Remembering our dark past

Dear Editor, How sad to see one whole page of your usually balanced paper (and interesting book reviews), given over to taking back what little we had conceded in terms of confession and repentance for some of the negatives of our Church history – in the Crusades, Inquisition and Holocaust (IC 09/07/2015 ‘Pernicious lies exposed for what they are’).

It appears that the slaughter of hundreds of Jews all along the Rhineland and the burning of a synagogue full of Jews in Jerusalem in the course of the Crusades doesn’t merit recording; likewise the burning to death of Jews in the Inquisition in Spain, Portugal and even in the so-called ‘New World’; and, it seems, we were unblemished altogether in the Holocaust!

But why am I surprised? After all we celebrated the canonisation of the two great Pope-prophets of reconciliation with our Jewish forefathers only one year ago without any public reference to what was arguably, their greatest contribution to the Church. (We even had a book to honour 50 years after Vatican II which maintained that the break with Judaism in the 4th Century “was progress” – Nostra Aetate notwithstanding!)

Meanwhile we moan at what is happening to our country as it tumbles down the road of violence and disobedience. “If only my people would turn back to me and obey my laws…”

Yours etc.,

Ena Gray,

Ferns,

Co. Wexford.