Bishop Wuerl Allows Rabbi to Teach Catholic Students in Pittsburgh

(www.RemnantNewspaper.com)  According to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Oct. 17, 2005), Catholic high-school students “are being exposed to the complicated story of Judeo-Christian relations through a program called the Catholic-Jewish Education Enhancement Program (C-JEEP).” The program was founded in 1993 by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), a New York-based organization which promotes “mutual cooperation and respect among people of all faiths.” It is carried out in cooperation with local archdioceses in cities across the nation, including Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The program started in Pittsburgh when Rabbi Alvin Berkun and Bishop Donald W. Wuerl joined to assign one rabbi to each Catholic high school to lecture several times a year in religion classes.

Rabbi Berkun teaches freshmen and sophomores at Central Catholic about once a month. According to Tim Grant of the Post-Gazette, “the whole idea behind Rabbi Berkun's recent lecture at Central Catholic High School was to help ease the lingering effects of historical tensions between Catholics and Jews and to recognize the special duty the Catholic Church has to teach its young about the awful legacy of Jews being persecuted by Catholics.”

During a recent class, two of the boys raised their hands when Rabbi Berkun asked how many of them thought Jews and Catholics had been friendly toward each other in the past 2,000 years. "You guys are wrong," he told them. Berkun, who says that he has waited his “entire rabbinic life to be in a position to teach non-Jewish young people about the Jewish faith," is afraid that the ideas expressed in the Vatican II document, Nostra Aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions) have not trickled down “to Catholics in the pews and to the youth of the church.”

Bishop Wuerl has said that C-JEEP was in Pittsburgh to stay. "What I hope will happen with our efforts is to provide a perspective in which our young Catholic people will see the relationship they have with the wider community, and especially the Jewish community, because of our ancient historic religious roots," he said. The Diocese of Pittsburgh school system, which has 12 high schools, is the only one in the country which has adopted the program in all of its high schools.

Comment: There was a time when bishops safeguarded Catholic education, making the Catholic classroom a safe environment whose ultimate purpose was the handing down of the Catholic Faith and Catholic principals to new generations. But Bishop Wuerl and his cronies have opened the classroom door to wolves whose goal is anything but the worship of Jesus Christ. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) claims as one of its missions the promotion of “democratic and pluralistic societies that respect the dignity of all peoples.”

Remember a little film called The Passion of The Christ? During the mass hysteria that gripped the nation prior to the film’s release, Rabbi James Rudin, the AJC's senior interreligious adviser, dared to describe the Holy Gospels as “radioactive material.” On June 25, 2003, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported Rudin’s assertion that “it takes enormous sensitivity to strip” the Gospels “of anti-Semitic teachings.” To the best of my knowledge, neither Rudin nor the American Jewish Committee has ever apologized for this gross insult to our sacred texts.

And Bishop Donald Wuerl has adopted the American Jewish Committee agenda for the Catholic schools of Pittsburgh? "I learned a lot about Judaism," said Jon Coulter, a Central Catholic freshman. "I don't have as broad a view as I thought I did.” Henry Pwono, a freshman, said the rabbi's visit to Central Catholic shattered many of the misinformed ideas he had about rabbis and Jewish people. "I learned how much the Jewish and Christian faiths have in common and the history they share," Henry said. "I didn't know they both originated from Abraham.”

If a Catholic high-school student has no inkling of the importance of Abraham in salvation history, then what he needs is a course in Scripture, not yet another reminder of the “awful legacy” of his Catholic Faith. I mean, it doesn’t get more basic than Abraham, does it? Instead, a Catholic bishop opens the door of his schools to men and women who deny Jesus Christ and despise the Gospels as hateful fairy-tales.

One day, Bishop Wuerl will have to answer to Jesus Christ for his stewardship. And Our Lord has already made his thoughts on the matter known in no uncertain terms: “But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.”

