+Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary+
Fr. Doyle’s Reflections on the Passion, Part 5
Gesthemani (cont’d):
It is right for us to plead earnestly for what we want – earnestly, perseveringly, but never insubmissively. We should recognize that God will not give us what will do more harm than good. Many of us have lived long enough to thank God that He did not give us what we asked in prayer in every instance. The best thing possible for us is always what God wills for us. Sometimes it may be pain, worldly loss, or some bereavement; yet His will is always love, and in simple acquiescence to God’s will, we shall always find our highest good. No prayer, therefore, is pleasing to God which does not end with the refrain of Gethsemani: “Not my will but Thine be done.”
This is the way to peace, for as we yield with love and joy, and merge our will with God’s His peace will flow like a river into our souls. Resolve that each time today you hear a clock strike the hour, you will say reverently, “Not my will but Thine be done.” Christ prayed three times in the Garden of Olives. After each prayer was finished, and the words of those three prayers, by the way, were nearly identical, the Master went back to His Apostles, and in each instance He found them asleep. Between the first and second sessions of prayer our Lord uttered a powerful warning, for He said to the drowsy disciples: “Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt. 26:41).
“Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation” is a powerful warning that no man should disregard. In wartime it is not unusual to find a soldier court-martialed and summarily executed for falling asleep at his post. Life is a constant warfare against the legions of hell, and we must be ever watchful against sudden attacks from the enemy. But to watch alone is not enough. A sentinel posted on the walls, when he perceives the enemy gathering for an attack, would be foolhardy indeed, to presume to engage the enemy singlehanded. The wise soldier would send word to his commanding officer of the enemy’s approach. Watchfulness lies in observing the imminent approach of the enemy and prayer is the telling of it to God. Watchfulness without prayer is presumption, and prayer without watchfulness is a mockery.
The great Abbot John remarked that a man who is asleep at the foot of a tree and sees a wild animal coming toward him, will most certainly climb up into the tree to save himself. “So we,” says the Abbot, “when we perceive ourselves beset with temptations, ought to climb up to heaven and by the help of prayer, retire safely into the bosom of God.”
The saints have taught that short prayers are more effective in time of temptation. St. Athanasius, for instance, taught that the opening phrase of the sixty-seventh psalm produced miraculous effects for those who used it in time of temptation. Here are the words: “Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered, and let those that hate Him fly before His face.” Note well, that our Lord did not tell His disciples to be relieved of temptation altogether, but rather that they “enter not into temptation.” God tempts no man, but He permits us to be tempted so to prove ourselves. “Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been tried, he will receive the crown of life” (James 1:12). St. Bernard, explaining these inspired words of St. James, says: “it is necessary that temptations should happen, for who shall be crowned but he that shall lawfully have fought, and how shall a man fight, if there be none to attack him?”
Be undeceived – position, piety, or experience will not spare you temptations. Adam fell when he was in the state of grace and Peter fell soon after his first Holy Communion. Resolve today to make use of the holy names of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the very outset of temptation. Try to commit the first sentence of the Psalm 67 to heart and promise yourself to make use of it as soon as you discern the approach of any temptation. (End of Fr. Doyle quote)
Introduction
In response to the Anti-Semitism booklet posted in a previous blog, it appears that certain bloggers frequented by LibTrads have increased postings condemning the Jews this Lenten season. These postings insinuate that the Church actually accepted Jewish ritual murder charges as true, when such charges were long ago refuted and condemned by the popes. The 1944 Antisemitism booklet explains this in no uncertain terms, and it cannot be brushed off as an already existing tendency to make concessions to the Jews at the false Vatican 2 council. Rev. Riley wrote in his booklet:
“The Popes courageously and in face of general popular antagonism have defended the Jews against calumnious accusations, notably of ritual murder, of ritual profanation of consecrated hosts and of the poisoning of wells at the time of the Black Death. The two calumnies, ritual murder and ritual profanation, still reappear, occasionally under, the names of estimable men, despite their repeated designation as vicious calumnies by Popes. This protecting charity amid wise administrative procedures has been the official tradition of the Church.”
