Inculturation today calling for a different attitude

This January the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church told the press he is aware of the fact that the problem of formation today is not easy to deal with:

“Daily culture is much richer and conflictual than that which we experienced in our day, years ago. Ourculture was simpler and more ordered.

Inculturation today calls for a different attitude. For example: problems are not solved simply by forbidding doing this or that.

Dialog as well as confrontation are needed.

To avoid problems, in some houses of formation, young people grit their teeth, try not to make mistakes, follow the rules smiling a lot, just waiting for the day when they are told: ‘Good. You have finished formation.’

In Rio the Pope identified already clericalism as one of the causes of the

 “lack of maturity and Christian freedom” in the People of God.

It follows that:

 “If the seminary is too large, it ought to be divided into smaller communities with formators who are equipped really to accompany those in their charge.

Dialogue must be serious, without fear, sincere. It is important to recall that the language of young people information today is different from that in the past: we are living through an epochal change. Formation is a work of art, not a police action. We must form their hearts. Otherwise we are creating little monsters. And then these little monsters mold the People of God.”

The Pope then insisted on the fact that formation should not be oriented only toward personal growth but also in view of its final goal: the People of God.

It is important to think about the people to whom these persons will be sent while forming hem:

“We must always think of the faithful, of the faithful People of God. Persons must be formed who are witness of the resurrection of Jesus. The formator should keep in mind that the person in formation will be called to care for the People of God.

We always must think of the People of God in all of this. Just think of religious who have hearts that are as sour as vinegar: they are not made for the people. In the end we must not form administrators, managers, but fathers, brothers, travelling companions. ”

Finally, Pope Francis wanted to highlight a further risk:

 “accepting a young man in a seminary who has been asked to leave a religious institute because of problems with formation and for serious reasons is a huge problem.

The pope was not just speaking about people who recognize that they are sinners:

 we are all sinners, but we are not all corrupt.

Sinners are accepted, but not people who are corrupt.”

Nobody can escape temptation except God Who can not be temted. Jesus was tempted more than once but did not go into the temptation and managed to stay clear of sin.

The present pope is not afraid to go away from difficult questions concerning the may priest who had young children in their care, but misused their power. Pope Francis I recalled Benedict XVI’s important decision in dealing with cases of abuse:

“this should be a lesson to us to have the courage to approach personal formation as a serious challenge, always keeping in mind the People of God.”

Religious should be witnesses of the humanizing power of the Gospel through a life of brotherhood.

The present pope does know the problems, but he also knows that the bishops are not always acquainted with the charisms and works of religious. Qe also should ask the question if the local headquarters are willing to inform the higher hierarchy of what is going wrong in their coutnry.

The Belgian Jesuit Jan Berchmans (1599 -1621) knew already very well this problem. True to his favorite mottos: Age quod agis (Do what you are doing well) and Maximi facere minima (Do the most with the least), he succeeded in accomplishing ordinary things in an extraordinary way and became the patron saint of community life.

To come to a healthy community everybody should be honest and open to each other. No secrets should go around. Once matter do have to be covered up, like we have seen the last few years, there is not only something going really wrong, but it also

"creates a pressure cooker that will eventually explode. A life without conflicts is not life.”

It becomes high time that 'bishops' and all those who are to take care of the flock need to understand that consecrated persons are not functionaries but gifts that enrich dioceses.

"The involvement of religious communities in dioceses is important. Dialogue between the bishop and religious must be rescued so that, due to a lack of understanding of their charisms, bishops do not view religious simply as useful instruments.” 

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Continuation of Church has to grow through witness, not by proselytism

From the "Wake up the world" press conference January 2014

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Vision blurred by cumulative burden of divisions

"Our vision is often blurred by the cumulative burden of our divisions and our will is not always free of that human ambition which can accompany even our desire to preach the Gospel as the Lord commanded."

said pope Francis I when he recently met the Archbishop of Canterbury in Rome for the second time since they were installed as leaders of their churches last year.

