When I was initially invited to present this talk, I was asked to highlight the rise of antisemitism in Europe. Even then, I suspected it might be rather short, given the overwhelming evidence that antisemitism appeared to be growing more than any other racial prejudice. And then we had the attacks of October 7, 2023. Quite possibly the talk is now moot.
I would like to preface this address with a personal experience, which bears on all we are discussing, particularly from my perspective as a Catholic priest. Some know of my work during the last 9 years—full time since 2016—working for aid/advocacy for persecuted Christians throughout the world, especially in the Middle East. I am certainly the only Catholic priest in the English-speaking world doing this work full time, and I am grateful to the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham for allowing me to pursue this ministry and vocation: allowing me but not paying me.
I have been to Iraq multiple times since early 2015, long before it became a place for a photo-op to raise funds and an Instagram profile. I have been to Syria, walked the streets of Damascus, and visited the holy towns of Saidnaya and Maloula. I have been to Lebanon, but I had never been to Israel until February of this year. I went with Philos Catholic, a group doing great work on, among other things, Christian and Jewish relations. I am now blessed to be the Philos Catholic chaplain, accompanying future visits to the Holy land.
The point of my story is, even though I am a natural procrastinator, I have been trying to write an article about my impressions of Israel for the last 8 months, and I just have not been able to do it. I am still trying to process the experience: everything that Israel is and everything that Israel means for Jews, obviously, but also for Christians, for Catholics, and the world. It is an utterly fascinating, confusing place, a clash of cultures, of secularism and great Orthodoxy; a myriad of experiences, with both prejudices conquered and confusion increased.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton—who was wrongly, I believe, accused by some of antisemitism, by what Ronald Knox called the “literary falsity of retrospect,”—once wrote these extraordinary words: “the truth is that the things that meet today in Jerusalem are by far the greatest things that the world has seen. If they are not important, nothing on this earth is important.” He also said, helping to prove he was not an antisemite: “I think it is sophistry to say, as do some antisemites, that the Jews have no more right there than the Jebusites.” We have seen much sophistry in recent days, and we are likely to see much more.
I could give you a long list of statistics, of facts and figures, evidencing the rise of antisemitism in Europe. It may interest some, perhaps bore many, but it really does seem pointless. Suffice it to say, the evidence exists, it is all easily available to access.
Let us just pause for a moment and refresh our memories—if refresh is a word we can use about what happened on October 7—that both confirms in the most grotesque way the level of antisemitism now on display in the West, and the tremendous importance of this conference and the need for closeness between Catholics and Jews. In our Western cities and capitals, huge demonstrations took place, allegedly in support of Palestine, all after what was witnessed on October 7. Many thousands marched in London, Berlin, New York, Sydney, where the chants “gas the jews,” “from the river to the sea,” and worse were heard. On university campuses, people tore down the pictures of the kidnapped. Synagogues were attacked; Jews were assaulted. Do we need to hear any evidence that antisemitism is at its highest since the 1930s?
This would be my first point. In the past, it would certainly be possible to say that the much vaunted anti-Zionism of some was not antisemitism, precisely because it was possible to be both Jewish and anti-Zionist. However, it was very convenient for many to claim anti-Zionism—opposition to the State of Israel—in order to cloak something else. It is my personal opinion, based on the evidence, that the excuse of anti-Zionism is no longer possible: it has been exposed as antisemitism. “Gas the Jews” is not anti-Zionist; “from the river to the sea” is the call for the total destruction of Israel which means, in fact, the destruction of the Jewish people. Antisemitism is now the accepted prejudice in the world of academia, much of the media, and among many in the secularized West.
I will use a biblical term to describe this, which I think is useful. It may even, paradoxically, be a positive development, in the sense that it is now in the open and cannot be denied. I believe this is a moment of revelation in that biblical sense: a revealing, an unveiling, a drawing back of the curtain. Now we see things as they really are, terrifying as it may be for Jews living in much of Europe. It cannot be hidden, it cannot be cloaked in phrases about “opposing Israel but not being antisemitic.” These attacks were no different from the Einszatsgruppen moving through the villages of Lithuania or Ukraine in the early years of WWII. Today, it was Hamas moving through the villages in southern Israel, killing men, women, and children, simply because they were Jews. Today, as people have said, if everyone is a Nazi, no one is a Nazi; but Hamas and violent antisemites are Nazis, and those who kill or maim someone because he is Jewish are the Einsatzgruppen of the 21st century. This has been revealed.
