This could be a long story but I will try to make it brief. In our adult education class today, the pastor mentioned the church’s ‘long history of anti-semitism.’ He condemned the Church for forcing Jews to live in ghettoes and also the Good Friday prayer for the line about ‘perfidious jews.’ I have studied Church history (on my own) and my impression was that he was making a sweeping generalization and was actually wrong on a couple of facts.

My points were that a) ‘ghetto’ simply means that people of a similar culture or ethnic group were living in a given area (voluntarily or involuntarily) and that the word has acquired excess meaning over the years (specifically an association with poverty), b) The actions of SOME of the Holy Fathers, as far as I know, were to protect Jews from attack by citizens and to keep the two faiths from intermingling, and c) I believe that ‘perfidious jews’ in the Latin Good Friday prayer was supposed to mean ‘faithless’ and not ‘treacherous’ or ‘evil.’ Still not very nice but the true and original intent, I think, is important.

I told Father that I believed that the record of the Church was probably mixed and that I didn’t believe it was ever a Church policy to persecute Jews. Father believed that I was engaging in the kind of defense that someone would have made of slavery or Jim Crow laws and said so. I have felt very chastened all day.

I did my own looking around on various web sites and you can find all range of commentary on the subject of Church anti-semitism. You can find some Papal Bulls that read as if they are anti-semitic. The Catholic Encyclopaedia tends to give a moderate anaysis (the Jews were treated better in the Papal States than anywhere else in Europe). If you read some pages, you are given the idea that some of the biggest anti-Semites have even been canonized!

What is a Catholic to think about this? … I have hated to be rebuked by any priest ever since I was an alter boy. Today was the first time in a long time.

I appreciate it if you can give me an answer or direct me to an authoritative source. I seek a scholarly assessment of this issue. I consider the asessment I received today to have been primarily emotional.