You may wonder if it are ecumenical talks the pope would like to see more, having the denominations growing closer to each other or like I would prefer it to see having the different denominations respecting each other for their own choices and teachings, loving them as being part of the Body of Christ and sharing with them the brotherly love Jesus preached.

Naturally the Roman Catholic Church may not expect the followers of Christ who prefer to the same God of Jesus, the God of Abraham, to "celebrate the Eucharist together and the Eucharist ... like the ‘burning bush’ in which the Trinity humbly dwells and communicates itself". He may think

"this is why the Church has placed the feast of the Body of the Lord after that of the Trinity.”

there are enough real Christians who only want to worship One True God, the Divine Creator of heaven and earth, of Whom no pictures or graven images may be made and certainly may not be bowded down for or prayed in front off.

For the Holy Father the Divine love of the Trinity is the “origin and goal of the universe and of every creature.”

But according to the Torah we do find in the Bereshit (the Genesis) that Jehovah God is the Divine Creator of everything. He alone is the Holy One Who is eternal, having no beginning and no end, no birth and no death.



As long as the pope considers the Trinity acting as a model of the Church where Christians are called to love with the perfect, sacrificial love of Jesus, it would be difficult to get trinitarian Christians to accept that there are also non-trinitarian Christians and also other believers in God who shall be able to be saved by the grace of God and be able to enter the Kingdom of God.

As long as the Catholic Church and several protestant churches keep up that distorted vision of the Trinity as sole possibility for people to come under God, Jews, non-trinitarian Christians and Muslims will find it difficutl to find honesty in the trials of that Church which says it is for unity and for peace between the monotheistic religions and other people living in this world.

Pope Francis also spoke emphatically of the impossibility of hatred for a Christian.

“It is a contradiction to think of Christians who hate. It’s a contradiction!”

Though I can assure you the letters (and other things), I and my church, often get in our mailbox because we are Christians not believing in the Holy Trinity, does not show much of that love.

The pope his saying:

“distinctive of Christianity, as Jesus has told us: ‘By this they will know that you are my disciples: if you love one another.’”

is often forgotten by his flock, though we must say most controversy and hate is brought to us by different protestant denominations.

Lots of Christians should come to open their eyes to see their is much variety in Christendom and that in those different denominations there are certain belief-points which may be far from each other. Unity should be felt under the choice made "Accepting Jesus as the Messiah". The way how to follow him as a master teacher is too different to bring them fast under one 'tag'.

"True love is boundless, but knows its limits in order to meet others, and respect others' freedom. " (Pope Francis I)

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Does there have to be a Holy Trinity Mystery

On Journey Towards Easter with subtitle: Discovering the beauty of truth, the writer who is an Englishman, living in Scotland writes that the Trinity is a symbol of the knowable and unknowable.

According to him

 – the One who reveals Himself to us is the same One who can never be fully understood.

would the God Who loves His creation raeally not want His creation to know Him an not want His creation to understand Him?

The god of Love from the start of His creation had the intention to have a good relationship with His creation. Good relations are build on comprehension, understanding each other and on being open for each other. God never had and/or never has the intention to have secrets for the world. For millenniums He wanted to play open card game with the people who inhabited His world. He took care all people could find a Guide in their life and would be able to find the guidebook or manual to make the best of their life.

The writer of the article himself knows:

The knowledge we receive from God about Himself is sure knowledge, by which we cannot be deceived, but it only serves to deepen our appreciation for how far God exceeds our expectations, and is infinitely more than we can or could ever have imagined.

Then he refers to the Old Testament reading for his day he want to celebrate a three-une god,
from Exodus (34:4b-6, 8-9), where we read that:

“4 And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as Jehovah had commanded him, and took in his hand two tables of stone. 5 And Jehovah descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of Jehovah. 6 And Jehovah passed by before him, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth; 7 keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear [the guilty], visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation. 8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped. 9 And he said, If now I have found favor in thy sight, O Lord, let the Lord, I pray thee, go in the midst of us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.” (Exodus 34:4-9 ASV)

He clearly understands that this passage speaks of God coming near to man (Moses in this case) and revealing Himself to us.

