christianity

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A history of Jewish–Christian friendships (www.mdpi.com)

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Many familiar with the subject of Jewish life under premodern European Christendom frequently summarize it as an unending dystopia: Christian society not only impoverished Judaists in dilapidated ghetti but also figuratively and literally demonized, humiliated, tormented, expelled, and massacred Judaists.

That persecution certainly should not be overlooked, but it is also true that many premodern Christians (mostly lower‐class ones) befriended, assisted, defended, and cohabited with Judaists. These instances demonstrate that Jewish life under Christendom did not have to be dystopian.

Quoting Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History, pages 68–9:

There is recent physical evidence (or what insiders sometimes call realia) suggesting that the Christian and Jewish communities remained closely linked—intertwined, even—until far later than is consistent with claims about the early and absolute break between church and synagogue. The realia are both archaeological and documentary.

Eric Meyers (1983, 1988) reported that a wealth of archaeological findings in Italy (especially in Rome and Venosa) show that “Jewish and Christian burials reflect an interdependent and closely related community of Jews and Christians in which clear marks of demarcation were blurred until the third and fourth centuries C.E.” (1988:73–74).

Shifting to data from Palestine, Meyers noted excavations in Capernaum (on the shores of the Sea of Galilee) that reveal “a Jewish synagogue and a Jewish–Christian house church on opposite sides of the street. […] Following the strata and the structures, both communities apparently lived in harmony until the seventh century C.E.” (1988:76). Finally, Meyers suggested that only when a triumphant Christianity began, late in the fourth century, to pour money into Palestine for church building and shrines was there any serious rupture with Jews.

Roger Bagnall reported a surviving papyrus (P.Oxy. 44) from the year 400 wherein a man “explicitly described as a Jew” leased a ground‐floor room and a basement storage room in a house from two Christian sisters described as apotactic monastics:

The rent is in line with other lease payments for parts of the city known from the period, and the whole transaction is distinguished by its routineness. All the same, the sight of two Christian nuns letting out two rooms in their house to a Jewish man has much to say about not only the flexibility of the monastic life but also the ordinariness of [Christian–Jewish] relationships. (1993: 277–278 )

These data may strike social scientists as thin, but they seem far less ambiguous and far more reliable than the evidence with which students of antiquity must usually work.

Markus Bockmuehl’s “Friendship between Jews and Christians in Antiquity” in Looking In, Looking Out: Jews and Non‐Jews in Mutual Contemplation, pages 308–9:

Chrysostom’s ill‐mannered rant eloquently attests the strength of what he rejects the widespread pattern of friendly social and religious relations between two remarkably interconnected communities. Christians kept feasts and fasts in the synagogues for the great autumn festivals of Rosh Ha‐Shanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot (Adv. Jud. 1.1.5), as well as Passover (3.3.6, 3.6.7; 4.4.4–5.4).⁵² A woman was required by a fellow Christian to seal a business transaction by an apparently superior oath in the synagogue (1.3.4).

Chrysostom’s concern at the widely intertwined lives of Christians and Jews was equally shared by church authorities in Asia Minor, including in Phrygia. The influential Council of Laodicea (c.363) sought to ban Christians from Sabbath‐keeping (Canon 29), celebrating festivals of the Jews or accepting gifts from them on such occasions (37), or indeed from eating their unleavened bread (38).⁵³

Meanwhile, by the late fourth century, Christians had long tended and perhaps appropriated the cult of the Maccabean martyrs, somewhat curiously translated to Antioch.⁵⁴

Despite Chrysostom’s best efforts, Antioch clearly showed very little inclination to effect a definitive “parting of the ways,” even while Christianity gained political and cultural ascendancy during the fourth century.

Chrysostom’s own teacher Libanius of Antioch (314–393), a prominent rhetorician and friend of the Emperor Julian, fostered networks of acquaintance with both Jews and Christians and numbered several future church fathers among his students. He corresponded with Priscianus the Governor of Palestine on behalf of the Jewish community and expressed to the Jewish Patriarch (probably Gamaliel V) his distress at recent harassment of the Jewish people.⁵⁵

In such relationships with both intertwined communities, this public intellectual attached great importance “to friendship […], to the rule of law and justice, and to divinely inspired human community as the essential foundation for human welfare.”⁵⁶

Joshua Trachtenberg’s The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism, pages 159–161:

It is a striking consideration, in this regard, that despite the virulent anti‐Jewish campaign of the early Church, relations between Jews and Christians were not materially embittered. Indeed, the period between the break‐up of the Roman Empire and the Crusades—roughly the sixth to the eleventh centuries—was comparatively favorable for the Jews.

Their unhappy experience in Visigothic Spain after its conversion from Arianism to Catholicism and the wave of expulsions during the seventh century were the result of official antagonism rather than of any strongly felt popular resentment. In general it may be said that social and economic relations remained good. Some Christians continued for a long time to observe their feasts and festivals on the Jewish dates and together with Jews.

