LOOSE CANONS

Yours truly is up in arms that Jewish groups are up in arms. Pope Francis has recently taken a step that will move Cardinal August Hlond closer to sainthood. Cardinal Hlond was the highest-ranking church official in Poland from 1926 until his death in 1948. What exactly did Cardinal do or say that has raised the ire of Jewish groups? In a 1936 Pastoral letter, Hlond, at the time, primate of Poland, wrote: “It is a fact that the Jews are fighting against the Catholic Church, persisting in free thinking and are the vanguard of godlessness, Bolshevism and subversion”. Adding insult to injury, Cardinal Hlond had the chutzpah to remain silent and not condemn the killing of 40 Jews in Poland in the Post World War II pogrom that took place in July 1946 in the city of Kielce.

Cardinal Hlond’s silence of the post-war pogrom in Poland along with his missive depicting Jews, are viewed as being so egregious, that the director of religious affairs of the American Jewish Committee is quoted as saying: “It’s very difficult to see how you can still claim that the man was a paragon (of saintliness) when the data  is so explicit.

I’m sure that I am in the vast minority, but it seems to me that Jews have no business whatsoever telling the Catholic Church whom they can elevate to sainthood .Twenty-seven years ago, this summer, Yosef Lifsh, driving the third car in a three car motorcade for the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Police escort was the first escort), accidentally hit a concrete pillar that subsequently fell on and killed 7 year old Gavin Cato and injured his 7 year old cousin Angela. However well justified he may have been, there was no reported apology or even comment from the Rebbe, who appears on bill boards throughout all Israel as Melech HaMoshiach – Messiah, the King). Applying the same standards that leaders of Jewish organizations are currently applying against Cardinal Hlond, wouldn’t the Guyanese community of which Gavin Cato and his cousin Angela were part – nay the entire black community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn – have had every right to excoriate the Rebbe through any and all media outlets for his failure to speak out?

I am no Catholic theologian, nor do I profess to be. Yet, from what I do know, one of the main criteria for elevation to sainthood is two miracles to have occurred through the intercession of the individual after his demise. I’m not aware that sainthood in the Catholic Church is contingent upon speaking out against man’s inhumanity against man, nor do I know that sentiments expressed in print, however controversial they are deemed to be, are grounds to withhold elevation to sainthood. Personally, I find it hard to believe that there are rabbis – especially revered rabbis – who have totally immaculate conceptions of non-Jews or are totally guiltless as far as comments – written or spoken concerning “goyim” (I apologize for the pejorative, which I employed to stress a point). So, let’s not be telling other religions how to go about their religious business.

Last, but not least, I dare say that we Jews are out of control as far as our reactions to perceived anti-Semitism. Hallevai (if only) the Third Reich would have come out with such statements instead of genocide. Within the last 6 months, I have heard the following two comments in my office, made by non-Jewish friends: “I tried to Jew him down” and “there’s no question that he’s a Jew, just look at his nose.” I wasn’t angry. I let it go. Perhaps leaders of national Jewish organizations should do the same.

To be sure, Jewish leadership has the right, perhaps even the obligation to express views pertaining to canonization. But these views ought to be expressed respectfully and after the fact. By the same token, Jewish leadership ought to look for the good and the noble in candidates for canonization and then, after canonization has taken place, Jewish leadership ought to take it upon itself to write letters of Yasher Koach and Mazel Tov to Catholic church leadership