(10-07-2011, 07:51 PM)Vetus Ordo Wrote: The Jews were kept in ghettoes or expelled from Catholic countries with the blessing of the Church. The popes themselves kept the Jews under check in the Papal States.

Social discrimination of the Jews is as old as Christianity itself, it has nothing to do with superficial feelings of "envy."

Catholic Encyclopedia Wrote:In many places, the severity of the Lateran decrees was outdone, so that in 1235 Gregory IX felt called upon to confirm the Constitution of Innocent III, and in 1247 Innocent IV issued a Bull reprobating the false accusations and various excesses of the time against the Jews. Writing to the bishops of France and of Germany the latter pontiff says:

    Certain of the clergy, and princes, nobles and great lords of your cities and dioceses have falsely devised certain godless plans against the Jews, unjustly depriving them by force of their property, and appropriating it themselves; . . . they falsely charge them with dividing up among themselves on the Passover the heart of a murdered boy. . . . In their malice, they ascribe every murder, wherever it chance to occur, to the Jews. And on the ground of these and other fabrications, they are filled with rage against them, rob them of their possessions without any formal accusation, without confession, and without legal trial and conviction, contrary to the privileges granted to them by the Apostolic See. . . . They oppress the Jews by starvation, imprisonment, and by tortures and sufferings; they afflict them with all kinds of punishments, and sometimes even condemn them to death, so the Jews, although living under Christian princes, are in a worse plight than were their ancestors in the land of the Pharaohs. They are driven to leave in despair the land in which their fathers have dwelt since the memory of man. . . . Since it is our pleasure that they shall not be disturbed, . . . we ordain that ye behave towards them in a friendly and kind manner. Whenever any unjust attacks upon them come under your notice, redress their injuries, and do not suffer them to be visited in the future by similar tribulations.

The protestations of the Roman pontiffs do not seem to have been much heeded in the Christian states generally.

(10-07-2011, 08:04 PM)Underdog Wrote: That is not Christian behavior.

Quote:It is deep seated hatred and envy.  That is the reason that the Church condoned putting the Jews in ghettos...because She couldn't stop Her children from being vicious and cruel.

Quote:"Ungrateful for favors and forgetful of benefits, the Jews return insult for kindness and impious contempt for goodness. They ought to know the yoke of perpetual enslavement because of their guilt. See to it that the perfidious Jews never in the future grow insolent, but that they always suffer publicly the shame of their sin in servile fear." - Pope Gregory IX

"It is fitting for Jews to serve Christians, but not for Christians to serve Jews. On the contrary, the Jews, as servants rejected by that Savior Whose death they wickedly contrived, should recognize themselves in fact and in creed the servants of those whom the death of Christ has set free, even as it has rendered them bondmen." - Pope Innocent III (“Etsi Judaeos")

"We exhort you not to tolerate that Jews rule Christians and have power over them. For, to allow Christians to be subjected to Jews and to be delivered to their whims means to oppress the Church of God and to revile Christ Himself." - Pope Gregory VII (Epistle to King Alphonsus of Castile)

"The Jewish people fell from the heights because of their faithlessness and condemned their Redeemer to a shameful death. Their godlessness has assumed such forms that, for the salvation of our own people, it becomes necessary to prevent their disease. Besides usury, through which Jews everywhere have sucked dry the property of impoverished Christians, they are accomplices of thieves and robbers; and the most damaging aspect of the matter is that they allure the unsuspecting through magical incantations, superstition, and witchcraft to the Synagogue of Satan and boast of being able to predict the future. We have carefully investigated how this revolting sect abuses the name of Christ and how harmful they are to those whose life is threatened by their deceit. On account of these and other serious matters, and because of the gravity of their crimes which increase day to day more and more, We order that, within 90 days, all Jews in our entire earthly realm of justice -- in all towns, districts, and places -- must depart these regions." - Pope St. Pius V (From his Bull, “The Jewish Race”)

"Our ways of life and those of the Jews are utterly different, and Jews will easily pervert the souls of simple folk to their superstition and unbelief if such folk are living in continual and intimate intercourse with them." - Pope Alexander III (“Ad Haec”)

"With great sorrow and mortal anxiety, We have heard that the Jews have in a Christian land the same rights as Christians, that Christian men and women live under the same roof with these traitors and defile their souls day and night with blasphemies!" - Pope Stephen III (Epistle to the Bishop of Norbonne)

(10-07-2011, 08:42 PM)Vetus Ordo Wrote: So the Church, a vehicle of God's grace and eternal word, was utterly incapable of reforming her children to act civilly and decently towards the Jews? We're talking about basic levels of social decency and fellowship. The Church couldn't do anything about this hatred for more than 1500 years? The only solution was to put Jews in ghettoes or agreeing to their expulsion en masse from several countries?

(10-07-2011, 09:00 PM)Underdog Wrote:

(10-07-2011, 08:42 PM)Vetus Ordo Wrote: So the Church, a vehicle of God's grace and eternal word, was utterly incapable of reforming her children to act civilly and decently towards the Jews? We're talking about basic levels of social decency and fellowship. The Church couldn't do anything about this hatred for more than 1500 years? The only solution was to put Jews in ghettoes or agreeing to their expulsion en masse from several countries?

Yes...whenever folks who were hate-filled came to power...the Church was pretty powerless to do much about it (and some clergy...even popes...were probably at times a bit culpable for fanning the flame).  Please don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm lumping everyone in together...some folks hate and envy...that's the way it has been and will be...sad that some folks choose to reject God's graces.  That, at least, is my $.02.

(10-07-2011, 09:34 PM)Cooler King Wrote:Well that's the whole point. To be in unity with our neighbor.

(10-07-2011, 09:47 PM)Cooler King Wrote:

(10-07-2011, 09:43 PM)Vetus Ordo Wrote:

(10-07-2011, 09:34 PM)Cooler King Wrote:Well that's the whole point. To be in unity with our neighbor.

No, the whole point is this:

If social discrimination of Jews is wrong and unchristian, then it was not the Church that ended it but her enemies. In fact, down the centuries, the Church condoned this social discrimination and was incapable of stopping it.

Well the Church killed a lot of them and befriended heads of state that were dead set in annihilating them.

(10-07-2011, 10:45 PM)Vetus Ordo Wrote: Oh my...

(10-07-2011, 10:55 PM)Cooler King Wrote:That's a great avatar Norbert. With the papal Tiara. I haven't seen one in worn in a while.