Francis’ Preface 

The Friendship Bible is an attractive but very challenging project. I am well aware that we have in the past nineteen centuries of Christian anti-Judaism and that in comparison a few decades of dialogue is a small thing. 

However, in recent times many things have changed and others are still changing. We need to work harder to ask for forgiveness and to repair the damage caused by misunderstandings. The values, the traditions, the great ideas that identify Judaism and Christianity must be put at the service of humanity without ever forgetting the sacredness and authenticity of friendship. 

The Bible makes us understand the inviolability of these values, a necessary premise for constructive dialogue. 

The best way to talk, however, is not just talking and discussing, but making plans and realizing them together with all those who have good will and mutual respect in friendship. There is a rich complementary relationship that allows us to read together the texts of the Hebrew Bible helping each other to dissect the riches of the Word of God. The common goal will be to be witnesses of the Father’s love all over the world. For the Jєω like the Christian, there is no doubt that love for God and for the neighbor summarizes all the commandments. 

Therefore, Jєωs and Christians must feel like brothers and sisters, united by the same God and by a rich common spiritual patrimony, on which to build a foundation and continue together to build the future. 

It is vitally important for Christians to discover and promote knowledge of Jєωιѕн tradition in order to be able to understand themselves authentically. The study of the Torah is part of this fundamental commitment. This is why I want to entrust your journey of research to the words of the invocation that every Jєωιѕн believer recites daily at the end of the amidah prayer: “May the doors of Torah, wisdom, intelligence and knowledge be open to us, the doors of nourishment and sustenance, the doors of life, of grace, of love and of mercy and of approval before You”. I wish you continue on the journey with perseverance and invoke God’s blessing on everyone.
 
 - Francis

I understand that Pope St Pius X was friendly with the Jєωs.

Herzl recorded his account of the meeting in his diary. The “Lippay” to whom he refers is Count Berthold Dominik Lippay, an Austrian papal portraitist, whom Herzl had met in Venice and who had arranged the audience with the pope.

Theodor Herzl was the first Zionist leader to understand the political importance of the Catholic Church in the Middle East. He also realized the necessity for Zionists to come to terms with the Church and gain its support or at least try to neutralize its influence.

The Bible makes us understand the inviolability of these values, a necessary premise for constructive dialogue.

The best way to talk, however, is not just talking and discussing, but making plans and realizing them together with all those who have good will and mutual respect in friendship. There is a rich complementary relationship that allows us to read together the texts of the Hebrew Bible helping each other to dissect the riches of the Word of God. The common goal will be to be witnesses of the Father’s love all over the world. For the Jєω like the Christian, there is no doubt that love for God and for the neighbor summarizes all the commandments.

Poche,
Why doth thou constantly misconstrue or misrepresent the truth?
St. Pope Pius X sent the Jєωs packing and Providentially, the zionist leader Herzl was dead six months later.


25 January 1904 Pope Pius X gives Theodor Herzl’s Zionist project a cold reception
Posted on January 25, 2015by richardsh

Theodore Herzl traveled to Rome in late January 1904, after the sixth Zionist Congress (August 1903) and six months before his death, looking for some kind of support.


On January 22, Herzl first met the Secretary of State, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val. According to Herzl’s private diary notes, the Cardinal agreed on the history of Israel being the same as the one of the Catholic Church, but asked beforehand for a conversion of Jєωs to Catholicism.



Three days later, Herzl met Pope Pius X, who replied to his request of support for a Jєωιѕн return to Israel in the same terms, saying that “we are unable to favor this movement. We cannot prevent the Jєωs going to Jerusalem, but we could never sanction it … The Jєωs have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jєωιѕн people.”


In 1922, the same periodical published a piece by its Viennese correspondent, “anti-Semitism is nothing but the absolutely necessary and natural reaction to the Jєωs’ arrogance…Catholic anti-Semitism – while never going beyond the moral law – adopts all necessary means to emancipate the Christian people from the abuse they suffer from their sworn enemy”.
This initial attitude changed over the next 50 years, until 1997, when at the Vatican symposium of that year, Pope John Paul II rejected the Christian roots of anti-Semitism, expressing that “… the wrong and unjust interpretations of the New Testament relating to the Jєωιѕн people and their supposed guilt [in Christ’s death] circulated for too long, engendering sentiments of hostility toward this people.

Herzl recorded his account of the meeting in his diary. The “Lippay” to whom he refers is Count Berthold Dominik Lippay, an Austrian papal portraitist, whom Herzl had met in Venice and who had arranged the audience with the pope.

Theodor Herzl was the first Zionist leader to understand the political importance of the Catholic Church in the Middle East. He also realized the necessity for Zionists to come to terms with the Church and gain its support or at least try to neutralize its influence.

The Vatican wished to safeguard Catholic rights in the holy places, and therefore Herzl was ready to propose an extraterritorial status for the holy places when he was received by the nuncio in Vienna, Msgr. Antonio Agliardi, on May 19, 1896, a short time after the publication of his book The Jєωιѕн State. Herzl repeated the idea of extraterritoriality to Secretary of State Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val on January 22, 1904, but Merry del Val answered that the holy places could not be regarded as entities separate from the Holy Land.

When I read Poche's first post, I thought simply that he was having a little fun with CI members, just a bit of trolling for his own amusement over a well anticipated reaction.  Either that was the motive, or the man is a complete idiot.  I would like to ask Poche and others to assess Sermon # 1 from Adversus Judaeos of the great doctor and saint, John Crysostom.  Does he think that this sermon expresses basic friendliness towards, and love for the Jєωs?
lf Poche is simply a fun loving troll, aiming to tweak the noses of the forum's "antisemites," he'll simply ignore the question, chuckle a bit, and move on to the next cynical provocation.  In any case, let it be known that Cryosostom set the standard for the Church's attitude towards the Jєωs. It was not a "collaborative" or friendly one by any stretch of the imagination.

Pray for them, Yes!  because the "veil on the hearts" is so thick.