I don't know how many Cardinals there are in the Curia and we surely are not privy to those Pope Francis has identified as the men he intends to replace them with but I have no hope for this Pope.
Those slated to replace the Cardinals may well be men of the Pope's ilk from the south who share his idea of making the Church smaller and poorer and cut lose from its roots.
Where Mr Voris hears rumors, I hear saws cutting, and holed being drilled so as to insert the intellectual dynamite that'll complete the razing of the bastions.
The Brick By Brick Bund and The Conservative Catholic Collective hear augtht but positive noise while I hear what this man heard:
Brick by brick. If Francis does some good things, let's capitalize on this. Bad things, work around. God works through, and despite, Popes .o date he has done very little, almost nothing. Writing him off wholesale seems almost unCatholic. Writing the cardinals off wholesale, now, THAT is another matter. LOL!
The Rumor Mills were wrong; it was about the Vatican Bank - not that there will be good news about the plans for it.
I expect this man of the poor wants to sever ties with not just the past and Tradition but with the present and that includes this bank.
Most of us would be shocked to learn that the Chief Rabbi of some crummy country advocated closing its central bank so it could be run by Christians but few of us, I assume, would be surprised to learn that this Pope would close down the central bank of the Country of the Holy See/Vatican and let the usurious Jews run our banking system.
They are our bestest friends and they only have the best of intentions when it comes to us.
This seemed unlikely to me as well. There were good men in the College of Cardinals, like Ouellet, yes, and Burke, etc.
If what happened was as described, it could have been a deal where they asked only some to step down. But it looks like something else may be going on.
Dear Sheldon. About Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke. You prolly are unaware of his activities on behalf of the Association of Hebrew Catholics (a Fifth Column within Catholicism) and that he not only promotes seders as a positive force within Catholicsism but that he his own self has participated in them...
Thanks for bringing Cardinal Burke's activities on behalf of the Association of Hebrew Catholics to our attention, IANS. That knowledge increases my respect and admiration for him.
However, if you know the facts about seders - their origins and what they entail - I am surprised you think that it is defensible action for a Cardinal to participate in them and to promote them.
Further, I suspect you do not know as much about the AHC as you imagine you do for if you did have the necessary information, I do not think you would defend it.
Try reading the information at this link
http://www.culturewars.com/2009/SSPX.htm
and feel free to post it at Rorate so you could inform your readers about this important matter.
Before I took down nearly all of my posts at my crummy blog, I had a post with videos of an interview with Cardinal Burke conducted by AHC.
Dear Jordanes. It would be helpful for you to identify the Catholic Tradition of celebrating a seder - which is a post-Crucifixion novelty created by the Jews (prolly 2nd or 3rd century) in opposition to the One True Church Jesus established and signifying denial that Jesus is the Messiah - a tradition that is not a result of the past one-half century of effete ecumenism.
The Catholic Church I was born into in the 1940s would not have touched this Judaising with a 10 mile long Crosier for, back then, Saint Thomas Aquinas was still considered the Universal Doctor (even though Cardinal Ratzinger thought he was impenetrable and when he was named the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he was the first such man in that august office in centuries who was not a Thomist) and they would have remembered this:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2103.htm#article4
Finally, I seriously doubt that you can even imagine Pope Saint Pius X participating in a seder or promoting a seder (Or any of the 260 Popes preceding V2) , but such is the discontinuity within our putative continuity that today's novelties are accepted with alacrity and defending vociferously.
"However, if you know the facts about seders - their origins and what they entail - I am surprised you think that it is defensible action for a Cardinal to participate in them and to promote them."
It is because I know the facts about seders (both Jewish ritual seders and the reenactments that Catholic parishes or schools occasionally put on) that I know there is no problem with a Cardinal to taking part in a purely educational dramatic exercise.
"Further, I suspect you do not know as much about the AHC as you imagine you do for if you did have the necessary information, I do not think you would defend it."
I suspect that I know more about the AHC than you do. You seem have the mistaken notion that they are a group of Judaising heretics. Such an accusation is unjust and unfounded.
"It would be helpful for you to identify the Catholic Tradition of celebrating a seder - which is a post-Crucifixion novelty created by the Jews (prolly 2nd or 3rd century) in opposition to the One True Church Jesus established and signifying denial that Jesus is the Messiah - a tradition that is not a result of the past one-half century of effete ecumenism."
