Hello Falecius,
My understanding is that the Church, while never espousing biological antisemitic views, still did not support the full integration of Jews into European political communities based upon national principles.
I would agree, and I don't see why that's reprehensible or in contradiction to its own teachings.
The Church in those days still held up the confessional (Catholic) state as the ideal to which its church-state understanding referred. (For that matter, Dignitatis Humanae never renounced that as a valid political ordering in Church teaching.) But it's one thing to say that Jews might not be desired as full members of the body politic, and another to say that they should be subject to unjust discrimination and abuse, or without basic juridical rights deriving from their dignity as men.
That distinction is, to be sure, out of favor in our enlightened times, at least outside the Middle East, where far more ruthless discrimination against Jews is practiced. But on its own terms, it made sense, and by the standards of the day, was even relatively enlightened.
It endorsed anti-judaism; it opposed the jews on religious grounds, not racial ones. It was deeply different in principle, but the result was that, on many respects, the attitude of the Vatican tolerated a vast grey zone - a grey zone where nasty things had room to happen.
Regrettably, I can't really disagree with that.
The scope and scale of those nasty things might be exaggerated today - but they did happen. Anti-Semitism was simply a common fact of life in much of the West until the last couple generations, in both Catholic and Protestant societies.
My understanding is that the Church, while never espousing biological antisemitic views, still did not support the full integration of Jews into European political communities based upon national principles.
I would agree, and I don't see why that's reprehensible or in contradiction to its own teachings.
The Church in those days still held up the confessional (Catholic) state as the ideal to which its church-state understanding referred. (For that matter, Dignitatis Humanae never renounced that as a valid political ordering in Church teaching.) But it's one thing to say that Jews might not be desired as full members of the body politic, and another to say that they should be subject to unjust discrimination and abuse, or without basic juridical rights deriving from their dignity as men.
That distinction is, to be sure, out of favor in our enlightened times, at least outside the Middle East, where far more ruthless discrimination against Jews is practiced. But on its own terms, it made sense, and by the standards of the day, was even relatively enlightened.
It endorsed anti-judaism; it opposed the jews on religious grounds, not racial ones. It was deeply different in principle, but the result was that, on many respects, the attitude of the Vatican tolerated a vast grey zone - a grey zone where nasty things had room to happen.
Regrettably, I can't really disagree with that.
The scope and scale of those nasty things might be exaggerated today - but they did happen. Anti-Semitism was simply a common fact of life in much of the West until the last couple generations, in both Catholic and Protestant societies.