Nazi views on Catholicism

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The signing of the Reichskonkordat on July 20, 1933 in Rome. (From left to right: German prelate Ludwig Kaas, German Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs Giuseppe Pizzardo, Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, Alfredo Ottaviani, and member of Reichsministerium des Inneren (Home Office) Rudolf Buttmann)

 

Nazi ideology could not accept an autonomous establishment whose legitimacy did not spring from the government. It desired the subordination of the church to the state. To many Nazis, Catholics were suspected of insufficient patriotism, or even of disloyalty to the Fatherland, and of serving the interests of "sinister alien forces". Nazi radicals also disdained the Semitic origins of Jesus and the Christian religion. Although the broader membership of the Nazi Party after 1933 came to include many Catholics, aggressive anti-Church radicals like Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann and Heinrich Himmler saw the kirchenkampf campaign against the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anticlerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists.

The Hitler regime permitted various persecutions of the Church in the Nazi Empire, though the political relationship between Church and state among Nazi allies was varied. While the Nazi Fuhrer Adolf Hitler's public relationship to Religion in Nazi Germany may be defined as one of opportunism, his personal position on Catholicism and Christianity was one of hostility. Hitler's chosen "deputy", Martin Bormann, an atheist, recorded in Hitler's Table Talk that Nazism was secular, scientific and anti-religious in outlook.

Biographer Alan Bullock wrote that, though Hitler was raised as a Catholic, and retained some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, he had utter contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure". Bullock wrote that Hitler frequently employed the language of "Providence" in defence of his own myth, but ultimately held a "materialist outlook, based on the nineteenth century rationalists' certainty that the progress of science would destroy all myths and had already proved Christian doctrine to be an absurdity". Though he was willing at times to restrain his anticlericalism out of political considerations, and approved the Reich concordat signed between Germany and the Holy See, his long term hope was for a de-Christianised Germany.

The 1920 Nazi Party Platform had promised to support freedom of religions with the caveat: "insofar as they do not jeopardize the state's existence or conflict with the moral sentiments of the Germanic race", and expressed support for so-called "Positive Christianity", a movement which sought to detach Christianity from its Jewish roots, and Apostle's Creed. William Shirer wrote that "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler—backed by Hitler—the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists." Himmer considered the main task of his Schutzstaffel (SS) organisation to be that of acting as the vanguard in overcoming Christianity. 

Background

Roman Catholicism has ancient roots among Germanic peoples, but The Reformation divided German Christians between Protestantism and Catholicism. The Nazi movement arose during the period of the Weimar Republic in the aftermath of the disaster of World War I (1914–1918) and the subsequent political instability and grip of the Great Depression. In the 1930s, the Catholic Church and the Catholic Centre Party (Zentrum) were major social and political forces in predominantly Protestant Germany. Through the period of the Weimar Republic (1919–33/34) the Centre Party, aligned with both the Social Democrats and the leftist German Democratic Party, had maintained the centre ground against the rise of extremist parties of the left and right. Historically the Centre Party had had the strength to defy Bismark and been a bulwark of the Weimar Republic, yet, according to Bullock, from the summer of 1932, the Party had become "notoriously a Party whose first concern was to make accommodation with any government in power in order to secure the protection of its particular interests". It remained relatively moderate during the radicalisation of German politics which occurred with the onset of the Great Depression, but the party's deputies ultimately voted for the Enabling Act of March 1933, with which Hitler obtained plenary powers.

Early Nazi movement

Catholic Bavaria resented rule from Protestant Berlin, and Hitler at first saw revolution in Bavaria as a means to power - but an early attempt proved fruitless, and he was imprisoned after the 1923 Munich Beerhall Putsch. He used the time to produce Mein Kampf, in which he argued that the effeminate Jewish-Christian ethic was enfeebling Europe, and that Germany needed a man of iron to restore itself and build an empire. He decided on the tactic of pursuing power through "legal" means.

Hitler combined elements of autobiography with an exposition of his racist political ideology in Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), published between 1925 and 1927. Laurence Rees wrote that emphasis on Christianity is missing from Mein Kampf, and described the thrust of the work as "bleak nihilism" revealing a cold universe with no moral structure other than the fight between different people for supremacy. Paul Berben wrote that insofar as the Christian denominations were concerned, Hitler declared himself to be neutral in Mein Kampf - but argued for clear separation between church and state, and for the church not to concern itself with the earthly life of the people, which must be the domain of the state. According to William Shirer, Hitler "inveighed against political Catholicism in Mein Kampf and attacked both of the Christian Churches for their failure to recognise the racial problem...", while also warning that no political party could succeed in "producing a religious reformation". The 1920 Nazi Party Platform had promised to support freedom of religions with the caveat: "insofar as they do not jeopardize the state's existence or conflict with the moral sentiments of the Germanic race". It further proposed a definition of a "positive Christianity" which could combat the "Jewish-materialistic spirit". The attitude of the Nazi party membership to the Catholic Church ranged from tolerance to near total renunciation.

Nazis take power

Otto von Bismarck became Chancellor of Germany in 1871 and launched the Kulturkampf Culture Struggle against the Roman Catholic Church in Germany.

 

A threatening, though initially mainly sporadic persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the Nazi takeover. The Nazis claimed jurisdiction over all collective and social activity, interfering with Catholic schooling, youth groups, workers' clubs and cultural societies. "By the latter part of the decade of the Thirties", wrote Phayer, "church officials were well aware that the ultimate aim of Hitler and other Nazis was the total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion. Since the overwhelming majority of Germans were either Catholic or Protestant this goal had to be a long-term rather than a short-term Nazi objective".

Hitler moved quickly to eliminate Political Catholicism. The dissolution of the Centre Party, a former bulwark of the Weimar Republic left modern Germany without a Catholic Party for the first time. Vice Chancellor Papen meanwhile negotiated a Reich concordat with the Vatican, which prohibited clergy from participating in politics. Kershaw wrote that the Vatican was anxious to reach agreement with the new government, despite "continuing molestation of Catholic clergy, and other outrages committed by Nazi radicals against the Church and its organisations". Hitler, nevertheless, had a "blatant disregard" for the Concordat, wrote Paul O'Shea, and its signing was to him merely a first step in the "gradual suppression of the Catholic Church in Germany". Anton Gill wrote that "with his usual irresistible, bullying technique, Hitler then proceeded to take a mile where he had been given an inch" and closed all Catholic institutions whose functions weren't strictly religious:

It quickly became clear that [Hitler] intended to imprison the Catholics, as it were, in their own churches. They could celebrate mass and retain their rituals as much as they liked, but they could have nothing at all to do with German society otherwise. Catholic schools and newspapers were closed, and a propaganda campaign against the Catholics was launched.

