The comments of the Pope’s preacher, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, in which he quoted a Jewish friend at this evening’s Good Friday homily in St. Peter’s is causing yet further media controversy for the Church.
But as always, it helps to read such comments in context. Thanks to Robert Moynihan of Inside the Vatican for obtaining the whole homily. The relevant remarks are in bold at the end.
“WE HAVE A GREAT HIGH PRIEST”
Homily on Good Friday 2010 in Saint Peter’s Basilica
by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, ofmcap
“We have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God”: thus begins the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews that we heard in the second reading. In the Year for Priests, the liturgy for Good Friday enables us to go back to the historical source of the Christian priesthood. It is the source of both the realizations of the priesthood: the ministerial, of bishops and presbyters, and the universal of all the faithful. This one also, in fact, is founded on the sacrifice of Christ that, Revelation says, “loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (Revelation 1:5-6). Hence, it is of vital importance to understand the nature of the sacrifice and of the priesthood of Christ because it is from them that priests and laity, in a different way, must bear the stamp and seek to live the exigencies.
The Letter to the Hebrews explains in what the novelty and uniqueness of Christ’s priesthood consists, not only in regard to the priesthood of the old Covenant, but as the history of religions teaches us today, in regard to every priestly institution also outside of the Bible. “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come [...] he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:11-14).
Every other priest offers something outside of himself, Christ offered himself; every other priest offers victims, Christ offered himself victim! Saint Augustine enclosed in a famous formula this new kind of priesthood in which priest and victim are the same thing: “Ideo sacerdos, quia sacrificium”: priest because victim.”[1]
* * *
In 1972 a famous French thinker launched the thesis according to which “violence is the heart and secret spirit of the sacred.”[2] In fact, at the origin and center of every religion there is sacrifice, and sacrifice entails destruction and death. The newspaper “Le Monde” greeted the affirmation, saying that it made of that year “a year to mark with an asterisk in the annals of humanity.” However, before this date, that scholar had come close again to Christianity and at Easter of 1959 he made public his “conversion,” declaring himself a believer and returning to the Church.
This enabled him not to pause, in his subsequent studies, on the analysis of the mechanism of violence, but to point out also how to come out of it. Many, unfortunately, continue to quote René Girard as the one who denounced the alliance between the sacred and violence, but they do not speak of the Girard who pointed out in the paschal mystery of Christ the total and definitive break of such an alliance. According to him, Jesus unmasks and breaks the mechanism of the scapegoat that makes violence sacred, making himself, the victim of all violence.
The process that leads to the birth of religion is reversed, in regard to the explanation that Freud had given. In Christ, it is God who makes himself victim, not the victim (in Freud, the primordial father) that, once sacrificed, is successively raised to divine dignity (the Father of the Heavens). It is no longer man that offers sacrifices to God, but God who “sacrifices” himself for man, consigning for him to death his Only-begotten Son (cf. John 3:16). Sacrifice no longer serves to “placate” the divinity, but rather to placate man and to make him desist from his hostility toward God and his neighbor.
Christ did not come with another’s blood but with his own. He did not put his sins on the shoulders of others—men or animals—; he put others’ sins on his own shoulders: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24).
Can one, then, continue to speak of sacrifice in regard to the death of Christ and hence of the Mass? For a long time the scholar mentioned rejected this concept, holding it too marked by the idea of violence, but then ended by admitting the possibility, on condition of seeing, in that of Christ, a new kind of sacrifice, and of seeing in this change of meaning “the central fact in the religious history of humanity.”
* * *
Seen in this light, the sacrifice of Christ contains a formidable message for today’s world. It cries out to the world that violence is an archaic residue, a regression to primitive stages and surmounted by human history and—if it is a question of believers—a culpable and scandalous delay in becoming aware of the leap in quality operated by Christ.
It reminds also that violence is losing. In almost all ancient myths the victim is the defeated and the executioner the victor . [3] Jesus changed the sign of victory. He inaugurated a new kind of victory that does not consist in making victims, but in making himself victim. “Victor quia victima!”, victor because victim, thus Augustine describes the Jesus of the cross.[4]
The modern value of the defense of victims, of the weak and of threatened life is born on the terrain of Christianity, it is a later fruit of the revolution carried out by Christ. We have the counter-proof. As soon as the Christian vision is abandoned (as Nietzsche did) to bring the pagan back to life, this conquest is lost and one turns to exalt “the strong, the powerful, to its most exalted point, the superman,” and the Christian is described as “a morality of slaves,” fruit of the mean resentment of the weak against the strong.
