Friday, April 27, 2007

Long before the Second Vatican Council, when Nazism reared its ugly head and the Jewish People were dehumanized and sent to death camps as part of Hitler's "Final Solution," Pope Pius XI raised his voice:

"Pius XI responded by issuing in 1937 the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge condemning the Nazi ideology of racism and totalitarianism and Nazi violations of the concordat. Copies had to be smuggled into Germany so they could be read from the pulpit.

As the extreme nature of Nazi racial anti-Semitism became obvious, and as Mussolini in the late 1930s began imitating Hitler's anti-Jewish race laws in Italy, Pius XI made his position clear, both in Mit Brennender Sorge and in a public address in the Vatican to Belgian pilgrims in 1938: "Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we [Christians] are all Semites."

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XI).

His successor to the Chair of Peter, Pope Pius XII of happy memory, stood with the Jewish People during their painful trial, and rescued anywhere between 800,000 and 1.5 million of the Jewish People. The Historical Record: What Pius XII Did for the Jews: http://www.catholicleague.org/pius/dalinframe.htm

The anti-Semitism of the Saint Benedict Center and other "traditional Catholic" groups in no way represents the mind of the Church.

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