— Extract from An Honourable Defeat by Anton Gill

Richard J. Evans wrote that Hitler believed that in the long run National Socialism and religion would not be able to co-exist, and stressed repeatedly that Nazism was a secular ideology, founded on modern science: "Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition". Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope and "Priests, he said, were 'black bugs', 'abortions in black cassocks'". He believed in a world Jewish conspiracy operating though social democracy, Marxism and Christianity.

Views of leaders of Third Reich

Alfred Rosenberg, the official "cultural and educational leader" of the Reich. A neo-pagan, and anti-Catholic, he wanted the extermination of the Christian faiths imported into Germany. His influence on the Nazi party's course, however, was limited.

 

The Nazis disliked the Catholic and Protestant churches. They wanted to transform the subjective consciousness of the German people—their attitudes, values and mentalities—into a single-minded, obedient "national community". Kershaw wrote that they believed they would therefore have to replace class, religious and regional allegiances by a "massively enhanced national self-awareness to mobilize the German people psychologically" for the coming struggle and war. Gill wrote that their long term plan was to "de-Christianise Germany after the final victory".

Aggressive anti-Church radicals like Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann saw the conflict with the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anti-clerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists. According to Shirer, "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler—backed by Hitler—the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists." The Nazi party had decidedly pagan elements. Once the war was over, Hitler wanted to root out and destroy the influence of the churches:

In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.

— Extract from Hitler: a Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock

The Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Born to a Catholic family, he later led the regime's persecution of Catholic clergy, and wrote that there was "an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a heroic-German world view".

 

Martin Bormann, Hitler's "deputy" from 1941, saw Nazism and Christianity as "incompatible" and had a particular loathing for the Semitic origins of Christianity.

 

Hitler possessed radical instincts in relation to the kirchenkampf campaign against the Churches, and though he occasionally spoke of wanting to delay the Church struggle and was prepared to restrain his anticlericalism out of political considerations, his "own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the 'Church Struggle, confident that they were 'working towards the Fuhrer'". Raised Catholic, Hitler retained some regard for the organisational power of the Church, but had utter contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure". However, important conservative elements, such as the officer corps, opposed Nazi persecution of the churches and, in office, Hitler restrained his anticlerical instincts out of political considerations.

Once in power, the Nazi leadership co-opted the term Gleichschaltung to mean conformity and subservience to the Nazi Party line: "there was to be no law but Hitler, and ultimately no god but Hitler". But Hitler was conscious that Bismark's kulturkampf struggle against the Church of the 1870s had been defeated by the unity of Catholics behind the Centre Party and was convinced that the Nazi movement could only succeed if Political Catholicism and its democratic networks were eliminated.

In January 1934, Hitler appointed Alfred Rosenberg as the cultural and educational leader of the Reich. Rosenberg was a neo-pagan and notoriously anti-Catholic. Rosenberg was initially the editor of the young Nazi Party's newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter. In 1924, following Hitler's arrest, Hitler had chosen Rosenberg to oversee the Nazi movement while he was in prison (though this may have been because he was unsuitable for the task and unlikely to emerge as a rival). In "Myth of the Twentieth Century" (1930), Rosenberg described the Catholic Church as one of the main enemies of Nazism. Rosenberg proposed to replace traditional Christianity with the neo-pagan "myth of the blood":

We now realize that the central supreme values of the Roman and the Protestant Churches [-] hinder the organic powers of the peoples determined by their Nordic race, [-] they will have to be remodeled

— The Myth of the 20th Century, Alfred Rosenberg, 1930.

Church officials were perturbed by Hitler's appointment of Rosenberg as the state's official philosopher. The indication was that Hitler was endorsing Rosenberg's anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, and neo-pagan philosophy. The Vatican directed the Holy Office to place Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century on the Index of Forbidden books on February 7, 1934. Joachim Fest wrote of Rosenberg as having little or no political influence in making the regime's decisions and as a thoroughly marginalized figure.

Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Propaganda, was among the most aggressive anti-Church radicals. The son of a Catholic family from Rheydt in the Rhineland, he became one of the regime's most relentless Jew-baiters. Goebbels led the Nazi persecution of the clergy. On the "Church Question", he wrote "after the war it has to be generally solved ... There is, namely, an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a heroic-German world view".

Heinrich Himmler (L) and Reinhard Heydrich (R) headed the Nazi security forces and were key architects of the Final Solution. Both believed that Christian values were among the enemies of Nazism.

 

Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich headed the Nazi security forces and were key architects of the Final Solution. Both believed that Christian values were among the enemies of Nazism: the enemies were "eternally the same" wrote Heydrich: "the Jew, the Freemason, and the politically-oriented cleric." Modes of thinking like Christian and liberal individualism he considered to be residue of inherited racial characteristics, biologically sourced to Jewry—who must therefore be exterminated. According to Himmler biographer Peter Longerich, Himmler was vehemently opposed to Christian sexual morality and the "principle of Christian mercy", both of which he saw as a dangerous obstacle to his plans battle with "subhumans". In 1937 he wrote:

We live in an era of the ultimate conflict with Christianity. It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives. This task does not consist solely in overcoming an ideological opponent but must be accompanied at every step by a positive impetus: in this case that means the reconstruction of the German heritage in the widest and most comprehensive sense.

— Heinrich Himmler, 1937

Himmler saw the main task of his Schutzstaffel (SS) organisation to be that of "acting as the vanguard in overcoming Christianity and restoring a 'Germanic' way of living" in order to prepare for the coming conflict between "humans and subhumans": Longerich wrote that, while the Nazi movement as a whole launched itself against Jews and Communists, "by linking de-Christianisation with re-Germanization, Himmler had provided the SS with a goal and purpose all of its own." He set about making his SS the focus of a "cult of the Teutons".

Hitler's chosen deputy and private secretary from 1941, Martin Bormann, was a rigid guardian of National Socialist orthodoxy. He believed, and said publicly in 1941 that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable".

Following the failure of the pro-Nazi Ludwig Muller to unite Protestants behind the Nazi Party in 1933, Hitler appointed his friend Hans Kerrl as Minister for Church Affairs in 1935. A relative moderate among Nazis, Kerrl nonetheless confirmed Nazi hostility to the Catholic and Protestant creeds in a 1937 address during an intense phase of the Nazi Kirchenkampf:

The Party stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and positive Christianity is National Socialism ... National Socialism is the doing of God's will ... God's will reveals itself in German blood ... Dr Zoellner and [Catholic Bishop of Münster] Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the son of God. That makes me laugh ... No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed ... True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially the Fuehrer to a real Christianity ... the Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation.

