Benedict's ritual subservience toward Judaism
Last Friday, September 7, 2007, Benedict XVI began his three-day-visit to Austria by paying homage to the Jews who died in Vienna during World War II. Before going to any Catholic place, Pope Ratzinger chose to stop at Judenplatz, or Jews' Square, to pray in silence before the Jewish memorial there, above. Also present was the chief-rabbi of Vienna, Paul Chaim Eisenberg, who received the Pope's homage, below first row.
On his plane trip to Vienna, Benedict XVI told journalists that his visit to that monument was meant to be "an expression of sadness, repentance and friendship toward the Jewish people" (BBC News, September 7, 2007, online edition).
The word "repentance" in this context is baseless because, objectively speaking, the doctrinal opposition of the Catholic Church to the errors of the Jewish religion has nothing to do with the Nazi's racial persecution against Jews in World War II. So, unless Pope Ratzinger was voicing repentance for his personal past as a member of the Nazi youth movement, the mention to "repentance" makes no sense when applied to Catholic doctrine.
We know that in the late '40s some members of the Frankfurt Jewish School - Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno - spread the incorrect thesis that Catholic doctrinal opposition to Judaism should be considered as anti-Semitic. This was part of a propaganda campaign that attempted to put Nazism along with all doctrinal oppositions to Judaism in the same basket. Even though this thesis was recognized as being intellectually dishonest, Progressivism took it up and promoted it to help destroy the indestructible Catholic doctrine.
Benedict's pontificate, even more than JPII's, has been marked by a kind of ritual obsession to promote Judaism and diminish Catholic teaching on it.
Confirming this, on September 6, 2007, the day before his trip to Austria, Benedict received Israeli prime-minister Shimon Peres in his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, below second row.
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