I wish to be clear on this: I do not absolve the Jews of Christ’s time and those applauding them today of guilt in Christ’s death. The Jewish leaders in Christ’s day were definitely responsible for His Crucifixion and death. They cursed their descendants by calling down Christ’s blood upon them. But who those actual descendants are today is the real question. Certainly it is not the Ashkenazi Jews who only converted to Judaism at a later date. The Jewish convert David Goldstein and secular historians conclude that Jewish blood has been so diluted over the centuries, that Jews no longer exist as a race. As will be seen below, most Jews consider themselves such only culturally, not from a religious or racial standpoint. Orthodox and Zionist Jews comprise only a small portion of that group.
That ritual murder is indeed a calumny condemned by the popes is proven by the extensive quotes from papal documents below. But first, a sampling of what is falsely being presented — without any mention of the Church’s position — on other sites.
Fisheaters site
“[Blood Passover is] a book written by Professor Ariel Toaff — son of the Chief Rabbi of Rome, and a professor of Jewish Renaissance and Medieval History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel — about the reality behind so-called “blood libel” allegations made against some Jews during the Middle Ages. This book was published in Hebrew, in Israel, but when translated into other languages, outrage ensued. Threats were made against the writer’s life, demands were made that he be fired from his teaching post, and all copies of the book disappeared from bookstores, deliveries of the book were disrupted, etc., and it’s virtually unavailable to read in print in any language but Hebrew. So here it is, in spite of the actions and threats of those who don’t want you to read it.”
The extensive book list regarding the Jews on this site includes numerous works by perennialist E. Michael Jones, four volumes by British Israel proponent Henry Ford, Saenz/Pinay’s The Plot Against the Church, Elizabeth Dilling’s The Jewish Religion, (an Aryan nation favorite), and other questionable works. Not one papal document regarding the Jews is mentioned on this list. A disclaimer to this list does state the following: “Before going further, I want it to be made very clear — radically clear, excruciatingly clear: racism has no place whatsoever in a Catholic’s heart or mind. The information here is about Jewish leadership and the Jewish religion; it is not about every single human being born of a Jewish mother, “the Jews” as an ethnic group, or “the Jews” as a “race.” Racism — any idea that one race is more beloved by God or is more deserving of respect and charity than another race — has no place in a Catholic’s heart. None whatsoever. Nazism, “white supremacy,” and other similar ideologies are evil and toxic and in no way compatible with Catholicism.” But the books listed as authoritative seem to call this disclaimer into doubt.
Tradition in Action
This site lists several articles on Judaism, including a lengthy review of Toaff’s work. In his Toaff review, Atila S. Guimarães concludes that the Jews were indeed guilty of ritual murder.
The Thinking Housewife
Numerous recent articles have been posted at this site on the topic of ritual murder (blood libel) with a quote from Toaff. There is no mention of papal teaching on this topic that I was able to discover. Some 22 pages are listed in the search function featuring articles on the Jews. From a 2015 post on this site we read from Laura Wood: “At the time, I didn’t think much of the comment by the Jewish lawyer. But my thinking on this issue has changed, especially over the last two years after a lot of hard, time-consuming study. I am grateful to the many authors, especially Dr. E. Michael Jones, Michael Hoffmann III, the Rev. Denis Fahey and Hugh Akins, who have written powerfully and persuasively on this topic.” Wood has since disassociated herself from the perennialist E. Michael Jones, as explained in a recent blog post comment. Study might ostensibly include secular sources, but it had better be rooted in theological sources. Fahey is one, but he certainly cannot rival what the popes teach.