 He ‘stood with him there’ and proclaimed His name – that is, His character, ‘a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness’ (v.6), so that His people would know it for sure.

but than he makes a strange twist, mixing tow different persons, of one is not exactly a man because It is a Spirit and the other is a man of flesh, bones and blood.

God desires to come close to us and show us who He is – something shown to an even greater extent in today’s Gospel reading (John 3:16-18).

In that reading you may find:

“16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through him. 18 He that believeth on him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (John 3:16-18 ASV)

clearly everybody should see that the God, Who does not tell lies,  has given His only begotten son to the world, i.e. not Himself.


The author of the article also says

To be saved by God we must first know who He is,

This is a very important issue. We should know exactly who Jesus is and who his Father is, the Only One True God.

Where he gets "the meditations" from he sells out: of His Church.
He does not give a clarification ho his church may be guided by the Spirit and than giving them the revelation that within God there would be a community of persons – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – who exist in an eternal pattern of mutual, self-giving love (which is true) but what he means is that they woudl also be one and the same person (which is not true).

People may not forget that being one in thought or even being equal does not mean being the same.

Lots of people do like mysteries but The God is a god of clarity. Some may like to say that we as human beings need the mystery of God and that in the Christian tradition the word “mystery” refers to something partially revealed, much more of which lies hidden.
We may wonder why so many would like to keep to teachings which are not clearly given in the Holy Scriptures but were imposed by men throughout history. Though beyond the reach or understanding of many of those Christians they keep refusing looking at what the words of the Bible say so clearly.

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Find the original article: The Holy Trinity: Mystery, Knowledge, Love

Plus more on the Trinity
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Recent Developments In Trinitarian Theology

Recent Developments in Trinitarian Theology explores the major renaissance that Trinitarian theology has undergone in recent decades. Remarkably, all the main Christian denominations have participated in this, and contemporary Trinitarian theology is a discussion that often crosses over confessional boundaries.
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Church has to grow through witness, not by proselytism

In January pope Francis I spoke about Benedict XVI who said that the Church grows through witness, not by proselytism.

Pope Benedict XVI in Portugal (Photo credit: Catholic Church (England and Wales))

Jesus gave the order to his disciples and to all who wanted to follow him, to go out in the world to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.  Evry person calling himself a Christian, should know that this should mean to be a follower of Christ, should also follow those teachings and orders of that person.

The witness that can really attract is that associated with attitudes which are uncommon:

the pope said and named them:

generosity, detachment, sacrifice, self-forgetfulness in order to care for others. This is the witness, the “martyrdom” of religious life. It “sounds an alarm” for people.

When people are religious those people should make a life for themselves filled with with thinkings which are not always of this world. Looking at this world, we can not escape living in it but should be careful not to become 'of it'.

 “religious life ought to promote growth in the Church by way of attraction."

continued the pope.

“The Church,” therefore, “ must be attractive. Wake up the world! Be witnesses of a different way of doing things, of acting, of living! It is possible to live differently in this world. We are speaking of an eschatological outlook, of the values of the Kingdom incarnated here, on this earth. It is a question of leaving everything to follow the Lord. 

The pope did not want to say “radical.”

Evangelical radicalness is not only for religious: it is demanded of all. But religious follow the Lord in a special way, in a prophetic way. It is this witness that I expect of you. Religious should be men and women who are able to wake the world up.”

 Pope Francis has returned in a circular fashion to concepts that he has already touched on, exploring them more deeply. In fact he continued:

“You should be real witnesses of a way of doing and acting differently. But in life it is difficult for everything to be clear, precise, outlined neatly. Life is complicated; it consists of grace and sin. He who does not sin is not human. We all make mistakes and we need to recognize our weakness. A religious who recognizes himself as weak and a sinner does not negate the witness that he is called to give, rather he reinforces it, and this is good for everyone. What I expect of you therefore is to give witness.