Unfortunately, however, the same culture of today that condemns violence, on the other hand, favors and exalts it. Garments are torn in face of certain events of blood, but not being aware that the terrain is prepared for them with that which is shown in the next page of the newspaper or in the successive palimpsest of the television network. The pleasure with which one indulges in the description of violence and the competition of the one who is first and the most crude in describing it do no more than favor it. The result is not a catharsis of evil, but an incitement to it. It is disturbing that violence and blood have become one of the ingredients of greatest claim in films and video-games, that one is attracted to it and enjoys watching it.
The same scholar recalled above has unveiled the matrix that sparks the mechanism of violence: mimicry, that innate human inclination to consider desirable the things that others desire and, hence, to repeat the things that they see others do. The “herd” psychology is that which leads to the choice of the “scapegoat” to find, in the struggle against a common enemy—in general, the weakest element, the different one—, a proper artificial and momentous cohesion.
We have an example in the recurrent violence of youth in the stadium, in the bullying in schools and in certain square manifestations that leave behind destruction and debris. A generation of youth that has had the very rare privilege of not knowing a real war and of never having been called to arms, amuses itself (because it is about a game, even if stupid and at times tragic) to invent little wars, driven by the same instinct that moved the primordial horde.
* * *
However there is a yet more grave and widespread violence than that of youth in stadiums and squares. I am not speaking here of violence against children, of which unfortunately also elements of the clergy are stained; of that there is sufficient talk outside of here. I am speaking of violence to women. This is an occasion to make persons and institutions that fight against it understand that Christ is their best ally.
It is a violence all the more grave in as much as it is often carried out in the shelter of domestic walls, unknown to all, when it is not actually justified with pseudo-religious and cultural prejudices. The victims find themselves desperately alone and defenceless. Only today, thanks to the support and encouragement of so many associations and institutions, some find the strength to come out in the open and denounce the guilty.
Much of this violence has a sexual background. It is the male who thinks he can demonstrate his virility by inflicting himself on the woman, without realizing that he is only demonstrating his insecurity and baseness. Also in confrontations with the woman who has made a mistake, what a contrast between the conduct of Christ and that still going on in certain environments! Fanaticism calls for stoning; Christ responds to the men who have presented an adulteress to him saying: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). Adultery is a sin that is always committed by two, but for which only one has always been (and, in some parts of the world, still is) punished.
Violence against woman is never so odious as when it nestles where mutual respect and love should reign, in the relationship between husband and wife. It is true that violence is not always and wholly on the part of one, that one can be violent also with the tongue and not only with the hands, but no one can deny that in the vast majority of cases the victim is the woman.
There are families where the man still believes himself authorized to raise his voice and hands on the women of the house. Wife and children at times live under the constant threat of “Daddy’s anger.” To such as these it is necessary to say courteously: dear men colleagues, by creating you male, God did not intend to give you the right to be angry and to bang your fist on the table for the least thing. The word addressed to Eve after the fault: “He (the man) shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16), was a bitter forecast, not an authorization.
John Paul II inaugurated the practice of the request for forgiveness for collective wrongs. One of these, among the most just and necessary, is the forgiveness that half of humanity must ask of the other half, men to women. It must not be generic or abstract. It must lead, especially in one who professes himself a Christian, to concrete gestures of conversion, to words of apology and reconciliation within families and in society.
* * *
The passage from the Letter to the Hebrews that we heard continues saying: “In the days of his flesh, with loud cries and with tears he offered prayers and supplications to Him who could save him from death.” Jesus felt in all its crudity the situation of the victims, the suffocated cries and silent tears. Truly, “we do not have a high priest who cannot suffer with us in our weaknesses.” In every victim of violence Christ relives mysteriously his earthly experience. Also in regard to every one of these he says: “you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
By a rare coincidence, this year our Easter falls on the same week of the Jewish Passover which is the ancestor and matrix within which it was formed. This pushes us to direct a thought to our Jewish brothers. They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms. I received in this week the letter of a Jewish friend and, with his permission, I share here a part of it.
