Anti- Wall Street Rally in New York

Irish activist arrested and injured at anti-CRH protest in West Bank village

A news item highlighting the news that an Irish man was arrested and injured at the behest of the Israeli army.

Source

Irish activist and documentarian Tommy Donnelan, 63, was this afternoon wounded and detained for two hours by the Israeli Military in the West Bank. While filming a non-violent protest against the role of Irish cement multinational CRH in building Israel's apartheid wall in the village of Bil'in, Mr. Donnellan was rushed by an Israeli snatch-squad of 4 or 5 soldiers. His throat and shirt were grabbed, his gas mask was torn off, and after being wrestled to the ground he was arrested. During the arrest he sustained a 3 inch gash to his right leg and was bleeding hevaily from his left ear, from which a piece was torn off. About two hours later he was released without charge.

Speaking after his release, Mr. Donnellan stated: "Thank the Lord I'm ok now. I've lost a chunk of my ear - but not my dignity. I was plainly in the role of journalist, videoing the proceedings, I should not have been arrested, especially in such a violent manner."

Interview with Fr Paul Morgan SSPX

Stephen Heiner conducted  an interview with Fr Morgan in London. Fr Morgan is the British District Superior. The interview can be watched here  Fr Morgan discusses the history of the British District SSPX, the Redemptorists of Papa Stronsay, the talks with Rome and other topics.

 

Gordon Brown Tells RCN of Precious Nature of Life

An excellent article here from Final Conflict. Brown and his Labour Party share the same ideals as the Labour Party in Ireland. They are hypocrites for certain. They believe in the murder of innocent children in their mothers womb. This same Labour Party support mass immigration to Ireland.

Source

I just watched Gordon Brown give a speech to the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) albeit in the background as I pottered away (as is my proclivity).
Gordon Brown said that every life is precious and that if everything they had done and all the money they had invested had saved just one life it would have been worth it, whereas in reality they had save millions.

Hypocrite.
Does he not know that his laws, his government and the system he supports have seen millions of innocent children murdered in the womb?
He has been personally responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents.
These are children who would grow to enjoy Christmases, to see their nephews and nieces graduate and all the other life-scenes that Gordon painted the scene for in his speech.

Gordon has been responsible for the murder of children who would grow to be tax-payers, who would become angelic nurses, policemen, soldiers, surgeons, taxi drivers, council workers, mums and dads -- in fact by killing so many children he has destroyed the future of whole families.
Of course this is the same mass murderer who says we "need" immigration... because he can't see he is murdering millions of our people, and he can't be bothered to educate the children for the skills we need.
None of these things occur in a vacuum.

None of the main parties and few if any of the serious fringe parties are Pro-Life. Least of all Gordon 'every life is precious' Brown.
If you are going to vote, speak to the candidates and find out which is Pro-Life and make it known that you will only vote for those who will end the mass murder of the innocents.
If a "patriotic" candidate is standing in your area, make sure they know you will vote for them, if they are Pro-Life.

Put the pressure on the vote-grubbers. If they want your vote they will have to work for it.
But if you live in Gordon Brown's constituency, don't bother asking him. Despite all his grandiose talk of saving lives so they can see another Christmas, he believes in the culture of death, of abortion mills and of mass murder of the ultimate innocents.
As some coloured chappies once said: don't believe the hype.

Mohammed - Is his Testimony Credible?

Source

By St. Thomas Aquanis

"He (Mohammed) seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh urges us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected; he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity.

He did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth. On the Contrary, Mohammed said that he was sent in the power of his arms - which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants. What is more, no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning (1). Those who believed in him were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Mohammed forced others to become his follower's by the violence of his arms. Nor do divine pronouncements on part of preceding prophets offer him any witness. On the contrary, he perverts almost all the testimony of the Old and the New Testaments by making them into a fabrication of his own, as can be seen by anyone who examines his law. It was, therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity. It is thus clear that those who place faith in his words believe foolishly"

- Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 1, Chapter 16, Art. 4.

Footnote:

1. Sura 21:5, Sura 44:14; Sura 16:103, Sura 37:36

The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed

You can read the entire article by clicking this link .  There is a brief extract below.  See also On Islam

 

Mohammedanism was a : that is the essential point to grasp before going any further. It began as a heresy, not as a new religion. It was not a pagan contrast with the Church; it was not an alien enemy. It was a perversion of Christian doctrine. It vitality and endurance soon gave it the appearance of a new religion, but those who were contemporary with its rise saw it for what it was not a denial, but an adaptation and a misuse, of the Christian thing. It differed from most (not from all) heresies in this, that it did not arise within the bounds of the Christian Church. The chief heresiarch, Mohammed himself, was not, like most heresiarchs, a man of Catholic birth and doctrine to begin with. He sprang from pagans. But that which he taught was in the main Catholic doctrine, oversimplified. It was the great Catholic world on the frontiers of which he lived, whose influence was all around him and whose territories he had known by travel which inspired his convictions. He came of, and mixed with, the degraded idolaters of the Arabian wilderness, the conquest of which had never seemed worth the Romans' while.

He took over very few of those old pagan ideas which might have been native to him from his descent. On the contrary, he preached and insisted upon a whole group of ideas which were peculiar to the Catholic Church and distinguished it from the paganism which it had conquered in the Greek and Roman civilization. Thus the very foundation of his teaching was that prime Catholic doctrine, the unity and omnipotence of God. The attributes of God he also took over in the main from Catholic doctrine: the personal nature, the all-goodness, the timelessness, the providence of God, His creative power as the origin of all things, and His sustenance of all things by His power alone. The world of good spirits and angels and of evil spirits in rebellion against God was a part of the teaching, with a chief evil spirit, such as Christendom had recognized. Mohammed preached with insistence that prime Catholic doctrine, on the human sidethe immortality of the soul and its responsibility for actions in this life, coupled with the consequent doctrine of punishment and reward after death.

If anyone sets down those points that orthodox Catholicism has in common with Mohammedanism, and those points only, one might imagine if one went no further that there should have been no cause of quarrel. Mohammed would almost seem in this aspect to be a sort of missionary, preaching and spreading by the energy of his character the chief and fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church among those who had hitherto been degraded pagans of the Desert. He gave to Our Lord the highest reverence, and to Our Lady also, for that matter. On the day of judgment (another Catholic idea which he taught) it was Our Lord, according to Mohammed, who would be the judge of mankind, not he, Mohammed. The Mother of Christ, Our Lady, "the Lady Miriam" was ever for him the first of womankind. His followers even got from the early fathers some vague hint of her Immaculate Conception.[1]

But the central point where this new heresy struck home with a mortal blow against Catholic tradition was a full denial of the Incarnation.

Mohammed did not merely take the first steps toward that denial, as the Arians and their followers had done; he advanced a clear affirmation, full and complete, against the whole doctrine of an incarnate God. He taught that Our Lord was the greatest of all the prophets, but still only a prophet: a man like other men. He eliminated the Trinity altogether.