ADL Celebrates 40^th Anniversary of “Nostra Aetate”

To celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the Vatican II document, Nostra Aetate, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith (ADL) has created “a new online guide that explains the historic changes in Church theology and provides educational resources in order to teach them.” The guide, titled, Nostra Aetate: Transforming Catholic-Jewish Relations, consists of “an impressive series of essays and reflections analyzing the history of this groundbreaking event and its profound impact on Catholic-Jewish relations,” featuring articles from “some of the world's leading Catholic and Jewish interfaith experts on the meaning and future of Nostra Aetate.” These experts are:

- Dr. Eugene J. Fisher, Associate Director of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

- Rabbi Leon Klenicki, ADL Interfaith Affairs Director Emeritus.

- Philip A. Cunningham, Executive Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College.

- Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, ADL Director of Interfaith Affairs.

The ADL praises Nostrae Aetate for its “historic changes to church policies and theology,” claiming that the document “revolutionized the Catholic Church's approach to Jews and Judaism after nearly 2000 years of pain and sorrow.” Also lauded is the document’s reaffirmation of “the eternal covenant between God and the People of Israel,” its dismissal of “church interest in trying to baptize Jews,” and its call for the Catholic Church “to dialogue with other world religions.”

According to the ADL, Nostra Aetate: Transforming Catholic-Jewish Relations is intended “to frame a healthy discussion on assessing our progress and planning for the future, as well to serve as “a guide on how to teach about Nostra Aetate in the schools and pews.”

"Nostra Aetate demonstrates that the Church can look at its teachings and behaviors towards Jews and Judaism, question them, challenge them and change them, said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, and Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor, ADL Director of Interfaith Affairs.” The past forty years must be understood as our introduction to each other's community.  We have learned to become comfortable with one another.  We have shared the things that we have in common and demonstrated positive changes are possible if there are willing partners to enter into a dialogue."

Comment: One glance at the names of the four “leading Catholic and Jewish interfaith experts” involved in the Nostra Aetate: Transforming Catholic-Jewish Relations guide tells us all we need to know about what to expect: namely, more of the same.

Dr. Eugene Fisher was one of the two men responsible for the formation of the infamous “Ad Hoc Scholar’s Committee,” the Gospel-trashing gang who jumped headfirst into the assault against Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, sparing no excuse to condemn the Church, the Gospels and ordinary Catholics whenever possible.  In his contribution to the ADL guide, an essay entitled, A Continuing Challenge, Dr. Fisher accuses the Evangelists of deliberately misrepresenting the Pharisees in an effort to trick readers into believing that the Pharisees rejected Jesus Christ! He likewise defends the post-conciliar Church’s refusal to preach the Gospel to the Jews on the grounds that “Catholic insight into the nature of Israel's covenanting with God is still emerging.” Too bad that’s not what Jesus Christ taught regarding the necessity for conversion.

Dr. Philip A. Cunningham was also one of the “Ad Hoc Scholars.” In the past, he has participated in a panel discussion with the author of a book which “graphically shows how the Catholic Church helped make the Holocaust possible,” and has participated in an online discussion posted by The Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies, in which he stated that Jesus Christ is “one particular Jew .... a specific son of the Covenant,” but the Church only “perceives [Him] as the Crucified and Raised One living in its midst.” He gave the surety and conviction to Christ’s Jewish identity, while His Divinity is merely a “perception” on the part of Christians. His contribution to the ADL guide is titled The Beginning of the Beginning, in which a gushing eulogy of Nostra Aetate is interspersed with the requisite teary-eyed hand-wringing over “the perennial Christian ‘teaching of contempt’ that had persisted for over 1500 years.”

Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor will forever be remembered with disdain among those who followed the Passion controversy as the individual who, along with ADL honcho Abe Foxman, disguised himself as a Protestant minister from the fictitious Brooklyn “Church of Truth,” in order to sneak into an advance screening of the film at a conference in Orlando, Florida! His contribution to the ADL guide is titled Unresolved Issues and Suggested Solutions. Bretton-Granatoor suggests that “the Christian community must learn to approach the Hebrew Bible [i.e., Old Testament] without the typography common in Christian hermeneutics.”  Translation: “true dialogue” cannot occur as long as Catholics see the Old and New Testaments as a unified history of salvation, in which Jesus Christ is present from page one of Genesis to the last word of St. John’s Apocalypse. There will be no “true dialogue” until we deny the foreshadowings of Jesus, Mary, the Church and the Sacraments which abound in the Old Testament. All this comes after Bretton-Granatoor’s halfhearted admonition to his fellow Jews to “deal with the validity of the Christian experience.” Translation: humor those nuts who believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

Rabbi Leon Klenicki weighed in with this Gospel-bashing gem during the Passion hysteria: "There is a tendency in the Catholic Church and many Christian denominations to try to explain the text to avoid anti-Semitism, but the danger is there all the time — in the text itself." His contribution to the ADL guide is titled, Nostra Aetate: A Jewish View "From Disputation to Dialogue." Klenicki refers to dialogue as “a reckoning and a reflection.” Of course, “reflection” here means that Jews must forever dwell upon the brutality of those barbaric Catholics, while wallowing in “two thousand years of memories, memories from the times of the New Testament experience, medieval disputations, the Inquisition, and present-day Christian ideological criticisms of Zionism and Israel.” Yes, for true dialogue to take place, Catholics must not even be allowed to criticize Israel! Oh, yes, Jews also “need to overcome the castrating effects of images transmitted by generations, and the concrete experiences of Christian triumphalism associated with political regimes past and present.” Klenicki says that “dialogue is both a process of inner cleansing and a search for truth.” As long as that “truth” is NOT Jesus Christ, but a neurotic celebration [“castrating effects”?] of victimhood, all will be well.

A note to the ADL bigwigs: The purpose of papal or conciliar writings is to teach and elucidate the Catholic Faith. Such documents are not empowered to “change Church theology,” no matter who promulgates them. If you are truly so concerned with the study of official Catholic documents, get yourselves a copy of Pope Pius XI’s magnificent encyclical, Quas Primas: On the Feast of Christ the King. You might learn something useful.

Christ Demoted in Netherlands & Belgium

The Brussels Journal reports (Oct. 14, 2005) that the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union), the official multinational organism which establishes guidelines for the Dutch language as it is used in the Netherlands, Belgian Flanders and Surinam, has decreed that the surname of Jesus Christ should be written without a capital letter as from August, 2006 for those using the Dutch language. Though today Dutch-speakers in the Netherlands, Belgium and Surinam write "Christus", next year they will have to change their habits and write "christus." The change is part of a new spelling norm, to be published in a new edition of the so-called "Green Booklet." Previous spelling reforms date from 1946 and 1996.

The use of the small ‘c’ for the spelling of Christ is not the only novelty to be introduced by the Dutch Language Union. They stipulate that the word for Jew will be written without a capital ("jood") when designating the member of a religion, and with a capital ("Jood") when designating the member of a people, since not all jews are Jews, but not all Jews are jews, either.

Apart from "Christus", terms like "Renaissance" and "Middle Ages" will also lose their capitals. But other words will acquire capitals. An Aztec is now an “azteek” in Dutch, but he will become an “Azteek” next year, just as an “eskimo” will become an “Eskimo.”

Many people in the Netherlands and Belgium are fed up with this second modification to the spelling in less than 10 years. According to some the changes are only intended to increase the sale of school books (which will all have to be reprinted) and dictionaries in what is normally a limited market.

Comment: The phrase “diabolical disorientation” becomes more and more apt as the years roll on. The reactions of the Dutch “blogging” public are as interesting as the above story. Apparently, a linguist appeared on Dutch television and said that the word “christus” (with a small ‘c’) would refer only to a statue of Jesus, while “Christus” would be capitalized when referring to the historical Person.  However, the following example of the new spelling rule was given in the newspaper, Het Nieuwsblad:

Today we are writing: "In the Middle Ages, Christ paid his horseflower (dandelion) with 50 eurobills." Next year we will write: "In the middle ages, christ paid his horseflower with 50 eurobills."