Rev. Fahey mentions the matter of ritual murder in his The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganization of Society, (pgs. 191-192). He states in a footnote that, “There are official documents of the Catholic Church unfavorable to the Jews in this matter,” but fails to quote from the actual documents of the popes. He cites St. Simon of Trent’s feast as March 25, (celebrated with another child martyr attributed to ritual murder, St. Wiliam of Norwich), as entered into the Roman Martyrology. In commenting on these feasts and others, Rev. Alban Butler wrote: “It is a notorious slander of some authors who, from these singular and extraordinary instances, infer this to have been at any time the custom or maxim of that people.” Commenting on Butler’s statement, Rev. Herbert Thurston and his assistant wrote:
“Butler’s protest is certainly well founded. No scrap of serious evidence has ever been adduced which would show that the use of Christian blood formed any part of Jewish ritual. It is possible that such child murders may occasionally have been committed by Jewish maniacs or as an act of private vengeance or by necromancers who wished to use the blood for some magical rite. Moreover if we confine our attention to the two martyrs here in question, there is no conclusive evidence that — confessions under torture being worthless — the guilt was brought home to those who were really the culprits,” (The Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, March, Vol. III, Corrected, Amplified and Edited by Herbert Thurston, S.J. and Norah Leeson, Burnes, Oates and Washbourne, 1931).
Other sites; Quas Primas
Catholic Family News, in the Spirit of Chartres (ISOC), Tradition Family and Property, The Remnant, CultureWars, the Society of St. Pius X and its publications, (and in the past, the publication Veritas) — all at various times have indicated that the Jews were the primary coordinators of Vatican 2 and are responsible for the Church’s ultimate destruction. That the Jews played a role in this is a matter of history, certainly. That they also help direct Freemasonry at the top is not disputed here, but the key word is “help.” As pointed out many times, this emphasis on Jews as the cause of all the Church’s (and for that matter the world’s) woes is a classic case of projection to avoid addressing the real problem: We were betrayed by our own Modernist hierarchy, and those acting as clergy today are not validly ordained or consecrated. Antichrist has reigned and his system continues in the Novus Ordo usurpers. We are enduring the Passion of the Church, the loss of the Mass and Sacraments, which can only end in Our Lord’s Second Coming. This is the inconvenient and terrifying truth from which they wish to escape.
There are those who claim that in insisting on the proper attitude we as Catholics must take toward the Jews, we lose sight of the fact that we must also defend the rights of Christ as King. They cite Pope Pius XI’s 1925 encyclical Quas Primas, establishing the Feast of Christ the King for this, but forget the words of the encyclical: “When the populace thronged around Him in admiration and would have acclaimed him King, He shrank from the honor and sought safety in flight. Before the Roman magistrate He declared that his kingdom was not of this world… . “With God and Jesus Christ,” we said [in Urbi Arcano], “excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.”
And human society is no longer tottering; it has fallen. As St. Paul predicted, the final representation of Christ’s authority as King — the Roman Pontiff — was forcibly removed by those of His own house, the cardinals and bishops, and Christ was betrayed once again. How any of those presenting as “Catholic” can pretend that Christ’s reign as King can be accomplished now with His Church in ruins is beyond me. And yet Christ will establish His kingdom on earth, just as Holy Scripture foretells, for as Quas Primas also teaches, “He whom St. John calls the “prince of the kings of the earth” appears in the Apostle’s vision of the future as he who “hath on his garment and on his thigh written ‘King of kings and Lord of lords!’.” It is Christ whom the Father “hath appointed heir of all things”; “for he must reign until at the end of the world he hath put all his enemies under the feet of God and the Father.” He WILL reign as the King of Zion, displacing the false Jewish messiah and vindicating those who still love and serve him.
What is totally lacking here is a correct understanding of the Church’s own teaching on this matter, which is presented below.
Ritual murder charges
From the Catholic Encyclopedia
[The death of St. William of Norwich]… has been well named “one of the most notable and disastrous lies of history”. The story is the foundation of the blood accusation or accusation of ritual murder against the Jews, which has found currency and gained popular credence from that date to the present day. In the “Jewish Encyclopedia”, III, 266, may be found a list of the cases of this ritual murder, beginning with William of Norwich. There are 5 other cases given for the twelfth century, 15 for the thirteenth, 10 for the fourteenth, 16 for the fifteenth, 13 for the sixteenth, 8 for the seventeenth, 15 for the eighteenth, and 39 for the nineteenth, going right up to the year 1900. There have been more recent cases still in Eastern Europe.