With that denial of the Incarnation went the whole sacramental structure. He refused to know anything of the Eucharist, with its Real Presence; he stopped the sacrifice of the Mass, and therefore the institution of a special priesthood. In other words, he, like so many other lesser heresiarchs, founded his heresy on simplification.

Baby boy survives for nearly two days after abortion

Let us pray that this baby was baptised by the chaplain.

Source 

The 22-week infant died one day later in intensive care at a hospital in the mother's home town of Rossano in southern Italy.

The mother, pregnant for the first time, had opted for an abortion after prenatal scans suggested that her baby was disabled. However, the infant survived the procedure, carried out on Saturday in the Rossano Calabro hospital, and was left by doctors to die.

He was discovered alive the following day – some 20 hours after the operation – by Father Antonio Martello, the hospital chaplain, who had gone to pray beside his body.

He found that the baby, wrapped in a sheet with his umbilical cord still attached, was moving and breathing.

The priest raised the alarm and doctors immediately arranged for the infant to be taken to a specialist neo-natal unit at the neighbouring Cosenza hospital, where he died on Monday morning.

Italian police are investigating the case for "homicide" because infanticide is illegal in Italy.

The law means that doctors have had an obligation to try to preserve the life of the child once he had survived the abortion.

The Italian government is also considering an inquiry into the conduct of the hospital staff.

Eugenia Roccella, the under-secretary of state in the health department, on Wednesday night promised a government inquiry into the incident.

“The minister of health will send inspectors to the hospital in Rossano Calabro to investigate what actually happened, and to see if the Law 194, which prohibits abortion when there is a possibility of the foetus living separately from the mother, and permits it only when the continuation of the pregnancy would result in life-threatening danger to the mother.”

She said that if initial information is correct, “this would be a case of deliberate abandonment of a seriously premature neonate, possibly also with some form of disability, an act contrary to any sense of human compassion but also of any accepted professional medical practice".

She added: “We must remember that a baby, once born, is an Italian citizen equal to all the others, and is entitled to all fundamental rights, including the right to health and therefore to be given full support.”

The case has reignited controversy on the legality of abortion in the Roman Catholic country.

It could also raise questions in Britain over the legal upper limits for abortion and the viability of the foetus – or its ability to survive outside of the womb.

A spokesman for the ProLife Alliance said: "There cannot be anybody in the world who is not horrified by a story like this nor anybody in the UK who would not support a massive reduction in the upper limit for abortion."

Most abortions at 22 weeks simply involve the induction of the birth which normally results in the death of a young foetus.

The case is causing uproar in Italy because it is the second involving a foetus of that age surviving the procedure in just three years.

The other involved a baby in Florence who weighed just 17oz when he was aborted at 22 weeks because of a suspected genetic disorder, but lived for three days.

Since 1978, abortion has been available on demand in Italy in the first three months of pregnancy but is restricted to specific circumstances – such as disability- in the second trimester. The government is considering a review of the working of the laws.

The case also comes as figures in Britain revealed last week that the number of babies born weighing only 2lbs has more than doubled in just two years.

Yet the proportion of tiny babies born stillborn has nearly halved, the health service statistics have shown.

The figures do not reveal at what stage the babies were born but a child weighing under 2lbs is likely to have been born at least three months early.

They will inevitably include some born alive at an age when they could, in other circumstances, have been aborted.

More than 200,000 abortions are performed each year, most for non-medical reasons within the legal upper limit of 24 weeks gestation.

The increasing number of babies surviving below 24 weeks, partly because of advances in medicine, has led to widespread calls for the legal upper limit to be further reduced.

Attempts to lower the limit failed in Parliament in 2008.

In 2005 a baby boy in Manchester was born alive at 24 weeks after surviving three attempts to abort him. He is now a five-year-old schoolboy.

Western civilisation on the Titanic

'Catholic' Archbishop: To Forget 'Holocaust' is Heresy!

The article can be viewed by clicking here

The ‘Holocaust’, ie ‘The Sacred Six Million’ is a theological belief of Talmudism. The Jews need to be converted to the Faith. Since the Second Vatican Council figures in the Church and in society have embraced a ‘Holocaust’ theology. The doctrine of the Talmud is bedded in what is passed off as Catholic by a majority of Bishops and priests today. There ought to be conversions to the One True Faith.

'What Sinn Fein Stands For'

'What Sinn Fein Stands For' (1921), outlines that Sinn Fein rejected both Capitalism and Communism and was geared towards a Distributist system of economic policy. This work of Aodh de Blacam can be read here

Irish Justice Minister snubs meeting of rank and file gardaí in Limerick

The Justice Minister stayed away from the annual conference of the 11,000 or so rank and file members of An Garda Síochána. He didn’t like the content of the speech that was due to be given at the conference. The rank and file members of the police are very angry at this government which has destroyed the Nation. Parts of the speech claim that the Government’s only agenda is to protect “economic traitors:Men like Fingers and Seanie”

‘Abortion and Contraception are fruits of the same tree’

These are the words of Eamon O’ Dwyer Professor, emeritus, of Obstetrics and Gynaecology who spoke at a conference at Stormont buildings recently. Professor O’ Dwyer went on to state that ‘There are no medical circumstances in which the life of a mother may only be saved by directly terminating the life of her unborn child’. He cited the 1893 President of the British Medical Association who stated it is not necessary to set mother against child.

Mrs Johanna Higgins, a barrister made the important point that ‘The question “Do you agree with abortion to save the life of the mother?” is based on a false premise that important is sometimes necessary to save the life of the mother. It is never necessary to kill the unborn child to save the life of its mother. It should, therefore, never be legal because it is never necessary.’

Praying the rosary outside an abortuary in the United States

Praying in Dublin (IFPA)

Global bank conspiracy

Goldman Sachs: Profiting at others expense

Scrap NAMA!

We  support neither Capitalism nor Socialism but will display this video as a news item. NAMA needs to be scrapped. Politicians and ‘Banksters’ need to be held account.

Gallipoli

 

Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax

A very tragic story from New York where a homeless man was left to die on the street. He was stabbed after he came to the assistance of a woman who was being attacked.

 Source

A heroic homeless man, stabbed after saving a Queens woman from a knife-wielding attacker, lay dying in a pool of blood for more than an hour as nearly 25 people indifferently strolled past him, a shocking surveillance video obtained by The Post reveals
Read more here 

Celtic Cross features on new stamp issued by An Post

An Post are featuring several Celtic Crosses on a series of postage stamps. There are thousands of these High Crosses around the country.

