Following today’s trend of antisemitism related posts.

'Pell' rhymes with 'Mel'

In a widely watched televised debate – which led to ongoing debate over the winner – Cardinal Pell said “the little Jewish people” were shepherds who lacked intellectual development.

“I’ve got a great admiration for the Jews but we don’t need to exaggerate their contribution in their early days,” he said on ABC television. “They weren’t intellectually the equal of [the Egyptians or Persians] – intellectually, morally … The poor – the little Jewish people, they were originally shepherds. They were stuck. They’re still stuck between these great powers.”

Later, Cardinal Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, seemed to suggest the Germans had suffered more than the Jews during the Holocaust.

Asked why god permitted the Holocaust to occur, he said: “He helped probably through secondary causes for the Jews to escape and continue. It is interesting through these secondary causes probably no people in history have been punished the way the Germans were. It is a terrible mystery.” When the debate host suggested that the Jews had suffered more than the Germans, Cardinal Pell said: “Yes, that might be right. Certainly the suffering in both, I mean the Jews, there was no reason why they should suffer.”

Cardinal Pell subsequently issued a statement clarifying his comments and insisting he did not intend to offend the Jewish community

12 thoughts on “Pell’s Cardinal Sin”

    1. Technically, the ovine version is called scrapie, and a Jewish scientist won the Nobel Prize for discovering the cause of these maladies.

      1. Stanley Pruisner greatly advanced the understanding of the cause of kuru, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (we shouldn’t honor the barbaric Creutzeld with an eponymous label), and scrapie, which had been viewed as “slow viruses” before he showed them to be the result of singular infectiouses proteins (prions), and for that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. But it should be noted that others made their contributions to that understanding of these diseases, including Carlton Gajdusek, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on kuru.

        1. BTW, if this is about Jewish boasting rights, it might be noted that Prusiner was the sole prize-winner for Medicine and Physiology in 1997, and when Gajdusek won it in 1979, he shared it with another virologist Baruch Blumberg. (I think there has been but one Egyptian Nobel Laureat, and that for literature. Don’t know about Persians. Any other sheepherders produce so many intellectually accomplished individuals?)

  1. “They weren’t intellectually the equal of [the Egyptians or Persians] – intellectually, morally …”

    So, Cardinal… leaning toward the intellectual and moral paragons of Ancient Egypt and Persia? They worshiped idols, you know. If that’s what you prefer to the heritage of Abraham, well, whatever floats your boat.

  2. The good cardinal is a historical ignoramus. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of private manufacturing enterprises during the Israelite and Judean kingdoms, including a winery, cloth weaving and dyeing, and perfume manufacture. This goes along with the outstanding literature and music from that era. The cardinal is still stuck on pathetic attempts to elevate the New Testament by denigrating the “Old,” whereas many Protestant denominations consider both to be co-equal.

    1. Did “private manufacturing enterprises during the Israelite and Judean kingdoms, including a winery, cloth weaving and dyeing, and perfume manufacture” put Jews ahead of other civilizations, e.g., the Chinese? The Cardinal cited monumental edifices and temporal power as indicators of intellectual achievemen. It may be seen, though, that those were very ephemeral, and there is little more than those curious pyramidal tombs with the mummies and objets they contained remaining as a legacy of Egyptian civilization. How striking is the contrast to the legacy of the Jewish people from those times and after.

      But I sensed no animus in his remarks on the point. Must listen to the balance of that debate, though, to get a sense of it and him. I will be especially interested to hear him on the Holocuast and German suffering.

      1. In one respect, the enterprises I cited were ahead of the rest of the world. They were regulated by the world’s first humane labor law, the Sabbath.

    1. Careful, you’ll have William Donohue from the Catholic League on your ass claiming you’re anti-Catholic.

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