— Hans Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs, 1937

During the war

Hitler called a truce in the Church conflict with the outbreak of war, wanting to back away from policies likely to cause internal friction in Germany. He decreed at the outset of war that "no further action should be taken against the Evangelical and Catholic Churches for the duration of the war". According to John Conway, "The Nazis had to reckon with the fact that, despite all Rosenberg's efforts, only 5 per cent of the population registered themselves at the 1930 census as no longer connected with Christian Churches." The support of millions of German Christians was needed in order for Hitler's plans to come to fruition. It was Hitler's belief that if religion is a help, "it can only be an advantage". Most of the 3 million Nazi Party members "still paid the Church taxes" and considered themselves Christians. Regardless, a number of Nazi radicals in the hierarchy determined that the Church Struggle should be continued. Following victory in Poland, the repression of the Churches was extended, despite their early protestations of loyalty to the cause.

Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda issued threats and applied intense pressure on the Churches to voice support for the war, and the Gestapo banned Church meetings for a few weeks. In the first few months of the war, the German Churches complied. The Catholic bishops asked their followers to support the war effort. But the Nazis strongly disapproved of the sentiments against war expressed by the Pope through his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus and his 1939 Christmas message, and were angry at his support for Poland and the "provocative" use of Vatican Radio by Cardinal Hlond of Poland. Distribution of the encyclical was banned.

Conway wrote that anti-church radical Reinhard Heydrich estimated in a report to Hitler of October 1939, that the majority of Church people were supporting the war effort - though a few "well known agitators among the pastors needed to be dealt with". Heydrich determined that support from church leaders could not be expected because of the nature of their doctrines and internationalism, so he devised measures to restrict the operation of the Churches under cover of war time exigencies, such as reducing resources available to Church presses on the basis of rationing, and prohibiting pilgrimages and large church gatherings on the basis of transportation difficulties. Churches were closed for being "too far from bomb shelters". Bells were melted down. Presses were closed. With the expansion of the war in the East from 1941, there came also an expansion of the regime's attack on the churches. Monasteries and convents were targeted and expropriation of Church properties surged.

Clergy in the German Resistance had some independence from the state apparatus, and could thus criticise it, while not being close enough to the centre of power to take steps to overthrow it. Mary Fulbrook wrote that when politics encroached on the church, Catholics were prepared to resist, but that the record was otherwise patchy and uneven, and that, with notable exceptions, "it seems that, for many Germans, adherence to the Christian faith proved compatible with at least passive acquiescence in, if not active support for, the Nazi dictatorship". A senior cleric could rely on a degree of popular support from the faithful, and thus the regime had to consider the possibility of nationwide protests if such figures were arrested. While hundreds of ordinary priests and members of monastic orders were sent to concentration camps throughout the Nazi period, just one German Catholic bishop was briefly imprisoned in a concentration camp, and just one other expelled from his diocese. This reflected also the cautious approach adopted by the hierarchy, who felt secure only in commenting on matters which transgressed on the ecclesiastical sphere.

The bishop of Münster, Clemens August von Galen, had rallied to the nationalist cause at the outbreak of war in 1939, but by 1941, his leadership of Catholic opposition to Nazi euthanasia had led to "the strongest, most explicit and most widespread protest movement against any policy since the beginning of the Third Reich." The speeches angered Hitler. In a 1942 Table Talk he said: "The fact that I remain silent in public over Church affairs is not in the least misunderstood by the sly foxes of the Catholic Church, and I am quite sure that a man like Bishop von Galen knows full well that after the war I shall extract retribution to the last farthing". Hitler wanted to have Galen removed, but Goebbels told him this would result in the loss of the loyalty of Westphalia. The regional Nazi leader, and Hitler's deputy Martin Bormann called for Galen to be hanged, but Hitler and Goebbels urged a delay in retribution till war's end.

Criticism of the Catholic Church

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Catholic_Church

The Catholic Church has been subject to criticism throughout its history for its beliefs and practices. Criticisms of the Catholic Church's religious beliefs and practices have often led to breaks with other Christian groups, such as the schism with the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church has also been criticized for its active efforts to influence political decisions, such as the Church's promotion of the Crusades and its involvement with various 20th century nationalist regimes. More recent criticism focuses on alleged scandals within the Church, particularly alleged financial corruption and the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandals.

Internal

Use of Latin

Before the reforms from Vatican II in the late 1960s the Catholic Church was best-known outside the church for the Tridentine Mass, said mostly in Latin with a few sentences in Ancient Greek and Hebrew. Since 1970, the Mass has been celebrated in the local language of where it is celebrated, and the Mass in Latin less frequently. A minority of Roman Catholics however prefer the Mass to be celebrated in Latin, generally arguing that the Latin text is more authentic, and truer to scripture and doctrine than the Mass of Paul VI. However, in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI loosened some restrictions on its use with the aim of healing the rift that had come about between advocates of the Novus Ordo Mass and those of the Tridentine Mass.

The 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, allowing a wider use of the Tridentine Mass raised concerns in the Jewish community regarding the Good Friday liturgy which contained a prayer "For the conversion of the Jews" referring to Jewish "blindness" and prays for them to be "delivered from their darkness." The American Jewish Committee pointed out that this raises "negative implications that some in the Jewish community and beyond have drawn concerning the motu proprio." In response to such complaints, Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 replaced the prayer in the 1962 Missal with a newly composed prayer that makes no mention of blindness or darkness. 

Traditionalist Catholics

Some Traditionalist Catholics see the Church's reforms in liturgy and teaching following the Second Vatican Council as contrary to the traditional teaching of the Church. Some groups, such as the Society of St. Pius X, have rejected certain decisions of the Holy See that they see as harmful to the faith.

Clerical celibacy

In the Catholic Church priestly celibacy is seen as a charism bestowed by the Holy Spirit, enabling one to make a total commitment of oneself in service of the kingdom of God. The scriptural basis for this is found in Matthew 19:12 and 1 Corinthians 7:32-35. 

Married men can be ordained to the permanent diaconate, but only unmarried men may be ordained priests. As celibacy is a discipline rather than doctrine, it can be abrogated in particular situations, as when, for example, married Anglican priests are ordained to the Catholic priesthood to minister in personal ordinariates. (Members of the Anglican hierarchy found the creation of the personal ordinariate "insensitive".)

Some Eastern Rite Catholic Churches such as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church allow the ordination of married men as priests. Only unmarried men may be ordained to the episcopate. Priestly celibacy continues to be the subject of a good deal of discussion. Proponents who view this as something that should be revisited say that it precludes otherwise qualified candidates from the priesthood, noting a shortage of priests in some areas.

The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod has strongly criticized clerical celibacy as a violation of Biblical teaching. Martin Luther wrote the following regarding priestly celibacy in "On Monastic Vows":

If you obey the gospel, you ought to regard celibacy as a matter of free choice. ... They [Jesus and Paul] glory in faith alone. They praise celibacy not because the chaste are more perfect than others because they are chaste, and not because they do not lust contrary to the command, but because they are free from the cares and tribulation of the flesh which Paul attributes to marriage [1 Corinthians 7:32], and may freely and without hindrance dedicate themselves day and night to the word and faith.