Successful mobilization against Militant Queers in Paris

A report from Paris on the successful action from the Catholic militants in Paris. The following is an electronic translation from the original French.

http://renouveaufr.free.fr/

Approximately 70 people including some forty members of RF showed yesterday that the abnormal always find to talk in their provocative actions and hateful. First success, moving the collection of "lesbian-gay-bi-trans to a hundred meters from the Nuncio. It must be said that from 14h, our activists occupied the place in a relaxed and under a blazing sun ... Second successful face-to-face verbal allowed to pass a strong message but educational! "LGBT, leave us alone!". A spokesman for the RF Paris addressed a few words to journalists covering the event. A video made by us out in the coming hours.
Thank you to all the comrades who have moved, thank you for Catholics and members of other movements have responded to the call

All-Ireland Rally for Life in Belfast on July 3rd 2010

An All-Ireland Rally for Life is planned to take place in the centre of Belfast on July 3rd at 2pm. Last year over 4,000 people marched through the streets of Dublin to show their opposition to abortion. Those interested in attending the Rally can contact + 353 1 8730465 or email info@rallyforlife.net  for more details. The organisers have a website. The website is http://www.rallyforlife.net/ 

US soldier apologises for attack on Iraq families

 Source 

AN American soldier who took part in an attack in which 12 people, including a Reuters journalist, were killed and two children injured has written an emotional apology to the victims’ families in Iraq.

Ethan McCord is seen carrying the children to safety in a Pentagon video of the attack which occurred three years ago in a suburb of Baghdad. The film was released on the internet earlier this month by WikiLeaks, the website dedicated to publishing secret documents.

“The acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war,” writes McCord in an apology which is also signed by Josh Stieber, another former soldier from the same unit. “We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused.”

The release of the 38-minute video embarrassed the Pentagon and prompted indignation at the spectacle of soldiers from Bravo Company 2-16 killing with the seeming detachment of video gamers.

McCord’s comments are likely to cause further disquiet: he claims he was so distressed by what he had witnessed that day that he asked to see a counsellor but was told by a superior: “Don’t be a pussy.”

In the video, an Apache helicopter is seen firing at a group of Iraqi men, killing a Reuters photographer and his driver. Then the helicopter opens fire on a van trying to rescue the wounded, killing several more people.

As the helicopter circled overhead, McCord’s platoon arrived on foot. He was the first to approach the bullet-riddled van. Inside, a girl sat crying in the back.

“She had a stomach wound and glass in her eyes and in her hair,” McCord recalled last week. Next to her was a boy who was covered in blood. In the front seat their father sat slumped to one side.

“Just from looking into the van and the amount of blood that was on the boy and the father, I immediately figured they were dead.”

McCord carried the girl into a house to be examined by a medic. Then he went back out to the van.

“That’s when the boy took, like, a laboured breath. That’s when I started screaming, ‘The boy’s alive, the boy’s alive’,” he said. He picked up the child and ran with him to a Bradley armoured vehicle.

“He opened his eyes when I was carrying him,” recalled McCord. “I just kept telling him, ‘Don’t die, don’t die’. He looked at me, then his eyes rolled back into his head.”

Back in his room that evening McCord said that he felt “distraught” as he tried to wash the children’s blood out of his uniform, thinking of his own family.

“So I went to a sergeant and asked to see the mental health person, because I was having a hard time dealing with it.”

He was warned that there would be “repercussions” if he insisted on counselling: “So I tried to move on with everything. I’ve lived with seeing the children that way since the incident happened. I’ve had nightmares. I was diagnosed with chronic severe posttraumatic stress syndrome.”

McCord left the army. Back home in Wichita, Kansas, his condition began to improve. Then, when he turned on his television one day earlier this month, he saw himself in the grainy, black-and-white video footage that had leaked onto the internet.

“The flood of emotions came back,” he said. “I know the scene by heart. It’s burnt into my head. I know the van, I know the faces of everybody that was there that day.”

He was happy to know that Sajad Salah, the 12-year-old boy, and Duaa, his six-year-old sister, had survived their injuries. Their father had been driving them home from school when he saw the injured Reuters driver crawling across the road and stopped to help. The helicopter then opened fire, killing them.

“Knowing that I was part of the system that took their father away from them ... it’s heartbreaking,” said McCord.

“That is what helped me and Josh write the letter, hoping that it would find its way to them to let them know that we’re sorry. We’re sorry for the system that we were involved in that took their father’s life and injured them.” Furious debate has raged in America over the military rules of engagement. “Personally I believe the first attack was appropriate,” says McCord, referring to the attack on the group of men.

“They did have weapons there. However, I don’t feel that the attack on the van was necessary ... the Apaches [helicopters] decided to completely obliterate everybody in the van.”

McCord has joined the Civilian-Soldier Alliance against America’s involvement in Iraq. “We are doing what we can to speak out against the wars and military policies responsible for what happened to you and your loved ones,” McCord says in his letter of apology.

“Our hearts are open to hearing how we can take any steps to support you through the pain that we have caused.”

Moral Framework

His Lordship has the approval of his Superior, Bishop Fellay to continue his weekly column.

The weekly column of Bishop Richard Williamson

ELEISON COMMENTS CXLV (April 24, 2010) : MORAL FRAMEWORK

By their comprehensive brevity and divine promulgation, God's ten Commandments (Deut.V,    6-21) are the outstanding presentation of that natural law known to every man through his natural conscience, and which he denies or defies at his peril. Last week's "Eleison Comments" claimed that this law makes easy a diagnosis of the ills of modern art. Actually it diagnoses a multitude of modern problems, but let us this week look at the structure of the ten Commandments, as analyzed by St Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae, 1a 2ae, 100, art.6 and 7.

Law is the ordering of a community by its leader. Natural law is God's ordering of the community of men with himself, of himself with men. Of this community God himself is the centre and main purpose, so the first "table of the Law" lays out men's duties to God  (C.1, no idols, C.2 no blasphemy, C.3 keep the Sabbath), while the second table (C. 4-10) details men's duties to their fellow-men.

The first three Commandments represent the duties of loyalty, respect and service in that order. For just as for a soldier in an army, says St.Thomas, disloyalty to his general, or treachery, is worse than disrespect, which is worse than a failure to serve him, so a man towards God must firstly have no other gods (C.1), secondly in no way insult him or his name (C.2), and thirdly render him the service he requests (C.3).

As for the duties of a man towards his fellow-men (C.4-10), of primary importance are his relations with the father and mother who gave him life.. Therefore the second table of the Law is headed by the duty to honour one's parents (C.4). So basic is this honour to all human society that without it society falls to pieces, as we see happening all around us today with "Western civilization" (which would better be termed "Western disintegration").
The remaining six Commandments St.Thomas continues to analyze as being in descending order of importance. Harm to neighbour in action (C.5-7) is worse than merely in word (C.8) which is worse than only in thought (C.9-10). As for harm in action, harm to a neighbour's person (C.5, no killing) is graver than to his family (C.6, no adultery), which in turn is graver than to his mere property (C.7, no stealing). Harmful actions in word (C.8, no lying) are worse than harm in mere thought, where again envy of his marriage or family (C.9, no concupiscence of the flesh) is graver than envy of his mere property (C.10, no concupiscence of the eyes).

However, the breaking of all ten Commandments involves pride - the ancient Greeks called it "hubris" - whereby I rise up against God's order, against God. For the Greeks, hubris was the key to man's downfall. For us today, a universal pride is the key to the modern world's appalling problems, insoluble without God, which means, ever since the Incarnation, without Our Lord Jesus Christ.    Sacred Heart of Jesus, save us!                                                     
Kyrie eleison.

