Rabbi Buchwald And The Saints Of The Church

Recommended Reading For Rabbi Buchwald

As I responded to a Rabbi in my last post, I will respond to another one here. This time it is Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald. He is the head of the National Jewish Outreach Program or NJOP.

He posted a video in 2014 called The Catholics and the Jews in where he talks about his love for Pope Francis. He also mentions that both the Catholics and the Jews have had a history of antagonism. He then says this disgusting phrase:

I would say that half of the Saints of the Catholic Church were true anti-Semites, many of them were murderers, who killed many Jews, burnt the Talmud, burnt synagogues, and made the life of the Jews miserable wherever they were in the Catholic lands.

The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNJlBlqy8Pc

Something tells me that the Rabbi hasn’t spend a whole lot of time studying Catholic hagiography.  He just laid a serious charge at the feet of the Catholic Saints. There are thousands of Saints in the Catholic Church. Half of them committed these horrific crimes that the Rabbi lists? I would like to ask Rabbi Buchwald the following questions:

How many Saint biographies have you read? How many writings of the Saints have you read? Could you even name 20 Saints? And which Saints committed these awful crimes?

Which Saints Rabbi Buchwald? Was it St. Nicholas of Myra? St. Augustine of Hippo? St. Thomas Aquinas? St. Bonaventure? St. Francis de Sales? St. Alphonsus Liguori? St. Isaac Jogues? St. Teresa of Avila? St. Germanus of Constantinople? St. Ignatius of Antioch? St. Bridget of Sweden? St. Francis of Assisi? St. Clare of Assisi? St. Robert Bellarmine? St. Bernadette? Pope St. Pius V? St. Cyprian of Carthage? St. John of Damascus? St. Josaphat Kuntsevych? Pope St. Pius X? St. Catherine of Siena?

I could go on Rabbi but I’m going to need some examples. Since anti-Semitism is a racial term and not a religious one, I would like the Rabbi to back these serious allegations of racism against the Catholic Saints. The charges of murder need to be cleared up as well.

Regarding the burning of the Talmud, this was done, but I don’t know of any Saint who was involved. In fact, the website Jewish Virtual Library has a whole page on this topic and no Saints are ever mentioned. The link to this article can be found here:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/TalmudBurning.html

It should also be noted that in 2008 Haaretz reported that some Jews burnt hundreds of copies of the New Testament in Or Yehuda Israel so no side can claim innocence here. The articles also mentions arson to a Church. It’s not the fist time this has happened either.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/orthodox-jewish-youths-burn-new-testaments-in-or-yehuda-1.246153

The truth is that Rabbi Buchwald has not done this out of spite but out or ignorance. He’s only repeating what he’s been told and what the rest of Western Civilization has been told. In other words, the Catholic Church has been just dripping with anti-Semitism from 33 AD until October 28, 1965. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Recently a Baptist friend told me that his Catholic brother was looking for literature that exonerated the Church in the Crusades. My answer was: Any primary account! A common accusation when I debate this subject and exonerate the Church is that some Crusaders committed some atrocities. This is the last gasp of the anti-Christian brainwashing. It is true that atrocities were committed, but every just war has bad some apples on the good side. The Allies in World War II committed numerous war crimes but we don’t deny that it was a just and noble war. The same goes with the Crusades and anti-Semitism.  I give examples in my response to Rabbi Skobac.  We all need to learn how to do research so we can overcome the poor education in every western country.

I encourage Rabbi Buchwald to either give examples or apologize to the Church. He doesn’t sound like a bad man and its obvious he did it out of ignorance but he should come clean.  After all, if I accused Talmudic Rabbis and Sages of racism, murder, and many other crimes, wouldn’t it be right of me to provide examples and evidence?