Liat, I agree that the Jewish News has a perfect right, even a duty, to report on the Pell kerfuffle, and this they did. But there was not a word about the context of Pell’s thoughtless remarks – mainly the kind of programme he appeared in and who he was up against. The programme’s organizers clearly aimed at a sort of genteel confrontation, and they chose well. So your “surely at least” remains hanging in the air!

Let me say this, It was only John XX111, who opened his heart and his hands to the Jews with no reservations or ulterior motives, long before the Holocaust. He later played a pivotal role in saving thousands of lives.
His pro Jewish statements causing all manner of theological implications.
It was he who had the 1960 Good Friday prayer with the offending word ‘perfidious’ removed.
During his Papacy, his pro Jewish statements causing all manner of theological implactions.
He is one unequaled, much loved and mourned at his death by his Jewish brothers and sisters.
His Prayer of Repentance is never recognised either, many Catholics unaware of it’s existance.
Here it is, for those still not familiar with it.
————————————-
‘We recognise today, that many centuries of blindness have veiled our eyes, so that we no longer see the beauty of Your chosen people and no longer recognise the features of our first born brother.
We now know, that the mark of Cain is on our forehead.
Over the course of centuries, our brother Abel has lain in the blood we have spilled and has wept tears which we have caused, because we forgot Your love.
Forgive us for this curse, which we unjustly placed on the name of the Jews.
Forgive us, for crucifying You a second time.
For we knew not what we were doing.
————————————–
Their lies our true inheritance.

It’s not true to say ‘nothing has changed’.
The late Pope John Paul went to Yad Vashem.
i wish my late Father z’l could have seen the live telecast – he would not have believed his eyes, but it happened. And by doing this John Paul de-legitimised centuries of Polish Catholic anti-semitism that had inflicted so much pain on my ancestors.
i wrote to Pell when Pope Benedict lifted the excommunication of bishops who were members of the Society of St Pius X, and mentioend the anti-Semitic remarks of one of those bishops, Richard Williamson.

Pell wrote [& i copy this without his permission]:

Like you, I was deeply dismayed to learn of Bishop Williamson’s comments, which attempted to deny or minimise the horror and magnitude of the Shoah. Anti-Semitism is always repugnant and offensive, and Holocaust denial is one of the more particularly vile forms it takes. It has no place in the Catholic church, or in the heart of Christians.

The Society of St Pius X is a schismatic group not in communion with the Catholic church. Its bishops were appointed by its founder in contravention of Church law and in defiance of Pope John Paul II. For this reason they were automatically excommunicated, and it is this penalty which has now been lifted by Pope Benedict XVI in an effort to re-open dialogue with the members of the Society.

The lifting of the excommunication does not reconcile the Society of Pope Pius X to the Catholic Church, or legitimise the appointment of its bishops. I would anticipate that if there was to be a formal reconciliation with the Society of St Pius X, those returning would be required to accept the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, including the teaching on religious freedom and the condemnation of anti-Semitism.

On January 28, Pope Benedict spoke of the evil of the Holocaust, which saw “the brutal massacre of millions of Jews, innocent victims of a blind racial and religious hate.”

As the Zenit news service (http://www.zenit.org/article-24940?l=english ) reported:

The Pope expressed his “hope that the memory of the Shoah moves humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the human heart,” and that the Holocaust “be for everyone a warning against forgetting, against negating or reductionism, because violence committed against even one human being is violence against all.”

“No man is an island,” Benedict XVI continued, referring to the English Poet John Donne (1571-1631).

“May the Shoah teach especially, as much the old generations as the new ones, that only the tiring path of listening and dialogue, of love and pardon, leads peoples, cultures and religions of the world to the desired encounter of fraternity and peace in the world,” he said. “May violence never again humiliate the dignity of man!”
Pope Benedict speaks for all Catholics with these words.

yours sincerely,

+George Cardinal Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY

Vicki, thank you for that reinforcement.
I was reared as a child by the wonderful timbrel playing Sally’s, and as I have mentioned elsewhere, on becoming a Catholic, it was my introduction to anti-semitism, damnation of the Masons, who were so good to us, and the issues of women in the church.
I was also shocked at the roll the Franciscans played in the withholding of whatever was due to the Holocaust survivors, not withstanding the few who assisted them in escaping from the Nazi’s and rememered as Righteous among the Nations.

Your astute questions relating to the Jews in biblical times are most pertinent to the discussion and it’s a shame they could not have been put to Cardinal Pell. It’s true that he spent an inordinate amount of time speaking of the Greeks and Romans, the former in particular, in relation to the subject matter. Again, it would have been interesting to explore further where this was coming from. Possibly further evidence of civilisations other than Egyptian that towered over the Jews intellectually? Pell needs to read ‘The Gifts of the Jews: How a tribe of desert nomads changed the way everyone thinks and feels’, by Thomas Cahill, an Irish author who is not Jewish. Cahill commences by saying, “The Jews started it all – and by “it” I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and gentile, believer and atheist, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings. …// Our history is replete with examples of those who have refused to see what the Jews are really about, who – through intellectual blindness, racial chauvinism, xenophobia, or just plain evil – have been unable to give this oddball tribe, this raggle-taggle band, this race of wanderers who are the progenitors of the Western world, their due. Indeed, at the end of this bloodiest of centuries, we can all too easily look back on scenes of unthinkable horror perpetrated by those who would do anything rather than give the Jews their due.” Well, Cardinal Pell replaced the description ‘raggle-taggle band’ with ‘shepherds’ or ‘this little or small people’ – trouble is he left it at that!
Cahill goes on to elaborate these ‘gifts of the Jews’, and validate his elaboration. The book is a Doubleday publication (imprint: Nan A. Talese), New York, 1998.