the war.

Ultimately, the Vatican would shamefully continue in its refusal to recognize the State of Israel until 1993, 45 years after its founding and 14 years after its greatest foe, Egypt, had recognized its right to exist in 1979. The Vatican was one of the last states in the world to do so.

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Being Protector of Morals-in-Chief

Published on December 21, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

The Catholic Church claims to be the highest moral authority on Earth. It also teaches to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, and to avoid doing to others what we don’t want others doing to us. These are of course wonderful, lofty goals and the Church is to be commended for holding them at the very top of their priority list. Yet, given the history of this institution, one wonders to what extent these are goals they strive to live by, or whether to them they are just nice-sounding goals on paper they just pretend to live by. After all, one needs to wonder given the attitudes of the Church as well as that of millions of Catholics during the Crusades, the religious wars in Europe, the persecution of others they considered to be heretical, their abominable behavior toward the natives in the New World, the Inquisition, and the deafening silence of the Church as millions of Catholics actively or passively participated in the murder of millions of Jews, Roma, Orthodox Christians, and others during the Second World War.

When you are the self-avowed protector of morals, silence is not an option when faced with moral outrage.  When Catholic Father Tiso, the leader of Slovakia, deported Slovakian Jews to their deaths during the 1940s, the Vatican merely made some token effort to try to stop him. The Vatican would have excommunicated Father Tiso if it had believed that what he was saying and doing was not in agreement with Catholic teachings and Church policy. Instead all he got was a slap on the hand meant to show the Church disapproved of his actions, while clearly that was not the case. What they truly disapproved of was the embarrassing situation Slovakia was getting the Church into, because so many members of the Slovakian government, including its president, were Catholic priests.

In Croatia the situation was worse, as many of the actual perpetrators were priests who were members of the ruling regime. Many committed the most heinous crimes imaginable. The commandant of the concentration camp of Jasenovac, a place where the crimes committed made even the SS cringe, was a Franciscan priest who had no qualms in cutting hundreds of throats of people in one night while wearing his Franciscan robe. These were priests with literally blood on their hands. Many more were part of the genocide through the incitement of their sermons and writings, the antisemitism they continued to spread throughout the war, and their failure to tell the faithful to stop. Given that the Croatian regime was in a crusade to eliminate Orthodox Serbs and Jews and forcibly convert thousands of Orthodox to Catholicism, the Vatican, and Pope Pius XII at its helm, remained as silent about this genocide as they were about the genocide the Germans and their helpers were perpetrating everywhere else in Europe.

Typically papal apologists confuse “silence” with “actions”. Even if the Pope did take actions to save Jews—and I’m quite skeptical—the fact remains that the Pope was indeed silent irrespective of what these actions may have been. He never publicly condemned the extermination of the Jews in language that anyone other than the curia and the Nazi hierarchy understood. He never admonished the faithful and his entire Church network to save Jews. He never told the flock and his vast network of priests that denouncing, hunting down, and killing Jews was a crime and a mortal sin. He never instructed the German Catholic Church to avoid helping the German government in any way, and failed to reprimand them once they helped the Nazis identify the Jews. He never told the German Church, and thus never told the faithful, that obeying Catholic principles and being loyal to God was more important than obeying the authorities, particularly when those authorities were asking the faithful to do things that were contrary to the teachings of Christianity. He never threatened the faithful, or Nazi authorities, with excommunication if they persevered with the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”. He never told his priests to tell the flock to refrain from having any part in the exterminatory campaign. He never reprimanded or even less told German Army Bishop Rarkowski to instruct his priests to admonish the troops to refrain from participating in any exterminatory actions.

It’s true the Germans are responsible for the Holocaust. It’s also true the Nazis wanted to make Nazism into a neo-pagan cult. But it’s also true that despite all efforts they failed, as the vast majority of the population remained Christian. In any case, any claims to neo-paganism are immaterial given the widespread active and passive participation of ordinary Christian civilians in the occupied countries, most of whom were Catholic. It’s disingenuous to say that the Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians and others are not responsible for the Holocaust too. Sure, Germany was the force behind it, but the Germans would not have been able to do what they did without the willingness—indeed, eagerness—of others that enthusiastically denounced, hunted down, and killed Jews. It’s a canard to say that they were forced. No one was forced to kill Jews. The belief that that was so is an already discredited post-war myth. The commanders of the killing squads gave their platoon members the option to not participate in killing operations. Only a handful did so, and they suffered no consequence for it. The willing auxiliaries in the East, the vast majority of whom were Christian and not brainwashed by Nazi racial propaganda but rather but the teachings of Christianity, were very happy to sign up for the task. They were very happy to join the Waffen SS and help in the killing squads. They were very happy to finally solve the “Jewish Question”. No one put a gun to their heads to do anything. No one forced the French police to round up the French Jews. And neither the Pope nor anyone else in the Roman curia reminded any of them that Jews were human beings too, and that murdering them was contrary to the Golden Rule, contrary to Christian teachings, a crime and a mortal sin.