The pope wants this special witness from religious people and warns them to look out not to restrict themselves to dogmatic teachings endangering them to go into fundamentalism.

From the "Wake up the world" press conference January 2014

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  To look at something from the periphery, the pope explained, meant analyzing reality through a variety of viewpoints, rather than filtering all experience through a centralized ideology.
  
• A Non-Political Pope? (Part 2) (clrforum.org)
  Some things he said in the interview are a frankly a little shocking. He told the interviewer, Eugenio Scalfari, “Proselytism is solemn nonsense.” That’s a rather dismissive way to treat millennia of Christian apologetics. The pope’s views on conscience were also odd, from a Christian perspective. “Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them,” the pope said. “That would be enough to make the world a better place.” With respect, “do what you think is right” is not the Christian view of conscience. That sounds more like Anthony Kennedy than St. Paul. And would the world really be a better place if everyone did what he thought was right? How about jihadis?
  +
  the Church would “never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I’m here.” What the Pope seems to mean is that the Church as an institution should avoid getting involved in the workings of government and political parties, but that its prophetic role remains.
• Church division a scandal - Pope (belfasttelegraph.co.uk)
  The leader of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide said a goal of full unity between the two churches "may seem distant" but it remained an aim that should direct "every step".
  He said progress towards full unity would not be the result of human actions alone, but would be a "free gift of God".
  "Beneath his merciful gaze, we cannot claim that our division is anything less than a scandal and an obstacle to our proclaiming the Gospel of salvation to the world," the Pope told Archbishop Justin Welby.
  
• Pope invites Romans, pilgrims, to Eucharistic procession (catholicnewsagency.com)
  “Every Sunday we go to Mass, we celebrate the Eucharist together and the Eucharist is like the ‘burning bush’ in which the Trinity humbly dwells and communicates itself: this is why the Church has placed the feast of the Body of the Lord after that of the Trinity.”
  
  The Holy Father also reflected on the Divine love of the Trinity, “origin and goal of the universe and of every creature.”
  
  He explained that the Trinity acts as a model of the Church where Christians are called to love with the perfect, sacrificial love of Jesus.
• Top Ten Myths About Pope Francis' First Year (dominicanablog.com)
  If Quoheleth had lived during the last year, he might well have said, “Of the making of many myths about Pope Francis there is no end.” As we give thanks to God for the Holy Father on this first anniversary of his papacy, it’s worth taking a moment to look back on some of the myths about Pope Francis that have made the rounds on the Internet this year. While this list could be many more pages long, what follows is my own Top Ten List of Myths about Pope Francis.
• Pope Francis Tells Religious Orders To "Wake Up The World" - 4 January 2014 (lucas2012infos.wordpress.com)
  
