The Pope's speech to the German Parliament

[fpb]

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_listening_heart
As ever, the man is worth listening to. But the responses in the comments thread just show how bloody useless it is to deliver intellectually distinguished and morally valuable speeches in a world where most people know no history but are stuffed full of out-of-context factoids and believe themselves entitled to judge.

Comments

Three

[fpb.livejournal.com]

All the factoids you quote to the dishonour of Europe are minor and local. You are probably not aware that when the Jews were driven out of Spain, many of them fled straight to... Rome. The Pope's own capital. Why? Because that is where the most ancient Jewish community in the world has resided and resides still, under the Pope's protection. I am told that some Roman Jewish families can trace their descent, son to father, to 250AD and the Roman Empire. Indeed, the whole idea that there is a special hatred between Christians and Jews is due to a Muslim peculiarity. Christians expel unwanted minorities. Muslims, if they have such a problem, bury it. And if it was otherwise, ask yourself: why is it that, by 1800, nine Jews out of every ten lived in Christian Europe?

Re: Three

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

Antisemitism existed in France, Austria, Iberia and England where pogroms and expulsions were common. It was hardly "minor and local", no more than German, Polish or Italian beneficence towards Jews were "minor and local" either.

I'm not trying to "dishonour" Europe, only to show that their Catholicism in the middle ages did not necessarily mean they behaved in the whitewashed manner you claim. Most probably did, some didn't, but you cannot take credit for people behaving well from your religion and inspiring later beneficial ideals, while ignoring those who used it as a pretex for abuse. It is hubris to believe that any human culture or religion is somehow perfect (or utterly wretched), or that the past was some golden age compared to today.

Re: Three

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Rubbish. The whole dimension of behaviour to the Jews was different. The worst thing that Christian governments and authorities ever did to Jews (the Nazis weren't Christian and were planning the destruction of Christianity) was to expel them; the pogroms were the result of the typical kind of popular hatred of different neighbours which happens all over the world. What is more, in the twelve and thirteen hundreds, both Popes and Emperors published several Bulls threatening with excommunication and with charges of lese-majesty - that is, with the worst kind of penalty possible - anyone who assaulted or slandered the Jews. That they could not control the mobs does not mean that they did not try. At any rate, that is wholly different from Muslim practice, where governments regularly led pogroms. There has to be a reason why, by the nineteenth century, nine-tenths of the world's Jews lived in the Christian West.
(In fact, the relative moderation of the West is the reason why it is being so constantly slandered. Expelled Jews could hug their grievances close and go on about them; dead Jews could not. So they remembered the Spanish expulsions, but not the massacres by Mongols and Turks. There was nobody left to remember. And so, with this meme stamped on their minds, the early leaders of Israel tried hard to make friends with the local Muslims while treating the Christians like dirt. The result has been a series of vicious wars and diplomatic disasters; and some Jews still haven't learned.)

Re: Three

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

I was specifically indicating the "popular hatred" that manifested as you mentioned. The expulsion of Jews was preferable to pogroms, but it still constitutes an institutionalized discrimination on the part of some of the governments of that time, that we in the West would disapprove of today as being immoral. Let's not pretend that the governments of the middle ages (in Europe or elsewhere) were more benevolent, or even as benevolent, as those of modern Western ones (or even Eastern ones like Taiwan, Japan and South Korea) in the final analysis.

Re: Three

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Will you please stop putting words in my mouth? And at least the so-not-benevolent governments of those barbarous tyrannical middle ages you try with every word to bring down did not butcher their children in the womb. Which our wonderful, benevolent and oh-so-moral governments, by whose moral light you would judge the past, do with gay abandon.

Re: Three

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

No time period is beyond criticism, but I'd still rather live now in the West than in the past, all things considered. It's a much more civilized time.