Ordination of women

The teaching of the Catholic Church on ordination, as expressed in the Code of Canon Law, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, is that "only a baptized man validly receives sacred ordination". According to Roman Catholic thinking, the priest is acting 'in persona Christi' (that is, in the Person of Christ). In 1979, Sister Theresa Kane, then president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious challenged Pope John Paul II from the podium at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, to include women “in all ministries of our Church”.

In his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994), Pope John Paul II said the "Priestly ordination, ... has in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone." He cited the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (under Pope Paul VI) Declaration Inter Insigniores on the question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood, and declared that “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.” The reasons given included: "the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God's plan for his Church." 

Some groups, nonetheless, say the matter should still be open for discussion. Dissenters do not regard Ordinatio sacerdotalis as definitive Church teaching. But in June 2018 Pope Francis said, "We cannot do this with Holy Orders (women priests) because dogmatically we cannot. Pope John Paul II was clear and closed the door and I'm not going to go back on that. It [John Paul's decision] was serious, it was not a capricious thing." But from the start of his papacy Francis has pointed out that "if sacramental power is too closely identified with power in general. It must be remembered that when we speak of sacramental power “we are in the realm of function, not that of dignity or holiness'” (EG 104).

Since Vatican II, women have taken an increased role in the Church. In 1994, the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments formally interpreted the 1983 Code of Canon Law, stating that women could assist at Mass as acolytes or altar servers. Women also serve as lectors and extraordinary ministers. Still many people see the Church's position on the ordination of women as a sign that women are not equal to men in the Catholic Church, though the Church rejects this inference. In a separate but related issue, Pope Francis set up the Pontifical Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women to study women deacons in the early church, to help answer the question of whether women could also serve as deacons today. The Commission submitted its inconclusive report to Pope Francis in January 2019.

Interfaith

Judaism

In the Middle Ages, religion played a major role in driving antisemitism. Adversus Judaeos ("against the Judeans") are a series of fourth century homilies by John Chrysostom directed to members of the church of Antioch of his time, who continued to observe Jewish feasts and fasts. Critical of this, he cast Judaism and the synagogues in his city in a critical and negative light. The use of hyperbole and other rhetorical devices painted a harsh and negative picture of the Jews. This was largely ignored until the Jewish anti-Christian teachings began to surface in Muslim Andalusia in the 11th and 12th centuries. According to historian William I. Brustein, his sermons against Jews gave further momentum to the idea that Jews are collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. "Over the course of time, Christians began to accept ... that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for killing Jesus. According to this interpretation, both the Jews present at Jesus’ death and the Jewish people collectively and for all time, have committed the sin of deicide, or God-killing. For 1900 years of Christian-Jewish history, the charge of deicide has led to hatred, violence against and murder of Jews in Europe and America."

In 1998, Pope John Paul II apologized for the failure of Catholics to help Jews during the Holocaust and acknowledged that Christian anti-semitism might have made Nazi persecution of the Jews easier, calling them "our elder brothers" in the faith.

Russian Orthodoxy

In 2007, then Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow objected to what he termed "proselytizing" by clerics of the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church. Catholic officials replied that their efforts in Russia were not aimed at Orthodox believers, but were reaching out to the vast majority of Russians who are not churchgoers. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith rejected the characterization of "proselytizing" and said that respect towards non Catholic Christians must not negate the possibility of conversion, if an individual should so chose.

Protestantism

Common factors that played a role during the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation included the rise of nationalism, simony, the appointment of Cardinal-nephews, the sale of indulgences, and other corruption in the Roman Curia and other ecclesiastical hierarchy, as well as the impact of humanism, the new learning of the Renaissance, the epistemological shift between the schola moderna and schola antiqua within scholasticism, and the Western Schism that eroded loyalty to the Papacy. 

Key events of the period include: the Council of Trent (1545–1563); the excommunication of Elizabeth I (1570); the Battle of Lepanto (1571); the adoption of the Gregorian calendar under Pope Gregory XIII; the French Wars of Religion; the Long Turkish War; the final phases of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648); and the formation of the last Holy League by Innocent XI during the Great Turkish War.

Protestants hold doctrinal differences with the Catholic Church in a number of areas, including the understanding of the meaning of the word "faith" and how it relates to "good works" in terms of salvation, and a difference of opinion regarding the concept of "justification", and the Catholic Church's belief in Sacred Tradition as a source of revelation complementary to Sacred Scripture. Some scholars of Early Christianity are adherents of the New Perspective on Paul and so believe "sola fide" is a misinterpretation on the part of Lutherans and that Paul was actually speaking about laws (such as Circumcision, Dietary laws, Sabbath, Temple rituals, etc.) that were considered essential for the Jews of the time.

Islam

In September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI delivered the Regensburg lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany, where he had once served as a professor of theology. It was entitled "Faith, Reason and the University — Memories and Reflections". In his lecture, the Pope, speaking in German, quoted a passage about Islam made at the end of the 14th century by Byzantine (Eastern Roman) emperor Manuel II Palaiologos. As the English translation of the Pope's lecture was disseminated across the world, the quotation was taken out of context and many Islamic politicians and religious leaders protested against what they saw as an insulting mischaracterization of Islam. Mass street protests were mounted in many Islamic countries. The Pope maintained that the comment he had quoted did not reflect his own views.

Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur v. Menteri Dalam Negeri is a 2009 court decision by the High Court of Malaya holding that Christians do not have the constitutional right to use the word "Allah" in church newspapers.

Buddhism

In 1994, Pope John Paul II wrote Crossing the Threshold of Hope, in which he discussed various non-Christian religions, including Buddhism. The book prompted widespread criticism from the Buddhist community, and the pope's statements were characterized as misunderstanding and offending Buddhism. Thinley Norbu Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist lama, wrote a book to address the "serious, gratuitous misrepresentations of Buddhist doctrine which seemed to be based on misunderstandings" contained within Crossing the Threshold of Hope. Bhikkhu Bodhi, a Theravada Buddhism scholar, published an essay "intended as a short corrective to the Pope's demeaning characterization of Buddhism" entitled Toward a Threshold of Understanding.

Historical

Simony

Simony is usually defined "a deliberate intention of buying or selling for a temporal price such things as are spiritual or annexed unto spirituals". Although an offense against canon law, simony became widespread in the Catholic Church in the 9th and 10th centuries.