Visiting the countryside

Those who live in rural areas often take it for granted. People, who are living in the decaying cities, blighted by the evils of capitalism  often love to spend just a few hours away from the noise and pollution of the big city and town. Irish people should forget jetting off on foreign holidays but should spend several days in the countryside.

 

Arts and Crafts

A great number of artists, writers and tradesmen have come from Ireland and we see this tradition continue today. The notion of arts and crafts brings enjoyment to people. People like to paint and draw, people enjoying spending hours at their woodwork. Our people like to sell butter and milk. People enjoy eating and making brown bread. There is a massive increase in organic baking. People do enjoy their hobbies and crafts.

 

There is great interest in farming and seeking to return to the land.

Group protest Anglo bail-out at bank's headquarters

There is widespread public anger towards the politicians and the banksters  and protests are set to continue around the country. People are certainly asking for a scrapping of NAMA and for the politicians and the banking elite to be held account. The news item below is very interesting.

 Source

Six people have occupied the reception area of Anglo Irish Bank's headquarters in Dublin.
They are protesting over the use of taxpayers' money to prop up the bank.
The group is also calling for NAMA to be abolished.
The group entered the building this morning and have chained themselves to a staircase.

Happy St George's Day!

Greetings to our many English friends and supporters on this day.

St. George, Heroic Catholic soldier and defender of your Faith, you dared to criticize a tyrannical Emperor and were subjected to horrible torture. You could have occupied a high military position but you preferred to die for your Lord. Obtain for us the great grace of heroic Christian courage that should mark soldiers of Christ. Amen

 

 

 

The Mystery of the Jews

http://www.sspx.org/against_the_sound_bite...of_the_jews.htm

By Rev. Frs. Michael Crowdy & Kenneth Novak
Originally printed in the April 1997 issue of The Angelus magaine.
It cannot be denied that the subject of the Jewish people is both very difficult and very fascinating.
Difficult, because the Jewish people is present in all history both divine and human. There is no period of history about which one can write without mentioning them. Says the Jewish author of Jesus Told by the Wandering Jew (Editions Fleg, p.177):
"There are two mysteries of history. Jesus is a mystery as Israel is a mystery! And when you put these two mysteries together, do I have to tell what results? —A third mystery, more mysterious by itself than the two others!"
And fascinating, because who can concern himself with the Jewish people without a feeling of admiration or pity, or of both at the same time? The Jewish people brought Christ into the world, yet before Pilate it repudiated Him; the people without a nation of their own and yet unable to live together among others.

The Jewish people is still more fascinating because of its many strengths. It is to its credit as achievers that the Jewish people holds positions in governments, in international and party politics, in the direction of national economies, in the complex mechanisms of money, in the media and leisure, and in the influence over lifestyle and public opinion. For two thousand years it has applied itself with unique tenacity.
And when one thinks of this people, who live in the midst of all the nations, through the most varied changes of fortune but always and everywhere intact and incorruptible —one reflects that this people’s lineage is the greatest upon earth!
The Jewish people justly claims the greatest of lineages, because it has six thousand years of indestructible history. The greatest of lineages, because it was in it that Christ, the Son of the living God, took flesh. This is a people which, though a minority, is here and everywhere, as it has been for 20 centuries of Christian history. What is its origin? How and why does it continue? What is its destiny in history? What attitude should one adopt towards it? These are the questions this article hopes to explain.

This article claims to be an explanation of the Jew —a theological explanation —which in this case is the only possible one. Theology is the science of the mysteries of God. These mysteries are the inscrutable judgments of the Most High which are known to us when He deigns to manifest them to us. Without these manifestations we would have no inkling of them.
Catholic theology teaches that the Jewish people is the object of a very special vocation from God. Only in the light of theology can one explain the Jew. Neither merely psychology nor the biological sciences, nor even purely historical studies can explain the Jewish people. This people is a topic of universal and eternal scope which by its very nature requires a universal and eternal explanation that is valid for today, for yesterday and forever. The Jewish people must be considered by an explanation which is eternal, like God; that is to say, a theological explanation.
What emerges from this explanation is not meant in any way to justify either semitic or antisemitic activity. These two terms tend to trivialize a situation that is deeper and more universal. Catholic theology, while throwing light on the mystery of the Jewish people, will indicate the relations between Jews and Christians, who must live apart until the mercy of God disposes their reconciliation.

The Jewish People According to Catholic Theology
The Jewish people is not like the other peoples, who are born today and fade tomorrow, creating admirable civilizations limited to a point in time and space. We remember the great empires of Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans: their glory was the glory of a day.
The Jewish people, a tiny enclave at the crossroads of East and West, was made tiny for its purpose of bearing the mystery of God through the centuries. And to bear this mystery graven in its flesh it was not to create a civilization, because that is a human thing. What was necessary for it was the divine.
The Jewish people is the theological people which God created for Himself. Moses tells us in Genesis how, two thousand years before Jesus Christ, the Lord God called the patriarch Abraham, living at Ur of the Chaldees, in Mesopotamia, and told him:
1. Go forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and out of thy father’s house, and come into the land which I shall show thee.
2. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and magnify thy name: and thou shalt be blessed.
3. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee; and in thee shall all the kindred of the earth be blessed (Gen. 12).
So the Jewish people, the sons of Abraham, have their origin in God, because it is He who has chosen them out of the rest of mankind and it is He that promises His blessing in such a way that in them all the kindred of the earth shall be blessed. Israel, then, is great with a theological greatness. But does this greatness consist purely in its bodily descent in the flesh from Abraham, the patriarch from whose body it was formed, or does it rest on the faith Abraham had in God’s Promise of a Redeemer?
This is an extremely important question. If the blessings of God are for Abraham’s bodily descendants only, then the Jewish people would be chosen and blessed among all the nations of the earth only for the fact of being sons of Abraham. But if the blessings are reserved to faith in the divine Promise, then simple descent by lineage is valueless. It is necessary to be a descendant of Abraham by faith in the Promise, that is to say, a spiritual descent based on faith.