He said: “I am following with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the Church, the Pope and all the faithful by the whole world. The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism. Therefore I desire to express to you personally, to the Pope and to the whole Church my solidarity as Jew of dialogue and of all those that in the Jewish world (and there are many) share these sentiments of brotherhood. Our Passover and yours are undoubtedly different, but we both live with Messianic hope that surely will reunite us in the love of our common Father. I wish you and all Catholics a Good Easter.”
And also we Catholics wish our Jewish brothers a Good Passover. We do so with the words of their ancient teacher Gamaliel, entered in the Jewish Passover Seder and from there passed into the most ancient Christian liturgy:
“He made us pass
From slavery to liberty,
From sadness to joy,
From mourning to celebration,
From darkness to light,
From servitude to redemption
Because of this before him we say: Alleluia.”[5]
* * *
Notes
[1] St. Augustine, Confessions, 10, 43.
[2] Cf. R. Girard, La Violence et le Sacré, Grasset, Paris, 1972.
[3] Cf. R. Girard, Il sacrificio, Milano 2004, pp. 73 f.
[4] St. Augustine, Confessions, 10, 4.
[5] Pesachim, X, 5 e Meliton of Sardi, Easter Homily, 68 (SCh 123, p. 98).
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This is an occasion for sadness.
Thank you for putting his statement into context. However, the insinuation is that the hierarchy of the Catholic church are the victims of a collective violence. Once again, that hierarchy has forgotten the collective violence visited upon innocent people - those who were molested by priests, lied to by bishops and overlooked by popes. The Vatican has much to do to correct this horror - feeling sorry for itself is not one of those things.
The homily of Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa and the comparison of “attacks on the Vatican” to the Holocaust leads me to suggest that he stay in the pulpit and out of the courtrooms of Europe. What are you thinking Pere Cantalamessa, or were you thinking?
Gabrielle,
Do all white people in America share collective guilt for the sins committed against black people? Or, do all men share collective guilt because of discrimination of women in the workplace? Do all Muslims share in the collective guilt of suicide bombers and extremists who want to kill? Do all pro-life workers who use peaceful means share in the collective guilt of those who use violence and murder for the cause? Hopefully, you answered, “no” to all of these. Why then, would you be ok with collective guilt being assigned to all priests and bishops based on what some brother priests have done, and on what some bishops have not done? The Jewish man is pointing out that stereotyping and assigning collective guilt to a group of people is wrong - period.
Gregory,
Perhaps I missed it, but I did not see any comparison of “‘attacks on the Vatican’ to the Holocaust” What I did see, was an objection to the use of stereotypes and of assigning collective guilt to Catholics from the Pope down to the faithful. Why should I be held accountable for the actions of what a priest did? Why should the 98% of the priests who do not engage in such gravely immoral attacks against innocent children be held accountable for what they did? Should the apostles have been held accountable for the actions of Judas? There are many lessons affiliated with Judas Iscariot, and of those, we see that Judas was a priest, called by Jesus. He was a man with a free will and he chose to do evil. Is the Catholic Church, which Christ founded that night responsible for the actions of Judas? Was Peter - the first Pope, responsible for the actions of Judas? Where the disciples responsible? Or, does the guilt belong to Judas?
The two comments here seem to come from minds totally malformed by our fallen secularized world.
Gabrielle does not seem to have read the article very closely or does not make much of an effort to understand the comments about personal responsibility v. collective responsibility. There are a very small number of people (some priests and bishops, no popes) who should be held personally responsible for grave sins and grave errors of judgment, many of which happened several decades or more ago. To continue to try to implicate the entire Catholic Church and her leaders of today with this is exactly what Fr. Cantalmessa’s Jewish friend so eloquently condemned.
Gregory simply does not read the article. This article was meant to contextualize the comments. It is ironic that Gregory simply regurgitates the distortions of the MSM in an article meant to address it without even bothering to look at the evidence of that shows he and the MSM are culpably calumnious in their spin on Fr. C’s homily. Gregory - where in Fr. C’s homily exactly do you see the word “Holocaust”? Where do you see Fr. C. making any comparison of anything himself? If you have a beef, it is with Fr. C’s Jewish friend.
The fact that the statement is an alleged quotation purportedly from “a Jewish friend” does not excuse the statement. It is wholly inappropriate to compare the discomfort being experienced by the church leadership in the sex abuse scandal to the violence that culminated in the Holocaust.
