Giorgio Israel, an Italian Jewish commentator (and Math professor at the University of Rome - La Sapienza), writes today in Il Foglio about the violent attacks of the Italian rabbinate against Pope Benedict XVI. Liberal Judaism acts together with the leaders of the "Progressive" Italian Church (led by the luminaries of the Archdiocese of Milan) to undermine the reputation of Pope Benedict XVI. What matters to them (and Liberal Jews do not even mind being used by the powerful Milanese Catholics for this) is to ridicule the Pope as a "neocon" and as a spent force.
Let us pray for our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI: that he may not be afraid of the wolves, from Milan or elsewhere.
Excerpts:
Ambrosian [Milanese] Catholicism and left wing Judaism march together to better attack Ratzingerismby Giorgio IsraelIt is significant that the violent attack in which Chief-Rabbi of Venice Richetti accused Benedict XVI of having demolished 50 years of Jewish-Christian dialogue would have appeared in the monthly of the Jesuits, Popoli.On the other hand, it is enough to stick to facts, without any recourse to the mediocre practice of hindsight, to realize that in this diatribe there are motives which have little to do with the merits [of the debate]. It should be noticed that none of the arguments proposed in opposition to the harsh attacks of the Italian rabbinate have ever been taken into consideration.On the contrary, after the Chief-Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, praised the affirmation of the Pope according to whom, in a strict sense, interreligious dialogue is impossible - because, Di Segni says, it is better to avoid the theological dialogue - behold that Richetti then indicates it, on the other hand, as an evidence that there is no wish to dialogue!The fact is that, while Di Segni, being cautious and wary, follows a line of rationality -"Dialogue is a process which should go on despite the difficulties. Pope Benedict XVI keeps rendering an original and decisive contribution, even though it is not always possible to share his positions"- there are those who have decided that it is necessary to battle the Pope at all costs, even at the cost of rekindling anti-Jewish sentiments which were never extinguished.Here we are in the presence of an internal struggle within the Catholic world in which a part of the Italian Jewish world is playing the role of the 7th Cavalry Regiment....Afterwards, there were the polemics related to the Good Friday prayer which have led to the current suspension of the dialogue, decreed also in the words of a prohibition of [members of] the Community of meeting ecclesiastics.Guido Guastalla and I dissented from such a suspension in a letter to Corriere della Sera (26 November 2008), with mild tone and with no shadow of polemics.In response, we received a violent answer signed by Rabbi Laras (President of the Italian Rabbis), by the President of the Union of Young Jews, and (a significant fact), not by the President, but by the former President of the Union of Jewish Communities, in the person of Amos Luzzatto. In this letter - in which it was urged [of us] not to bother with the dialogue, of exclusive competence of the rabbis (only "interlocutors" and "officials responsible for the religious representation") - the "capital" of the Jewish-Christian dialogue was indicated as Milan and in the persons of Cardinals Martini and Tettamanzi, on one side, and Laras and others [on the Jewish side]; and it was noticed that we were missing from this list... [sic]In every circumstance, we always returned there, to Milan, around the Ambrosian Catholicism and a certain Leftist Judaism....It is the ideological identity between a certain Catholicism of the Ambrosian [Milanese] style - the same [Catholicism] which watches the Islamic marches passively - and a Leftist Judaism, indifferent to being called a "degraded religious tradition" [Rorate note: words used by Martini]: what matters is to attack together the common enemy, the hated Ratzingerian neoconservatism... [sic]
