I was caught in the crossfire between Catholics and Jews in the Upper Room of the Old City (Jerusalem)

                                                                        
                                                                    

Yesterday, I decided to make my way back to the Old City (Jerusalem). I felt I did not have enough time to think and contemplate during the last visit the day before. I wanted to spend the day there, praying and seeking God for a deeper consecration and closer walk with him. I joined a group of people holding hands and we were praying for the peace of Jerusalem, the City of David. While we were praying we notice that the Catholics were setting up for Mass. Apparently, the Catholics (who I am informed have been trying to officially have the Upper Room as a Catholic Church), are allowed by Israeli law to hold Mass there twice a year. Well, while they were setting up, this happened:

One of the protesters turn to me and said, ‘We are not against all Christians because many Christians were Zionist and supported the building of the nation of Israel but we hate Catholics, because they are murderers.” She continued, “They are Babylon and want to take over Israel but we will not allow this” I have more footage on this intrusion but the file is too large for this blog. Things escalated. The police and a few members of the armed forces showed up and tried to talk the protesters down. They weren't having it and so the orthodox Jews were arrested. It was an ugly sight in the most holiest of places. 

I knew of the historical rift between Jews and Catholics but this incident got me thinking. I decided to look into this again. This is what I found to be the basis of Jewish hatred of Catholics:

1.     The conflict between the Pharisees and the Church is well documented in Scripture. Many Jews believe that Christians blame them for the death of Jesus. This whole debate resurfaced during the making of the Passion of the Christ if you recall, which Mel Gibson produced.

2.     Patristic bishops of the patristic era such as Augustine argued that the Jews should be left alive and suffering as a perpetual reminder of their murder of Christ. Like his anti-Jewish teacher, St. Ambrose of Milan, he defined Jews as a special subset of those damned to hell. As "Witness People", he sanctified collective punishment for the Jews and enslavement of Jews to Catholics: "Not by bodily death, shall the ungodly race of carnal Jews perish 'Scatter them abroad, take away their strength. (see Michael, Robert (2011). A History of Catholic Antisemitism : The Dark side of the Church (Palgrave Macmillan).

3.     “Set fire to their synagogues or schools,” Martin Luther (German Reformer) recommended in On the Jews and Their Lies. Jewish houses should “be razed and destroyed,” and Jewish “prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, [should] be taken from them.”

       In addition, “their Rabbis [should] be forbidden to teach on pain of loss of life and limb.” Still, this wasn’t enough. 

 Luther proposed seven measures of “sharp mercy” that German princes could take against Jews: (1) burn their schools and synagogues; (2) transfer Jews to community settlements; (3) confiscate all Jewish literature, which was blasphemous; (4) prohibit rabbis to teach, on pain of death; (5) deny Jews safe-conduct, so as to prevent the spread of Judaism; (6) appropriate their wealth and use it to support converts and to prevent the lewd practice of usury; (7) assign Jews to manual labor as a form of penance.

 I agree with Dr. Eric W. Gritsch a Maryland Synod Professor of Church History at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania who argues that Luther was not an anti-Semite in the racist sense. His arguments against Jews were theological, not biological. Actually it was not until a French cultural anthropologist in the nineteenth century held that humankind consisted of “Semites” and “Aryans,” were Semites considered inferior. European intellectuals and politicians quickly adopted Alfonse de Gobineau’s views, and Jews became the scapegoats of a snobbish colonialist society in England, France, and Germany. The rest is history—including the Jewish holocaust perpetrated by Adolf Hitler and his regime who also used Luther's writings to fan the flames of hatred towards the jewish people. National Socialists used Luther to support their racist anti-Semitism too, calling him a genuine German who had hated non-Nordic races.

5. On April 26, 1933 Hitler declared during a meeting with Roman Catholic Bishop, Wilhelm Berning of Osnabrück:

      “I have been attacked because of my handling of the Jewish question. The Catholic Church          considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc., because it recognized the Jews for what they were. In the epoch of liberalism the danger was no longer recognized. I am moving back toward the time in which a fifteen-hundred-year-long tradition was implemented. I do not set race over religion, but I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the Church, and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.”

6.     The transcript of this discussion contains no response by Bishop Berning. 

7.     In 1306 there was a wave of persecution in France, and there were widespread Black Death Jewish Persecutions as the Jews were blamed by many Christians for the plague, or spreading it.

8.     It must be remembered however that many individual Christian clergy and laypeople of all denominations, had to pay for their opposition with their life, including: Catholic priest, Maximilian Kolbe.

Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer the Catholic parson of Berlin Cathedral,  and Bernhard Lichtenberg to name but a few.

9.     Before becoming Pope, Cardinal Pacelli addressed the International Eucharist Congress in Budapest  on 25–30 May 1938 during which he made reference to the Jews "whose lips curse [Christ] and whose hearts reject him even today"; at this time antisemitic laws were in the process of being formulated in Hungary. (see Donald J. Dietrich. Christian responses to the Holocaust: moral and ethical issues Religion, theology, and the Holocaust. Syracuse University Press, 2003)

I could go on with the list as there are many grievances that led to this outraged Orthodox Jews to demand the abandoning of the Catholic Mass even twice a year, which has been established by Israeli law that allows Catholic Mass in the Upper Room twice a year. The day that I was caught in the verbal and physically violent clash was one of those days.I left the upper room not feeling the spiritual high that I travelled so far to get. Perhaps the Lord has a lesson in this form me and who know perhaps for you too.

The question that still lingers is, 'do the Jews have probable cause to be suspicious of the Catholic Church? And may be the Christian churches at large. What do you think?