The analogy is simply shameful.
OPEN LETTER TO REV. CANTALAMESSA
Rev. Cantalamessa, you really messed up today. I know you didn’t mean to insult anyone when you compared the current attacks on the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict with the persecution of the Jews, but you did, and you did it big time. It seems that you are ignoring a few important points: first of all, there is no comparison because the Church persecuted the Jews for no other reason than their Jewishness, which the Church found intolerable, while the current attacks on the Church and the Pope—I wouldn’t quite call it “persecution”—are well deserved as the Church seems to have an endemic child abuse problem compounded with on obstruction of justice problem. This is not the first time this happens. It’s best to not even talk about the Middle Ages. Hopefully the Pope will make use of his power and swiftly remove any offenders from the Church and hand them over to the civil authorities for prosecution, as would be the case with any child molester. The attacks on the Pope are well deserved too. He was responsible for some of these cases before he became pope and he not only did not punish these priests, he moved them to other places where they were able to molest children again! So, it’s hard to feel sorry for the Church or the Pope these days. You also seem to have forgotten that of the 365 days of the year, this is the least appropriate day to make such comparison with the persecution of the Jews. Should I remind you of the forced conversion of the Jews, instituted by the Church centuries ago? Should I remind you of the incitement to violence in the faithful every Good Friday after sermons and Passion Plays? Should I remind you of the accusation of deicide which prompted countless acts of Christian violence toward Jews? Or the Good Friday prayer which asked God to lift the veil of the blind, perfidious Jews?
It makes me wonder about your boss, Pope Benedict, too, because one needs to ask oneself the uncomfortable question of why he didn’t stand up as you were making this innapropriate comparison and distance himself and the Church from your comments. But then, maybe one should not be so surprised about this given his recent track record regarding the sexual predator priests, or his treatment of the whole Bishop Williamson affair, or his reinstating the Good Friday prayer referenced above, or his rush canonization process for the problematic wartime Pope Pius XII. In a way, seeing Pope Benedict looking at the floor today as you uttered those words reminded me of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who also stood silently by the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in 2001 as Assad let loose an antisemitic rant that was broadcast in the entire Christian world. Assad, like the Catholic Church before him, presented Jews as enemies of God. Also like Christians before him, Assad used the Christian blood libel of Jews as Christ-killers. Pope John Paul II did not see fit to stop him right then and there and thus appeared to implicitly accept Assad’s vitriolic statements.
Perhaps this issue of silent popes is also endemic in the Church. After all, Pope Pius XI and his successor Pope Pius XII both stood by silently as the Nazis slowly and inexorably dehumanized, demonized, and exterminated millions of Jews during the Second World War.
To wrap it up, Rev. Cantalamessa, as the sole and direct preacher to the pope I think you yourself need some advising. I would encourage you to think about these things, and next time you sit with Pope Benedict advise him better.
Gabriel Wilensky
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Author
Six Million Crucifixions:
How Christian Teachings About Jews Paved the Road to the Holocaust
http://www.SixMillionCrucifixions.com
Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sixmillionbook
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The seemingly willful misreading of Fr. Cantalmessa makes me suspect that people’s minds are so clouded by sanctimonious rage that their critical faculties have abandoned them. Cantalmessa did NOT compare what the church is going through to the Holocaust. He quotes his Jewish friend as saying,: “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” This statement, on its own merits, is unassailable. Easter and Passover coincide this year, so it is timely and appropriate to say that as Jesus suffered violence, so have the Jews. The problem is that, given the current climate—the media feeding frenzy and the lynch mob mentality of the public—it was an extremely impolitic thing for the good friar to say. He ought to have known that his words would be taken down, distorted and taken out of context in the most lurid, sensational way, what he really meant to say lost to other people’s agendas.