Ishmael and Isaac
What, then, is the basis of Israel’s greatness in the light of God’s plan? To make it clear, God gave Abraham two sons. The one called Ishmael was by his slave-woman, Hagar, and his birth was in the ordinary course of nature. The other was given him, against all hope, by his wife Sarah in her old age, in accordance with the Promise of God. He was called Isaac.
It was to Isaac and his descendants that God confirmed the Pact made with Abraham. He also bestowed a blessing on Ishmael, but a purely material one, promising to make him the head of a great people. From Ishmael descend the present Arabs, who are in such bitter opposition of the entry of Jews into Palestine. That is because Abraham was persuaded by Sarah and commanded by God to show Hagar and Ishmael the door (Gen. 21).
What is signified by these two sons of Abraham? St. Paul, the great apostle of the divine mysteries, tells that two nations are prefigured in Ishmael and Isaac (Gal. 4).
Ishmael, the first to be born and the natural offspring of the slave, Hagar, represents the Synagogue of the Jews, which glories in its descent from the flesh of Abraham. But Isaac, born miraculously of the sterile Sarah according to a Promise of God, represents the Church which, like Isaac, is born by faith in the Promise of Christ.
So it is not lineal descent from Abraham which brings salvation, but spiritual union with Christ through faith. The Jewish people which began with Abraham will be able to attain to its salvation not by the fact of its material descent from Abraham, but in believing in Christ and assimilating itself to Him in faith.
All who are united in Christ form the blessed inheritance of Abraham and the patriarchs, and are the object of God’s Promises. The Catholic Church is Sarah made fruitful by the divine power. It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh, on the other hand, is worth nothing, as Jesus Christ was to say:
"It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life." (Jn. 6:64)
Could it happen that this people, or a part of it —united to Abraham by bodily descent —should believe that this same genealogical link alone is what gives justification and salvation? Yes, it could happen, and it did. St. Paul comments that, to show it in advance, God so disposed that...:
"...Abraham had two sons; the one by the bondwoman and the other by the free woman. But he who was of the bondwoman, was born according to the flesh: but he of the free woman was by Promise." (Gal. 4:22,23)
All this was said by way of allegory in order to signify that the simple fact of fleshly union with Abraham is represented by Ishmael, the slave’s son; and the imitation of Abraham, by faith in Jesus Christ, is represented by Isaac, the son of the Promise.
And one must also make a distinction between those who are true Israelites because they imitate Abraham’s faith in God by believing in Jesus Christ (those represented by Isaac), and the Israelites who descend from Abraham in the flesh without imitating his faith (who are prefigured by Ishmael).
Ishmael persecuted Isaac. St. Paul, commenting on this, adds:
But as then he that was born according to the flesh persecuted him that was after the spirit: so also it is now (Gal. 4:29).
Here we see expressed the theological necessity by which Ishmael persecuted Isaac, the Synagogue persecutes the Catholic Church, and the Jews who are united to Abraham by only a union of the flesh persecute the Christians who are the true Israelites, united to Christ by faith.
The same mystery is revealed to us by the two sons granted by the Lord for the patriarch Isaac —Esau and Jacob. Let us turn to Genesis (ch. 25):
v.21: And Isaac besought the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and He heard him, and made Rebecca to conceive.
v.22: But the children struggled in her womb: and she said: If it were to be so with me, what need was there to conceive? And she went to consult the Lord.
v.23: And He answering said: Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be divided out of thy womb, and one people shall overcome the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.
v.24: And when her time was come to be delivered, behold twins were found in her womb.
v.25: He that came forth first was red, and hairy like a skin: and his name was called Esau. Immediately the other coming forth, held his brother’s foot in his hand, and therefore he was called Jacob.

In his Epistle to the Romans, in which he reveals the mystery of the Jewish people, St. Paul shows how Esau, the elder according to the flesh, is the Jewish people united to Abraham by a simple blood-tie, while the younger brother Jacob is the Catholic Church (formed of Jews and Gentiles) which, because it is united by faith to Christ, is preferred above Esau. In this way were fulfilled the words of Scripture (when God reproached the Jews for their ingratitude and lack of pure sacrifice, and called the Gentiles to offer up to Him in every place an acceptable sacrifice):
"I have loved you, saith the Lord: and you have said: Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau brother to Jacob, saith the Lord, and I have loved Jacob, but have hated Esau? and I have made his mountains a wilderness, and given his inheritance to the dragons of the desert." (Mal. 1:2,3)
As it is written: "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated." (Rom. 9:13)
So it is that the Church overcomes the Synagogue, although the Synagogue, like Esau...
"...always hated Jacob...and he said in his heart...I will kill my brother Jacob." (Gen. 27:41)

The Greatness of the Jewish People
We have referred to these figures from among the Patriarchs as interpreted by the Catholic Church to show that at the very origins of the Jewish people there is foreshadowed both its greatness and complexity.
The Jewish people has a theological lineage, chosen, consecrated, and sanctified for the purpose of identifying and bringing to us the bodily reality of our Divine Lord Jesus Christ who had to come, and whom the Gentiles expected. This is what is awe-inspiring in the Jewish people: its flesh is sanctified and marked to bring us Him "Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life."
But precisely why is this flesh holy? Why is it of Abraham’s lineage? Why must it bring to us the Christ? In other words, is it Christ who sanctifies the Jewish lineage, or the Jewish lineage that sanctifies Christ?
The fact is that Christ, as Isaiah had foretold (Rom. 9:32) had been placed as a stumbling block, a stone of scandal among his people. If, with the humility of Abraham, this people believed in Christ as sanctifying their lineage, then it was called to be the root and the stem of that flourishing Olive Tree which was to be the Church of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church. On the other hand, if it was to reject Christ, confident in its pride of race, then it destined itself to be the root and stock of a wild vine which would produce bitter fruits.
In the former case, this people will be Isaac, Jacob, and Abel; in the latter, it is called to play the part of Ishmael, Esau, and Cain.
But this chosen line will always take precedence over all the other races of men. If it accepts Christ, it will be the principal and best part of the Catholic Church, the root and trunk of that Olive Tree that produces fruit for eternal life, as the Apostle Paul teaches. If it rejects Christ, it will be chief in the kingdom of iniquity. The great Apostle, St. Paul, who was proud to know himself an Israelite, emphasizes the Jewish pre-eminence for good or ill when he says:

"Tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that worketh evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek…" (Rom. 2:9)
What advantage then hath the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way. First indeed, because the words of God were committed to them (Rom. 3:1,2).
The Jew then is first in the order of goodness, in the mystery of grace. The trunk of the tree that is the Catholic Church is Jewish. The Patriarchs are Jews; the Prophets are Jewish, John the Baptist is Jewish; St. Joseph is Jewish; the Mother of God is Jewish; and our Blessed Savior in whom all nations of the earth are blessed is Jewish. The Apostles are Jewish; the Evangelists are Jewish; and the first of the Martyrs, St. Stephen, is Jewish.
What a people, this theological people that is the trunk of the tree of the Church! In the presence of this Olive Tree, what worth have the Gentile peoples who are only poor wild olives? What worth has the learning of the Greeks or the power of pagan Rome? Mere foolishness, says St. Paul, because these nations did nothing to bring salvation such as the Jewish nation did. If the Gentile nations–starting with the Greeks–wish to enter the way of salvation they must do so by charity, profiting by the general rejection of Jewish people in order to be grafted in. That is why St. Paul says the fall of a part of the Jewish people has become the opportunity of salvation for the Gentiles:
"And if some of the branches be broken, and thou, being a wild olive, art ingrafted in them, and art made partaker of the root, and of the fatness of the olive tree, boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee." (Rom. 11:17,18)
But Israel’s greatness, which was predestined to be in Christ, needs to be matched by a corresponding fidelity to Christ. What unhappy consequences visit this people if it repudiates the One Who is its salvation! Judas Iscariot, Annas, and Caiphas were Jewish. It was the Jewish chief priests who persuaded the people to call for the crucifixion of the Savior and who cried out, "His blood be upon us and our children!" (Mt. 27:25) Jews stoned St. Stephen; Jews martyred St. James and laid traps for the apostles. The greatest crime of all time —the death of the God-Man —was perpetrated by this forlorn people.