Ritual murder as a Jewish institution has been learnedly and conclusively disproved, e.g. by Strack, op. cit. below, and in the case of St. William the evidence is totally insufficient. It seems, however, quite possible that in some cases at least the deaths of these victims were due to rough usage or even deliberate murder on the part of Jews and that some may actually have been slain in odium fidei. In this connection we may notice the first case of all, and the only one before St. William, in which Jews are known to have been accused of murdering a Christian child. In 415 at Inmestar in Syria some Jews in a drunken frolic killed a Christian child in mockery of the death of Christ (Socrates, VII, xvi). Many popes have either directly or indirectly condemned the blood accusation, and NO POPE HAS EVER SANCTIONED IT (Strack, op. cit., 177 and v. Strack’s work, The Jew and Human Sacrifice, is available at www.archive.org).
Massimo Introvigne quoting Strack and various popes
What popes are referenced here? A work by Novus Ordo author and attorney Massimo Introvigne, sheds much light on the history of the blood libel accusation. The popes mentioned by this author begin with Innocent IV, who in 1247 issued a series of bulls and briefs condemning the execution of 34 Jews in Fulda Germany, who, it was said, “killed five boys and burned their blood in a magical ritual… The Pope forbade “to accuse any Jew of using human blood in their rites, since it is clear in the Old Testament that it is forbidden to them to consume any blood, let alone the blood of humans” (published in Strack 1909, 254). Twelve years after the first executions, Rome promptly declared the blood libel myth as illogical and false…
“Pope Gregory X (1210-1276, revered as Blessed Gregory X by Catholics after 1713) publish[ed] an even stronger bull on October 7, 1272. There, he threatened to excommunicate “those who very falsely (falsissime) insist that the Jews kidnap Christian children and make a ritual use of their hearts and blood, since their law in fact strictly forbids any Jew to drink blood, including from animals. We do order that any Jew jailed for this foolish accusation be freed immediately, and that in the future no Jew be incarcerated for such foolish accusation, except in the case, which we do not believe to be possible (quod non credimus), of being caught committing this very offence” (published in Strack 1909, 255-256)…
Pope Nicolas V (1397-1455) had published a bull dated November 2, 1447, where he “prohibited in the strictest way” spreading blood libel accusations and fulminated against “some who try to make Jews odious to Christians by daring to spread false rumours about the Jews, accusing them to celebrate their rites.” And Pope Martin V (1368-1431)… condemn[ed] anybody ‘claiming, with false pretexts and arguments (fictis occasionibus et coloribus) that Jews mix Christian blood to their bread for Easter…. Pope Paul III (1468-1549)… concluded that “those accusing the Jews of drinking the blood of children are blinded by avarice and only want to rob [them of] their money” (published in Strack 1909, 258).’”
Introvigne then relates that Pope Benedict XIV later commissioned a study by the Holy Office, which was conducted by the Franciscan bishop and cardinal, Lorenzo Ganganelli, (later to become Pope Clement XIV). Pope Clement XIII approved the investigation, which stated “that it is impossible, according to their history and theology, for Jews to even conceive of drinking human blood or mixing it with bread or other food.”
Rev. Denis Fahey quotes the following from Cardinal Ganganelli’s report: “Cardinal Ganganelli sets aside a number of accusations of ritual murder as not sufficiently supported by proofs but he accepts two cases. He writes in his report: “I admit as true the case of Blessed Simon, a child of three years, put to death by the Jews at Trent in 1475 out of hatred for the faith of Jesus Christ, though that murder has been denied by Basnage and Wagenseil. I admit also as true a second murder which took place in 1462 in the village of Rinn, in the Diocese of Brixen. Blessed Andrew a little child was there cruelly done to death by the Jews out of hatred for the faith of Jesus Christ.” But ritual murder is not specifically mentioned.