Response to heresy

The development of doctrine, the position of orthodoxy, and the relationship between the early Church and early heretical groups is a matter of academic debate. Before the 12th century, Christianity gradually suppressed what it saw as heresy usually through a system of ecclesiastical sanctions, excommunication, and anathema. Later, an accusation of heresy could be construed as treason against lawful civil rule, and therefore punishable by civil sanctions such as confiscation of property, imprisonment, or death, though the latter was not frequently imposed, as this form of punishment had many ecclesiastical opponents. Within five years of the official 'criminalization' of heresy by the emperor, the first Christian heretic, Priscillian, was executed in 385 by Roman officials. For some years after the Protestant Reformation, Protestant denominations were also known to execute those whom they considered heretics.

When John Paul II visited Prague in the 1990s, he apologized for the execution of Jan Hus on charges of heresy and requested experts in this matter "to define with greater clarity the position held by Jan Hus among the Church's reformers", and acknowledged that "independently of the theological convictions he defended, Hus cannot be denied integrity in his personal life and commitment to the nation's moral education."

In 2015, after visiting a Waldensian Temple in Turin, Pope Francis, in the name of the Catholic Church, asked Waldensian Christians for forgiveness for their persecution. The Pope apologized for the Church's "un-Christian and even inhumane positions and actions".

Crusades

The Crusades were a series of military conflicts, with a religious as well as socio-political character, waged by much of Christian Europe against external and internal threats. Crusades were fought against Muslims, Slavs, Mongols, Cathars, Hussites and political enemies of the popes. Crusaders took vows and were granted an indulgence.

Elements of the Crusades were criticized by some from the time of their inception in 1095. Roger Bacon felt the Crusades were counter-productive because, "those who survive, together with their children, are more and more embittered against the Christian faith." In spite of some criticism, the movement was still widely supported in Europe long after the fall of Acre in 1291. After that, the Crusades to recover Jerusalem and the Christian East were unsuccessful. Eighteenth century rationalists judged the Crusaders harshly. In the 1950s, Sir Steven Runciman published a highly critical account of the Crusades which referred to Holy War as "a sin against the Holy Ghost".

Magdalene laundries

Magdalene laundries, also known as Magdalene's asylums, were Protestant but later in Ireland largely Roman Catholic institutions that operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries, to house "fallen women". The term implied female sexual promiscuity or work in prostitution; young women who became pregnant outside of marriage, or whose male family members complained about their behavior, were committed here. They were required to work as part of their board, and the institutions operated large commercial laundries, serving customers outside their church bases. Many of these "laundries" were effectively operated as penitentiary work-houses. Laundries such as this operated throughout Europe and North America for much of the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, the last one closing in 1996. The institutions were named after the Biblical figure Mary Magdalene, in earlier centuries characterised as a reformed prostitute.

Nationalist critique

As early as the second century, Justin Martyr addressed his First Apology to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius to explain that Christians could be good citizens. In addition to arguing against the persecution of individuals solely for being Christian, Justin also provides the Emperor with a defense of the philosophy of Christianity and a detailed explanation of contemporary Christian practices and rituals. In many instances concern regarding the loyalty of Catholics arose in the context of perceived political threats. In 1570, Pope Pius V issued a papal bull titled Regnans in Excelsis, which declared Elizabeth I to be excommunicated and a heretic. Concerned at the possibility that, in the event of an attack by the Catholic monarchs of France and Spain, English Catholics might side with the invaders, Parliament enacted restrictive legislation against Catholics. The initial favorable reception of Jesuits in Japan changed when Toyotomi Hideyoshi became disturbed by the external threats posed by the expansion of European power in East Asia. Hideyoshi was apprehensive that Portugal and Spain might provide military support to Dom Justo Takayama, a Christian daimyō in western Japan. The San Felipe incident (1596) involved the Spanish captain of a shipwrecked trading vessel, who, in an attempt to recover his cargo, made the claim that the missionaries (many of whom had arrived with the Portuguese) were there to prepare Japan for conquest. Hideyoshi was concerned that divided loyalties might lead to dangerous rebels like the Ikkō-ikki Sect of earlier years and issued an edict expelling missionaries.

The Reichskonkordat of 1933 was an agreememt between the Holy See and Germany, negotiated by Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen on behalf of President Paul von Hindenburg. While the treaty preserved the Church's ecclesiastical and educational institutions, and guaranteed the right to pastoral care in hospitals, prisons and similar institutions, it also required all clergy to abstain from membership in political parties, and not support political causes. Hitler routinely disregarded the concordat and permitted a persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany. Shortly before the 20 July signing of the Reichskonkordat, Germany signed similar agreements with the state Protestant churches in Germany, although the Confessing Church opposed the regime. Nazi breaches of the agreement began almost as soon as it had been signed and intensified afterwards leading to protest from the Church including in the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge encyclical of Pope Pius XI, followed in 1943 by Mystici corporis Christi, condemning forced conversions, the murder of disabled people, and the exclusion of people on the basis of race or nationality. The Nazis planned to eliminate the Church's influence by restricting its organizations to purely religious activities.

In a series of sermons in the summer of 1941, Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Munster denounced the Nazi regime for its Gestapo tactics and policies, including euthanasia, and attacked the Third Reich for undermining justice. He stated: "As a German, as a decent citizen, I demand justice". In the view of SS General Jürgen Stroop, German patriotism "was tainted by Papist ideals, which have been harmful to Germany for centuries. Besides, the Archbishop's [Clemens August Graf von Galen] orders came from outside the Fatherland, a fact which disturbed us. We all know that despite its diverse factions, the Catholic Church is a world community, which sticks together when the chips are down." "There is no doubt that in the long run Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Himmler intended to eradicate Christianity just as ruthlessly as any other rival ideology, even if in the short term they had to be content to make compromises with it."

Catholic clergy have also been implicated in the violent repression of the Ustaše regime in Croatia during the Second World War.

Finances

Concerns about usury included the 19th century Rothschild loans to the Holy See and 16th century objections over abuse of the zinskauf clause. This was particularly problematic because the charging of interest (all interest, not just excessive interest) was a violation of doctrine at the time, such as that reflected in the 1745 encyclical Vix pervenit. As a result, work-arounds were employed. For example, in the 15th century, the Medici Bank lent money to the Vatican, which was lax about repayment. Rather than charging interest, "the Medici overcharged the pope on the silks and brocades, the jewels and other commodities they supplied." However, the 1917 Code of Canon Law switched position and allowed church monies to be used to accrue interest.

Italian priest Pino Puglisi refused money from Mafia members when offered it for the traditional feast day celebrations, and also resisted the Mafia in other ways, for which he was martyred in 1993.

In 2014, Pope Francis criticized the practice of charging altarage fees or honorariums for things like baptisms, blessings, and Mass intentions (such as Masses for the dead).

In 2015, the Bishop of Oslo was charged with fraud for inflating membership rolls for the Catholic Church in Norway and the diocese had to repay some of its subsidy.