The constantly reiterated fulminations of Church authorities against close social and religious intercourse between the two groups (“It comes to such a pass that uneducated Christians say that Jews preach better to them than our priests,” complained Agobard ¹), against eating and drinking and living with Jews, testify to their unimpaired and cordial intimacy. Even the clergy had to be forbidden from time to time to be friendly with Jews.

Reporting his amicable discussions with Rabbi Simeon Hasid of Treves, Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster in the eleventh century, says: “He often used to come to me as a friend both for business and to see me […] and as often as we came together we would soon get talking in a friendly spirit about the Scriptures and our faith.” ² In the tenth and eleventh centuries we hear of Jews receiving gifts from Gentile friends on Jewish holidays, of Jew leaving the keys to their homes with Christian neighbors before departing on a journey.

In Champagne, where Jews engaged extensively in viticulture and wine making, they freely employed Gentiles in their vineyards, and the rabbis set aside the ancient ritual prohibition against the use of this wine on the ground that Christians are not idolaters. Christians took service in Jewish homes as nurses and domestics, and Jewish traders dealt in ecclesiastical articles. Business relations were markedly free and close, and there are many instances of commercial partnerships between adherents of the two faiths.

Nor did the sporadic dissemination of anti‐Jewish propaganda by clerical preachment disturb these generally amicable relations sufficiently to arouse a sense of insecurity and alienness on the part of the Jew. The Jews of France, for instance, called the French language “our language,” and some eminent scholars of this period bore French names, e.g., Judah HaKohen, who was known as Léontin, and Joseph, known as Bonfils.

The use of French names was even more marked in England, where Norman French was the vernacular of the Jews no less than of the aristocracy; and a similar process of cultural adaptation prevailed throughout Central and Southern Europe. These are assuredly tokens of a cultural and social affinity which could not have flourished in an atmosphere of unrelieved suspicion and hostility.³

It will not do to idealize this situation; the distinction between the earlier and the later medieval periods, so far as the popular attitude toward the Jew is concerned, must not be overly formalized. Even in the earlier period, of course, there were signs pointing toward the later attitude, but they multiplied very slowly at first and gathered momentum only in the twelfth and the succeeding centuries, until the slowly changing picture was wholly transformed by that unmitigated hatred of the Jew which we have come to characterize as medieval.

Christopher Tuckwood’s From Real Friend to Imagined Foe: The Medieval Roots of Anti‐Semitism as a Precondition for the Holocaust:

Other sources confirm that it was common at the time for Christians and Jews to dine together on kosher food, discuss religious ideas, and for Christians to adopt Jewish customs such as resting on Saturday and celebrating Jewish holidays while neglecting their own. Such practices likely even extended to the imperial court, and clerical alarm is thus not surprising.¹²

Katherine Aron‐Beller’s Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators: The History of an Allegation, 400–1700, pages 106–107:

When the anonymous Christian author of the 1286 Majorca disputation addressed the Christian practice of using images and crosses in churches, the Christian interlocutor Inghetto Contardo, having been accused of idolatry by his Jewish opponent, put forward an unusual argument.⁷ He rejected the accusation by suggesting that if there was a [humanitarian] need, he would destroy an image himself:

We do not venerate idols and images but we venerate the God of heaven, the Father, and His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. […] And indeed I say to you that if I had a wooden cross or image, and I had nothing with which to heat water for my Christian brother, or my Jewish friend were they to fall sick, I would put the cross and the image in the fire and burn them.

Robert Chazan’s “Philosemitic Tendencies in Medieval Western Christendom” in Philosemitism in History, pages 47–8:

Jewish sources recurrently mention pleas on the part of friendly Christians to Jews, urging the latter to convert in order to save themselves. These pleas do not seem to have been inspired by genuine missionizing ardor. Rather, they seem to reflect the simple desire of Christians to save Jewish neighbors at all costs.

The story of the Jews of Regensburg is told elliptically in the Solomon bar Simson Narrative: The burghers of Regensburg “pressed them [the Jews of the town] against their will and brought them into a certain river. They made the evil sign in the water — the cross — and baptized them all simultaneously in that river.”³² The fact that the Jews of Regensburg are reported to have returned almost immediately to Judaism reinforces the sense of an act performed by well‐intentioned burghers in order to save endangered Jewish neighbors.

Curious and intriguing evidence of warm Christian–Jewish relations is available from more peaceful circumstances as well. Joseph Shatzmiller has studied in depth an unusual court record from fourteenth‐century Marseilles.³³ There, a Jewish moneylender named Bondavid was accused of attempting to collect a debt twice and chose to defend his reputation in court.

During the protracted deliberations, Bondavid brought on his behalf a set of Christian witnesses, who testified to his exceptional character and generosity. Human relations are always reciprocal. The testimony offered by the Christian witnesses attests to Bondavid’s warmth and generosity toward Christians in need. In return, the Christian witnesses to his largesse took the trouble to make court appearances and to praise Bondavid’s character lavishly.