  Editor Antonio Spadaro, SJ, has written an article recounting the private meeting last November between Pope Francis and the Union of Superiors General of religious men at the end of their 82nd General Assembly.
  The 15-page article (available in English at the La Civiltà Cattolica website) documents the views of Pope Francis on religious life.
• Moving Through Time: Timeline of Religion (pcr.wpengine.com)
  Since the beginning of time, mankind has formed beliefs of the unexplainable and unknowable. Over thousands of years, these beliefs became traditional, customary, and institutionalized within regional societies. People continue to express an interest in spiritual matters from all corners around the world. Everybody has pondered the meaning of life, what happens after we die, what existed before us, and whether any other life exists in the universe. Mankind may never know concrete answers regarding the spiritual. In fact, humans may destroy the planet before we can discover the remaining life in unexplored regions. Nevertheless, we continue to seek spiritual enlightenment and a connection with our Creator.
• Why Are Christians the World's Most Persecuted Group? (tomohalloran.com)
  Why are Christians, as a new Pew report documents, the most persecuted religious group in the world?  And why is their persecution occurring primarily throughout the Islamic world?  (In the category on “Countries with Very High Government Restrictions on Religion,” Pew lists 24 countries—20 of which are Islamic and precisely where the overwhelming majority of “the world’s” Christians are actually being persecuted.)
  +
  Christianity is a proselytizing faith that seeks to win over converts.  No other major religion—including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism—except Islam itself has this missionary aspect (these faiths tend to be coterminous with their respective ethnicities: Buddhists, Asians; Judaism, Jews; Hinduism, Hindus).    Thus because Christianity is the only religion that is actively confronting Muslims with the truths of its own message, not only is it the primary religion to be accused of proselytizing but, by publicly uttering teachings that contradict Muhammad’s, Christians are accused of blaspheming as well.  Similarly, this proselytizing element is behind the fact that most Muslims who apostatize to other religions overwhelmingly convert to Christianity.  Finally, if indigenous Christians are many in the Middle East, because that is the cradle of Christianity, in other regions with large Muslim populations, such as sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia, Christian missionaries have won over millions of converts to the faith—many of whom are now targeted and persecuted according to Islam’s anti-apostasy law, which often calls for the death penalty.
• Pope: Saints are humble sinners, sanctified by Jesus (en.radiovaticana.va)
  “In this holy Church the Lord chooses certain people so that holiness can be better seen, to show that it is He who sanctifies, that no one sanctifies himself, that there’s no course to become a saint, that it’s not being a religious fraud or something of that sort… No! It’s not that! Holiness is a gift of Jesus to His Church and to show this He chooses people in whom His work of sanctifying is clearly seen.”
• Why are Christians the world's most persecuted group? (humanevents.com)
  Christianity is the quintessential religion of martyrdom.  From its inception—beginning with Jesus followed by his disciples and the early Church—many Christians have accepted martyrdom rather than recant their faith, in ancient times at the hands of Romans, in Medieval and modern times at the hands of pious Muslims and others.  Few other religions encourage their adherents to embrace death rather than recant, as captured by Christ’s own words: “But whoever denies me before men, I will deny him before my Father in heaven” (Matt 10:33; see also Luke 14:33).”   Conversely, Islam teaches Muslims to openly renounce their faith (taqiyya)—not just when their lives are threatened, but even as a stratagem of war—as long as they remain Muslim in their hearts.  Other religions and sects also approve of dissimulation to preserve their adherents’ lives.  Back in the 1800s, for instance, Samuel M. Zwemer, a Christian missionary, observed that in Iran “Bahaism enjoys taqiyya (concealment of faith) as a duty, but Christianity demands public profession; and hence in Persia it is far easier to become a Bahai than to become a Christian.”

Iraqi Christians flee homes amid Islamic militant rampage

ALQOSH, Iraq –  Over the past decade, Iraqi Christians have fled repeatedly to this ancient mountainside village, seeking refuge from violence, then returning home when the danger eased. Now they are doing it again as Islamic militants rampage across northern Iraq, but this time few say they ever want to go back to their homes.

The flight is a new blow to Iraq's dwindling Christian community, which is almost as old as the religion itself but which has already been devastated since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. During the past 11 years, at least half of the country's Christian population has fled the country, according to some estimates, to escape frequent attacks by Sunni Muslim militants targeting them and their churches.

...

Iraq was estimated to have more than 1 million Christians before the 2003 invasion and topping of Saddam Hussein. Now church officials estimate only 450,000 remain within Iraq borders. Militants have targeted Christians in repeated waves in Baghdad and the north. The Chaldean Catholic cardinal was kidnapped in 2008 by extremists and killed. Churches around the country have been bombed repeatedly.

The exodus from Mosul — a Sunni-majority city that during the American presence in Iraq was an al-Qaida stronghold — has been even more dramatic. From a pre-2003 population of around 130,000 Christians, there were only about 10,000 left before the Islamic State fighters overran the city a week ago.

> Iraqi Christians flee homes amid Islamic militant rampage

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Iraqi Underclass and animosities

writes:

Previous Weekly Numbers have documented growing religious hostilities in Iraq. The missing headline -- as the Sunni-led Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda, battle Shia-dominated government forces -- is a phrase from Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign strategist James Carville, "It's the economy, stupid." But, it's not oil and the negative impact on the global economy I'm referring to.

