Judaism discovered

Ant i- Semant icism

What is interesting about the term "antisemitism" which has escaped analysis is that the use of this phrase is itself an instrument of hatred, since it is a means of equating a person with being "insane," a "criminal" and a "sadistic hater." Persons thus labeled are often subject to loss of employment, housing and curtailment of their civil and human rights. What is the definition of an antisemitic act? In so serious a crime, the felonious conduct should be clearly indicated. In spite of much palaver to the contrary, however, the definition is much akin to the logic of the Red Queen of Alice's Wonderland who said that a word was "Anything I want it to be." Someone is an "antisemite" simply by exposing rabbis, Judaism or the Israeli state. In other words, for any speech that Talmudists deem offensive. When journalist Patrick J. Buchanan criticized the Zionist role in the formation of U.S. Middle East foreign policy, Abe Rosenthal, contributing editor of the New York Times, compared Buchanan to Nazi soldiers who forced Jews into the Warsaw ghetto! ³⁴³ In Rosenthal's view, antisemitism applies equally to the act of murdering Judaics and to the act of criticizing Zionism.

Professor Hugh Kenner in a letter to William F. Buckley Jr: "The points on which I agree with Joe Sobran are la) that the state of Israel is mighty arrogant in its presumption of entitlement to U.S. handouts and general compliance; lb) that a large & influential U.S. Jewish population shares this presumption...2) that 'anti-semitism' is a rather facile label for habitual objections to la and lb...I note from a recent New York Times that Abe Rosenthal...was not satisfied with your treatment of Pat Buchanan. It is surely evident that such as he will never be satisfied by anything short of a casting of whoever annoys them into outer darkness, and I think it is a mistake to let them control the terms of the discourse. 'Anti-semitism' — here I agree with Joe — has no stable meaning; it can run all the way from gas ovens to a mere wish that Abe R. would moderate his frenzies. And a term

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that has no stable meaning is simply not a profitable head for rational discussions." ³⁴⁴

It is questionable whether Kenner's statement will even be allowed once Orwellian "hate speech" criminal codes are fully legislated and enforced. Any kind of deep, critical thinking which analyzes such matters as who sets the terms of public discourse and what the phrase antisemitism actually denotes and for what objectives it is wielded, are slated to be criminalized. The defense against Prof. Kenner's thoughts must be in terms of the denunciation of a heretic who has the gall to deny the True Faith of Absolute Belief in the Infallible Goodness of Zionists.

A superstructure of piety is erected over the framework of debate in order to stifle and extinguish debate. The state religion of the otherwise agnostic, terminal West emerges, viz. Holocaustianity, cloaked in the moth-eaten, dusty, ermine robes not used since the coronations of popes, czars and emperors. Zionist High Priest Eric Breindel of the NY Post announces that "after Auschwitz, express hostility to the essential Zionist endeavor on the part of a Western intellectual requires an explanation." ³⁴⁵ The Los Angeles Times has decreed the fantastic dogma that public criticisms of Judaics are precursors of a Holocaust. ³⁴⁶ The New York Times has alleged that "It reeks of anti-semitism to suggest that survivors of the Holocaust are to be condemned for establishing a haven in the only state in which Jews form the majority." ³⁴⁷ Prof. Irving Abella, whose wife, Rosalie Silberman, is a Canadian Supreme Court justice, stated, "The Holocaust metaphor being

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used against Israel is a group libel..." ³⁴⁸ Here is the sacred state-church dogma of the "Holocaust" in action as it is invoked to block condemnation of the "holy" Israeli state. The association of a stench with condemnation of Israeli murder and dispossession of Palestinians effectively halts any further clearheaded analysis of the terms the New York Times has established for dealing with Palestine. That we are dealing with a religious impulse rather than merely a debate between competing ideas can be seen in the fact that the believers in Holocaustianity are unable even to imagine an alternative view. Joseph Sobran in his published debate with William F. Buckley Jr. eloquently stated:

"An anti-Semite' in actual usage, is less often a man who hates Jews than a man certain Jews hate. The word expresses the emotional explosion that occurs in people who simply can't bear critical discourse about a sacred topic, and who experience criticism as profanation and blasphemy. The term 'anti-semitism' doesn't stand for any intelligible concept. It belongs not to the world of rational discourse, but to the realm of imprecations and maledictions and ritual ostracisms." ³⁴⁹

Sobran's epigram about antisemitism being both unintelligible and a function of Judaic hatred for others, is corroborated by the knowledge that when Judaics heatedly disagree with one another they sometimes call each other "antisemites." When Michael Bar-Zohar of the Israeli Labor Party voted for religious Judaics to be subject to the Israeli army draft like all other able-bodied young Israelis, he was called an "antisemite" and a "Nazi" by members of the Shas and Degel HaTorah parties in the Knesset. ³⁵⁰ When Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin chose to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization in Gaza, his Israeli political rivals produced posters showing Rabin dressed in a Nazi uniform.

It is fitting that in this modern age, when man has become puffed up on his own supposed scientific grasp of the universe he presumes to have mastered, that we should witness the crowning self-mockery of the creed of scientific progress, the bondage of the West to the superstitious religion of Judaism and its murderous, racist branch, Israeli Zionism. The European

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Union — whose symbol is the Tower of Babel— upholds the right of Zionist criticism of Muhammad and Islam, while criminalizing criticism of Judaism and Holocaustianity. According to the New York Times, to say that Zionism is racism "remains code language for bigotry." ³⁵¹ By the Times' logic it is an act of bigotry to point out that Zionism constitutes bigotry against Arabs. The idea that speaking out about the racism of Judaism and Zionism, is itself some form of racism, is the Talmudic mentality par excellence.

The Contents of the Babylonian Talmud: An Overview ³⁵²

Whenever raw quotations from the Talmud are published we are accused of distorting them or "taking them out of context." Some go so far as to claim they are an "antisemitic fabrication." People who make such allegations must be very lazy indeed, because it is not a major ordeal to locate the volumes of the Soncino or Steinsaltz English-language edition of the Talmud and confirm the existence of these passages as well as their context. The Talmud and the other major texts of the rabbinic canon, should be read and studied in their entirety and not merely in anthologies that have been edited to include only passages that give the impression that Judaism is a wise and humane, loving and kind religion of God's justice and law. The same charge can be leveled at this book: that we have merely selected the most prejudicial passages, skipping over anything that would acquit Judaism of the charges we make with regard to it. There are couple of problems with

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such a view. First, true Christians have never held that the Talmud was anything other than a compendium of evil. Second, unlike others, we recommend that the reader study the uncensored (1989-1999 Steinsaltz) edition, or the partly censored (1935 Soncino) edition, of the English-language Talmud, and decide for yourself. ³⁵³

Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Talmud is the authoritative and true exposition of Scripture. Orthodox Judaism asserts that the New Testament is false and misleading. We have selected passages from the Talmud so that readers may determine for themselves whether the Talmud is of God and "morally superior." We don't believe it to be either. We have chosen some of the useless, stupid, repugnant and blasphemous passages of the Talmud to demonstrate that the Talmud is not the word of God, nor it is even a superior code of morals. By reading the passages, one may come to appreciate the position of Jesus Christ toward the Rabbis, which was almost entirely negative, and rightly so. If one reads the New Testament words of Jesus, one will notice that the ultimate enemies of Jesus during His sojourn on earth were the Rabbis of Judaism, whose teachings he opposed constantly. These Rabbis (whom Christ called vipers, blind guides, hypocrites and whitewashed tombs) had obscured the true doctrines of the Old Testament, canceling many of the laws which God set up for Israel. For example, Moses said that anyone who committed adultery with his neighbor's wife should be executed, but the Rabbis, by defining "your neighbor" as "only your Judaic neighbor," ruled that adultery with a gentile's wife wasn't adultery at all. They also ruled that followers of Christ could be killed, and that cursing one's parents is no sin unless the curse includes the name of God.

