As Popapalooza 2005 draws to a finish....

...we have some closing thoughts:

Though Ratzi (rhymes with Nazi) was a card-carrying (but compulsory) member of the kraut boy scouts Hitler Youth and the Luftwaffe - at a time when conscientious German objectors went to Dachau instead - the only overt anti-Semitism he's demonstrated since deserting the German air force is his theology. Yes, his theology.

Some highlights, of the Popenfuhrer's teachings: (1) Judaism, like all non-Catholic religions is "deficient." (2) Jesus is the one and only way to heaven; and therefore (3) Jews should accept him as the messiah and savior of the world.

In it's pathetic, historicaly obtuse, defense of the new pope's theology, the Jerusalem Post mentioned some of this, but shrugged its shoulders. "That's what it means to be Catholic," they seemed to say. Big deal.

What the Post fails to understand is that an affirmation of the Christian mission to the Jews is a delegitimation of Jewish belief. The new Pope's documented reluctance to let the Jews be Jews is a slippery slope towards the chauvinistic and triumphalist views that led the church, when it had the power to do so, to lead crusades and impose inquisitions.

Yes, Jerusalem Post, that is what it means to be Catholic. And if you have a sense of Jewish history and Jewish honor it is a very big deal.

We must not forget the cruel and insulting history, and we must not think for a moment that those absolutists in their blood-stained, blood-colored robes, who are forever praised by the faithful for the conservative fidelity to the absolute truth of their traditons, have renounced the supercessionist teachings that made the horrors possible.

Sof davar hakol nishma et ho'elokim yerah v'et mitzvotav shmor kee zeh kol ha'adom

Ad kaan, Popapalooza 2005.