Last Sunday, the New York Times ran a story about recently published documents from the Nuremberg archives, detailing the Nazis’ attempts to neutralize and destroy Christianity within Germany. Hitler’s cynical Concordat with the Catholic Church was temporary, the summary argued, because Catholic doctrine “could not be reconciled with the principle of racism.” This news must have startled any reader of last week’s essay in these pages by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, titled, “What Would Jesus Have Done?” I’ve now read Goldhagen’s essay several times to absorb what I think I was reading. Since I admired Goldhagen’s book, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” and glowingly reviewed James Carroll’s book on Catholic anti-Semitism, “Constantine’s Sword,” and since, like any Catholic with a conscience, I have tried for some time to grapple with my own Church’s shameful past with respect to the Jewish people, I was looking forward to Goldhagen’s essay. What I found was something that I can only say was shocking. Indeed, the intellectual dishonesty of the essay, its elisions and conflations, its animus against Catholicism itself, would shock anyone eager to get to the bottom of this dark and difficult subject… (Continued here.)
THOSE PESKY LABELS: “The lawsuit alleges the defendants, during a Dec. 10, 2001 public meeting to discuss the awarding of minority-oriented contracts by Toyota, surrounded and assaulted Rev. Peterson — calling him “nigger” as they taunted and harmed him. Rev. Peterson is a nationally known conservative civil rights activist who has been critical of Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/Push operation. At one point during the assault, Gregory Mathis, who hosts the nationally televised program “Judge Mathis,” is alleged to have yelled “where’s your buddy (Bill) O’Reilly (of Fox News) now?” (Rev. Peterson is a regular guest on the O’Reilly’s program, “The O’Reilly Factor.”)” – U.S. Newswire. So Peterson is a ‘conservative,’ but it is not relevant that Mathis or Jackson are left-liberals?
The Dish 