What rot. The Jewish Passover seder obviously is derived from pre-Christian Jewish customs, and contains nothing in it that *specifically* signifies denial that Jesus is the Messiah (apart from the Jewish belief that the Messiah has not yet come)>
There is nothing in the contemporary practice of holding educational, non-ritual reenactments of a Passover seder, for the purpose of understanding better the Old Covenant roots of the Holy Eucharist, that is contrary to the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas. It's not necessarily any more of a spiritual danger than any other grade school dramatic exercise. These so-called "seders" are not religious acts of Orthodox Jewish ritual worship, and are not held to be Eucharistic or in any way salvific -- if they were, then yes, they would be sins against the First Commandment. But they're not.
"The Catholic Church I was born into in the 1940s would not have touched this Judaising with a 10 mile long Crosier for, back then."
It's not Judaising. (It does, however, tend to prevent or eliminate unjustified animosity toward Jewish people, which probably accounts for some of the opposition to them in anti-semitic traditionalist circles.)
It is interesting, however, that every year the Catholic Church celebrates "Pascha" (Passover) and Pentecost, and the traditional Roman Rite also marks the four seasons of the year with Ember Day fasts, the scripture lections of which recall the ancient Jewish liturgical calendar and Atonement fast that God gave the Jews through Moses and Aaron. The Catholic Church is not allergic to its Jewish roots, and gladly confesses with her Lord that salvation is of the Jews. None of that, however, is Judaising. How much less, then, a grade school class having a "seder"?
Dear Jordanes. I have to write that I find your dismissal of the AHC Fifth Column an act of willful blindness; that is, it is if you read the material about them at the provided link.
You are factually wrong about the seder meal as can easily be found at The Jewish Encyclopedia and at an increasing number of Jewish sites which are recommending abandoning it as a ceremony totally severed from OT Judaism.
I note you are unable to identify any pre 1960s tradition of Catholics participating in this judaising practice.
The Jewish Passover seder obviously is derived from pre-Christian Jewish customs, and contains nothing in it that *specifically* signifies denial that Jesus is the Messiah (apart from the Jewish belief that the Messiah has not yet come
Kudos if that was intended as a wry observation but I suspect it was not, was it?
The Catholic Church is not allergic to its Jewish roots, and gladly confesses with her Lord that salvation is of the Jews. None of that, however, is Judaising.
What I bolded is not only judaising, it is heresy.
Salvation if from JESUS and you sadly, have been co-opted by the racial supremacism of the Jews and which racial supremacism is a heresy (see Mit Brennender sorge)
It's not Judaising. (It does, however, tend to prevent or eliminate unjustified animosity toward Jewish people, which probably accounts for some of the opposition to them in anti-semitic traditionalist circles.)
So, that which has never been done before in the Catholic Church (you know, ecclesiastical tradition) the Seder Meal, is now not to be avoided as a novel and judiaisng practice, it is, rather, to be considered a positive Christian act which eliminates the putative animosity promoted by Catholic Ecclesiastical traditions.
Dear Jordanes. You have adopted the categories of the Zionists in believing that Catholic Ecclesiastical traditions were anti semitic; and that is just another way of saying that the Catholic Church WAS anti semitic prior to the bestest council ever and that IS the belief of the VAST number of Catholics - from Popes to Prelates to Priests to Pew-dwellers.
And yet,somehow, I am supposed to consider all of this as some sort of continuity.
I could post scores of quotes from the Early Church Fathers refuting this mephitic and scandalous heresy but I will simply encourage you to read what Saint John Chrysostom had to say about the Jews (his sermons about the Jews are now back on the web for some inexplicable reason) and Saint John Chrysostom's statue, as a Doctor of the East, is affixed to the Altar of the Chair of Saint Peter so he WAS, at one time, considered orthodox.
"I have to write that I find your dismissal of the AHC Fifth Column an act of willful blindness; that is, it is if you read the material about them at the provided link."
You are mistaken -- about several things, including your opinion that my rejection of noted anti-semite Robert Sungenis' attack on the AHC is an act of willful blindness. It is because I'm very familiar with Sungenis' unjust accusations that your referring me to them has not persuaded me that their are Judaising heretics. Sadly, Sungenis is not able to correctly identify Judaising -- and neither are you able to. I urge you to read AHC's responses to Sungenis' inaccurate and unjust attacks.
"You are factually wrong about the seder meal as can easily be found at The Jewish Encyclopedia and at an increasing number of Jewish sites which are recommending abandoning it as a ceremony totally severed from OT Judaism."
