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Entry: Firing Foxman Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/firing_foxman#3464 Post contents: "undue Jewish influence regarding foreign policy" -- Meng By way of preface and caveat: (1.) I do NOT regard Mr. Meng a Judeophobe, or malicious at all; I enjoy reading his contributions. (2.) Mr. Gottfried's remarks about Foxman need to be followed by a similar inquiry by someone into Rev. Hagee so as to not to arouse suspicion that a Czarist pogrom might be underway. That said, I greatly fear that the defeat in Iraq will prompt an outburst of Judeophobia and Anti-Semitism -- a sort of American conflation of "knife in the back" and the Dreyfus Affair. Let's be on guard against this. Indeed, were such to happen, Zionists would have even more reason to argue that Jews need their own country. Let's burn Drumont and instead follow Washington's policy -- GEORGE Washington's to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport RI--; I as all of you know many outstanding men -- and outstanding in charity -- who are Jews. The question of Catholic and Protestant antagonism is vast. Just a few points. 1. Does something like "Protestantism" still exist? I see its classic form (Lutheran and Reformed) now dead. The "Neo-Orthodox" movement among Protestants (Barth et al.) also seems dead. In its place are two very opposed movements who oppose each other with vastly more fury than any anti-Catholic feeling: (i) Liberal Protestants (Social Gospel, "Main Line") and (ii) the Evangelicals (including Fundamentalists, Pentecostals, and Dispensationalists). Both, when not anathemizing each other, are hostile to Catholics, the former increasingly so when "Vatican II" didn't turn into the Liberalization of Catholicism, a fact now obvious with Benedict. 2. Historical-critical method, when taken to an extreme, caused a crisis for sola scriptura, at least for Liberal Protestants. Fr. Ronald Knox said that Protestants had the habit of beating Catholics with the Bible; then suddenly the Bible fell apart in their hands. How "Biblical" Protestants really were is open to question, with the de-emphasis on the Bible's cultic material, the Wisdom Tradition, and even the Psalms. For the Church already has a hymnbook: the "book" of Psalms, 40% of which are laments. One wonders if the Benedictine tradition is in fact more Biblical. Not that I wish to depreciate worthy Protestant Biblical scholarship, mind you. 3. The Ecumenical Movement, still a part of the Magisterium, was launched in the 60s and now is in ruins. It was poorly executed from the start. Liberal Catholics were only interested in talking to Liberal Protestants. There were nonetheless many evangelicals -- I know them -- who were not fanatical and were eager to learn from Catholic traditions, especially Arminian Evangelicals. Alas, Catholics -- Liberal and Authentic -- didn't make the effort, perhaps with memories of being denounced by the fanatical as "mackerel-snappers", bead-clickers", "cracker-eaters", and "toe-kissers". 4. In the same vein, I wish Rome would make some hay out to the mess among the Whiskey-Palians (to continue with some other Baptist lingo) and invite the anti-sodomite wing into the Church with their own rite. Rome is to be credited, on the other hand, for bending over backwards to appeal to the Eastern Church, and I suspect the Regensburger Zinger was an effort at this. Alas, I wonder, with its autocephalous structure and the subordination of the Patriarch to the Emperor, if the Eastern Church has fallen victim to 19th C nationalism, some of it rather extreme. All the same, at least that church didn't destroy its liturgy! Sent at: 2008 05 15