What is the root of the errors of the Jews? —It is that "a part of this people" believed that the promises given to the Jewish people on account of Christ (who was due to be born from among them) were made to His flesh, to His lineage. However, the Jewish people, instead of acknowledging that it was the chosen people because of Christ, rather believed that it was Christ who had something to boast about on account of His genealogical lineage.
Thus, it was not Christ, but the flesh of Abraham, that was the source of glory. And the Pharisees, the veritable incarnation of this spirit of iniquity, declared proudly as a reason for not accepting Christ: "We have Abraham for our father."
So their sin consisted in making carnal (i.e., material) the promises of God. In that way they attributed substantial value to what was only a foreshadowing. They expected salvation from what was only a sign of that salvation.
As for the Messiah, the One awaited, who was to bring grace and truth to the world, they made of Him a political, earthly ruler, who would assure and perpetuate the greatness of Israel over all the nations.
The Carnalization of the Jewish People
It will be instructive to distinguish the different stages in the process of the carnalization of the Jews. We have coined this word —carnalization —by which we mean to indicate the Jewish people’s historical material-mindedness.
The Sacred Scriptures record that the Israelite people had always a nature dominated by great pride and avarice. Moses himself distinctly warned the Israelites:
"Know therefore that the Lord thy God giveth thee not possession of this excellent land for thy justices [righteousness], for thou art a very stiff-necked [stubborn] people…" (Deut. 9:6)
"And again the Lord said to me: I see that this people is stiff-necked: Let me alone that I may destroy them, and abolish their name from under heaven, and set thee over a nation, that is greater and stronger than this." (Deut. 9:13.14)
In the period of the Kings, the people’s dishonesty and materialism became particularly evident. They abandoned themselves to a thousand perversities and idolatries to such a degree that they were the first to be broken up and led into captivity in Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar, six centuries before Christ. This hard captivity lasted seventy years. At the end of it the Jewish people, returning to Palestine, reformed themselves on new and firm foundations given by Ezra, whom the Jews considered as great a lawgiver as Moses. In fact, Judaism, as it was at the time of Christ and as it has remained until the present day, springs from the reorganization of the people under Ezra.
To generalize, it must be said that the Jews are a people bound to a book, the book above all others, the Law —the Torah. In reality, the Torah is composed of the first five books of the Sacred Scriptures [the Pentateuch], written by Moses as inspired by the Holy Ghost. But the Jews only accept as the Word of God (superior to that of Moses himself) the Torah together with the interpretations the rabbis have handed down by oral tradition. These interpretations have been collected and in some way petrified in a voluminous book called the Talmud. The Talmud is the civil and religious code of the Jewish people.
Judaism
The Jews are a people created by the mentality of the rabbis, especially of the Pharisee rabbis. The Pharisee vividly displays the carnality of the Jews. We are not using the word carnal with the meaning that they have a special leaning to sins of impurity, but with the meaning Jesus Christ gave this word when He anathematized the tendency to give a literal, inferior, earthly interpretation to what in the mind of God has a superior and heavenly meaning.
The Pharisees, instead of following in the steps of prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel who had preached a worship of God in spirit, compunction of heart, a reform of conduct, and charity to all men, worked to train the people in a literal following of petty observances and a feeling of pride in the fact of lineal descent from the patriarch Abraham. "They answered Him: We are the seed of Abraham..." (Jn. 8:33) as if it was the flesh of Abraham itself that brought justification.

The Pharisees had drawn up a host of rules on purification, ablutions, washing and immersion of hands, of the body, of cups and cloths, so as to preserve the purity of the people. They obliged any of their faithful who had touched a non-Jew in the street or in the market to wash himself. They considered the violation of these ritual prescriptions a grave sin.
Nothing shows better the carnalized Judaic mentality than the terrible "Woes" declared by the Jew, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the last days of His life on earth, when He denounced the hypocritical religion, purity, and piety of the Pharisees (Mt. 23). Against religious hypocrisy, He said:
v.13: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men, for you yourselves do not enter it; and those that are going in, you suffer not to enter.
v.15: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you go round about the sea and the land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, you make him a child of hell twofold more than yourselves.
v.16: Woe to you blind guides....
v.23: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you tithe mint, and anise, and cummin, and have left the weightier things of the law; judgment, and mercy, and faith....

v.24: Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel.
v.27: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchers, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones, and of all filthiness.
He denounced simulated worship and piety towards ancestors when He said:
vv.29-32: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; that build the sepulchers of the prophets, and adorn the monuments of the just, and say: If we had been in the days of our Fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of them that killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
vv.33-35: You serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell? Therefore behold I send to you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them you will put to death and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city: that upon you may come all the just blood that hath been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even unto the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachias, whom you killed between the temple and the altar.
No one in all the course of history has pronounced more terrible anathemas than those of the Son of God against the perfidious carnality of His own people

 

Continued here http://z10.invisionfree.com/Ignis_Ardens/index.php?showtopic=5430&hl=

Looking at the evidence and seeking truth

Further Reference:
The Theological and Doctrinal Basis of 'The Holocaust'.
The Sacred Six Million in the Jewish Religion
http://z10.invisionfree.com/Ignis_Ardens/i...?showtopic=3473
Nostra Aetate and other liberalising documents of Vatican II, that have wrought havoc upon the Church and upon gentile society, were constructed upon the false Talmudic theology and doctrine of 'The Holocaust'.
Nostra Aetate
http://z10.invisionfree.com/Ignis_Ardens/i...?showtopic=3613

 

 

 

"Saint of the Sanhedrin"

The Angelus magazine and the SSPX District in the United States have come in for criticism because of the following article. It has cost them readers and the faithful are very concerned about the Society leadership of Bishop Fellay and Fr Rostand among others. Further discussion can be found here. http://z10.invisionfree.com/Ignis_Ardens/index.php?showtopic=5423&view=getnewpost

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See also

Letter to The Angelus on "Saints of the Sanhedrin"
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27571233/Michael...f-the-Sanhedrin

QUOTE

Fr. Markus Heggenberger
Editor, The Angelus
2915 Forest Avenue
Kansas City, MO 64109
January 26, 2010
Dear Fr. Heggenberger,
In the December, 2009, Angelus you published an article by Mr. Scott Montgomery, “Saint of the Sanhedrin” (pp.  29-34). Do you have a policy in place for fact-checking assertions made in the Angelus by authors you publish? I did not see any evidence of fact-checking by Mr. Montgomery’s editor in the article in question.