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The Historic Record of the Christian Witness Concerning Judaism

Our assessment of the Talmud is based upon the Holy Scriptures and reason. There is also the historic record of the witness of Christians of the past. Martin Luther stated: "I maintain that in three Fables of Aesop there is more wisdom to be found than in all the books of Talmudists and Rabbis...Should someone think I am saying too much, I am not saying too much — but too little! For I see in their writings how they curse us Goyim and wish us evil in their schools and prayers...Thus they call Him (Jesus) the child of a whore and His mother, Mary, a whore, whom she had in adultery...Reluctantly I must speak so coarsely in opposing the Devil..." ³⁵⁴

In his lifetime Luther grew increasingly frustrated at how little success he had achieved in his goal of converting Judaics to Christianity in his lifetime.³⁵⁵ In fact, Luther records that three rabbis had dared to call on him seeking to convert Luther to Judaism! In the 1540s, bands of proselytizing Talmudists had succeeded in converting Protestants in central Europe, persuading them to deny Christ and submit to circumcision. "This was the exact opposite of what he (Luther) had long believed should be happening."³⁶⁶ It was partially in reaction to this situation that Luther wrote his book, On the Jews and their Lies. "Luther did not advocate extermination and he was not a racist. His objection was entirely to the Jews' religious beliefs and the behavior that stemmed from those beliefs. He did not support inquisitorial methods to obtain conversions...Anti-Semitism was a nineteenth-century invention and it did not come from Luther's workbench. He did not believe

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the world would be a better place without Jews, but he believed passionately that Christendom would be better without Judaism..." ³⁵⁷ For centuries, On the Jews and their Lies served as a bulwark within Protestantism with regard to fending off attempts at accommodating Judaism. Charles Provan, the Bible exegete and twenty-first century Christian scholar of the Talmud, credited Luther's work with alerting him to the dangers and nature of Judaism. Provan regarded On the Jews and their Lies as thoroughly anti-racist and cynically and dishonestly exploited and selectively quoted by the Nazis. To the best of our knowledge, racist right-wing groups have never published Luther's book in its entirety, always omitting all the portions which radically undermine their ideology — sections in which he opposes nationalism and racism and promotes the Old Testament and the Jewish identity of Jesus. These telling omissions were documented in 1949 by the National Lutheran Council in a published report. ³⁵⁸

St. Vincent Ferrer: Evangelist to the Judaics of Western Europe St. Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419) of Valencia in Aragon, lived a century before Luther and is credited with converting many thousands of Judaics in the Iberian peninsula. "At Valladolid he converted a rabbi, later well known as Bishop Paul of Burgos. ..Ranzano, his first biographer, estimates the number of Jews converted at 25,000." ³⁵⁹

"Vincent Ferrer underwent extensive academic and pastoral training from 1370 to 1378 in preparation for a life of scholarly teaching and preaching. He was a teacher of logic at Lleida (1370-1), philosophy at Barcelona (1375) and he completed his formal training at Toulouse (1376-78)...Vincent was also prior of his monastery at Valencia (1385-90), a lecturer in theology at the Cathedral of Valencia (1385-90), eventually being

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promoted to the chair of theology at Valencia. He became a prolific writer of books on ethics, theology, and philosophy...he possessed intellectual abilities of the first order., .that he might increase his knowledge of the Old Testament he learned Hebrew...He acquired such a perfect knowledge of the Hebrew that he was able to quote to the Jews ...the Old Testament and to refute the absurd doctrines of the Talmud and the lying stories with which that book abounds." ³⁶⁰