No, it is you who are factually wrong. Jews have been eating Passover seder meals since Moses first commanded them to do so at the Exodus. Their seders obviously have changed over the centuries and from place to place, but it inexcusable ignorance -- and anti-Jewish bigotry -- to claim that this custom was invented in the first or second century as a way to express their rejection of Jesus' Messiahship.
"I note you are unable to identify any pre 1960s tradition of Catholics participating in this judaising practice."
The practice is not Judaising, and in order to condemn it as harmful it is far from sufficient to show that these educational exercises are of post-Vatican II provenance.
I wrote (with your bolding emphasis added): "The Catholic Church is not allergic to its Jewish roots, and gladly confesses with her Lord that salvation is of the Jews. None of that, however, is Judaising."
You retorted, "What I bolded is not only judaising, it is heresy."
It's unclear why you think the words "None of that, however, is Judaising" is heretical or an act of Judaistic worship. You yourself probably couldn't say why you claimed it a participation in the Jewish religion to say the words, "None of that, however, is Judaising."
It IS clear, however, that your claim that it is Judaising and heretical to agree with Jesus that salvation is of the Jews is itself materially heretical or even apostate. To deny that salvation is of the Jews is to reject what Our Lord told the Samaritan woman, and to reject that Jesus, a Jew (nay, THE Jew), is the Messiah. In your antipathy for Jewish things, you have inadvertently denied that Jesus is the Savior of the world.
"Salvation is from JESUS"
Yes, and Jesus is a Jew, and Our Lady is a Jew, and Good St. Joseph is a Jew, and the apostles are Jews. Even more, St. Paul says that Gentiles can only be saved by being grafted into the Israelite olive plant (while unbelieving Jews can only be saved by being grafted back into their own olive plant).
"and you sadly, have been co-opted by the racial supremacism of the Jews and which racial supremacism is a heresy (see Mit Brennender sorge)"
You haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about, and you've twisted Pius XI's encyclical. Mit Brennender Sorge doesn't just reject racism when Jews practice it, but was written specifically to reproach a particularly virulent strain of Gentile racism and anti-semitism.
"So, that which has never been done before in the Catholic Church (you know, ecclesiastical tradition) the Seder Meal, is now not to be avoided as a novel and judiaisng practice, it is, rather, to be considered a positive Christian act which eliminates the putative animosity promoted by Catholic Ecclesiastical traditions."
Don't be ridiculous. These "seder meals" aren't even real seders, nor are they acts of worship (any more than other meals or banquets that Catholics may eat), so they can't be considered to be distinctively Christian acts. They aren't even paraliturgical or sacramental, or even presented as such.
As for the objection that Catholics never used to hold mock seder meals before, well, a thousand years ago no one prayed the Rosary either. That IS a sacramental, paraliturgical act, yet its novelty did not mean our medieval ancestors should not have taken up that devotion. How much less force does your objection have when considering grade school-type dramatic exercises in a religion or catechetical class?
If you don't want to participate in a mock seder, then don't. But you are presumptuous to condemn others as Judaising heretics for doing so.
"You have adopted the categories of the Zionists in believing that Catholic Ecclesiastical traditions were anti semitic"
Rubbish. I do not believe, and have never claimed, that Catholic ecclesiastical traditions were anti-semitic. The regrettable anti-semitism of Catholics in the past must be deplored and abandoned, but the Church's traditions are not racist against the Jews.
"I could post scores of quotes from the Early Church Fathers refuting this mephitic and scandalous heresy but I will simply encourage you to read what Saint John Chrysostom had to say about the Jews (his sermons about the Jews are now back on the web for some inexplicable reason) and Saint John Chrysostom's statue, as a Doctor of the East, is affixed to the Altar of the Chair of Saint Peter so he WAS, at one time, considered orthodox."
St. John IS orthodox. He was, however, a fallible human and, like all men, was culturally conditioned. I've read his homilies against the Jews before. Though they are founded in orthodox doctrine, their mode of expression is, shall we say, not always charitable and often extreme. St. John, gifted orator that he was, knew how to use rhetoric, and could be sharp tongued also -- but the Church rightly recommends that we avoid such rhetorical flourishes as counterproductive. His sanctity and his status as Doctor of the Church is not an endorsement of every single thing he said nor of the manner in which he said it.
14 comments:
This is prolly bad news.
I don't know how many Cardinals there are in the Curia and we surely are not privy to those Pope Francis has identified as the men he intends to replace them with but I have no hope for this Pope.
