Wednesday, March 9, 2011

"It is good that Mr Netanyahu should praise the Pope’s book: but it contains nothing new about the Jews"

Dr. William Oddie comments in the Catholic Herald:

Last week, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, thanked Pope Benedict for making it clear – in his new book, Jesus of Nazareth part II – that there is no basis in Scripture for the accusation that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus’s death. “I commend you for rejecting in your new book the false claim that was used as a basis for the hatred of Jews for hundreds of years,” Mr Netanyahu wrote to the Pope; he added that he hoped that “the clarity and bravery” shown by Benedict XVI would strengthen relations between Jews and Christians worldwide and promote peace in the next generations.

This reaction is certainly to be welcomed, and I certainly hope that this will be one outcome. I have to say, all the same, that I don’t quite see that the pope needed any particular bravery to assert what Catholics have taken for granted for generations.

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