"...in the year of Our Lord 1390...Vincent Ferrer...wanted to convert all the Jews of Spain through preaching and proofs from the Holy Law and Scripture...He and other preachers preached a great deal to the Jews in the synagogues, churches and fields...the Jewish rabbis...were deceived and misled by that gloss called the Talmud...The Jews have ten times as many copies of the Talmud as they do the Bible, and they sent it throughout the world...There were very great lies and intricate arguments in that Talmud..."³⁶¹

"In the countries of the west the number of Jews and infidels increased, who by their wealth and culture of letters exercised a fatal influence...At a favorable moment He sent into the world...Vincent of Valencia...Like a vigorous athlete, he rushed to combat the errors of the Jews, the Saracens and other infidels; he was the Angel of the Apocalypse, flying through the heavens to announce the day of the last judgment, to evangelize the inhabitants of the earth, to sow the seeds of salvation among all nations, tribes, peoples and tongues and to point out the way of eternal life...'

In the decree of his canonization it was stated: "The celebrated Lewis of Grenada boldly affirms of him: 'After the Apostles, Vincent is, of all apostolical men, he who gathered most fruit in God's vineyard'...He was almost forty-nine years old when our Lord named him His legate to reform the world; and for the space of twenty years he acquitted himself of that sacred charge, traversing the whole of Europe, and converting to the faith in each city Jews, infidels, heretics and sinners, by thousands....Seeing that

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among unbelievers the Jews are most perfidious, he was on that account most desirous of their conversion...St. Vincent was one day introduced into a synagogue by an Israelite, with whom he was leagued in friendship for that purpose. He entered with the crucifix in his hand, which caused confusion and dismay among the assembly... Then in soft and gentle words he began to speak of the holy Christian Faith and particularly of the Passion and Death oftheSonofGod..."³⁶²

Notice here the link which Christians made between Judaism and Islam as both being in need of evangelism. The connection between the errors of Islam and the errors of Judaism was made by Vincent Ferrer himself numerous times in the course of his missionary work. Prior to the late twentieth century it was the nearly universal practice of both Protestants and Catholics to categorize Judaism and Islam as evil. Like many Protestant exegetes and missionaries, the Calvinist scholar Moses Amyraldus (1596-1664) wrote an entire book dedicated to this issue: A Treatise concerning religion; In refutation of the opinion which account all Indifferent; Wherein is also evinc'd the Necessity of a Particular Revelation, And the Verity and preeminence of the Christian Religion above the Pagan, Mahometan, and Jewish rationally Demonstrated (London, 1660). In 1449, Pedro Sarmiento fulminated against the deeds of Iberian Judaics. Chief among the charges was the idea the Judaics of Toledo, had opened the gates to the invading Moors, "...when Toledo was first taken by the Moors it was filled with Hebrews...they, resenting the Gothic persecution, facilitated the progress of the Berbers..." ³⁶³

"The Moors on entering Spain at once took the Jews into favor...the Jews found themselves called upon to act as confidential interpreters to the new masters of the kingdom...The Moors, indeed, went far beyond a passive toleration, and protected the Jews with a fervor...They granted the Jews a separate organization and sanctioned their judicial administration. The Jewish government under the patronage of the Moors was remarkable. The synagogues elected the chiefs of the nation: the chiefs in their turn elected judges, who were to form the judicial body, to whom all disputes between Jews were referred. The number of Jews in Spain at the beginning of the

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tenth century suddenly received a great accession by the destruction of the celebrated academy at Pumbedita in the East (in Babylon); and the Talmud, which the refugees brought with them, was translated into Arabic by order of the Kalif Haschem II...³⁶⁴

