As anyone who reads my blogs would know I am a great supporter of Pope Francis. However, I think the Pope's response and that of the Vatican and many of its Bishops to the present Israel-Hamas War has set back much of the good will built up since Vatican II and Nostra Aetate between Catholics and Jews. Many Jews and Rabbis that were friendly to the Church now feel let down and that the Church is engaged in double speak due to political reasons.
Is the Jewish-Catholic dialogue finished? The Church authorities never got to grips with accepting the claim to the land which is so important to Jews and seemed to cling to a supersessionist theology on this issue which meant that the Vatican didn't have diplomatic relations with the State of Israel until 1994. Many in the Church including the Pope cling to the idea of Jerusalem having a special international status which neither Jews nor Muslims want or would agree to at this stage of history.
The Palestinian Muslims want Jerusalem to be theirs and the capital of the Palestinian state which will be free of Jews. The Jewish people will never give up their rule of Jerusalem willingly and nor should they. The Israelis protect the holy sites of all three faiths so why is there any other authority needed? We see how international organisations like the UN can be taken over by anti-Semites and the woke. One need only look at PA ruled West Bank to see that the Christian Arabs have abandoned it due to Muslim fanaticism so that there are less than 2 percent of them when they once made up 15 %. Even in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem it has many Muslims living there now rather than Christians.
A Rabbi friend of mine in Israel is one of those people who feels let down and betrayed by the Pope and the Catholic Church. And it is quiet possible someone who was a friend is now an enemy of the Church. Many Catholics of Jewish background and ancestry also feel let down by the Church and many of our fellow Catholics which I wrote about in a previous blog post. How much more do other non-Catholic Jews feel about this as a betrayal. With deep sadness I wrote this to him:
I feel your pain and anguish on this. I understand why you think as you do. However I think you are misrepresenting or misunderstanding the Pope who has indeed condemned the brutal atrocities done against the Israeli civilians on Oct 7 and supported the Israeli right to self defense. I also support him praying for peace as I am praying for peace as well. However, I think he is mistaken and getting mistaken advice in regard to how that peace can be achieved. A cease fire or a premature peace would be a disaster for Israel and the world. Israel cannot allow Hamas to go on doing what they have been doing. I think those in both the Vatican and those in the Western leadership in general are out of touch with the reality that the Palestinians don't want a two state solution but a one state solution in which Israel ceases to exist and the Jews driven out and the whole area of Israel is part of a Muslim state. I also think the Pope is worried that this will turn into a global conflict as I think most of us are worried about that.I have been deeply hurt and shocked by the response of many Catholics as are many of us who are Catholics of Jewish background and ancestry and you are right about many of the traditionalists and the modernists - both groups have many antisemitic opinions and attitudes. However there are also many other Catholics who belong to neither of these groups who are standing with the Jews and Israel. Some get it wrong but they are sincere in their wrongness and I have found by talking and sharing with them they are now more clear and have changed many of their opinions and have apologised to me. You speak to Father __ about stepping away and forming some kind of 3rd Church, however this is not the Catholic way and even if we don't like what the Pope and the Church are saying and doing politically, we will always remain obedient to the validly elected Pope as the infallible guide on faith and morals and the successors of Peter and pray for him to change his mind if he is wrong. We had the reading today from Matthew 23 where Jesus told his followers to accept and obey the teachings of the Pharisees and Scribes who sit in the Seat of Moses but don't follow their hypocritical example. This is also the Catholic approach to those who sit in the Seat of Peter and the Apostles.It would make me sad to lose your friendship but I respect your decision and understand your hurt. I will continue to pray for you and for Israel and the hostages and the IDF soldiers and for victory over Hamas. In the dark days ahead I and my community will remain with the Barque of Peter even if it plunges under the waters for a time, as we know it will resurface and be more purified and sanctified in the process. I suspect that the Church may go into schism very soon and the traditionalists will break away with a so-called Pope of their own and the modernists also break away with a Modernist Pope (actually anti-Pope). We will remain with Pope Francis and whoever is validly elected after him. There will soon come a massacre of Catholic priests beginning in France and moving to Rome as well as civil wars in many European countries. This has all been prophesied by our Catholics saints, seers and prophets. The Russians and the Muslims will ally and attack Europe.The Pope (probably the next one) will flee Rome and go into hiding and then after a year be martyred and then there will be no valid Pope for 25 months. At this time the English King will be killed and England will have a violent revolution and become a communist republic. We have now in my opinion entered the time of Jacob's trouble and I don't expect peace in the near future unless it is a false peace. I hope I am wrong and that through prayer, fasting and sacrifice things can turn out different.