Those slated to replace the Cardinals may well be men of the Pope's ilk from the south who share his idea of making the Church smaller and poorer and cut lose from its roots.
Where Mr Voris hears rumors, I hear saws cutting, and holed being drilled so as to insert the intellectual dynamite that'll complete the razing of the bastions.
The Brick By Brick Bund and The Conservative Catholic Collective hear augtht but positive noise while I hear what this man heard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2PdyxMtiYM
Monty Python's wooden rabbit. Brilliant.
You may be right, unfortunately.
Time will tell.
Brick by brick. If Francis does some good things, let's capitalize on this. Bad things, work around. God works through, and despite, Popes .o date he has done very little, almost nothing. Writing him off wholesale seems almost unCatholic. Writing the cardinals off wholesale, now, THAT is another matter. LOL!
The Rumor Mills were wrong; it was about the Vatican Bank - not that there will be good news about the plans for it.
I expect this man of the poor wants to sever ties with not just the past and Tradition but with the present and that includes this bank.
Most of us would be shocked to learn that the Chief Rabbi of some crummy country advocated closing its central bank so it could be run by Christians but few of us, I assume, would be surprised to learn that this Pope would close down the central bank of the Country of the Holy See/Vatican and let the usurious Jews run our banking system.
They are our bestest friends and they only have the best of intentions when it comes to us.
Cardinal Ouellet is one of Pope Francis's closest friends. I'd be quite surprised if *he* were sacked from his post at the Cong. for Bishops.
Likely something is going to happen, but it won't be so wide-ranging as a total house-cleaning.
This seemed unlikely to me as well. There were good men in the College of Cardinals, like Ouellet, yes, and Burke, etc.
If what happened was as described, it could have been a deal where they asked only some to step down. But it looks like something else may be going on.
Dear Sheldon. About Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke. You prolly are unaware of his activities on behalf of the Association of Hebrew Catholics (a Fifth Column within Catholicism) and that he not only promotes seders as a positive force within Catholicsism but that he his own self has participated in them...
Thanks for bringing Cardinal Burke's activities on behalf of the Association of Hebrew Catholics to our attention, IANS. That knowledge increases my respect and admiration for him.
Dear Jordanes. You are welcome.
However, if you know the facts about seders - their origins and what they entail - I am surprised you think that it is defensible action for a Cardinal to participate in them and to promote them.
Further, I suspect you do not know as much about the AHC as you imagine you do for if you did have the necessary information, I do not think you would defend it.
Try reading the information at this link
http://www.culturewars.com/2009/SSPX.htm
and feel free to post it at Rorate so you could inform your readers about this important matter.
Before I took down nearly all of my posts at my crummy blog, I had a post with videos of an interview with Cardinal Burke conducted by AHC.
Maybe it was just me, but I found them disturbing
Dear Jordanes. It would be helpful for you to identify the Catholic Tradition of celebrating a seder - which is a post-Crucifixion novelty created by the Jews (prolly 2nd or 3rd century) in opposition to the One True Church Jesus established and signifying denial that Jesus is the Messiah - a tradition that is not a result of the past one-half century of effete ecumenism.
The Catholic Church I was born into in the 1940s would not have touched this Judaising with a 10 mile long Crosier for, back then, Saint Thomas Aquinas was still considered the Universal Doctor (even though Cardinal Ratzinger thought he was impenetrable and when he was named the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he was the first such man in that august office in centuries who was not a Thomist) and they would have remembered this:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2103.htm#article4
Finally, I seriously doubt that you can even imagine Pope Saint Pius X participating in a seder or promoting a seder (Or any of the 260 Popes preceding V2) , but such is the discontinuity within our putative continuity that today's novelties are accepted with alacrity and defending vociferously.
C'et la vie...
"However, if you know the facts about seders - their origins and what they entail - I am surprised you think that it is defensible action for a Cardinal to participate in them and to promote them."
It is because I know the facts about seders (both Jewish ritual seders and the reenactments that Catholic parishes or schools occasionally put on) that I know there is no problem with a Cardinal to taking part in a purely educational dramatic exercise.
"Further, I suspect you do not know as much about the AHC as you imagine you do for if you did have the necessary information, I do not think you would defend it."
I suspect that I know more about the AHC than you do. You seem have the mistaken notion that they are a group of Judaising heretics. Such an accusation is unjust and unfounded.
"It would be helpful for you to identify the Catholic Tradition of celebrating a seder - which is a post-Crucifixion novelty created by the Jews (prolly 2nd or 3rd century) in opposition to the One True Church Jesus established and signifying denial that Jesus is the Messiah - a tradition that is not a result of the past one-half century of effete ecumenism."