With all the chatter about the "clash of civilizations" comparatively little notice or study has been expended upon the Battle of Lepanto between a Muslim superpower, the Ottoman empire's naval fleet, and a smaller Catholic navy under the military command of Don John of Austria (1547-1578) and Marc Antonio Colonna (1535-1584), Captain-General of the papal Fleet, under the leadership of Pope Pius V. Fought off the coast of Greece on October 7, 1571, it is one of the decisive naval battles of western history, in which the fate of the Mediterranean basin was decided in favor of Europe. One of the combatants was Miguel Cervantes, the future author of Don Quixote. ³⁶⁵ The role of a Talmudic banking house in exacerbating the conflict is as obscure as the battle itself: "The war, like all wars, had many causes, but one of the more significant ones was the fact that France owed 150,000 ducats to the Duke of Naxos. Turkish Sultan Selim II had conquered the Island of Naxos and appointed his close friend, Joseph Nasi (1505-1579), as Duke. Nasi had been been born in Portugal to a family that had been forcibly converted to Catholicism. Joseph was baptized in the church and raised under the Christian name Joao Miguez. His aunt was the well-known Dona Gracia Nasi (foundress of the Yeshiva of Istanbul). When Joseph followed his aunt to Constantinople, he married his cousin, Brianda, Dona Gracia's daughter. His famous aunt was now his mother-in-law. Earlier, he had become a principal in the House of Mendes (also spelled Mendez), the family firm, and a major trading and banking company of the age. Mendes ships often assisted crypto Jews in fleeing Iberia, the firm's agents arranged for bills of credit to save their assets. As a financier, Joao/Joseph often dealt with the royal houses of Europe, and a loan to the king of France was made while he (Joao/Joseph) was still openly a Catholic. For their own safety, the family had to emigrate from Iberia and eventually they settled in the Ottoman Empire. Here they returned to Judaism and to their Jewish names.

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Joseph (Nasi), as he was now known, became a close friend of Prince Selim, the son of Suleiman the Magnificent. When Selim ascended the throne, he rewarded his Jewish friend with the Dukedom. When King Charles IX of France learned of this, he disavowed his debt to the new Duke, insisting that the loan was taken from the Christian, Joao, and that nothing was owed to the Jew, Joseph. Joseph, however, owed money to the new sultan and could not pay it unless the French loan was collected. In 1569 Sultan Selim II gave the Mendes/Nasi banking family permission to seize merchandise from French-flagged ships in the port of Alexandria. The French protested to Constantinople, and Sultan Selim notified King Charles that the merchandise would be returned when the loan was paid. The dispute continued and intensified." ³⁶⁶ French vessels joined the allied fleet at Lepanto in part to defend French shipping from the predation of the Mendes/ Nasi banking house, which was in turn backed by Muslim naval power at the behest of Joseph Nasi.

Undoubtedly this defense of Europe from Muslim invasion was a legacy of Ferrer. "He (Vincent Ferrer) converted a prodigious number of Jews and Mahometans...He regularly entered synagogues in Toledo and Salamanca and began to preach..." ³⁶⁷ "...when he learnt that Granada, the last refuge of the infidels, was clamoring to have him, he determined to go and see....To convert the Moors and the Jews would have meant a grand infusion of freshly baptized blood into the veins of a Christendom grown old. But such a return of Israel to the fold it had deserted, when it rejected its true destiny as written in the Books, was one sign of the end of the world. Vincent's faith in the proximity of the day of judgment must have been powerfully reinforced. He spared nothing, hurled himself at the Jewish problem in a kind of frenzy. Certain historians claim that he had Jews among his ancestors: there is no proof of this, but it would explain his need...to force the gates of heaven and bring in the chosen people. They were in great numbers in Cordova, Seville, Toledo especially. Vincent made no bones about it. These people were hard of head, they did not want to hear: he must go to seek them in their own places,

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draw them out from their ghettos and their synagogues, bring them once more into the house of God. When he was preaching on the rock of Toledo, in the Church of Santiago del Arrabal, he suddenly felt that there had been enough talk. Is it possible, Christians,' he cried, 'that you tolerate here such monuments of perfidy? Let us all go to the Synagogue. Let it become the loveliest sanctuary dedicated to the Mother of God in this town consecrated to her.' He came down from the pulpit, and took the head of the procession, bearing aloft the crucifix that never left him, a huge crucifix six feet high whose shadow fell upon the multitudes faithful or rebellious. He entered the synagogue and Christ went in with him...