In 2018, Pope Francis criticized the selling of Masses for the dead, stating, "the Mass is not paid for, redemption is free, if I want to make an offering, well and good, but Mass is free." In response, Archbishop Julian Leow Beng Kim and two bishops put out a press release reminding Catholics that according to canon law, "any priest celebrating or concelebrating is permitted to receive an offering to apply the Mass for a specific intention."

Sexual abuse scandals

In January 2002, allegations of priests sexually abusing children were widely reported in the news media. A survey of the 10 largest U.S. dioceses found 234 priests from a total 25,616 in those dioceses, have had allegations of sexual abuse made against them in the last 50 years. The report does not state how many of these have been proven in court. Victims of such abuse filed lawsuits against a number of dioceses, resulting in multi-million dollar settlements in some cases. In response, in June 2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops initiated strict new guidelines ("zero tolerance") for the protection of children and youth in Catholic institutions across the country. In February 2019, the Catholic Church held a worldwide summit of bishops in Rome to discuss the steps that can be taken to prevent the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults.

Anti-Judaism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Judaism

Anti-Judaism is the "total or partial opposition to Judaism—and to Jews as adherents of it—by persons who accept a competing system of beliefs and practices and consider certain genuine Judaic beliefs and practices as inferior."

Anti-Judaism, as a rejection of a particular way of thinking about God, is distinct from antisemitism, which is more akin to a form of racism. Scholars who see a less clear line between theology and racism have since coined the term religious antisemitism.

Nevertheless, the concept of Judaism has been challenged over the past two thousand years by scholars of both Christendom and Islam.

Pre-Christian Roman Empire

In Ancient Rome, religion was an integral part of the civil government. Beginning with the Roman Senate's declaration of the divinity of Julius Caesar on 1 January 42 BC, some Emperors were proclaimed gods on Earth, and demanded to be worshiped accordingly throughout the Roman Empire. This created religious difficulties for monotheistic Jews and worshipers of Mithras, Sabazius and Early Christians. Jews were prohibited by their biblical commandments from worshiping any other god than that of the Torah. 

The Crisis under Caligula (37-41) has been proposed as the "first open break between Rome and the Jews", even though problems were already evident during the Census of Quirinius in 6 and under Sejanus (before 31).

After the Jewish-Roman wars (66-135), Hadrian changed the name of Iudaea province to Syria Palaestina and Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina in an attempt to erase the historical ties of the Jewish people to the region. In addition, after 70, Jews and Jewish Proselytes were only allowed to practice their religion if they paid the Jewish tax, and after 135 were barred from Jerusalem except for the day of Tisha B'Av. 

Flavius Clemens was put to death for "living a Jewish life" or "drifting into Jewish ways" in the year 95 CE, which may well have been related to the administration of the Jewish tax under Domitian.

The Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its state religion with the Edict of Thessalonica on 27 February 380. 

Christian anti-Judaism

Early Christianity and the Judaizers

Christianity commenced as a sect within Judaism, so-called Jewish Christianity. It was seen as such by the early Christians, as well as Jews in general. The wider Roman administration most likely would not have understood any distinction. Historians debate whether or not the Roman government distinguished between Christians and Jews before 96 CE, when Christians successfully petitioned Nerva to exempt them from the Jewish tax (the Fiscus Judaicus) on the basis that they were not Jews. From then on, practising Jews paid the tax while Christians did not. Christianity is based on Jewish monotheism, scriptures (generally the Greek Old Testament or Targum translations of the Hebrew Bible), liturgy, and morality.

The main distinction of the Early Christian community from its Jewish roots was the belief that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, as in the Confession of Peter, but that in itself would not have severed the Jewish connection. Another point of divergence was the questioning by Christians of the continuing applicability of the Law of Moses (the Torah), though the Apostolic Decree of the Apostolic Age of Christianity appears to parallel the Noahide Law of Judaism. The two issues came to be linked in a theological discussion within the Christian community as to whether the coming of the Messiah (First or Second Coming) annulled either some (Supersessionism), or all (Abrogation of Old Covenant laws), of the Judaic laws in what came to be called a New Covenant.

The circumcision controversy was probably the second issue (after the issue of Jesus as messiah) during which the theological argument was conducted in terms of anti-Judaism, with those who argued for the view that biblical law continued to be applicable being labelled "Judaizers" or "Pharisees" (e.g. Acts 15:5). The teachings of Paul (d. ~67 CE), whose letters comprise much of the New Testament demonstrate a "long battle against Judaizing." However, James the Just, who after Jesus's death was widely acknowledged as the leader of the Jerusalem Christians, worshiped at the Second Temple in Jerusalem until his death in 62, thirty years after Jesus' death.

The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE would lead Christians to "doubt the efficacy of the ancient law", though Ebionism would linger on until the 5th century. However, Marcion of Sinope, who advocated rejecting the entirety of Judaic influence on the Christian faith, would be excommunicated by the Church in Rome in 144 CE.

Anti-Judaic polemic

Anti-Judaic works of this period include De Adversus Iudeaos by Tertullian, Octavius by Minucius Felix, De Catholicae Ecclesiae Unitate by Cyprian of Carthage, and Instructiones Adversus Gentium Deos by Lactantius. The traditional hypothesis holds that the anti-Judaism of these early fathers of the Church "were inherited from the Christian tradition of Biblical exegesis" though a second hypothesis holds that early Christian anti-Judaism was inherited from the pagan world.

Taylor has observed that theological Christian anti-Judaism "emerge[d] from the church's efforts to resolve the contradictions inherent in its simultaneous appropriation and rejection of different elements of the Jewish tradition."

Modern scholars believe that Judaism may have been a missionary religion in the early centuries of the Christian or common era, converting so-called proselytes, and thus competition for the religious loyalties of gentiles drove anti-Judaism. The debate and dialogue moved from polemic to bitter verbal and written attacks one against the other. To Tarfon (died 135 CE) is attributed a statement about whether scrolls could be left to burn in a fire on the Sabbath. A disputed interpretation identifies these books with the Gospels (see Gilyonim): "The Gospels must be burned for paganism is not as dangerous to the Jewish faith as Jewish Christian sects." The anonymous Letter to Diognetus was the earliest apologetic work in the early Church to address Judaism. Saint Justin Martyr (died 165 CE) wrote the apologetic Dialogue with Trypho, a polemical debate giving the Christian assertions for the Messiahship of Jesus by making use of the Old Testament contrasted with counter-arguments from a fictionalized version of Tarphon. "For centuries defenders of Christ and the enemies of the Jews employed no other method" than these apologetics. Apologetics were difficult as gentile converts could not be expected to understand Hebrew; translations of the Septuagint into Greek prior to Aquila would serve as a flawed basis for such cross-cultural arguments, as demonstrated by Origen's difficulties debating Rabbi Simlai.

