Free to question

I noted with interest last week how Pope Benedict’s new book re-declares the Catholic teaching since the 1960’s that the Jews are definitely not collectively responsible for the death of Christ.  As the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets noted, this seemed particularly good timing given that it was also only last week that some weird looking fashion figure, with whom I was previously unfamiliar, turned up on video spouting anti-semitic lines (and praise for Hitler) that is hard to credit as still existing post Holocaust. 

But I thought I would mention it here more because of the Tablet’s explanation of Benedict’s analysis:

Benedict follows the scholarly consensus that “the Jews” mentioned in St John’s gospel as calling for Jesus to be executed cannot possibly refer to the whole population of Israel at the time, but refers to the Jerusalem Temple authorities alone; and not even all of those. But the greater problem is presented by Matthew’s account, which refers to the demand of “the whole people” for Jesus to be crucified and which – alone of the four gospels – has them cry out, “His blood be on us and on our children!” This verse kept Christian anti-Semitism alive for many centuries, and was the basis of the charge of deicide or “Christ-killing” laid against all Jews, alive or dead.

Benedict simply rejects Matthew’s historical accuracy, preferring the account in John and Mark. Matthew had gone “beyond” historical considerations and “is certainly not recounting historical fact here”. Matthew is attempting a “theo­logical etiology”, he suggests, with which to account for the fate of the Jewish people in the forthcoming Jewish-Roman war. Furthermore, seen through the eyes of Christian faith, Jesus’ blood has the purifying power of redemption, so the words attributed to the crowd are not a curse but rather “redemption, salvation”. Why that matters, if the words were never uttered, Benedict does not explain.

How interesting.   Catholics don’t take a fundamentalist approach to Scripture, and of course has no problem with understanding Genesis and other parts of the Old Testament as not being written as literal history.

The New Testament, though, comes in for a lot less Catholic doubt as to its relationship with fact, and it’s interesting to see we have it from the top, so to speak, that the Gospels are not always historically accurate.

There’ll be some Protestant churches decrying this is why you can’t trust the Catholic Church.  Mind you, few will go as far as the website www.popebenedictantichrist.com.  (Don’t bother going there, it’s only one page, but it has obviously picked a good name given how high it came up on my Google search results when looking for sources for this post.)  I like this line from the said site, though:

Could it be that Pope Benedict XVI will one day become the Antichrist?  Look closely at the coldness of his eyes in above photo.  Can you really trust this man?  Do his eyes remind you of Adolph Hitler's eyes?

Can't say I've noticed the Hitler resemblance myself.

Of course, the problem once you do allow for historical revision of the truth of Gospel statements, it can be a tricky issue as to knowing where to stop.  Still, it keeps life interesting.