A Pew Research survey conducted in 2012 (before ISIS gained ground) found that the large majority of Iraq's population (74%) considered unemployment to be a "very large problem" for the country. By contrast, fewer than half of the population considered conflict between religious groups to be a very large problem.

....
it highlights the dangers of a system where religion and religious identities become rallying points for other grievances. As the Shia-dominated Iraqi government favors other Shia Muslims -- long the underclass under Saddam Hussein -- this sets up new animosities that are easily grafted onto other issues, such as unemployment, inequality and unmet expectations. 

Continue reading:

Iraq: "It's the Economy, Stupid"

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Renewed Catholic-Jewish relations still with a blemish

It is a good sign we may find some trials of the new pope, Francis I, to bring the monotheist faithgroups Jews Christians and Muslims closer to each other again.

The Jews of Antwerpen (Photo credit: CharlesFred)

Catholic-Jewish relations for sure need some boost now we can see many fundamentalist groups trying to undermine such relations and trying to bring more extreme right-wing thoughts in the forefront. In Western Europe we might see again a growing anti-Semitism and a growing hate against Muslims. That hate is mostly triggered by fundamentalist faith-groups giving their 'religion' a bad name.

The world should always remember that the minority faith where people only wanted to honour Only One God Who created heaven and earth, suffered centuries of persecution. The world was warned already in the old days, many centuries before Jesus was born, that those people were the chosen people of God, but would also have to suffer much because of their choice. Also Jeshua, the Nazarene Jew warned his followers they should know when they would like to follow him, they would be a target of spot and bullying. Followers of Christ would in case they originally did not belong to the People Israel, also be taken up in the Family of God. But that would mean they also as part of the Body of Christ, would be part of God's people and would have to suffer likewise. though they may become protected more than those who did not accept the Messiah.

The Jews would have to live in ghettos and face the horrors of the Holocaust. Christians were persecuted but Jews were more and still are persecuted and shunned.

It is a pity the Jews have one distorted picture of the Christians, because they always see the majority of them being Trinitarians often raging against Jews. It is true when they say Christianity began as an offshoot of Judaism, because Jeshua (Jesus Christ) was a Jew, who never intended to make an other religion. After the church leaders of followers of that Jew made a bond with the men in power they took on the Greek-roman cultur with its many gods and holy days. they made Jeshua part of a three-une god like in the pagan cultures and as one bigger group they formed Christendom that became the main religion across Europe. It was that group which treated the tiny minority that did not follow Jesus as a tri-une god with persecution, exclusion and expulsion. Many Christians and Jews found their death as other people who did not want to confirm to the doctrines of that church.

Archbishop Angelo Roncalliin Worl War II was using his wartime post as Vatican ambassador in Istanbul to run a network of nuns, diplomats and other people to issue forged visas and baptismal and immigration certificates to Jews from the Balkans to get them to Turkey and then to British-mandate Palestine.
Later as Pope John XXIII he modernised the Roman Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), whose landmark document "Nostra Aetate" (In Our Times) repudiated the 2,000-year-old concept of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus.

Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of Inter-religious Affairs of American Jewish Committee, said:

"Nostra Aetate ushered in amazing changes in Catholic-Jewish relations around the world, even if the degree to which it was internalized depended on whether Catholics and Jews lived side by side." 

Today we can see a lesser nice site of that Roman Catholic Church which got several of its members really helping Jews out of love for the children of God. But some of them also could have taken action and used the situation to 'win more souls' for the 'good faith'.

Harold Pollack writes:

A great many individual Catholics, priests, nuns, bishops, and others acted heroically to save Jews and to oppose Hitler. To pick one example among many, Archbishop Jean-Geraud Saliege of Toulouse bluntly declared that ”the Jews are our brothers, like so many others, and no Christian can forget this fact.” The Archbishop said this from the pulpit, in 1942, in the middle of occupied Europe. He was not alone in such heroism.