"A great many of the Jews accepted the fact: it seemed to them that God had sent them His prophet; he would never have dared if God had not been

with him: they accepted baptism In every town of Spain, at the time of his

preaching, Moors and Jews swarmed; they had common resources of industry, skill, cunning, the art of getting on: they tended to form a State within a State, the one slowly and silently substituting itself for the other. ...The mass of ordinary Jews were not to be feared...but the great Jews, merchants, usurers, bankers, had made for themselves a clientele who were also dependents—and their prestige growing deviously was really undermining the Christian way of life...he 'fished' with all his might in their streets and bazaars and even in their synagogues. And he made an immense haul. It is difficult to arrive at a figure. The most cautious of his historians gives twenty-five thousand converts among the Jews and eight thousand among the Moors. 'You know/ Vincent announced from the pulpit, 'that we have good news. All the Jews and many of the Moors of Valladolid are converted.' There was similar news from Toledo, Huesca, Saragossa. . . . This was after the Congress of Tortosa for the conversion of Israel, suggested to Benedict by a former rabbi, Josua Holuorqui, who had become Friar Jerome

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of the Holy Faith,³⁶⁸ It met in 1414...Vincent who took part in the Congress, collaborated in a Treatise on the Jews which served as a base for his further labors among them; in it all the proofs of the Dogma of the Incarnation were magisterially set forth.

"...The populace were massed on the river bank, Master Vincent had taken up his stand to preach on the roof of a house surrounded by trees on the far side of the Ebro. One day he stopped suddenly in his sermon. The people were startled. 'Do not be shocked by this interval,' he said, 'I must wait upon grace.' As the crowd began to laugh, a party of Jews were seen approaching: grace had conquered them. Of sixteen rabbis, fourteen were converted. How he loved these new children of his: he loved to remind Christians who too readily forgot the fact that Jesus and Mary were of the Jewish race..."³⁶⁹

Much libel has been heaped upon St. Vincent claiming he instigated pogroms and abetted the inquisition. These accusations are not supported by the documentary record: Leon Poliakov stated: "...the greatest preacher of the time, Saint Vincent Ferrer, whose flaming eloquence was then arousing the whole western world..His sermons, which all the Jews were forced to attend, did not fail to recall that Jesus as well as the Virgin Mary had been Jewish and that nothing would displease God so much as baptisms obtained by force; that it was vital for the Church to convert the Jews, but that this had to be accomplished by gentle persuasion and kind words," ³⁷°

"...preaching played a more important role in the new offensive than did the pogroms. The leading player in this drama was St. Vincent Ferrer who, from 1411 onward was able to rouse the Castilian people to a frenzy of

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religious fervor and to drive —as if by a miracle—entire groups of Jews to the baptismal font...Between 1412 and 1419, the preaching of Vincent Ferrer alone seems to have led to 15,000 to 20,000 conversions at the very least."³⁷¹ "He was one of the most successful missionaries to the Jews of his time, particularly in Valencia, Toledo and Valladolid." ³⁷²

The life of St. Vincent vitiates the claims of those who attempt to put paid to the entire era of Catholic evangelism in Spain. His mission to Judaics, among the most spectacularly successful of all such Christian missions, was launched out of love and compassion, not hatred. It addressed Muslims as well as Judaics and Vincent's reputation was such that he was greeted with kindness by the Muslim "king" of Grenada, Mahomet Aben-Baha, who exhibited good will toward Vincent and "afford(ed) him liberty to preach in his kingdom...St. Vincent commenced a course of sermons in the presence of the king, his whole court and innumerable...Mahometans..." ³⁷³