I realize papal apologists tend to think they can counter these arguments by looking under the rocks for someone who can say the Pope told them to save a Jew, or a Jew that is thankful to the Pope for having saved him. But they are missing the point, because even if by his “heroic” behind the scenes actions the Pope was successful in saving tens of thousands of lives, he would still be a moral failure because he failed to do all the things I mentioned above, which could and most likely would have completely changed the course of history.

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Are all Cultures Equal? Primitivism and Tribalism

Published on December 6, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

History has shown us that the so-called “advanced” or “progressive” societies have been in certain regards as primitive as the “primitive” ones. Western Civilization has always been quite savage under the—sometimes not very good—cover of advanced civilization, from the Spartans throwing “useless” girls and malformed boys off a cliff to Roman bloodthirstiness to the horrors of the Dark Ages (under the veil of Christian devotion!) to the corruption of the Middle Ages. When we compare the “primitive” societies of the Americas and those of Africa and the Polynesia with the European societies that brought them “modern” technology, culture, and Christianity, can we honestly say the Europeans were more advanced? Why? Because they had muskets instead of bow and arrow? Because they believed in one god instead of many? Were these Europeans really less primitive than the peoples they colonized?

Most of the people in the “advanced” societies that conquered the “primitive” societies did not believe that the universe operates according to natural law rather than by supernatural powers. On the contrary. And just like the “primitive” societies they conquered and decimated, the Europeans did not believe that by observing nature and applying reason through the scientific method, people could understand natural law and successfully apply that understanding to the task of living on Earth. No, rather they read the Bible believing it was the immutable word and law of God and blindly followed the Church’s dictates. They did not think that by assuming self-responsibility, each individual could shape the course of his own life, rather than being controlled by the tribe, but rather they accepted their life was in the hands of God and/or the Church. What the “more advanced” societies definitely had was better technology.

Unfortunately, the ideals of the Enlightenment are not as prevalent as we would like (and as they should). Recent polls show that about 98% of Americans believe in God. A large number of those think that Evolution through Natural Selection is not only wrong, but evil, and truly believe that the Creation, as narrated in the book of Genesis, is actual and indisputable truth. We are talking about millions of people who do not believe the Scientific Method is—so far—the best epistemological system we have, and also the only system that has proven to consistently provide correct answers to questions about the natural world, time after time. The Scientific Method opposes the dogmatic view, and it is a self-correcting system. To the millions of religious people —the nice couple next door, you could say—the word of the priest (or God) has always been more significant than that of the scientist. To them, if the Bible says that sodomy (or whatever) is bad or wrong, it’s enough to burn those people’s houses or lynch them. Even to this day, at the beginning of the 21st century, there are people in the “advanced” societies who refuse to accept modern medicine and prefer to see their family members die of some disease while they pray by the bedside. It was only a few years ago that the Pope officially acknowledged that the Church had made a mistake in condemning Galileo for supporting Copernicus’ heliocentric theory… To me, they are not any less primitive than any society we wish to call “primitive”. We are not any better than them just because our telephones work.

It is very important to be aware of the memetic heritage any social group has, and how that determines the identity of the group. Ethnicity—determined by their gene pool—is clearly not the factor that matters the most: there are myriad of different groups who share a Caucasian, or black, or Polynesian, American Indian or whatever origin and yet they can be not only totally different but also mortal enemies. The differences are cultural. Culture evolves and propagates through a memetic process in a way analogous to the way genetic evolution occurs: through Natural Selection. The memes that conform a society—the beliefs, ideas, thoughts, hopes—go through a constant battle for survival, exactly as our genes do. The memes that survive are those that can replicate, that is, they get transmitted to another brain which in turn transmits it to another brain and so forth. The memetic pool of the western powers which “conquered” the world were spread and inculcated in the colonized societies that endured them. The Jesuits had (have?) the specific purpose of proselytizing the Catholic creed. The Mormons are one of the most phenomenal cases of successful memetic propagation in modern times. But this is not limited to the great religions and/or ideas: even simple memes like “Say no to drugs!” get propagated.

In the history of the world many cultures have come and gone. Some of those cultures were seminal in their advancement of human thought, such as that of the ancient Greeks; some others were the incarnation of evil, such as the one that flourished in Germany during the Nazi period. The reasons for their demise are numerous and irrelevant to this discussion; what matters is that whether their legacy survives or not happens through a selection process. Their memes either propagate or not: there are a limited number our brains can deal with, so the competition for survival (replication) is very tough.

Whether any “primitive” cultures eventually get assimilated into the mainstream of the memetic pool or not remain to be seen. The question is whether any “primitive” memes can compete with the mainstream, “modern” memes. When someone is faced with the option of having a refrigerator where to preserve food fresh or have to deal with spoiled food, or when someone has to choose between a proven penicillin shot or the local shaman’s incantations, etc., it is very likely that, if the person really has a choice, they would choose the former. From this regard we call the societies that subscribe to the latter ideology “primitive”, in the sense that they maintain an epistemological system that has—historically speaking, at least—not advanced.

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