-Caveat Lector-
~~for educational purposes only~~
[Title 17 U.S.C. section 107]
Christ the Culprit?
by Joseph Sobran
Time magazine has just hailed an intellectual breakthrough:
"A new book claims that Christianity, not just bad Christians,
is to blame for persecution of the Jews."
What an original idea! This must be only the fortieth book
to come up with it. The book is Constantine's Sword: The
Church and the Jews, by James Carroll (Houghton Mifflin).
Carroll is one of those liberal ex-priests who insist that
they are staunch Catholics while defaming their Church at
every turn.
According to Time's reviewer, Carroll, whose book is "brave"
and "fascinating" (though it merely repeats a thesis that has
become safe and commonplace), blames anti-Semitism and the
Holocaust on the popes, the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades,
the medieval Church, St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, the
Church fathers, and even the authors of the Gospels.
Has he left anyone out?
Well, yes. Why not blame Jesus Christ? He certainly had
quarrels with the Jews and made some harsh and provocative
remarks about them. Why let Christ off the hook? If the
Church has so consistently opposed the Jews for two millennia,
might not its Founder have had some influence in the matter?
Are we really supposed to believe that, once he had left this
earth, Christianity immediately adopted a doctrine totally
alien to him? If the Church is so thoroughly anti-Semitic,
why not trace its anti-Semitism to Christ himself?
Ah, but that might be a little more "brave" than Carroll
deems prudent. It might cut him off from the Faith to which
he professes allegiance. Christ is a pretty imposing figure
even now. Safer to blame the Church, the popes, even the
Apostles, than the Founder himself. One nubile movie star,
blaming the Catholic Church in a recent interview for
inhibiting her sex life, never fingered Christ as the
culprit as if Catholic doctrines didn't reflect Christ's
own stern teachings on lust, but were superimposed by a
bunch of old celibate males.
You'll notice that whenever people dislike Christianity,
they blame whatever they dislike about it on everyone but
Jesus. They'd have us believe that they have no quarrel
with Christ's "authentic" teachings, with which they are
in total agreement, but reject only those alien accretions
that started collecting, as they claim, the moment Christ
departed.
The so-called Jesus Seminar, a group of liberal theologians,
has even decided to tell us which Gospel sayings Jesus
"really" spoke and the "authentic" ones always turn
out to be those that are acceptable to modern liberalism.
It's easy to see why. If you want to make Jesus Christ a
modern liberal, you have to edit the Gospels pretty heavily.
Garry Wills does something similar in his recent book,
Papal Sin, which purports to be a critique of the modern
papacy but winds up rejecting some ancient and basic
Catholic doctrines. Of course Wills never admits that he
rejects any of Christ's own teachings.
Just as those who cant about "anti-Semitism" stop short
of indicting Christ, those who cant about "racism" present
a heavily expurgated version of Abraham Lincoln, and for
similar reasons. If even Lincoln was a "racist," the word
loses its sting. He has to be preserved as the great icon
of "racial justice," the "color-blind society," "civil
rights," and all that. So we rarely hear about Lincoln's
actual views on race.
Wills has written a book on Lincoln too: Lincoln at
Gettysburg, which won a Pulitzer Prize, portrays the
familiar Great Emancipator of liberal mythology with
hardly a blemish. The book disingenuously avoids all
mention of Lincoln 's devotion to the cause of removing
"free colored persons" from the United States, his denial
that blacks should be American citizens, or his proposal
of a constitutional amendment to authorize their deportation
("with their consent," it should be noted) to other
countries. Professor Wills, meet Parson Weems.
For the real Lincoln, the United States was, and should
ideally be, a white nation, and by "the American people"
he meant the white people. As one wag quipped: "Mighty
white of you, Abe!"
Liberals know they can't afford to make full frontal
assaults on such venerable figures as Christ and Lincoln.
So they continue to feed the public false images and
censored versions of them. You have to wonder how long
liberalism could survive without lies.
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