Sanctimonious rage,” bullying, scapegoating, flogging (like Pilate did to Jesus to make the Jews satisfied with his punishment), malice and lying by way of innuendo, blood lust, ressentiment—all of these are the leaven of our society today. The press stokes these emotions, which spread like wildfire through twittering and other techie mechanisms, and the herd mentality surges forward to find a victim with which to satisfy its desire to punish and get revenge. People, think about what you are doing and saying! There is a will to viciousness, a bestial desire to torture and dominate, which is part of human make-up. Think of what Cain did to Abel, and all because Abel was the better man! He beat him to death. Tarantino offered a graphic illustration in his recent film of this sentiment at work in the baseball bat murder of the German soldier. Forget the soldier’s guilt as a murderer of Jews for a moment (and, yes, he was a monster deserving of the severest punishment by a court of law), and consider what the bat-wielding man has done to himself in this act of violence, of blood lust murder. This movie was nominated for an Academy Award. Think about it—how our sentiments are played and manipulated today. Step back, consider, think and reflect. The pope and most of the Church’s hierarchy have not done that with which they have been charged, but there is a lynching party out to get anyone, who by imagined association, can be charged as complicit. Do not join the lynching mob.
When I read the willful mispresentations and opportunistic bashing of the Church, it at times makes me angry. But then I think of our Holy Week readings. Christ was unjustly whipped, spat upon, crowned, and hung, and he barely said a word in his defense. His silent suffereing led to his Resurrection. Maybe for the 98% of the innocent clergy and nearly 100% of the laity not involved in the abuse scandal, it would be wise to focus on the silence of Christ’s Passion. My guess is that there are graces for us and the Church in doing so.
Thank you to Edward Pentin and the National Catholic Register for posting Father Raniero Cantalamessa’s comments in full.
No fair person can deny that the press presented these comments in a completely distorted manner. Reading news accounts on Google and reading the full comments here, the reader encounters two completely different texts.
This may be the hidden gift of this ugly, frightening event: those who compare the distorted news accounts with Father Cantalamessa’s actual comments may come to realize that the press cannot be trusted, especially on matters concerning the Christian faith.
Thank you to posters Diane Korzeniewski, David Delaney, and J. M. Rice, above.
Many of the protesters here, particularly Gabriel, actually give credence to Fr. Cantalamessa’s Jewish friends concerns.
Look at the uproar that those in the Catholic Church DARE defend itself….!
I’m glad that the good Fr. had the ganas to air his Jewish friend’s opinion. Afterall, the friend had lived through some of the same “elements”: stereotyping, collective guilt, forgeting about personal responsibility.
Gabriel, why don’t you value a Jewish man’s point of view about lynch mobs?
Thanks to Diane, David, and J.M. Rice for the clear thinking. Elastico- I agree, there are many graces to be gained through these trials, for all people. “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more!”
Man, watch the devils squirm when the truth is proclaimed!
I agree with those who have already pointed out that several posters obviously didn’t read this sermon, or they could not possibly continue to say that the Father is comparing the Vatican to the Jews. That to ask people to look at context has become tantamount to excuse-making is yet another way that our culture has become impoverished. It’s called reading, people. Try it. Or is a long, detailed, erudite sermon simply too difficult for some people, and it’s just easier to regurgitate tabloid headlines? Sadly, I fear the latter. To prove the former, I challenge anyone who reads this and STILL thinks he’s comparing the Vatican to the Jews in this homily to provide textual evidence of him doing so—come on, the text is right there, it’s not even like you have to Google anything. Man up—engage in a real debate about interpretation of a text.
I dare you.
And re: Pope Pius XII, please, please, read some actual history. There’s a reason why the New York Times called him “a lone voice crying in the wilderness” when Hitler was rising, and why the Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholcism—and took Pius’ name sa his baptismal name.
Hmmm—what could possibly be the reason for that??
“Have mercy on your people, Lord, and give us
a breathing space in the midst of so many troubles.”
Missal of Pius V
Yada,yada,yada…...... It was a good Homily ! Some understood it, some didn’t. Grow up and move on !!!
The priest as “scapegoat” and “victim,” likened to victims of the holocaust? This IS priests, putting the blame on everyone else.
Um, no, Bretton—he’s referring to the victims of violence he’s TALKING about in his homily—women—when he refers to Jews as victims of collective violence. He then goes on to read amessage of solidarity from a Jewish friend. Why exactly in this so hard to get? Is literacy really this much of a problem?
I wonder what sort of culture could culminate is comments of this kind. The comparison, presented by the Pope’s own preacher, minimizes the holocaust and demonstrates that the church has a victim complex. Any organization that systematically covers up the victimization of children (something the church obviously did, I was a soldier, I know how hierarchy works), and then says that they are the victim, has truly lost its moral compass. God forgive them.
I see that there are still no takers.
