Some Jews Are Missing the Big Point on Pope Benedict

Yes another story on the "Crisis" as to the lifting of the excommunications. But this was is a tad different and it is good since it comes from Spengler in the Asia Times.

See Benedict's tragedy, and Israel's. I think some astute Jewish Voices are waking up the fact that they are being used.

Spengler brings up a interesting fact besides again showing how Pro-Jewish this Pope is

He states in part

The "left" of the Catholic Church agrees in principle with the Lefebvrists that the Catholic Church cannot fulfill its role as the Israel of the Spirit without the apparatus of state power to enforce its social position. Unlike the Lefebvrists, the left of the Church is not caught up in nostalgia for the Catholic past. It is modern, multicultural, open-minded and non-judgmental. It simply isn't particularly Catholic.

Benedict XVI horrifies the Catholic left. As I reported in June 2008 in The pope, the president and politics of faith, a leading Jesuit Islamologist denounced the Pope in the Order's Italian-language monthly Popoli for receiving into the Church the Italian journalist Magdi Allam at the Easter Vigil last year. The Curia was aghast at the Pope's September 2006 criticisms of Islam at Regensburg.

But the issue that separates the sheep and the goats inside the Curia is the Jewish issue. Most of the Curia looks at the State of Israel as a gross inconvenience at best, and as a stumbling-block at worst. The leftist sentiments of the Curia play out in theology: the Catholic left and right never accepted the affirmation of John Paul II and Benedict XVI that God's covenant with the Jewish people never was revoked. Benedict XVI is the most prominent opponent of substitution theology in the Church, and his nuanced and sympathetic understanding of Jewish theology is evident in his 2007 book Jesus of Nazareth.

As Sandro Magister reports, "In the Catholic camp, not everyone accepts the road marked out by Ratzinger in dialogue with Judaism. It is opposed by the so-called 'theology of substitution', both in its 'left-wing' pro-Palestinian versions, and in its traditionalist 'right-wing' versions. According to this theology, the covenant with Israel has been revoked by God, and only the Church is the new chosen people. For some, this view amounts to a substantial rejection of the Old Testament
." The misnomered "traditionalist"right does not want a People of God, that is, a congregation, but rather the restoration of Catholic theocracy; the left wants a multicultural stew rather than a unified People of God. In a perverse sort of coincidentia oppositorum, the two extremes join in their hatred of the Jews.

The article is pretty good and gets into more controversial areas. I don't want to get into the nuances of the theology but the theology leads to real practical political applications.

I think he makes some good points. I am hoping Jewish voices are paying attention.