In addition to Muslims and Judaics, Vincent desired reformation of the leaders and clergy of his own Roman Catholic church and in some Catholic hagiographies much of this aspect of his life is passed over entirely or reported inadequately. In his apocalyptic treatise De eversione Europa he laments bitterly over the decay of ecclesiastic discipline, order and morality. The German Reformers reprinted Vincent Ferrer's excoriation of the clergy of his time: "...Die priester seind vnwissend, furnamisch vnd spotter, vngelert, gleichszner, den weisen uberlredend, geitig, symoneyer, boser dann dye juden, vnkeiisch, neydig vnd vnlauter dye ganczen welt zerstorent, sy laffend bald nach den pfenning, sy seind aber langsam zu den laff der tugent, sy seynd hort on all barmherczikeyt, Sj haben vil waffen vnd wenige bucher, Sj seind vnweisz claffer vnd vnwarhaft. Die cristenheit freiiet sich wenn einen andechtigen vnder tausenten funde." ³⁷⁴

Certain German Reformation pamphlets seem to have been directly inspired by Vincent Ferrer: "Particular emphasis was placed...on the figure of the 'Antichrist,' which is typified in a 1486 Augsburg tract, rendering the

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apocalyptic ideas of Vincent Ferrer...criticism against the clergy focused on three main issues: the attitude of the clergy to worldly goods and power; their life style; their understanding of clerical office. The range of criticism incorporated into Ferrer's popular tradition made it easily adaptable to varying contexts...This tradition provided a framework of reference for reformation teaching..." ³⁷⁵ Catholic clergy in the fifteenth century were viewed in the minds of some of the German yeomanry as akin to rabbis lording it over the people, as for example in Heinrich von Kettenbach's Ein Gesprdch rn.it einem frommen Altmutterlein (Augsburg, 1523). As a result, the cry for a "priesthood of all believers" grew out of a desire to correct what was perceived as a growing Talmudic-like chasm between priest and laity that mirrored the divide between the rabbi and his subject Judaics.

Scant scholarly attention has been given to the study of the synchronicity between militant evangelism of Judaics as embodied by Ferrer, and the rise of radical dissatisfaction with corrupt clergy and prelates as embodied by Luther. Was Vincent Ferrer's remarkable success in evangelizing Judaics, coupled with his vision of the rise of Antichrist as a result of corruption in the Church, a twin-engine of the coming Reformation? If the answer is in the affirmative, what does this bode for the modern Church, which has suppressed almost entirely one side of the missionary dynamic — the evangelization of Judaics through exposure of Judaism's errors and iniquity? Given the dissolution of what was a formerly inseparable Christian dynamic, e.g. the commission to convert Muslims and Judaics — not merely viewing Muslims only as the locus of the lost — do we discover anywhere in these questions the answers to why the Church today, rather than overcoming the world, is being overcome by it? Does the revival of our Faith rest in a new and fearless commitment to the historic mission of the Church, before political correctness and Holocaustianity inculcated in us a false orientation, persuading us that the conversion of rabbis and those subject to them, was no longer our pressing apostolic duty, but was in fact little more than a peripheral issue, if indeed it had any moral force whatsoever?

We need not automatically associate a radical desire for reform with a revolt, or a Protestant-like splintering of the unity of the Church. The

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demand for reform had come from within the Church for centuries. The protest against corruption was likewise ancient. When the Franciscan Spirituals accused the Conventuals of departing from the rule of St. Francis, were they anticlerical? Susan Karant-Nunn asks, "When the Cistercians accused the Cluniacs of self-indulgent departure from the rule of St. Benedict, were they anticlerical? When the theologians of Paris objected to the presence and privileges of the friars, were they anticlerical?...Were those secular clergy who opposed the incursions of the Jesuits anticlerical?..All of the examples given stand with a venerable medieval tradition of opposing blatant clerical transgression and exploitation of the laity..."

