Relapsed Catholic notes that the ADL seems to be 2004's largest spreader of the meme that jews killed Jesus.
Now I've actually met Catholics who believe in the blood libel, that jews born today are guilty. They were, to a person, ignorant of both recent Catholic thought on the subject and a good deal of ancient thought among the first Church fathers. Such people are usually bigots first and Catholics second but argument from authority actually works in case the order is reversed. For those who want more detail, you can find a great deal at the Vatican website.
One thing you would find there is the following passage:
At the dawn of Christianity, after the crucifixion of Jesus, there arose disputes between the early Church and the Jewish leaders and people who, in their devotion to the Law, on occasion violently opposed the preachers of the Gospel and the first Christians. In the pagan Roman Empire, Jews were legally protected by the privileges granted by the Emperor and the authorities at first made no distinction between Jewish and Christian communities. Soon however, Christians incurred the persecution of the State. Later, when the Emperors themselves converted to Christianity, they at first continued to guarantee Jewish privileges. But Christian mobs who attacked pagan temples sometimes did the same to synagogues, not without being influenced by certain interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish people as a whole. "In the Christian world—I do not say on the part of the Church as such—erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish people and their alleged culpability have circulated for too long, engendering feelings of hostility towards this people". Such interpretations of the New Testament have been totally and definitively rejected by the Second Vatican Council.
Unfortunately, most of the time that you try such persuasion, it doesn't work because for that person their religion is just a convenient cover. Whatever they truly believe in, it generally isn't christian.
Posted by TMLutas at January 24, 2004 08:23 PM