Though Emperor Hadrian was an "enemy of the synagogue", the reign of Antonius began a period of Roman benevolence toward the Jewish faith. Meanwhile, imperial hostility toward Christianity continued to crystallize; after Decius, the empire was at war with it. An unequal power relationship between Jews and Christians in the context of the Greco-Roman world generated anti-Jewish feelings among the early Christians. Feelings of mutual hatred arose, driven in part by Judaism's legality in the Roman Empire; in Antioch, where the rivalry was most bitter, Jews most likely demanded the execution of Polycarp.

From Constantine to the 8th century

When Constantine and Licinius were issuing the Edict of Milan, the influence of Judaism was fading in the Land of Israel (in favor of Christianity) and seeing a rebirth outside the Roman Empire in Babylonia. By the 3rd century the Judaizing heresies were nearly extinct in Christianity.

After his defeat of Licinius in 323 CE, Constantine showed Christians marked political preference. He repressed Jewish proselytism and forbade Jews from circumcising their slaves. Jews were barred from Jerusalem except on the anniversary of the Second Temple's destruction (Tisha B'Av) and then only after paying a special tax (probably the Fiscus Judaicus) in silver. He also promulgated a law which condemned to the stake Jews who persecuted their apostates by stoning. Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire (see Christendom). "No sooner was [the Church] armed than it forgot its most elementary principles, and directed the secular arm against its enemies." Animosity existed on both sides, and in 351 the Jews of Palestine revolted against Constantine's son in the Jewish revolt against Constantius Gallus.

From the middle of the 5th century, apologetics ceased with Cyril of Alexandria. This form of anti-Judaism had proven futile and often served to strengthen Jewish faith. With Christianity ascendant in the Empire, the "Fathers, the bishops, and the priest who had to contend against the Jews treated them very badly. Hosius in Spain; Pope Sylvester I; Eusebius of Caesaria call them 'a perverse, dangerous, and criminal sect.'" While Gregory of Nyssa merely reproaches Jews as infidels, other teachers are more vehement. Saint Augustine labels the Talmudists as falsifiers; Saint Ambrose recycled the earlier anti-Christian trope and accuses Jews of despising Roman law. Saint Jerome claims Jews were possessed by an impure spirit. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem claimed the Jewish Patriarchs, or Nasi, were a low race.

All these theological and polemical attacks combined in Saint John Chrysostom's six sermons delivered at Antioch. Chrysostom, an archbishop of Constantinople, (died 407 CE) is very negative in his treatment of Judaism, though much more hyperbolic in expression. While Saint Justin's Dialogue is a philosophical treatise, Saint Chrysostom's homilies Against the Jews are a more informal and rhetorically forceful set of sermons preached in church. Delivered while Chrysostom was still a priest in Antioch, his homilies deliver a scathing critique of Jewish religious and civil life, warning Christians not to have any contact with Judaism or the synagogue and to keep away from the rival religion's festivals.

"There are legions of theologians, historians and writers who write about the Jews the same as Chrysostom: Epiphanius, Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyprus, Cosmas Indicopleustes, Athanasius the Sinaite among the Greeks; Hilarius of Poitiers, Prudentius, Paulus Orosius, Sulpicius Severus, Gennadius, Venantius Fortunatus, Isidore of Seville, among the Latins."

From the 4th to 7th centuries, while the bishops opposed Judaism in writing, the Empire enacted a variety of civil laws against Jews, such as forbidding them from holding public office, and an oppressive curial tax. Laws were enacted to harass their free observance of religion; Justinian went so far as to enact a law against Jewish daily prayers. Both Christians and Jews engaged in recorded mob violence in the waning days of the Empire.

Through this period Jewish revolts continued. During the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 many Jews sided against the Byzantine Empire in the Jewish revolt against Heraclius, which successfully assisted the invading Persian Sassanids in conquering all of Roman Egypt and Syria. In reaction to this further anti-Jewish measures were enacted throughout the Byzantine realm and as far away as Merovingian France. Soon thereafter, 634, the Muslim conquests began, during which many Jews initially rose up again against their Byzantine rulers.

The pattern wherein Jews were relatively free under pagan rulers until the Christian conversion of the leadership, as seen with Constantine, would be repeated in the lands beyond the now collapsed Roman Empire. Sigismund of Burgundy enacted laws against Jews after coming to the throne after his conversion in 514; likewise after the conversion of Reccared, king of the Visigoths in 589, which would have lasting effect when codified by Reccesuinth in the Visigothic Code of Law. This code inspired Jews to aid Tariq ibn-Ziyad (a Muslim) in his overthrow of Roderick, and under the Moors (also Muslims), Jews regained their usurped religious freedoms.

After the 8th century

Beginning with the 8th century, legislation against heresies grew more severe. The Church, once confining itself to only the powers of canon law, increasingly appealed to secular powers. Heretics such as the Vaudois, Albigenses, Beghards, Apostolic Brothers, and Luciferians were thus "treated with cruelty" which culminated in the 13th century establishment of the Inquisition by Pope Innocent III. Jews were not ignored by such legislation, either, as they allegedly instigated Christians to judaizations, either directly or unconsciously, by their existence. They sent forth metaphysicians such as Amaury de Béne and David de Dinan; the Pasagians followed Mosaic Law; the Orleans heresy was a Jewish heresy; the Albigens taught Jewish doctrine as superior to Christian; the Dominicans preached against both the Hussites and their Jewish supporters, and thus the imperial army sent to advance on Jan Ziska massacred Jews along the way. In Spain, where Castilian custom (fueros) had granted equal rights to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, Gregory XI instituted the Spanish Inquisition to spy on Jews and Moors wherever "by words or writings they urged the Catholics to embrace their faith".

Usury became a proximate cause of much anti-Jewish sentiment during the Middle Ages. In Italy and later Poland and Germany, John of Capistrano stirred up the poor against the usury of the Jews; Bernardinus of Feltre, aided by the practical notion of establishing mont-de-piétés, called for the expulsion of Jews all over Italy and Tyrol and caused the massacre of the Jews at Trent. Kings, nobles, and bishops discouraged this behavior, protecting Jews from the monk Radulphe in Germany and countering the preachings of Bernardinus in Italy. These reactions were from knowing the history of mobs, incited against Jews, continuing attacks against their rich co-religionists. Anti-Judaism was a dynamic in the early Spanish colonies in the Americas, where Europeans used anti-Judaic memes and forms of thinking against Native and African peoples, in effect transferring anti-Judaism onto other peoples.

The Church kept to its theological anti-Judaism and, favoring the mighty and rich, was careful not to encourage the passions of the people. But while it sometimes interfered on behalf of the Jews when they were the objects of mob fury, it was at the same time fueled the fury by combating Judaism.

