To go with my recent post on historical Christian antisemitism, here are some translated extracts from the article on "Jews and Christians" in the Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique, published in 1911.
...It is claimed that, over the long course of the centuries, the Jews have been beyond reproach, or nearly so.... [It is claimed that] the Jews are an innocent nation, odiously persecuted, and that the Church is responsible for this unjust treatment....
....After the triumph of the Church, the situation of the Jews with regard to the Christians changed. It was clear that misconduct on their part would be punished, and it was. This repression in turn provoked thoughts of revenge, and more than once led Jews into new excesses....
Through the ages, the Jews appear as what they have been from the beginning: the indefatigable enemies of the followers of Christ.
....As Christianity extended its empire, the misdeeds of the Jews became rarer: it was too imprudent to risk committing them. But the hate of the Jews did not entirely lose its force....
...Judaeo-Masonry. - "Modern" times have allowed the Jews to resume, in more favourable circumstances, their hostility towards Christians. It has been argued that they were, by means of Freemasonry, the principal architects of the French Revolution, and that the ruinous deeds which the Revolution accomplished were the outcome of an anti-religious conspiracy, hatched by the sects embedded in Masonry which the Jews inspired and controlled.... [However,] since the 18th century, "there has not been, strictly speaking, an alliance, but only affinities", inspired by hatred, between Judaism and the secret societies, together with "inchoate or transient links...". What is certain, however, is that in the 18th century the different secret societies concentrated themselves in Freemasonry and were, to a large extent, implicated in the commotion of the French Revolution. It is proven with virtual certainty that Judaism was officially admitted into Freemasonry at the Convention of Willemsbad (1781)....
....The Jews played a striking role in the French Revolution, given their small numbers. They were among those who organised the ransacking of churches and the goods of exiles....
Have the Jews carried out moneylending in a moderate manner? - No. In their hands, usury - lending money at interest - became usury in the current sense of the word - lending money at exorbitant interest....
....From the fact that ritual murder in the strict sense is not a historical reality resting on convincing proofs, must we conclude that all the accusations of murder made against the Jews are false? No. Setting aside the cases of murder which lack documentation or are undoubtedly legendary, and taking no account of confessions extracted by torture, there remains a considerable number of facts which require examination and which we are not entitled to reject disdainfully a priori. To reject all the accusations together or to endorse them all together would be equally unscientific. There is not always enough evidence to give a confident verdict. Let us recognise this, and, because no-one is to be deemed guilty unless they are proved to be so, let us be inclined to believe that the Jews are innocent while doubt persists. But let us reject, along with the desire to find them guilty, the notion that they cannot be guilty.
The history of early Christianity is full of acts of savagery which they have carried out against the faithful. Subsequently, though obliged to be circumspect while living in Christian countries, they did not cast off their malevolent attitudes. They hated and were hated....
Why has the Jew been "universally hated"? Because in every place, and up to our own day, the Jew has been "an unsociable being", marked out by his excellence, mistrusting anyone who is not Jewish, and forming a state within the state. If he had kept purely to the religion of Moses, he would have ended up being assimilated with the other nations. But one thing stopped this assimilation, and that was the Talmud and its elaborations, with the domination and the authority of the Talmudic scholars. The Jew who adhered to the Talmud isolated himself from the rest of humanity. It was not just unsociability: it was exclusivism. He entered into contact with the rest of humanity for patriotic, religious and economic reasons, in order to make use of other men, in order to do business with them, in order to convert them, but holding himself back from them, refusing to submit to their customs, considering their ideas, their influence and their way of life to be evil, proclaiming that he must await, free of all mixing with these "impure" men, the re-establishment of the empire of the Jews....
As well as being a danger to the faith of individuals, the Jews were, in many cases, a danger to the nation which received them. It is understood that civil rulers were troubled by their aggressive and dirty hostility, and that acts of treachery committed by Jews, both real - and there were some of these - or thought to be real, brought on them a vigorous repression. Their usurious excesses of all kinds, together with their treacheries, motivated the rigorous measures of which they were the object....
Beginnings are extremely important. The Jews began badly. Everything else followed. The Jews were aggressive: the Christians responded. The Jews, not being willing to be subordinate, resumed the fight....
