Finally, Exculpation
It was worth waiting two thousand years-plus to finally hear those words of forgiveness. This is an inheritance that Jews did not really want. But history is history and divine forgiveness is not to be slighted. We had the example of Eve and of Pandora and all the world's ills flow from those indiscretions. Surely our ancestors should have known better than to leave us such a dreadful inheritance?All those years of carrying that dreadful burden of guilt. That we, the Jews of the world, past, present and future, are responsible for the untimely and ghastly death of one of our own. Who just happened to become, post-mortem, a world figure of great renown. Who might imagine it? We have had other great Jews: Maimonides, Spinoza, Einstein, Kant, to name a scant handful, who have burnished the Jewish tradition.
But the living son of the Almighty God? Now that's special. The anointed of the All-Powerful. And we the sorry living legacy of the death of God's only begotten and surely beloved son. Sacrificed to demonstrate to the world that God Himself is not above taking the life of one so loved. To redeem unworthy humankind.
And so it was that the Jew became the symbol of the eternal wanderer. No one would have him, no country, no land, no government, no monarch, no people wanted to have Jews about, defiling the atmosphere with the stench of deicide. The inheritor of Christ's crown, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, has taken a long time to forgive the unforgiveable.
They see no virtue in any longer casting blame upon the tribe of Judea. The Hebrews are to be given full exculpation - for they knew not what they did. And Christ himself appealed for their mercy, saying "forgive them Father, for they know not what they do". And if God can find it in his immense heart to forgive his Chosen, why not his emissary here on Earth?
And so, finally, we have Pope Benedict XVI graciously exonerating the Jewish people for their dreadful act of murder. The crucifixion of Christ was a plot of Jewish priests and the elite leaders of the now-extant Jewish community, urging a reluctant Pontius Pilate, who did not mind one whit crucifying petty robbers, to do the same with an itinerant rabbi.
The rational in the scalpel-edged mind of this great intellectual pope was reason itself. "How could the entire Jewish people have been present at this moment to call for the death of Jesus?" wrote the pope in his wonderful expose of Churchly misunderstanding, Jesus of Nazareth. "The true accusers were those circulating in the temple at the time."
Ahah! Their plot truly sickened. And made of Jews global pariahs unto eternity. Shame on those unprincipled jackals.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Human Relations, Religion
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