It wasn't a coven of Soviet spies who drafted Nostra Aetate; it was a trio of American and European-based Jєωιѕн "converts." It wasn't Communists who advised JFK to declare his fealty to an America "where the separation of Church and State is absolute," or laid the groundwork for Dignitatis Humanae; it was the very anti-communist, Americanist CIA stooge, John Courtney Murray.

The Point ’s second White Jєω is drawn from the religious rather than the secular world, but he has been no less a problem to our readers than Mr. Baruch. He is a refugee from Austria who now conducts, at a Catholic college in New Jersey, a one-man propaganda agency called the Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies. So “White” is this Jєω that at the age of twenty he submitted himself to the ritual of Christian Baptism, and then went on to become a Catholic priest. His name is Father John M. Oesterreicher.

Before Baptism, John Oesterreicher had been a student of medicine. Three years and a few theology books later, he was ordained a Catholic priest. Even his most prostrate apologists have wondered at such a speeded-up process. And more thoughtful observers have concluded that in the Church which harbors such painful and multiple memories of deceitfully converted “Marrano” Jєωs, there is something most unusual, to say the least, about the urgency with which John Osterreicher was rushed from Baptism to Holy Orders.

Whether by deliberate design or not, the historical fact is that, for hundreds of thousands of German-speaking Jєωs, Father Oesterreicher’s sudden priesthood became an immediate weapon against the rising anti-Jєωιѕнness of Adolph Hitler. With the weight of the Catholic Church presumably behind him, and the passion of his Jєωιѕн blood clearly pushing him on, Father Oesterreicher began a frenzied crusade of writing and speaking. He invoked, as authorities, both saints and sociologists, popes and psychiatrists. He devised arguments from demonology and anthropology, from scholastics and rationalists — all to prove to the Catholics of Austria and Germany that anyone who speaks ill of a Jєω is actually blaspheming Jesus Christ Himself!
The same Catholics who well knew that the program proposed by Hitler was hardly the Church’s solution to the Jєωιѕн question, knew quite as well that Father Oesterreicher did not have the answer either.

As Hitler proceeded across Europe, Father Oesterreicher managed to keep several towns ahead of him, and finally, in 1941, turned up as a curate in New York City. Since there were in our whole country only about a dozen Jєωιѕн-convert priests, Father Oesterreicher proved to be a popular novelty. He was the object of much parochial curiosity and found no difficulty in gathering an inquisitive crowd for the lectures he started to give within six months of his arrival here. His message was invariably of one theme. Always there was the appeal to respect, to admire, to love, to fall down in the mud and worship the Jєωιѕн race. And always the appeal was subtly charged with what Father Oesterreicher hoped would pass for the binding authority of the Catholic Church.

But Father Oesterreicher did not have to depend solely upon his own initiative. He had a number of American boosters, of whom perhaps the most zealous was Professor Jacques Maritain. Professor Maritain is the French-born, Protestant-reared, Catholic philosopher who married a Russian Jєωess named Raïssa Oumansoff. Although known in this country as a speaker at Jєωιѕн seminaries and teacher at Masonic universities, Maritain did try to get a position at a Catholic school. Some years ago, he was interviewed for a job at Fordham University, and stipulated in the course of the discussion that he would expect to be given free rein in all his classes to criticize the pope. Fordham’s Jesuit president turned him down, and Maritain took a job at Princeton, no holds barred.

When Professor Maritain received an honorary degree a few months ago from Jєωιѕн Brandeis University, his support of Father Oesterreicher accounted for much of the genuine applause he received from the assembled representatives of American Jєωry. For Father Oesterreicher, in every point of his Judaeo-Christian program, has complied exactly with the publicized objectives of the powerful American Jєωιѕн Committee. In his books, Walls Are Crumbling and The Bridge, Father Oesterreicher’s glorification of the Jєωs would erase forever from Catholic minds those New Testament texts which the Jєωιѕн Committee has so repeatedly attacked as “anti-Semitic.” Saint Peter’s accusation in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 5, that the Jєωs are the murderers of Christ; Saint Stephen’s vehement repetition of this charge in chapter 7; Saint Paul’s elaboration on the guilt and curse of the Jєωs in I Thessalonians, 2:15 — these and all other biblical indictments of the Jєωιѕн people are blotted out and replaced by Father Oesterreicher’s devotion to such unbaptized “saints” as Jєωιѕн logician Edmund Husserl and Jєωιѕн intuitionist Henri Bergson.

In his compliance with the American Jєωιѕн Committee’s declared aim, “to revise Christian religious teaching,” Father Oesterreicher has consistently depreciated the tall stacks of papal legislation against the Jєωs. And, even more boldly, he has demanded a rewording of the Church’s liturgy, proposing that our annual Good Friday reference to the “perfidious Jєωs” be changed in meaning! The American Jєωιѕн Committee followed up Father Oesterreicher’s proposal by pulling every string within its grasp from here to Rome. The result? The following half-hearted, much-guarded statement by the Vatican’s Congregation of Rites: “This Sacred Congregation, having been consulted about the matter, has deemed it advisable to make the following declaration only: That, in translations into the vernacular, phrases are not disapproved of which the meaning (for ‘perfidious Jєωs’) is ‘infidels without belief.’ ”

Although we may be assured from our Faith that nineteen hundred years of Church policy toward the crucifiers of Christ will never be undone by one strategically-placed Jєω, still, it is encouraging to be presented with clear evidence of just how little pro-Jєωιѕн residue Father Oesterreicher leaves behind him. When President Truman’s Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine held its hearings in Vienna, the center of Father Oesterreicher’s “apostolate” during the thirties, there was not the least hint that Austrian Catholics had retained even a remembrance of the Oesterreicher “doctrines.” Indeed, the outlook of Austrian Catholics toward Jєωs was summarized most orthodoxly by His Excellency, Francis Kamprath, Vienna’s Auxiliary Bishop. As a gauge of the previous effectiveness of Father Oesterreicher’s Judaeo-Christian program, and a pledge of its ultimate failure, we conclude with the statement by Bishop Kamprath, taken from recorded testimony before the Anglo-American Committee:

Quote

“During the war and in the time of the nαzιs there was a great deal of mistaken racial anti-Semitism. Today all anti-Semitism in Austria is religious anti-Semitism. That is justified.”