Justice, not Fear

A Response to "Fear of the Jews in Harrisburg" by Thomas J. Herron, Culture Wars, October 2007, pp. 8-15, 47.

Dear Editor,

I owe Tom Herron a thank you. Thank you, Mr. Herron, for revealing that Bishop Rhoades ordered Robert Sungenis to "immediately desist from commenting on the Jewish people and Judaism", and to pull down all such materials from his website, as early as June 29, 2007. Given that Sungenis kept churning out the Jewish stuff unabated until a full month later, Herron's attempt to paint Sungenis as a humble son of the Church, obedient to a fault to priestly authority ("This deference to the collar may yet prove his undoing"), is reduced to absurdity. God knows, if my bishop told me to be silent about Jews, the next thing I put on my website would not be a big cartoon of a Jew shoving a rifle in a kid's face.

Furthermore, on July 6, just about a week after Sungenis received the cease and desist letter, his promotions director Chris Campbell quietly copied six of Sungenis' Jewish-related articles to a separate blog, sungenisandhiscritics.blogspot.com, where they remained for several months. I confronted Sungenis about this blog and his response was an extended, nasty invective. The blog came down only recently.

Anyway, I also had to laugh at Herron's claim that, for Sungenis' critics, "nothing is too petty or too private to destroy Mr. Sungenis." And we receive this stinging rebuke because we, heaven forbid, wanted to know who his pastor and bishop were! I doubt Mr. Herron is unaware of the biblical formula: when one sees one's brother sinning, one rebukes him in private, then in the presence of witnesses, then one goes to the Church (Matt 18:15-17). This formula we have followed, with the sole exception that in step two we have rebuked Sungenis to the public at large, instead of before a small group, since the nature of his sin is such as to cause public scandal and thus to require public opposition.

Mr. Herron's article is a rather meandering piece; it contains much information which, while mildly interesting, has precious little to do with the question of whether Bob Sungenis is an anti-Semite and deserved the Church's discipline. In fact, it is quite telling that Herron's article does not so much as attempt to defend Sungenis from a single specific argument his critics have used to justify the charge of anti-Semitism. Herron simply attempts to poison the well by accusing us of "ethnically judaizing", whatever that means, or being closet dispensationalists trying to smuggle the Scofield Reference Bible into the Vatican (I'm amillennial, myself).

Well, in case Mr. Herron is genuinely ignorant of the real, substantive issues in this controversy, allow me to bring him up to speed. I will start with a few words on the definition of anti-Semitism. Pace Mike Jones, I am going to reject, as unnecessarily narrow, the definition of anti-Semitism as the belief that Jews are biologically degenerate. This definition falsely assumes that anti-Semitism must proceed from some consciously articulated principle. It leaves no room for the crude and ignorant bigot who knows nothing of DNA and racial hygiene, and can't articulate why he is so hostile to Jews. Further, the definition of anti-Semitism as racial hatred of Jews unnecessarily excludes other forms of principled anti-Semitism, such as that of Martin Luther.

To begin to properly define anti-Semitism, let us look to the definition most commonly found in dictionaries: prejudice against Jews. And prejudice is best understood according to its etymology: to pre-judge. The anti-Semite will form hostile judgments about Jews prior to any dispassionate consideration of rational evidence. His treatment of Jews and Jewish issues will be, to put it mildly, heavily biased and tendentious. So will be his exegesis of texts by and about Jews. He will have an irrational predisposition to see the worst in Jews, and to see Jews in the worst. He will suspect his enemies to be secret Jews, even in the absence of evidence. He will habitually, uncritically swallow any spurious claim which disparages Jews (any stick good enough to beat the Jews with), and seek to undermine any statement which praises them. Lastly, when the issue is the Jews his faculty of reasoning will be manifestly impaired. The foregoing commentary may be crystallized into the following definition: anti-Semitism is the habit of will whereby one violates justice and charity with respect to Jews. Now, on to specific things that Robert Sungenis has said and done:

(1) He has made use of forged quotations of Roy Schoeman and Albert Einstein, and stuck behind them obstinately even after they were exposed as forgeries. The forged Schoeman quote was sent to him by a young man with whom he had only recently struck up correspondence. It was promptly exposed as a doctored version of an article available on the internet, yet Sungenis left it online and defended it for quite some time. For that whole sordid story, including the part where Sungenis claimed (falsely) to have traced the young man's e-mail address to Mark Shea and Jacob Michael (the fearsome two-headed judaizing monster, I suppose), see: www.pugiofidei.com/fraud.htm.

With respect to the forged Einstein quote, Sungenis obviously got it, mediately or immediately, from one of the myriad White Supremacist websites which carry it. It consists of two sentences, which are eight paragraphs apart in Einstein's original article, which the forger connected without ellipses; after this there is an ellipsis and a third sentence which is fabricated out of whole cloth. This has been pointed out to Sungenis many times, yet he has never retracted the quote.

(2) Sungenis has himself forged two quotes of Roy Schoeman. He states in his letter to the editor of The Latin Mass (Winter 2006, p. 5) that, according to Schoeman, "anyone who tries to stop [the return of the Jerusalem Temple] is 'of the Antichrist'", and "God will then proceed to make 'the Old Covenant fulfill the New'". Neither the phrase "of the Antichrist" nor "the Old Covenant fulfill the New" appear anywhere in Schoeman's book. Furthermore, so far from believing that those who oppose the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple are of the Antichrist, Schoeman himself opposes it.

(3) Sungenis has attributed to Schoeman the absurd belief, which he obviously does not hold, that God has been done saving Gentiles as of 1969.

(4) Sungenis has stated that there is nothing good in the Talmud. How does he know? Prejudice. I doubt he's read 20 folios beginning to end; every critique he has put on his website besides mine (which was later published in Culture Wars) has consisted in him copy-pasting or paraphrasing secondary sources like Jack Mohr, Ted Pike, or Michael Hoffman II. Sungenis has never demonstrated the slightest personal familiarity with the Talmud or published any original research. Yet, he feels qualified to say that there is nothing good in those thousands of pages! Well, allow me to say this as one who has spent a number of hours studying the Talmud, and on the whole am no fan of it at all: every once in a while the rabbis manage a witty aphorism, or a salutary precept, or a probable interpretation of Scripture, or some such.

This leads into point (5), that Sungenis has habitually and uncritically gobbled up and regurgitated material from the Jack Chicks and Dave Hunts of anti-Judaism: Mohr, Dilling, Pike, Hoffman, National Vanguard (the now defunct racist organization whose leader was arrested for child pornography), Dr. Robert Ley (propaganda minister for the third Reich), etc. In some cases, to be fair, Sungenis did not know who was the author of the text he was copy-pasting onto his website, at the time he copy-pasted it (this was the case with the Nazi propaganda tract). But does it reflect any better on Sungenis that he copy-pastes anti-Jewish texts onto his website without even knowing who wrote them? And in some cases, without even reading them? What rational consideration convinces him that a text of unknown origin (even content!), if it disparages Jews, is therefore ipso facto truthful and worth repeating? Prejudice.

(6) After I left CAI, Sungenis asked me if I were Jewish, and when I responded no, publicly suggested that I was lying. He has also asked Michael Forrest, Jacob Michael, and David Palm whether they were Jewish. When they did not dignify his question with a response, he suggested they too were hiding their Jewishness. And as if that were not enough, Sungenis even persuaded one of his followers to write Jacob Michael under a pseudonym to attempt to get Jacob to divulge his ethnic identity.

More recently, Sungenis has stated that Paul Tarsax and Mendel Levine, the creators of "The Catholic Anti-Defamation League" blog, are Jews. This is false. Once again, Sungenis simply assumed that his enemies were Jews. Hopefully by this point the reader is beginning to notice a pattern and will not be surprised when I say that Sungenis has publicly speculated that Paul Tarsax is an Anti-Defamation League agent and is lying when he says that he is not a Jew.