This article contains very serious errors and its tenor is one with the judaizing absurdities of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. On the strength of one erroneous and insupportable statement in the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia (“It was the method of the school of Shammai rather than that of Hillel which Christ condemned”), Mr. Montgomery spins a tale remarkably consonant with the teaching of Orthodox Judaism concerning Hillel the Pharisee.
Mr. Montgomery goes so far as to impart the following fabulous enormity concerning Hillel: “...he served as an instrument of Heaven.”
Judaism in projecting its public image, like The Angelus, projects the face of Hillel the merciful, though he was by no means as kind, just, sweet, compassionate, decent and virtuous as the legends portray him. In its actual practice and beliefs, Judaism combines characteristics of both Hillel and Shammai who form one of the exegetical early zugot or "pairs," and as a pair they reflect a central unity on those key dogmas which will brook no dissent. Here is an instructive indication of the rabbinic mentality as symbolized by the figure of Hillel: "Hillel is described as a man of great humility who in his pursuit of peace was even prepared to depart from the truth (Bezah 20a)."

Hillel is a symbol of the deceit which Judaism regards as necessary to advancing its power: for the sake of an ulterior motive the preeminent Pharisee departs from the truth. With this in mind, how should we regard the statement that Hillel reduced the entire Oral Law to the clean and simple crystalline lines of one requirement? "To a heathen who came to him to be converted on condition that he teach him the entire Torah 'while standing on one foot,' Hillel replied, 'What is hateful to you, do not unto your neighbor, this is the entire Torah, all the rest is commentary."
But this is a Big Lie. Judaism's thousands of laws and rules binding on Judaics are not "commentary," they are halacha and the failure to keep them can result in calamities ranging from birth defects and death in childbirth, to the delaying of the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah) and the imposition of the "iron fist of gentile oppression." If the golden rule, as embodied by Hillel was the chief law of Judaism from which all other rabbinic laws flowed, and all the rest of Judaism's positive and negative laws "constituted mere commentary," the min and the apikorsim would not be beaten and killed, and their books would not be banned, hanged and burned. Since "our neighbor" does not want these things done unto him, if this were Judaism's rule of law, the rabbis would not visit these things upon doubters and dissidents. The tale of Hillel's "wise and benevolent" distillation of the essence of Judaism is tailor-made to appeal to western ideals and is often retailed to the goyim as part of Judaism's introductory mythology. Hillel serves his purpose within the rabbinic semiotic by acting as poster boy for the Kabbalistic pillar of chesed. But the rule of Shammai, the pillar of gevurah, also forms a significant part of the reality of Orthodox Judaism, even though Hillel is put forth as the more prominent (and dominant) of the two. In truth, they are complimentary, as the mystical Kabbalah compliments the bureaucratic Talmud, thesis/antithesis — "pairs" produce the synthesis that is Judaism in all of its indissolubly connected, subterranean minutiae.

Judaism's commitment to the Torah SheBeal Peh (oral law) as the guarantor of authentic understanding of the written Torah (SheBichtav) was institutionalized, contemporary with the repudiation and crucifixion of the Messiah of Israel, by Hillel, the much touted, supposed good Pharisee. In the Tannaitic period that led to the writing of the Mishnah (first two centuries A.D.), the earliest halachic midrashim (legal exegesis) were formed on the basis of a solution Hillel devised to a problem in the cognitive psychology of Judaism: how to persuade a Jewish audience of the correctness of one's Scriptural interpretation. Hillel was unable to convince his fellow Jews on the basis of the Scriptures alone. Prefacing one's remarks, as Jesus did, with "It is written" was insufficient for the followers of the religion of the Pharisees. In the fateful step of institutionalizing the heretofore oral tradition by writing it down as the proto-Mishnah, Hillel established his credentials and established his school of interpretation by invoking the oral tradition which he had received from his Pharisaic mentors — Shemayah and Avtalyon — from which formed Judaism's early labyrinthine hermeneutical system of methodology (which would grow ever longer and more complex over time), the middot  of sevenfold classification, based on ultra-meticulous syntactical and phraseological lawyer's minutiae. These seven rules soon morphed into thirteen (as devised by Rabbi Ishmael) and then thirty-two (as devised by Rabbi Eliezer ben Jose ha-Galili, a disciple of Rabbi Akiba) and like a cancer, have never ceased exploding in number and complexity since then. Yet, this is supposed to be the Pharisaic method that Jesus did not condemn, what The Angelus terms, “the holy and balanced system of observing the Old Law established by Hillel...” (p. 30)

Shmuel Safrai points out (in The Literature of the Sages, Part One, p. 164) that in the Talmud's Gittin Tractate, the Talmud nullifies the Biblical teaching concerning usury and money-lending: "Hillel decreed the prozbul for the betterment of the world. The prozbul is a legal fiction which allows debts to be collected after the Sabbatical year and it was Hillel's intention thereby to overcome the fear that money-lenders had of losing their money."
In terms of permissible sex with a male child, the age of nine is a determining factor in Judaism, no matter what the gender of the pederast, whether an adult woman, or an adult man. In Babylonian Talmud (BT) tractate Sanhedrin 69b, it is argued that a woman having sex with a boy less than nine is an act that is exempt from punishment (and therefore permissible), and does not render her a zonah (prostitute) or disqualify her from a marrying a Judaic priest, because sex with male children less than age nine is not considered sex. The actual reference in BT Sanhedrin 69b is to sex between a mother and her own son. If her son is less than nine years-of-age, then it's rabbinically permissible for her to engage in it with him. While the school of Shammai objected to her being eligible to marry a priest, they were overruled by Maimonides and the other penultimate halachic decisor, Rabbi Karo, in the Shulchan Aruch; but the original ruling exempting the incestuous molesting mother from punishment and disqualification, which came to be accepted as halakha by the majority, was made by Hillel, the "good Pharisee" who allegedly has "so much in common with Jesus." Yet here's that "good Pharisee" establishing the utterly depraved and barbaric principle that sex between a mother and her son does not actually qualify as sex, if the son is less than nine years-old (cf. Judaism Discovered, pp. 424-425).

Your author has accepted Judaism’s highly deceptive cover story about Hillel and disseminated it to the readers of The Angelus, who are led to believe that Hillel was “an instrument of Heaven.” I am reasonably familiar with rabbinic propaganda but I am not accustomed to encountering such brazen propaganda in the pages of a traditional Catholic magazine where it will mislead thousands.
To this is added highly speculative conjecture which The Angelus puts forth concerning the patrimony of Simeon and the fundamental benevolence of Phariseeism as conveyed by Gamaliel to Saul of Tarsus, which leaves Mr. Montgomery in the predicament of having to explain how it was that Saul mercilessly persecuted Christians and may have had a hand in the murder of St. Stephen when he had been taught such exemplary Pharisee ethics as a youth. The origin of the legend about Simeon being the son of Hillel, though ascribed to various Church Fathers, is actually derived from a rabbinic source, the Pirke Avoth, which is completely unreliable.
Finally, Mr. Montgomery imagines that St. Paul was taught the Gemara (the second section of the Talmud) when he was fifteen years of age. The Gemara, however, would not be written for at least another two centuries after Paul.
In “Saint of the Sanhedrin,” The Angelus presents rabbinic delusions as fact and promotes the wicked Pharisee Hillel as a virtual holy man of God. The great confusion among traditional Catholics concerning Judaism will only be exacerbated by the farrago you have published, to the detriment of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the understanding of the faithful. It is my prayer that you will somehow undo the damage that has been wrought.