Merry Cardinal del Val was asked to submit documentation in a Kiev case in 1911, involving the Lithuanian priest, Iustinas Pranaitis (1861-1917),
. Pranaitis was “an indefatigable propagandist for blood libel that the Holy See had seen fit to remove to faraway Tashkent, Uzbekistan,” Introvigne reports. (Shades of Angelo Roncalli!) “He… claimed that the papal bulls and the Holy Office 1759 report… were forgeries. Merry del Val, then Secretary of State of Pope Pius X …wrote to the Court confirming that the documents were genuine, and that the position of the Church had not changed.” Introvigne then goes on to explain that in private correspondence, Pope St. Pius X told Jewish leaders he believed the blood libel to be “an unfortunate superstition.” The Church’s position remained the same, and the stand taken by Popes Pius XI and Pius XII only confirm this.The matter of Pope Benedict XIV beatifying Simon of Trent and Andrei of Fulda, and later popes confirming this, is constantly offered as proof that ritual murder charges were admitted to by the popes. But we find this explanation in the January 1914 edition of the Jesuit publication, The Month:
“We cannot refrain from entering a protest against the extraordinary perversity with which so many anti-Semitist journalists — not a few of them, we are sorry to say, Catholics — persist in thinking evil of their Jewish fellow-countrymen… The one argument which is appealed to by all the accusers, and which is supposed to settle the question, is the allegation that “the Church has canonized as a martyr the boy, holy Simon of Trent, murdered in that city on the occasion of the Jewish Easter in the year 1475.” Even supposing this were true, it proves nothing regarding the practices of the Jewish religion. No one denies that Jews may have killed a particular Christian boy out of hatred for the faith, and that such a victim may lawfully be honoured as a martyr. But the unqualified statement that the Church has canonized little Simon of Trent illustrates nothing so much as the weakness of the cause it is adduced to support. It is simply untrue to say that the Church has canonized little Simon of Trent. A decree of beatification was issued by Sixtus V, which took the form simply of a confirmation of cultus and which allowed a Mass to be said locally in honour of the boy martyr. Everyone knows that beatification differs from canonization in this, that in the former case the infallibility of the Holy See is not involved, in the latter it is. Be this as it may, Pope Sixtus was careful not to say that little Simon had been put to death with any ritual purpose, and he did not even emphasize the point that the child had been martyred by the Jews.”
Introvigne, commenting on this, explains that “In 1753 Pope Benedict XIV (1675-1758), ironically a Pope who did much to fight the blood libel, confirmed the local cult of ‘Blessed Andreas.’ For several centuries, cults practiced locally for many years were simply “confirmed” by Popes as a matter of routine. Denying confirmation would have hurt local sensitivities, and there was no beatification process complete with a historical investigation as it happens today.” So why are these things never investigated and explained?
As for the Toaff work listed at Fisheaters and elsewhere, Introvigne writes that Toaff withdrew his book after it was pointed out to him that he had based one of his major examples of blood libel on the testimony of “dozens“ of Jews who confessed under torture, proofs not considered as reliable by credible scholars. An interesting account in Toaff’s work, however, accredits ritual murder to a secret Ashkenazi cult, which certainly could not be laid at the door of Jews in general. Introvigne notes further: “…Some conservative clergymen befriended by Pius X, including Monsignor Umberto Benigni (1844-1932), did propagate the blood libel, although in a last incarnation of the myth they attributed the ritual sacrifice and blood-drinking to a secret Jewish Kabbalistic cult whose existence was unknown to the majority of common Jews.” This cult easily fits the description of radical Orthodox Jews guiding the Illuminati at the top of the Masonic pyramid, which is further suggested below. But it does not indict them of ritual murder.
Jews are such primarily by way of culture today
Research shows the majority of Jews consider themselves such in ethnicity, but not primarily in religion. Most Jews who consider themselves superior to the rest of mankind do so because they believe they are still “the Chosen People.” But this does not necessarily involve the hateful anti-Christian invective spewed by certain Orthodox Jews, who are guilty of forcefully teaching and believing the stringent application of Talmudic precepts. For as seen below, the Orthodox Jews constitute only a small but fervent and vocal minority. So it seems most unfair to lump the rest of those identifying as Jewish in with a small fanatical faction and represent them all as professing the same beliefs.