This example contradicts the linguist from Dutch television. The word “Christ,” even minus the name “Jesus,” still, and will always, refer to the historical Jesus Christ.

There is only one question here: why? If the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union) merely wants to sell new textbooks, there are a thousand bits of vocabulary and grammar they can monkey with in order to justify the process. Why stop capitalizing “Christ” and start capitalizing “Aztec?” If the term “Middle Ages” will not be capitalized, what about the term, “Cold War?”

With the world on the brink of devastation from unprecedented natural disasters and international strife, why twist people’s heads around with senseless, ridiculous changes in spelling? That’s like telling someone in a burning house to change his socks. But – when it comes to any manner of denigrating Jesus Christ or the Catholic Faith, nothing is too great or small, too pompous or niggling. Such are the workings of the “diabolical disorientation.”

One Dutch internet blogger reported that the Dutch linguist mentioned above stated that the name “Mohammed” will never be written with a small-case ‘m’ because there are no statues of Mohammed and, since they don't exist, there will be never a need to write them in small characters. Thus, “Mohammed” will be always be spelled with a capital letter. This is the bizarre anti-reasoning that would tamper with – of all things – the spelling of the name of Jesus Christ.

Since the Dutch Language Union claims to work “on linguistic issues, language policy, education within the Dutch language area and, at university level, education worldwide, literature and language-related cultural issues,” the inevitable outcome, of course, will be that, regardless of what the populace may feel about it, school teachers of all levels will be required to penalize students who insist on the proper and respectful spelling of “Christ,” in accord with the words of St. Paul to the Philippians:

Rather, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

Because of this, God greatly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Ancient Roman Town Uncovered Near Bologna

The Italian news agency, ANSA, reports (Oct. 18, 2005) that “the once bustling Roman town of Claterna is slowly re-emerging from the soil 15 centuries after it was abandoned and then vanished beneath farmland.”

While haphazard excavations in the past have uncovered mosaics and pottery shards at the site, a methodical, long-term research project is now getting under way for the first time, with funding from regional and provincial authorities, which have acquired the site. To date, digs have uncovered small portions of the town, revealing the street layout and mosaic paving from homes. Archaeologists have also found pottery, coins, metalwork and decorated bone, as well as glass and metalworking sites, and a cluster of buildings that were probably used as the town's mansio on the eastern edge of the city. Mansios were relay or post stations along a fixed route, providing fresh riders and horses for the delivery of mail on horseback.

An Etruscan-Celtic settlement stood in the area prior to the arrival of the Romans, who founded Bononia (Bologna) in 189 B.C. before spreading out to the surrounding area. The town of Claterna took its name from the river that still runs in the area today, the Quaderna, a clue that helped archaeologists identify the Roman ruins. In fact, while Claterna's precise location was a mystery, historians had long known of its existence from various documents and maps. A careful study of local place names, combined with the large number of Roman finds being unearthed by farmers, led experts to place Claterna between Bologna and Imola.

The town's prominence in ancient times was partly due to its location, at a crossroads between the ancient Roman highway of Via Aemelia, now the Via Emilia, and an important route across the Apennines, which archaeologists believe was probably the Via Flaminia Minor. Both roads, constructed as consular routes in 187 B.C., were major highways in Roman times, ensuring Claterna a constant flow of visitors, who brought with them trade, business and cash. The town thrived and,  during its heyday in the first centuries A.D., boasted several patrician complexes, complete with a variety of decorated buildings and ample space for food production and storage, in addition to various medium and smaller properties scattered among the surrounding hills, and more  modest dwellings with floors of beaten earth and facades of wood and clay. The roads leading out of the town were flanked by Claterna's necropolis, including important funerary monuments, in addition to manufacturing complexes and services centers.

Claterna eventually fell foul of barbarian incursions from the north. Following a gradual decline, it was eventually abandoned for good at the start of the 6th century A.D.