(7) Recently, Sungenis ran an article about Robin Williams mocking the Catholic priesthood. In his headline, he referred to Robin Williams as a "Jewish comedian." Robin Williams is not Jewish; Sungenis simply assumed he was. Robin Williams did something evil, therefore he is Jewish, so says the logic of prejudice. Similarly, Sungenis recently ran an article in which various scholars derided the Talpiot tomb theory. The article contained no quotations of Jewish scholars claiming they found Christ's bones. Sungenis headlined the article: "Jewish scholars claim they found Christ's bones."

(8) Sungenis has manifestly manhandled statements from Pope Benedict XIV and Cardinal Ratzinger, which contradict his positions on the Jews. Pope Benedict XIV, in Ex Quo 67, 74, clearly teaches that some of the ceremonial rites of the Old Covenant may licitly be observed by Christians if they are observed, not qua obligations of the Law, but from some other motive such as from "personal decision, from human custom, or on the instruction of the Church." Sungenis cannot come to grips with the plain teaching of this Pope, which will become quite evident if he responds to this letter.

Next, Sungenis' media technician recently asked him whether Cardinal Ratzinger, in his book God and the World, affirms that the Jews are still God's chosen people. Cardinal Ratzinger answers the question: "God has not, then, retracted his word that Israel is the Chosen People?" His answer is, "No, because he is faithful." According to Sungenis, Cardinal Ratzinger does not say that the Jews are still the Chosen People. Well Bob, you may disagree with Ratzinger's private theological opinions all you want, just don't manhandle his statements and pretend that they don't contradict you when they do.

(9) Sungenis has quoted St. Augustine's writings in order to refute the interpretation, which Sungenis associates with dispensationalism, that the olive tree of Romans 11 refers to Israel. Yet, in two cases St. Augustine explicitly identifies the olive tree as Israel in the very same paragraph from which Sungenis quotes. "You say that the apostle, in leaving Judaism, passed from the bitter to the sweet. But the apostle himself says that the Jews, who would not believe in Christ, were branches broken off, and that the Gentiles, a wild olive tree, were grafted into the good olive, that is, the holy stock of the Hebrews, that they might partake of the fatness of the olive" (Augustine to Faustus the Manichean, Bk 9, 2). "So then for this reason that people did not come to Him, that is by reason of pride; and the natural branches are said to be broken off from the olive tree, that is from that people founded by the Patriarchs" (Sermons, XXVII, 12). Sungenis has persisted in his misuse of St. Augustine (St. John Chrysostom as well) on this question in spite of his being corrected repeatedly by Michael Forrest and myself.

(10) When the issue is the Jews, Sungenis' capacity for reason is drastically impaired. Witness the following statement from one of his essays, in which he defines what he means by calling his critics "Jewish racists":

"Essentially, they think that the Jews, just because of their race, are a chosen and special people above all the other people of the world. They believe that, basically, nothing has changed since the Old Testament." Later on in the same article he adds that, "'Nature," as Mr. Schoeman insists, concerns being blessed intrinsically merely because of race... It would be akin to saying that the Polish people are 'blessed by nature' just because they are Poles. This is racism. God no longer looks upon race as a matter of divine favor. Those days were over with the completion of the Old Testament. God loves all people, but he no longer blesses particular races by nature."

Here we see, in quite close proximity, the assertions that (a) it is racist to look upon race as a matter of divine favor, and (b) under the Old Testament, God looked upon race as a matter of divine favor. Did God used to be a racist, then? Who told Him better, that He finally wised up?

In light of all this, I would be most interested in whatever sort of case Mr. Herron could build in Sungenis' defense, and especially interested in whether he could stand up to cross-examination.

Ben Douglass
November 8, Anno Domini MMVII
Updated February 25, Anno Domini MMVIII