What rot. The Jewish Passover seder obviously is derived from pre-Christian Jewish customs, and contains nothing in it that *specifically* signifies denial that Jesus is the Messiah (apart from the Jewish belief that the Messiah has not yet come)>
There is nothing in the contemporary practice of holding educational, non-ritual reenactments of a Passover seder, for the purpose of understanding better the Old Covenant roots of the Holy Eucharist, that is contrary to the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas. It's not necessarily any more of a spiritual danger than any other grade school dramatic exercise. These so-called "seders" are not religious acts of Orthodox Jewish ritual worship, and are not held to be Eucharistic or in any way salvific -- if they were, then yes, they would be sins against the First Commandment. But they're not.
"The Catholic Church I was born into in the 1940s would not have touched this Judaising with a 10 mile long Crosier for, back then."
It's not Judaising. (It does, however, tend to prevent or eliminate unjustified animosity toward Jewish people, which probably accounts for some of the opposition to them in anti-semitic traditionalist circles.)
It is interesting, however, that every year the Catholic Church celebrates "Pascha" (Passover) and Pentecost, and the traditional Roman Rite also marks the four seasons of the year with Ember Day fasts, the scripture lections of which recall the ancient Jewish liturgical calendar and Atonement fast that God gave the Jews through Moses and Aaron. The Catholic Church is not allergic to its Jewish roots, and gladly confesses with her Lord that salvation is of the Jews. None of that, however, is Judaising. How much less, then, a grade school class having a "seder"?
Dear Jordanes. I have to write that I find your dismissal of the AHC Fifth Column an act of willful blindness; that is, it is if you read the material about them at the provided link.
You are factually wrong about the seder meal as can easily be found at The Jewish Encyclopedia and at an increasing number of Jewish sites which are recommending abandoning it as a ceremony totally severed from OT Judaism.
I note you are unable to identify any pre 1960s tradition of Catholics participating in this judaising practice.
The Jewish Passover seder obviously is derived from pre-Christian Jewish customs, and contains nothing in it that *specifically* signifies denial that Jesus is the Messiah (apart from the Jewish belief that the Messiah has not yet come
Kudos if that was intended as a wry observation but I suspect it was not, was it?
The Catholic Church is not allergic to its Jewish roots, and gladly confesses with her Lord that salvation is of the Jews. None of that, however, is Judaising.
What I bolded is not only judaising, it is heresy.
Salvation if from JESUS and you sadly, have been co-opted by the racial supremacism of the Jews and which racial supremacism is a heresy (see Mit Brennender sorge)
It's not Judaising. (It does, however, tend to prevent or eliminate unjustified animosity toward Jewish people, which probably accounts for some of the opposition to them in anti-semitic traditionalist circles.)
So, that which has never been done before in the Catholic Church (you know, ecclesiastical tradition) the Seder Meal, is now not to be avoided as a novel and judiaisng practice, it is, rather, to be considered a positive Christian act which eliminates the putative animosity promoted by Catholic Ecclesiastical traditions.
Dear Jordanes. You have adopted the categories of the Zionists in believing that Catholic Ecclesiastical traditions were anti semitic; and that is just another way of saying that the Catholic Church WAS anti semitic prior to the bestest council ever and that IS the belief of the VAST number of Catholics - from Popes to Prelates to Priests to Pew-dwellers.
And yet,somehow, I am supposed to consider all of this as some sort of continuity.
I could post scores of quotes from the Early Church Fathers refuting this mephitic and scandalous heresy but I will simply encourage you to read what Saint John Chrysostom had to say about the Jews (his sermons about the Jews are now back on the web for some inexplicable reason) and Saint John Chrysostom's statue, as a Doctor of the East, is affixed to the Altar of the Chair of Saint Peter so he WAS, at one time, considered orthodox.
"I have to write that I find your dismissal of the AHC Fifth Column an act of willful blindness; that is, it is if you read the material about them at the provided link."
You are mistaken -- about several things, including your opinion that my rejection of noted anti-semite Robert Sungenis' attack on the AHC is an act of willful blindness. It is because I'm very familiar with Sungenis' unjust accusations that your referring me to them has not persuaded me that their are Judaising heretics. Sadly, Sungenis is not able to correctly identify Judaising -- and neither are you able to. I urge you to read AHC's responses to Sungenis' inaccurate and unjust attacks.
