Israel Matzav

Warning: Anti-Semite in line to become Pope

Alan Dershowitz warns that one of the candidates on the short list to become the Pope - Venezuela's Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga - is an anti-Semite.

To put it most simply, Rodriguez Maradiaga is an out and out Jew-hater. He has said that "the Jews" are to blame for the scandal surrounding the sexual misconduct of priests toward young parishioners! The Jews? How did Rodriguez Maradiaga ever come up with this hair-brained idea? Here is his "logic." He begins by asserting that the Vatican is anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian (as he says it should be). It follows, therefore, that "the Jews" had to get even with the Catholic Church, while at the same time deflecting attention away from Israeli injustices against the Palestinians. The Jews managed to do this by arranging for the media—which he says they control—to give disproportionate attention on the Vatican sex scandal.
Listen to Rodriguez Maradiaga's own words:

"It certainly makes me think that in a moment in which all the attention of the mass media was focused on the Middle East, all the many injustices done against the Palestinian people, the print media and the TV in the United States became obsessed with sexual scandals that happened 40 years ago, 30 years ago. Why? I think it's also for these motives: What is the church that has received Arafat the most times and has most often confirmed the necessity of the creation of a Palestinian state? What is the church that does not accept that Jerusalem should be the indivisible capital of the State of Israel, but that it should be the capital of the three great monotheistic religions?"

Rodriguez Maradiaga then goes on to compare the Jewish controlled media with "Hitler," because they are "protagonists of what I do not hesitate to define as a persecution against The Church."

The prime media culprit in Rodriguez Maradiaga's bizarro world is the Boston Globe, which has won numerous journalistic awards for its exposure of the sex scandal and cover up. The Globe is owned by The New York Times, which is controlled by the Sulzberger family. Hence the Jewish conspiracy. The problem (among so many) with this cockamamie theory is that the Jewish community of Boston was very close to, and admiring of, Cardinal Bernard Law, who presided over the archdiocese during the scandal. Cardinal Law had built bridges between the Catholic and Jewish communities of Boston, and when the scandal was exposed by the very un-Jewish Boston Globe, the Jewish community remained largely supportive of Law. None of the leading media critics, lawyers or politicians who railed against the church were Jewish. Most were Catholic. But that didn't matter to the bigoted cardinal, who -- along with other classic anti-Semites -- believes that if there is a problem, "the Jews" must be to blame for it. As James Carrol, the distinguished columnist for the Boston Globe who is himself a Catholic, has characterized Rodriguez Maradiaga's "crackpot" mindset: "when the church has a problem—here is the oldest move of all—blame the Jews."

When asked whether he wanted to reconsider his attack, Rodriguez Maradiaga replied: "I don't repent... sometimes it is necessary to shake things up." He later promised Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League that he wouldn't repeat his conspiratorial nonsense, but he has refused to publicly apologize or "repent."

I am not an expert on the inner workings of the Catholic Church (I have readers who are far more familiar with it than I am) but I certainly hope that this guy isn't the winner. 

Labels: anti-Semitism, Catholic Church

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:40 PM