Then I would ask who precisely are the antisemites now in their vast masses? I have already mentioned the many in academia and the media, but we can clearly see now, if we had not before, the unholy marriage between the Left and Islam.
It is traditional to speak of the extreme Right as antisemitic, and in many cases that is true, but parts of the Left have always been antisemitic to a greater or lesser degree, and this has exponentially grown in the last decades. Victor Davis Hanson has written about the causes of this leftist prejudice; victim culture, ‘anti-colonialism,’ anti-capitalism, and the profound hatred of Western culture. This all finds a perfect outlet in the hatred of Israel, reviving the ancient hatred of the Jew.
We can add to this factor something as ephemeral and useless, but nevertheless important in our vapid culture: fashion. It is quite simple fashionable to be anti-Israel, and even antisemitic. For a Western culture that abhors history, that does not even teach history, fashion becomes the leitmotif of what is ‘really real’ and what is important. TikTok wisdom is more valuable than a doctorate. This is one of the reasons, I believe, that we have seen the explosion of antisemitism on college campuses, disguised as anti-Zionism. Never underestimate the power of higher education to produce imbecility.
To add to our list of who the antisemites are, we must remember what the communists behind the Iron Curtain called the ‘useful idiots.’ There are many of them; their name is Legion. Not just the idiots in academia and their tenured professors, but so many others. Shall we dare to mention some of the signs we have seen at some of the demonstrations: “Queers for Palestine”? I believe I am probably one of the few people in this room who actually saw the building in Mosul where ISIS threw homosexuals off to their death. It has been blown up now, but I saw it when I was in Mosul for the first time in 2018. They are certainly idiots and not really that useful, but there are many of them.
And last, speaking the truth in love, we must face the significant influence of not just radical Islam, but much mainstream Islam; what we might call the attitude of the street. When speaking of the persecution of Christians, Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, who went to Iraq in early 2015, once said that two things were necessary: “complete honesty and absolute transparency.” That is why it must be acknowledged that with mass immigration, many of the attacks on Jews, and large numbers of these crowds demonstrating, are made up of Muslims: Islam has a problem with antisemitism. When the Church dialogues with Islam, if that is even possible, it is incumbent upon Church leaders not to avoid this issue, but to speak the truth in love. In recent years we have failed very badly.
My talk is entitled “The Warning Sign” because, not long before I wrote it, I read a few words of the late, great Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Lord Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi. He wrote: “antisemites are never just antisemites—antisemitism is the best warning sign that we can have of a threat to liberal civilization.” Those are important words to consider. This will not end with antisemitism, as many of us know. However I would like to conclude on a note of hope, which I think we need, because we are a people of hope, not optimism. They are paradoxical signs of hope, but I think, once again, so relevant to this gathering:
The first is, I believe, a profound gift of God to the Church at this particular time and a gift to Catholic-Jewish relations. I refer, as some of you know, to what took place in Poland on September 10nth of this year, in the village of Markova. The Ulma family—Joseph, Viktoria and their seven children, including the unborn baby in Viktoria’s womb—were beatified by the Church, the last step before canonisation. The Ulmas, devout Catholics, are accorded by Yad Vashem as “righteous among the Gentiles,” because, from 1942 until their murder in 1944, they hid eight members of three different Jewish families. This was a crime punishable by death and, on March 24th, 1944, after being betrayed, the Nazis came, executed the Jews first, and then shot the entire Ulma family. The chief Rabbi of Poland, who attended the beatification ceremony said “this is a very important step by the Church to show the faithful how they should act.”
Their hidden life was revealed—a life of charity, love, and faith—an antidote to the poison of hatred. I would humbly suggest we proclaim the Blessed Ulma family the patrons of all future Catholic-Jewish gatherings, and indeed, all future Catholic-Jewish dialogue.
And lastly, and paradoxically, I think the growing persecution of Christians throughout the world is actually a point of meeting and support between Catholics and Jews. I remember Cardinal Dolan saying, back in 2015, that the greatest support he had received over the ISIS persecution of Christians was from Jewish leaders. We know the old saying: “first they come for the Saturday people and then the Sunday people.” For all of us Catholics, let us be united with our elder brothers in faith and make “never again,” not a soundbite, but a reality.
This is a lightly edited transcript of a speech given at the Catholics Against Antisemitism conference at Franciscan University in Steubenville in October.