I watched an interviewer on a recent youtube video ask ordinary Palestinian Muslim people on the street, including women, about their opinions on suicide bombers and a two state solution. After watching their answers, I got the impression that peace with them is impossible, as they consider suicide bombings to be martyr operations and secondly they want no compromise or two state solution but they want all of the area not only on the West Bank but the whole of Israel to be theirs as Palestine and all the Jews to be gone. This is summed up in their mantra of "Free Palestine from the River to the Sea."
I think that the Pope and most Catholics have not realised how horrific the events of October 7 were for Jewish people all over the world and from all strands of Jewishness and that changed everything. The Israelis and the Jews are more united than ever. Trying to use the usual political rhetoric about how hard done by the Palestinians are is not resonating, when it is their people who are fanatical and and uncompromising in their hatred of Israel and Jews, so much so, that they celebrated the atrocities against fellow human beings, in a way that few, if any Christians or Jews would, if something like that was done by their own people on another group of people.
It is all very sad and it seems like old scars have been ripped afresh. I hope this isn't the death of the new understandings that have come through Jewish and Catholic dialogue but we may have to, on the Catholic side, do a lot of bridge building and fence mending as a result of these recent events. I have noticed also how united Jews are now and many are returning to God and to some more Jewish observance. This, at least, is a positive thing.
While I am sure that most of us are very sad to hear of the deaths of children in Gaza from the bombings, it is not the Israelis that are to blame for that but Hamas and the men of Gaza who attacked, murder and raped Israeli civilians. The Israelis warn the Gazans but it is Hamas that puts its civilians in harm's way. They do not care for the lives of their own people if it furthers their cause. As Golda Meir once said: Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.
I know that the Pope loves children and it breaks his heart to hear of any children being killed but he is mistaken if he thinks a ceasefire will make things better. It will embolden Hamas and the Muslims to further terrorist attacks. It seems the world has learnt nothing from the events of the 1930's and 40's. The Church and the West is foolish is they believe any footage coming from Hamas who are known to stage scenes for the media.
How quick they forget how they jumped on the Hamas bandwagon to condemn the Israelis for the bombing of a hospital with 200 or more killed when in fact it was a Hamas rocket which hit the car part of the hospital and killed 10-15 people in the car park. The hierarchs of the Churches in Israel leapt into action to condemn the Israelis and to sympathise with the people of Gaza and release a statement. They ended up with egg on their collective faces. I pray that the Pope will start to listen to some new advisors and change tack and to regain the admiration of the Jewish people that he once had. Let's hope and cry: Am Yisrael Chai! Baruch Hashem! Yosef Chai! May the aspect of Esau/Edom in the Church not triumph over the aspect of Joseph in the Church.
