Rabbi Walter Homolka, is executive director of the Abraham Geiger College at the University of Potsdam, Germany, has accused Pope Benedict XVI of “accepting” “anti-Semitic tendencies.” The comments were published on Good Friday and pertained to the new prayer for the conversion of the Jews inserted into the 1962 Roman Missal.
The Rabbi accused the Church of historic wrongdoing against the Jewish people — including in Nazi Germany — and further stated that:
He [Pope Benedict] indicates that he believes that the path to salvation, even for Jews, can only go through Jesus, the savior. This opens the floodgates for the conversion of Jews. The Internet is already full of comments by conservative, right-wing Catholics who say: “Wonderful, now we finally have the signal to convert the Jews.” This kind of signal has an extremely provocative effect on anti-Semitic groups. The Catholic Church does not have its anti-Semitic tendencies under control. [Full Article]
In related news, Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said that “inter-religious dialogue has suffered an enormous setback” because of the new Good Friday prayer. “As long as the Catholic Church, that is to say Pope Benedict, does not return to the previous wording, I assume that there will not be any further dialogue in the form that we were able to have in the past.”
Like the Spiegel article cited above, the Reuters piece in which these statements were quoted also appeared on Good Friday.
“I would have assumed that this German pope, of all people, had got to know first hand the ostracizing of Jewry,” she said. “I could not have imagined that this same German pope could now impose such phrases upon his church.”
Note that the comments of both of these critics take a patent falsehood for granted, namely, that the Catholic Church is responsible for Hitler and the atrocities of his Third Reich. This is a baseless smear so thoroughly refuted that it beggars belief the idea can be put forth by educated people. This appears to be an instance of repeating a lie often enough until everyone believes it.
