https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=18&v=tAng1TUtgxE
This post is a follow up from my last post. Read it to get up to speed on my refutation of Dr. Brown’s critique of my post.
The first thing that I want to tackle in this post is Kristallnacht. Luther’s birthday was the day of Kristallnacht! Luther must have influenced the Nazis, right? First of all, Kristallnacht is not the holocaust. It was a crime against the Jews of Germany and a few dozen died but it wasn’t the holocaust. The holocaust was the acts of the Einsatzgruppen and the extermination camps in far east Poland. Also, Luther’s birthday had nothing to do with it. The fact that Kristallnacht was on the 9th and the 10th of November was a coincidence. Kristallnacht was a reaction to the shooting of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Jewish man named Herschel Grynszpan. This happened on November 7, 1938. Ernst vom Rath died on two days later on November 9. Obviously the Nazi’s wanted to take quick revenge on the Jewish community the night that he died. It had absolutely nothing to do with Luther’s birthday. Also, the fact that a Lutheran Bishop was pleased with this supposed connection didn’t orchestrate the holocaust which happened years later.
At around the 22:00 minute mark, Dr. Brown talks about Jews in Germany who were burned at the stake for the blood libel. He’s a bit vague here again. He doesn’t give a specific date. Regardless, this was not a Church persecution. I wish all Jews knew the true history of the blood libel charge. It had nothing to do with the Church. While it was invented by a Monk from England named Thomas of Monmouth in the 12th Century, he was only a monk. Thomas of Monmouth was not a Bishop, Saint, or Pope. While his writings did inspire mob violence against the Jews in subsequent centuries, the Catholic Church was always against these acts and condemned them to ensure the protection of the Jews.
Multiple Popes condemned this stupid charge against the Jews. In 1247, Pope Innocent IV issued the bull Lacrimabilem Judaeorum which condemned the perectution of Jews based on this lie. In 1272, Pope Gregory X issued a condemnation of the blood libel. He said the following:
And most falsely do these Christians claim that the Jews have secretly and furtively carried away these children and killed them, and that the Jews offer sacrifices from the heart and the blood of these children, since their law in this matter precisely and expressly forbids Jews to sacrifice, eat, or drink the blood, or to eat the flesh of animals having claws. This has been demonstrated many times at our court by Jews converted to the Christian faith: nevertheless very many Jews are often seized and detained unjustly because of this.
We decree, therefore, that Christians need not be obeyed against Jews in a case or situation of this type, and we order that Jews seized under such a silly pretext be freed from imprisonment, and that they shall not be arrested henceforth on such a miserable pretext, unless — which we do not believe — they be caught in the commission of the crime. We decree that no Christian shall stir up anything new against them, but that they should be maintained in that status and position in which they were in the time of our predecessors, from antiquity till now.
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/greg10/g10jprot.htm
Many other examples can be given, including Pope Gregory IX, Pope Clement XIV and others.
Dr. Brown, if you’re reading this I’d like to ask you the following questions. How many times have you publicly spoken about the blood libel as an example of Christian anti-Semitism? How many times have you brought up the Papal condemnations of the blood libel like that of Pope Gregory X which I quoted and sourced? Did you even know that they existed?
Dr. Brown then brought up pogroms in Russia. First of all, this had nothing to do with the holocaust as the holocaust was done by Germans. It also has nothing to do with the Catholic Church or Luther as Russia is not Catholic or Lutheran. The Church in Russia didn’t have the policy of Sicut Judaeis Non as the Catholic Church did. Dr. Brown did say in this accusation: “and sometimes with Catholics” but he never gave a date or location so I couldn’t contextualize the situation. One more vague accusation.
Dr. Brown then brought up Ukrainian SS soldiers who wore belt buckles that said “God With Us” on them. This is incorrect. The motto “God With Us” was never on SS belt buckles. That was on the belt buckles of the Wehrmacht. In other words, it was on the belt buckles of standard German soldiers who had nothing to do with the holocaust. No SS officers had “God With Us” on their belts and the SS are the ones who committed the holocaust and not the Wehrmacht, so another error from Dr. Brown. Also, does having the words “God With Us” on a standardized uniform make someone a believer? Are all Americans Christian because they have coins in their pockets with the words “In God We Trust” on them? Absolutely not. It’s just a belt buckle.
I think this wraps up my response to Dr. Brown. He’s a great Biblical scholar. I’ve read his 5 volume series on Jewish apologetics and about 6 more of his books including his commentary on Jeremiah. I recommend those books to all. However, he’s wrong on this issue. The holocaust didn’t happen because of centuries of Catholic and Protestant anti-Semitism. It happened because Europe abandoned the Catholic Church that protected the Jews. Europe is not that religious today and wasn’t very religious in the 1940’s. We have Freemasonry and the French Revolution to thank for this. Europe needs to return to Catholicism for their salvation and for the safety of the European Jews in the future.
A commentary on Jeremiah…
…by Dr. Michael Brown.
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