Italian Rabbi Objects To Pope Francis’s ‘Anti-Jewish’ Rhetoric
Image by Getty Images
By Sam Kestenbaum March 21, 2017
In his push to open up Catholic communion to the divorced and remarried, Pope Francis has portrayed his critics as stubborn legalists and Pharisees who “sit in the chair of Moses and judge.”
It’s language that, for at least one rabbi, evokes anti-Jewish stereotypes.
The flare-up was highlighted in the religious journal First Things.
In a recent letter objecting to this language, Giuseppe Laras, an Italian rabbi, criticizes these homilies as promoting what he calls anti-Jewish stereotypes.
Laras describes an undercurrent of “resentment, intolerance, and annoyance on the Christian side toward Judaism; a substantial distrust of the Bible and a subsequent minimization of the Jewish biblical roots of Christianity.”
Laras acknowledges that there have been improvements in broader Catholic understanding of Judaism and Jews — but worries that Francis’s homilies are diluting the power of those positive developments.
“Too many authoritative Christian voices — both bishops and theologians — have greeted Pope Francis’s anti-Jewish rhetoric with silence, smooth excuses, or applause,” First Things editor Matthew Schmitz writes. “When will they speak out with the boldness of Rabbi Laras?”
Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected]
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