“Approximately 5.8 million adults (2.4% of all U.S. adults) [are] Jewish” according to a 2021 Pew Research report (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/the-size-of-the-u-s-jewish-population/The rest of this section is taken from a Pew report issued in 2020). “This includes 4.2 million (1.7%) who identify as Jewish by religion and 1.5 million Jews of no religion… Religion is not central to the lives of most U.S. Jews. Even Jews by religion are much less likely than Christian adults to consider religion to be very important in their lives (28% vs. 57%). And among Jews as a whole, far more report that they find meaning in spending time with their families or friends, engaging with arts and literature, being outdoors, and pursuing their education or careers than find meaning in their religious faith. Twice as many Jewish Americans say they derive a great deal of meaning and fulfillment from spending time with pets as say the same about their religion…” And only 9% of that 2.4% identify as Orthodox, those most likely to take their religion seriously and practice it.
“Compared either with U.S. Christians or with the adult public overall, U.S. Jews are far less likely to say that religion is important in their lives. However, Orthodox Jews rank among the most religiously devout subgroups in the country by this measure;… Among Jews who are neither synagogue members themselves nor live in a household where anyone else belongs to a synagogue, 47% do not identify with any institutional branch or stream of Judaism. More than half of U.S. Jews identify with the Reform (37%) or Conservative (17%) movements, while about one-in-ten (9%) identify with Orthodox Judaism. One-third of Jews (32%) do not identify with any particular Jewish denomination… Nearly half of U.S. Jews say religion is either “very” (21%) or “somewhat” (26%) important in their lives, while 53% say religion is “not too” or “not at all” important to them personally… Religion is more important to Jewish women, on average, than to Jewish men.” Most Jews are deeply worried about Anti-Semitism, the report states (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-identity-and-belief/).
Conclusion
If a secret cabal of Jews engineered the demise of the Church, they were scarcely alone in this endeavor. They had plenty of help from apostates and occult heretics within the Catholic hierarchy. Such a cabal certainly is not representative of most Jews, only a certain minority. So why stir readers up against the Jewish people as a whole when they don’t even seem particularly interested in practicing the Jewish religion? By way of comparison, 62 percent of the U.S. population identify as “Christian.” The Jews are therefore outnumbered many times over. Yet the more things change, the more they remain the same: “The extraordinary perversity with which so many anti-Semitist journalists — not a few of them, we are sorry to say, Catholics — persist in thinking evil of their Jewish fellow-countrymen…” (quoted from The Month article above). And if they did this when there were still true popes reigning, popes sympathetic to the plight of the Jews before and during World War II, what would stop them today?
All we have left of our Church is the doctrines she taught prior to the hostile takeover by the usurpers following Pope Pius XII’s death. Even papal opinions, Pope Leo XIII teaches, must be adopted as our own: “If, in the difficult times in which our lot is cast, Catholics will give ear to Us, as it behooves them to do, they will readily see what are the duties of each one IN MATTERS OF OPINION AS WELL AS ACTION (quae sua cuiusque sint tam in opinionibus quam in factis officia). As regards opinion, whatever the Roman Pontiffs have hitherto taught, or shall hereafter teach, must be held with a firm grasp of mind, and so often as occasion requires, must be openly professed. Especially with reference to the so-called “liberties” which are so greatly coveted in these days, all must stand by the judgment of the Apostolic See and have the same mind” (oportet Apostolicae Sedis stare iudicio, et quod ipsa senserit, idem sentire singulos, Immortale Dei, DZ 1880).
We have presented papal teaching on ritual murder here because regardless of the loss of the papacy — regardless of the prejudice generated on this subject by men such as the professed Mason Saenz-Arriaga and his The Plot Against the Church, also others like him — we cannot adopt the opinion popular among Traditionalists today regarding the Jews. As Catholics, we can only adopt that opinion of the Vicar of Christ sent to rule in His stead as King, until He comes. This is the bounden duty we owe Christ as King.