Pope Francis taught in Fratelli Tutti:
241. Nor does this mean calling for forgiveness when it involves renouncing our own rights, confronting corrupt officials, criminals or those who would debase our dignity. We are called to love everyone, without exception; at the same time, loving an oppressor does not mean allowing him to keep oppressing us, or letting him think that what he does is acceptable. On the contrary, true love for an oppressor means seeking ways to make him cease his oppression; it means stripping him of a power that he does not know how to use, and that diminishes his own humanity and that of others. Forgiveness does not entail allowing oppressors to keep trampling on their own dignity and that of others, or letting criminals continue their wrongdoing. Those who suffer injustice have to defend strenuously their own rights and those of their family, precisely because they must preserve the dignity they have received as a loving gift from God. If a criminal has harmed me or a loved one, no one can forbid me from demanding justice and ensuring that this person – or anyone else – will not harm me, or others, again. This is entirely just; forgiveness does not forbid it but actually demands it.242. The important thing is not to fuel anger, which is unhealthy for our own soul and the soul of our people, or to become obsessed with taking revenge and destroying the other. No one achieves inner peace or returns to a normal life in that way. The truth is that “no family, no group of neighbours, no ethnic group, much less a nation, has a future if the force that unites them, brings them together and resolves their differences is vengeance and hatred. We cannot come to terms and unite for the sake of revenge, or treating others with the same violence with which they treated us, or plotting opportunities for retaliation under apparently legal auspices”. [224] Nothing is gained this way and, in the end, everything is lost.243. To be sure, “it is no easy task to overcome the bitter legacy of injustices, hostility and mistrust left by conflict. It can only be done by overcoming evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21) and by cultivating those virtues which foster reconciliation, solidarity and peace”. [225] In this way, “persons who nourish goodness in their heart find that such goodness leads to a peaceful conscience and to profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties and misunderstandings. Even when affronted, goodness is never weak but rather, shows its strength by refusing to take revenge”. [226] Each of us should realize that “even the harsh judgment I hold in my heart against my brother or my sister, the open wound that was never cured, the offense that was never forgiven, the rancour that is only going to hurt me, are all instances of a struggle that I carry within me, a little flame deep in my heart that needs to be extinguished before it turns into a great blaze”. [227]244. When conflicts are not resolved but kept hidden or buried in the past, silence can lead to complicity in grave misdeeds and sins. Authentic reconciliation does not flee from conflict, but is achieved in conflict, resolving it through dialogue and open, honest and patient negotiation. Conflict between different groups “if it abstains from enmities and mutual hatred, gradually changes into an honest discussion of differences founded on a desire for justice”. [228]245. On numerous occasions, I have spoken of “a principle indispensable to the building of friendship in society: namely, that unity is greater than conflict… This is not to opt for a kind of syncretism, or for the absorption of one into the other, but rather for a resolution which takes place on a higher plane and preserves what is valid and useful on both sides”. [229] All of us know that “when we, as individuals and communities, learn to look beyond ourselves and our particular interests, then understanding and mutual commitment bear fruit… in a setting where conflicts, tensions and even groups once considered inimical can attain a multifaceted unity that gives rise to new life”. [230]
This is the teaching of Pope Francis from the Chair of Peter that I affirm and agree with when dealing with most conflicts. However, this doesn't fully apply to an enemy that only wants to exterminate you and your family and never make peace with you. Israel has tried every approach to making peace with the Palestinians and giving them their own independent state and each time they have rejected such a plan.
"...THE ANTICHRIST IS IN THE WORLD AND IS SECRETLY EXAMINING THE SCENARIO IN WHICH MEN FIND THEMSELVES, SPECIFYING WHAT IS NECESSARY IN ORDER FOR CHAOS TO SPREAD and so that his appearance would be regarded by My People as an act of salvation in the midst of suffering due to terrorism, war, strife and famine, which will be a specter passing among My children, making man despair and leading him to be more savage than an animal. In the face of hunger man is no longer man.The peace negotiated by man transforms itself into violence. Israel will suffer due to terrorism, and in reacting hastily it will draw suffering..."
On October 17 2023 Our Lady allegedly said to Luz de Maria:
"...Pray with the Holy Rosary in your hand and supplication in your heart. Remain united, pleading that the plans of terrorists in other parts of the world would be stopped, so that they would not be carried out according to the demands of groups that exist in various countries..."