Unfortunately, as an institution the Catholic Church, particularly Pope Pius XII, spectacularly failed. The Church bears general responsibility and (in many cases) specific guilt both its failure to intervene and for particular actions taken against Jews.

Not many Catholics shamed themselves for certain actions taken by their church against people of other faiths. Several Roman Catholics became right wing fighters against those who did not want to come to the real faith of the god son Jesus. All others where considered blasphemous, and the Jews traitors to God. Many in charge of that Roman Catholic Church did not want to react against the way some of their flock were thinking. For years the West could see what was going on in Germany, but not many reacted against the genocide taking place.

Pope Pius XII called Pastor Angelicus, was the most Marian Pope in Church history. Bäumer, Marienlexikon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As head of the Chruch you would think Popes Pius XI and Pius XII could do something against the Nazi doctrine, but they failed to plainly condemn Nazism and specific genocide against Jews (and others). From historical sources we know that diplomats representing France, Poland, Brazil, the United States, and Britain approached the Vatican more than once with the request that the Pope specifically denounce Nazi crimes against Jews. British diplomat Francis D’Arcy Osborne, wrote:

A policy of silence in regard to such offences against the conscience of the world must necessarily involve a renunciation of moral leadership and a consequent atrophy of the influence and authority of the Vatican…

Terrible was it when after the war the Catholic Church did not enough to bring the Jewish kids back to their family or did not allow them to keep their faith. Instead they tried to keep them away from their faith.

Harold Pollack  in his article The Pope at Yad Vashem writes:

Some misdeeds continued beyond the war. Jewish children were hidden in Catholic homes or religious institutions during the war. When children were baptized, the Church sometimes deliberately obstructed their return to surviving Jewish relatives. As one notorious 1946 memorandum directed:

1) Avoid, as much as possible, responding in writing to Jewish authorities, but rather do it orally.

2) Each time a response is necessary, it is necessary to say that the Church must conduct investigations in order to study each case individually.

3) Children who have been baptized must not be entrusted to institutions that would not be in a position to guarantee their Christian upbringing.

4) For children who no longer have their parents, given the fact that the Church has responsibility for them, it is not acceptable for them to be abandoned by the Church or entrusted to any persons who have no rights over them, at least until they are in a position to choose themselves. This, evidently, is for children who would not have been baptized.

5) If the children have been turned over by their parents, and if the parents reclaim them now, providing that the children have not received baptism they can be given back.

It is to be noted that this decision of the Holy Congregation of the Holy Office has been approved by the Holy Father.

This stain can not be wiped out. It is a blot on the Roman Catholic Church its escutcheon. Trying to keep the children away from their original family and original faith, this intentionally done, is a sin. You may say the Church had a responsibility to those who it could save from the horror of the Nazi's, but it did not give them the right to take away all the grounds to restore their original faith.

To claim those children who lost their family and who were baptised, was not respecting the will of the deceased family members. The parents would have loved to see their children saved in the faith, not given them over to an other religious group to have them unwillingly be reformed in that other faith.

Naturally it would be wrong to take Pope Francis I accountable for what happened in the 1930s -1960s. He bears no personal stain for actions undertaken almost seventy years ago.

Some Christians do not seem to like what he is doing the last few weeks, which shows how there are still too many Christians who do not want to see their connection with the Jews, and how many still consider a whole people guilty for what some of their folks did. It would be the same as the Jews would consider all Christians guilty for killing so many Jews. The same with the Muslims, too many Christian are generalising the Islamic community, equalising them all with those lunatic fundamentalists. You also could say it would be the same if we all would consider the Christians on the same line as some freaky fundamentalist Christians like the Westboro Church a.o.

We should welcome Pope Francis I his efforts to helpfully mediate the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis even at a time when still a debt remains unacknowledged and unpaid.

Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s director of international interreligious affairs and former head of the IJCIC, welcomed the Pope’s speech as conciliatory.

“Pope Francis is a very good friend of the Jewish people, and we rejoice in the fact that he will continue to advance the path of his predecessors in deepening the Catholic-Jewish relationship.”

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