Vincent Ferrer emphasized the mission of the lay people in furthering the Great Commission: "Vincent described the world as a "mare magnum (great sea) upon which a boat navigates...Upon this ocean a beautiful boat sails with three decks (cubertes) which corresponds to the three types of preachers who propagate the message of Christ across the oceans...the religious in monasteries...the presbyters...The third cuberta are navigators traveling freely without any direct ecclesiastic restraints and whom Vincent called the 'laborers'...Vincent was identifying the active preaching role of the laity...Vincent Ferrer admonished all three cubertes of preachers to follow Christ daily and at the end of each week to observe the Sabbath by shunning worldly entertainments. To buttress his admonition, Vincent cited Numbers 15...and he additionally censured any work not related to the church as breaking (trencar) the Sabbath... Lastly, the three cubertes have one common defining characteristic identified by Vincent as the first or principal Christian virtue (primera virtut), obedience to Christ...believers living out their earthly lives in denial of Christ, by their constant preoccupation with the world, run the risk of...eternal damnation...Vincent quoted Leviticus 25 and Isaiah 52 as proof texts to the highlight the gravity of the consequences..." ³⁷⁶

St. Vincent also anticipated Reformation themes in his use of the vernacular: "The era of Vincent Ferrer is a major turning point in late-medieval Europe for vernacular languages as modes of literary expression in both secular and ecclesiastical life...In the fourteenth century...vernacular tongues received significant impetus by luminaries such as Dante, Chaucer, John Wyclif and preachers like Vincent Ferrer...Vincent's insistence on

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preaching in (the language of) Catalan...reinforces the pervasiveness of that language at the local level in fourteenth century Catalonia and southern France...speakers of Breton, Provencal, Occitan and other similar cognate languages would have understood his Catalan preaching..." ³⁷⁷

One pathway to understanding the bursting of the floodgates of the Reformation is found in the attitude of the common people. It was almost always the people and not the ecclesiastical hierarchy or the royalty, who objected most passionately to rabbinic control and Talmudic privilege within Christendom. At some point in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries a popular perception arose that the men in charge of the Church had taken a seemingly irrevocable secret oath of allegiance to some occult form of Judaism. If this was indeed the perception, it would explain why the Church, which throughout its long history had always resolved even the most concerted and vigorous protests, could no longer contain them, and from the Renaissance onward, came to be viewed by what would become the populist base of the Reformation, as hopelessly polluted by Kabbalism and Talmudism.

"In canon law a sharp distinction is drawn between clergy and laity. The former have the purpose of leading the church, and the latter are called upon to entrust themselves to this leadership for the sake of the souls' salvation. The difference between the spiritual and temporal estates originates in the sacrament of ordination, which stamps upon the future cleric an indestructible quality (character indelebilis) and raises him to a level of participation in the divine essence to which a layman cannot attain. Only the clergyman is able to offer a sacrifice of Christ in the Mass....As long as clergy and laity conducted themselves peaceably with each other the difference of the two estates was a matter of course. As soon, however, as tensions arose and the laity had grounds to doubt the integrity and question the leadership of the clergy, the traditionally established differences could develop into an antagonism..."³⁷⁸

"This is what a man from Limoges remembered from Brother Vincent's teaching...in order to be saved, banish from one's mind all superstitions..."³⁷⁹

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There is a legacy of admiration for St. Vincent Ferrer in Protestant circles. For example, Rev. Joseph Milner and his brother Isaac, the president of Queen's College, Cambridge University, wrote: "Vincent Ferrer...was a shining model of piety...and a zealous preacher of the word of God...his heart was insensible to the charms of worldly honors and dignities. He very earnestly wishe(d) to be an apostolic missionary...His word is said to have been powerful among the Jews, Mahometans and others."

Vincent Ferrer proclaimed, "Whoever is proud shall stand without. Christ manifests his truth to the lowly, and hides himself from the proud."³⁸⁰

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