"You are factually wrong about the seder meal as can easily be found at The Jewish Encyclopedia and at an increasing number of Jewish sites which are recommending abandoning it as a ceremony totally severed from OT Judaism."
No, it is you who are factually wrong. Jews have been eating Passover seder meals since Moses first commanded them to do so at the Exodus. Their seders obviously have changed over the centuries and from place to place, but it inexcusable ignorance -- and anti-Jewish bigotry -- to claim that this custom was invented in the first or second century as a way to express their rejection of Jesus' Messiahship.
"I note you are unable to identify any pre 1960s tradition of Catholics participating in this judaising practice."
The practice is not Judaising, and in order to condemn it as harmful it is far from sufficient to show that these educational exercises are of post-Vatican II provenance.
I wrote (with your bolding emphasis added): "The Catholic Church is not allergic to its Jewish roots, and gladly confesses with her Lord that salvation is of the Jews. None of that, however, is Judaising."
You retorted, "What I bolded is not only judaising, it is heresy."
It's unclear why you think the words "None of that, however, is Judaising" is heretical or an act of Judaistic worship. You yourself probably couldn't say why you claimed it a participation in the Jewish religion to say the words, "None of that, however, is Judaising."
It IS clear, however, that your claim that it is Judaising and heretical to agree with Jesus that salvation is of the Jews is itself materially heretical or even apostate. To deny that salvation is of the Jews is to reject what Our Lord told the Samaritan woman, and to reject that Jesus, a Jew (nay, THE Jew), is the Messiah. In your antipathy for Jewish things, you have inadvertently denied that Jesus is the Savior of the world.
"Salvation is from JESUS"
Yes, and Jesus is a Jew, and Our Lady is a Jew, and Good St. Joseph is a Jew, and the apostles are Jews. Even more, St. Paul says that Gentiles can only be saved by being grafted into the Israelite olive plant (while unbelieving Jews can only be saved by being grafted back into their own olive plant).
"and you sadly, have been co-opted by the racial supremacism of the Jews and which racial supremacism is a heresy (see Mit Brennender sorge)"
You haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about, and you've twisted Pius XI's encyclical. Mit Brennender Sorge doesn't just reject racism when Jews practice it, but was written specifically to reproach a particularly virulent strain of Gentile racism and anti-semitism.
"So, that which has never been done before in the Catholic Church (you know, ecclesiastical tradition) the Seder Meal, is now not to be avoided as a novel and judiaisng practice, it is, rather, to be considered a positive Christian act which eliminates the putative animosity promoted by Catholic Ecclesiastical traditions."
Don't be ridiculous. These "seder meals" aren't even real seders, nor are they acts of worship (any more than other meals or banquets that Catholics may eat), so they can't be considered to be distinctively Christian acts. They aren't even paraliturgical or sacramental, or even presented as such.
As for the objection that Catholics never used to hold mock seder meals before, well, a thousand years ago no one prayed the Rosary either. That IS a sacramental, paraliturgical act, yet its novelty did not mean our medieval ancestors should not have taken up that devotion. How much less force does your objection have when considering grade school-type dramatic exercises in a religion or catechetical class?
If you don't want to participate in a mock seder, then don't. But you are presumptuous to condemn others as Judaising heretics for doing so.
"You have adopted the categories of the Zionists in believing that Catholic Ecclesiastical traditions were anti semitic"
Rubbish. I do not believe, and have never claimed, that Catholic ecclesiastical traditions were anti-semitic. The regrettable anti-semitism of Catholics in the past must be deplored and abandoned, but the Church's traditions are not racist against the Jews.
"I could post scores of quotes from the Early Church Fathers refuting this mephitic and scandalous heresy but I will simply encourage you to read what Saint John Chrysostom had to say about the Jews (his sermons about the Jews are now back on the web for some inexplicable reason) and Saint John Chrysostom's statue, as a Doctor of the East, is affixed to the Altar of the Chair of Saint Peter so he WAS, at one time, considered orthodox."
St. John IS orthodox. He was, however, a fallible human and, like all men, was culturally conditioned. I've read his homilies against the Jews before. Though they are founded in orthodox doctrine, their mode of expression is, shall we say, not always charitable and often extreme. St. John, gifted orator that he was, knew how to use rhetoric, and could be sharp tongued also -- but the Church rightly recommends that we avoid such rhetorical flourishes as counterproductive. His sanctity and his status as Doctor of the Church is not an endorsement of every single thing he said nor of the manner in which he said it.
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