In the Reformation

Martin Luther has been accused of antisemitism, primarily in relation to his statements about Jews in his book On the Jews and their Lies, which describes the Jews in extremely harsh terms, excoriating them, and providing detailed recommendation for a pogrom against them and their permanent oppression and/or expulsion. According to Paul Johnson, it "may be termed the first work of modern anti-Semitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust". In contrast, Roland Bainton, noted church historian and Luther biographer, wrote "One could wish that Luther had died before ever this tract was written. His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial".

Peter Martyr Vermigli, a shaper of Reformed Protestantism, took pains to maintain the contradiction, going back to Paul of Tarsus, of Jews being both enemy and friend, writing: "The Jews are not odious to God for the very reason they are Jews; for how could this have happened since they were embellished with so many great gifts...."

Contrasted with antisemitism

"The terms 'anti-Judaism' (the Christian aversion toward the Jewish religion) and 'antisemitism' (aversion toward the Jews as a racial or ethnic group) are omnipresent in the controversies over the churches' responsibility with regard to the extermination of the Jews" and "since 1945, most of the works on 'anti-Semitism' have contrasted this term with 'anti-Judaism'".

According to Jeanne Favret-Saada, the scientific analysis of the links and difference between both terms is made difficult for two reasons. First is the definition: some scholars argue that anti-Judaic refers to Christian theology and to Christian theology only while others argue that the term applies also to the discriminatory policy of the churches [...]. Some authors also advance that eighteenth-century catechisms were "antisemitic" and others argue that the term cannot be used before the date of its first appearance in 1879. The second difficulty is that these two concepts place themselves in different contexts: the old and religious for the anti-Judaism' the new and political for anti-Semitism.

 

As examples regarding the nuances put forward by scholars:

• Leon Poliakov, in The History of Anti-Semitism (1991) describes a transition from anti-Judaism to an atheist anti-Semitism going in parallel with the transition from religion to science, as if the former had vanished in the later and therefore differentiating both. In The Aryan Myth (1995) he nevertheless writes that with the arrival of anti-Semitism, "the ineradicable feelings and resentments of the Christian West were to be expressed thereafter in a new vocabulary". According to Jeanne Fabret, "[if] there were fewer Christians going to church during the age of science, [...] religious representations kept shaping minds.
• For Gavin Langmuir, anti-Judaism is concerned with exaggerated accusations against Jews which nonetheless contain a particle of truth or evidence, whereas antisemitism reaches beyond unusual general inferences and is concerned with false suppositions. Thus Langmuir considers the labelling of Jews as 'Christ-killers' is anti-Judaic; accusations of well-poisoning, on the other hand, he regards as antisemitic. In his view, anti-Judaism and antisemitism have existed side by side from the 12th century onwards and have strengthened each other ever since. The blood libel is another example of antisemitism, though it is based in distorted notions of Judaism.
• Anti-Judaism has also been distinguished from antisemitism based upon racial or ethnic grounds (racial antisemitism). "The dividing line [is] the possibility of effective conversion [...]. [A] Jew ceases[] to be a Jew upon baptism." However, with racial antisemitism, "the assimilated Jew [is] still a Jew, even after baptism [...]." According to William Nichols, "[f]rom the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews [...]. Once Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly racist doctrines appear."
• Similarly, in Anna Bikont's investigation of "the massacre of Jews in wartime Jedwabne, Poland" in The Crime and the Silence, she recognizes the presence of antisemitism as a result of religious influence that is blurred with anti-Judaism characteristics. Bikont's explanation of life in Poland as a Jew post World War I reveals how it is often difficult to distinguish between anti-Judaism and antisemitism during this time of growing anti-Judaic ideology. Poles and Jews "lived separate lives and spoke different languages" which prevented Jews from fully assimilating into Poland culture. Jewish religious culture remained present and Jew's "social and cultural life ran on a separate track" compared to Poles. The ethnic differences were made more obvious through the obvious differences in culture which fuel anti-Judaic acts. Although Jews ran separate lives from Poles, they coexisted for a long time. "Jews, especially the young, got along fine in Polish, but at home they spoke Yiddish." Socially, Jews and Poles often participated in "picnics, festivities [together]… but Jews [were] often met with an unfriendly response from Poles, and in the latter half of the thirties they were simply through own of these organizations." Bikont believes that negative views towards Jews were reinforced through religious organizations like the Catholic Church and National Party in northern Europe. "The lives of Catholics revolved around the parish and the world of churchgoers, as well as events organized by the National Party, which was blatant in its exclusion of Jews. Bikont considers that the murderous actions towards Jews in Poland resulted from "[teachings of] contempt and hostility towards Jews, feelings that were reinforced in the course of their upbringing." These events are classified as antisemitic because of the change from increase of hostility and exclusion. The delusional perception of Jews escalated in 1933 when there was a "[revolution that] swept up the whole town… 'Shooting, windows broken, shutters closed, women shrieking, running home." Bikont believes that these violent aggressions towards Jews are considered acts of antisemitism because they are performed as revolutionary acts that were a part of the National Party's agenda. Much of the difference between defining anti-Judaism from antisemitism relies on the source of influence for beliefs and actions against Jews. Once Jews were viewed as the other from Poles, the discrimination transformed from ideology of religion to race which are shown through acts of violence.

Islamic anti-Judaism

A prominent place in the Quranic polemic against the Jews is given to the conception of the religion of Abraham. The Quran presents Muslims as neither Jews nor Christians but as followers of Abraham who was in a physical sense the father of both the Jews and the Arabs and lived before the revelation of the Torah. In order to show that the religion which is practiced by the Jews is not the pure religion that was practiced by Abraham, the Quran mentions the incident in which the Israelites worshipped the Golden calf, in order to argue that Jews do not believe in a part of the revelation that was given to them, and their practice of usury shows their worldliness and disobedience of God. Furthermore, the Quran claim they attribute to God what he has not revealed. In his polemic against Judaism, Ibn Hazm provided a polemical list of what he considered "chronological and geographical inaccuracies and contradictions; theological impossibilities (anthropomorphic expressions, stories of fornication and whoredom, and the attributing of sins to prophets), as well as lack of reliable transmission (tawatur) of the text".

Between the 9th and 13th centuries

Throughout the Islamic Golden Age, the relatively tolerant societies of the various caliphates were still, on occasion, driven to enforce discriminatory laws against members of the Jewish faith. Examples of these and more extreme persecutions occurred under the authority of multiple, radical Muslim Movements such as that of the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in the 11th century, the Almohad Caliphate in the 12th century, and in the 1160s CE Shiite Abd al-Nabi ibn Mahdi who was an Imam of Yemen.

Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

Differentiation laws were enforced much more regularly following the decline of secular influence within Islamic society and external threats posed by non-Muslims.