Reply to Fr. Markus Heggenberger, Editor, The Angelus
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27540959/Fr-Mark...he-Angelus-2915

QUOTE

Fr. Markus Heggenberger
Editor, The Angelus
2915 Forest Avenue
Kansas City, MO 64109
February 25, 2010
Dear Fr. Heggenberger,
I am in receipt of your reply to the concerns I raised in my letter of Jan. 17 with regard to the December, 2009, Angelus essay by Scott Montgomery, "Saint of the Sanhedrin" (pp. 29-34).
With all due respect, it must be said that your reply is inadequate and constitutes an evasion. Never once in your letter can you bring yourself to mention Hillel, when it was Hillel, not Gamaliel, who was the main focus of my concern that the Angelus has published perverse adulation of this vile Pharisee, repeating rabbinic propaganda about Hillel and lauding him as a figure worthy of the admiration of Catholics. Part of the evidence I presented has been contemptuously dismissed as “all sorts of questions related to Judaism... With all these questions, which are apparently of interest to you, neither ‘The Angelus’ in general nor the incriminated article has anything to do."

In order to maintain this notion that facts are irrelevant to the substance of the article you published, you quote me as writing, “The Talmud nullifies the Biblical teaching concerning usury and money-lending.” But you omit my next sentence: "Hillel decreed the prozbul ...a legal fiction which allows debts to be collected after the Sabbatical year and it was Hillel's intention thereby to overcome the fear that money-lenders had of losing their money." Hillel, who the Angelus believes was a good Pharisee, nullified the Biblical law against usury in support of money-lenders. How is it that this damning fact is supposedly of concern only to this writer? It is your magazine that exalts Hillel. I demonstrated Hillel’s grave transgression and the folly of upholding Hillel as a paradigm of an alleged good Pharisee. How then can his record of transgressions be of no interest?
You allege that another irrelevancy is my reference to “permissible sex.” Once again, you omit the context — I mentioned “permissible sex” in connection with a specific charge against Hillel: his establishment of the depraved and disgusting halachot (legal principle) that sex between a mother and her son does not actually qualify as sex, if the son is less than nine years-old — yet you dare to assert that these matters have nothing to do with The Angelus or the article in question, when it is The Angelus that honors this evil man.

You claim that “Mr. Montgomery simply states that there were tendencies in Judaism that were open to the Gospel.” Au contraire, Mr. Montgomery went far beyond any such simplicity when he asserted that Hillel “served as an instrument of heaven.” You are unwilling to take any responsibility for this outrageous mendacity; you evade it, and you appear to have no intention of correcting it in any future issue of The Angelus. Apparently you do not even intend to correct easily demonstrable errors, such as Mr. Montgomery’s assertion that St. Paul learned the Gemara from Gamaliel, when in fact the Gemara did not even exist at the time of St. Paul.

Even in your focus on Gamaliel to the exclusion of Hillel, you blunder. You should know that Wikipedia is not a reliable scholarly source for establishing the verity of much of anything. Wikipedia refers to the “Clementine Literature” as the basis for its spurious claims about Gamaliel. Are you aware that this “Literature” comprises one of the pseudepigraphic legends? This particular legend fantasized that Gamaliel became a Christian, but there is absolutely no proof for this claim.

The sole primary source for this fantasy is the spurious Recognitions of Clement, a book which contains a mix of pagan philosophy and a curious theology attributed to St. Peter. The notion that Gamaliel was benevolent in part because he was the teacher of Paul (Acts 22:3) is also a fallacy. Gamaliel was the teacher of Saul, the wicked persecutor of Christians who went on to convert to Christ and become the saintly Apostle Paul. When he was Saul, the pupil of Gamaliel, he may even have had a hand in the murder of St. Stephen. Can we absolve Gamaliel and the Mishnaic teachings which he imparted to Saul by imagining they had no role in Saul's iniquity?

Moreover, there has been a surfeit of wishful thinking concerning Gamaliel's statement of neutrality toward Christians (Acts 5:35-39), which may have been nothing more than a display of sly Pharisee caution. How can anyone assume that Gamaliel’s neutrality was pleasing to God, or that it marked Gamaliel as a future Christian? Jesus said, "I would you were hot or cold" (Rev. 3:16). Gamaliel was neither.
You state that, “The Angelus’ does not try to replace the Bible with the Talmud....” You then cast a strange aspersion on my good name and reputation by adding, “you would be much better qualified for that by the way.” Do you mean to say that it is this writer who favors the Talmud over the Bible? If so, where in my entire oeuvre is there one line I have written that you can adduce for your charge? Your statement is as reckless as the “Saint of the Sanhedrin” essay you published without fact-checking; a blunder you compound by referencing Wikipedia, a notoriously unreliable Internet “encyclopedia” often consulted by persons too lethargic to engage in authentic research.
You write, “Your accusations are wrong...I say: what is good enough for the Church Fathers and for the Catholic Encyclopedia, is good enough for me.” But Reverend Father, there is nothing in the Church Fathers that supports the claims The Angelus makes for Gamaliel, and as for the Catholic Encyclopedia, you have only troubled to consult the 1913 version. The 1967 Catholic Encyclopedia, which is not online, does not validate anything Mr. Montgomery has written about Gamaliel or Hillel. In fact, the latter work correctly indicts Hillel as the source for the Pharisaic teaching that permitted divorce on trivial grounds, and which was the basis for the attempted entrapment by which the Pharisees hoped to ensnare Jesus (Matthew 19: 3-9). Hillel taught against restricting divorce to sexual immorality: "The school of Hillel says: [He may divorce her] even if she cooked his food poorly” (Mishnah, Gittin 9:10).

It was with Hillel’s doctrine on divorce that Jesus was confronted. You and your writer must be surprised that Jesus rebuked rather than embraced the Pharisees for this doctrine, since it emanated from the very Pharisee whom The Angelus exults as “an instrument of heaven.”
You dismiss the need for scholarship in these exegetical matters, yet you and Mr. Montgomery are sadly confused and decidedly ignorant of the subject matter. I repeat what I wrote to you on January 26: “The Angelus presents rabbinic delusions as fact and promotes the wicked Pharisee Hillel as a virtual holy man of God. The great confusion among traditional Catholics concerning Judaism will only be exacerbated by the farrago you have published, to the detriment of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the understanding of the faithful. It is my prayer that you will somehow undo the damage that has been wrought.” I am still waiting.
Jesus Christ was not a party to the modern Vatican mania for finding something — anything — allegedly positive in the Pharisees. In our time this fad is intended to curry ecumenical favor with the rabbis. Whether intentional or not, the Angelus article “Saint of the Sanhedrin” is of this tenor. It is an expression of the modernist zeitgeist. “Servility to the Sanhedrin” would have been a more apt title. I beseech you to make amends and correct this most unfortunate disservice to your readers, without further delay.
Sincerely in Christ,
Michael Hoffman