POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY THE DAILY TELEGRAPH'S DAMIAN THOMPSON
I do sense a kind of almost melodramatic outrage in Damian's observations of Radio Maryja.
You know, the 'methinks, thou dost protest too much' kind of stuff?
The fact is that the Catholic Church has a long, sad history of genuine, serious anti-Semitism.
I know, I know, officially, it has tuned around, but history isn't erased in a short time, nor should it be. I'm sure there are plenty of the old ones out there passing on their attitudes to youth.
I'd bet that a poll of Catholics world-wide on this topic would be highly embarrassing to Rome. Just ask a question like, 'Was Christ murdered by Jews?'
After all, it was from Catholic lands - Austria, Bavaria - that Nazism sprouted and flourished and became strong.
The record of the Poles in World War II with regard to the Jews is a shameful one, as was the record of Baltic countries that are heavily Catholic, Lithuania and Latvia.
And I think the considerations that went into the sites of death camps like Auschwitz was no accident.
In all those lands, mobs behaved every bit as badly as Hitler's SS.
In the Baltic states, literally thousands of Jews were beaten to death in the streets. Indeed, there were great numbers of volunteers for Nazi operations.
This kind of activity is often today blurred in with the desire to be free of Russia, but there is a lot of historical dishonesty in these claims.
My point is that speaking in the tones Damian does is just a bit grating considering the bloody history of the institution about which he speaks.
And when I put together Damian's sense of outrage on this topic with his rather hateful speech towards Muslims, it just doesn't compute.