After reading Fr. Cantalamessa’s actual homily, I don’t believe that he actually “likened accusations against the pope and the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal to ‘collective violence’ suffered by the Jews”, as the AP report has it (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125507808). In full context, that was not how I interpreted it.
Read the entire homily yourself, here: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/what_fr._cantalamessa_really_said
I hope people read the entire homily carefully and fairly, rather than merely trying to “quote mine.”
I think Rabbi Greenebaum’s reaction is reasonable and understandable – even if I believe it emanates from a misunderstanding. But to characterize what Fr. Cantalamessa said as “insolence”, “repulsive” and “obscene” as the general-secretary of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Stephan Kramer, said?
Ironically, I believe Kramer could have benefitted from reading the entire homily and Fr. Cantalamessa’s warnings about irresponsible media coverage that is “not a catharsis of evil, but an incitement to it.”
Also ironically, Peter Isely, the Milwaukee-based director of SNAP, reportedly denounced Fr. Cantalamessa’s homily “reckless and irresponsible.”
I can’t imagine that these men actually read the entire homily before making their condemnations - but if they did read it all – they certainly did not do so after allowing themselves some time to cool down and read it dispassionately.
I completely understand that the Holocaust/Shoah is a sensitive subject. And perhaps Fr. Cantalamessa should have been more clear and careful with his choice of words to avoid any possible misunderstanding. But this does not justify the extreme reaction he has received.
Aimee R. asks if literacy is that much of a problem. Yes it is. Reading is work. This 2000-word sermon tests at grade 12 for reading level. This sermon is beyond the reading ability of about two-thirds of North American adults. Sad, but true based on the International Adult Literacy Survey. When you factor in the anti-Catholic bias noted by the speaker’s Jewish friend—those who are quick to jump to an opinion without even attempting to read what was really said—you will have a strong majority of people happy to be spoon fed by the main-stream media, which consistently demonstrates an anti-Catholic bias.
I am a Protestant believer. I read the homily and thought it to be sincere and moving—up until the last part where the “letter from a Jewish friend” was inserted. I thought the “letter from a Jewish friend” was a transparent invention designed to present ideas that could not be presented as the preacher’s own. I object to comparing death and torment suffered by defenseless victims to the position of powerful clergymen being subjected to criticism, even if the criticism is nothing but malicious lies. I think it is an insult to the defenseless women and Jews who are mentioned earlier in the homily to use their suffering as a way to deflect criticism from powerful clergymen. Thank you for your attention.
See http://books.google.com/books?id=mJN8Bqvp30cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=gabriel+wilensky&hl=en&ei=6PbgS_m2OoKclgfa0tDqCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f;=false
A check of Mr. (not Dr.) Wilensky’s footnotes show heavy reliance on secondary sources, including Daniel Goldhagen and James Carroll, who also rely on secondary sources.
You won’t find many authors cited who challenge any of Mr. Wilensky’s preconceived views or much in the way of archival material or too many sources in other languages.
This isn’t a serious book, and Mr. Wilensky (who actually works in the computer industry) is not a serious author.
In fact, his publisher, QWERTY Publishers, appears to be a vanity press he set up. How come its Web site offers only one book, his own? See http://www.qwertypublishers.com/qwerty/Our_Books.html
Walk with love through all adversity….thats what I try to do even when it is the hardest..it is our teching..but I remember Jesus in the temple when He lost it and He told the so called “high priests” off…let the truth prevail with God always; Gods truth, where is Gods truth? In the bible…...
This homily is the most profound statement about violence that has be written to date. He hits the nail squarely on the head, Jesus destroyed evil,its bloodlust,its primitive ugly insidious fallen nature on the CROSS, and HIS BLOOD flowed like an ocean over the whole earth to purify every particle of living existence from time into eternity. This one act in a moment of time completely paid the price of the salvation of all life. We are a new creation in Him.Thank you!!!!!!! LORD JESUS, THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!MAY WE ALL GET IT SOON!!!!!!!!!!!!
I did enjoy Father Cantalamessa On E W T N Is he ever filled with the Holly Sprint.He’s so humble .Gee how I would like to introduce my self to him.Devotion To the Holy Face of Jesus the Holy Shroud of Turin is the Greatest reverence always expect a miracle, Lovingly in Carmel Confraternity of the Holy Face of Jesus .
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