Daniel Jütte’s Interfaith Encounters between Jews and Christians in the Early Modern Period and Beyond: Toward a Framework:

For instance, there is the well‐known case of the humanist and Hebraist Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), who became the target of a campaign spearheaded by the Dominicans, at least in part because of his close relationships with Jewish scholars.²²

Another example is the famous eighteenth‐century court Jew Joseph Süß Oppenheimer (“Jud Süß”), whose surviving letters to the Duke of Württemberg reveal a degree of intimacy that can be called friendship. Indeed, Oppenheimer even used the second‐person address “Du” in those letters—an extremely rare privilege reserved mainly for fellow sovereigns and immediate family members.²³

One can, of course, object that these cases were exceptional because they involved two unrepresentative protagonists, a scholar and a court Jew. To counter this argument, it is necessary to examine the dimension of everyday life. This does not imply an irenic concept of daily life—indeed, prejudice and hatred were a common feature of premodern social life in all strata of society.

On the other hand, recent studies on hatred as a social institution in premodern Europe show that except in times of crisis, everyday Jewish–Christian relations were quite the opposite of what one might expect. Daniel Lord Smail has convincingly shown that in late medieval Marseilles, “Jew–Christian confrontations were relatively infrequent.”

By contrast, cases of “intracommunity confrontations among Jews” were far more frequent, given the small size of the Jewish community.²⁴ In light of this, consigning minorities such as Jews to an “otherly status” in premodern society is debatable.²⁵

Katherine Aron‐Beller’s Christians in Jewish Houses: The Testimony of the Inquisition in the Duchy of Modena in the 17th Century:

When the nineteen‐year‐old Giuseppe Melli was prosecuted by the inquisitors in 1623 for holding a double wedding of poor Jews in his father Emilio’s house in Finale Emilia in 1620, he admitted to allowing Christians to take part in the singing and dancing.¹⁷ The inquisitorial vicar Don Baldassarre Passerini interrogated over twenty Christians, who were reprimanded for socializing and dancing with Jewish women.¹⁸

When Giuseppe was asked whether it was normal practice for Christians and Jews of the town to mingle together, he replied in the affirmative.¹⁹ When he listed some of the Christians who participated, the inquisitorial vicar Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza was shocked that his list included some of the most prominent local Christian noblemen.²⁰

In fact, certain Christian witnesses testified that the whole of the town had come, many out of curiosity so that they might enter the home of a prominent Jew.²¹ Others noted that they had attended because the Jews were their friends.²²

[…]

In 1680, the situation was even more scandalous when it appeared that fraternization between Jews and Christians included members of the clergy. The inquisitorial vicar in Finale Emilia, Fra Girolamo Moretti, was denounced to the Holy Office by Father Provincial of the Conventual Franciscans of Bologna, for participating in social gatherings with Jews and even for eating unleavened bread during the Jewish festival of Passover.²⁸

One Jewish witness, Elia Benedetto Castelfranco, was able to confirm that the vicar had sat with him a few years earlier in his sukkah: the temporary abode (booth) which Jews build as an attachment to their home during the festival of Tabernacles.²⁹ These gatherings of Christians in the homes of Jews seem to have nurtured knowledge of Jewish practices and also personal friendships and genuine trust.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

The enmity between many premodern Christians and Judaists cannot be deduced as some sort of natural and inevitable byproduct of Christian teaching. Rather, it was a political decision: whether it eliminating (potential) economic competition, seizing others’ property or distracting ordinary people from their real problems (typically the upper classes), those who reduce the cause to the Christian justification only put the cart before the horse.

May your presence be a blessing to Jews, as theirs is to you.

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“So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.” -John 2:15 (hexbear.net)

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I share my prayer to you all. (lemm.ee)

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Dear God, l commit all our plans, dreams and aspirations into hands. These are only products of our thoughts,what we truly want is what you want for us because we know that is what will truly be best us In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen

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Netanyahu cancels Vatican visit over fears of ICC arrest (english.almayadeen.net)

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Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly canceled plans to attend the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican due to concerns over a possible arrest linked to a pending warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), according to Israeli media outlet Ynet.

The decision followed behind-the-scenes inquiries made by the occupation government with both Italian and Vatican officials to assess whether Netanyahu could enter the country without facing detention. However, responses from both parties were reportedly ambiguous, and it remained unclear whether they would comply with the ICC's warrant should Netanyahu set foot on their soil.

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CAC.org event - ReVision: What Do We Do with Christianity? (email.cac.org)

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I thought this looked interesting - and have found CAC’s events and reflections insightful. The event description includes this: “Together, we’ll courageously imagine a spirituality rooted in love and spacious enough for the complexity of our world today. Christianity has been shaped by empire and by mystics, by resistance and renewal—so what can it become now through us?”

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How would your faith inform your view of sapient artificial life (AI, bioengineered, etc.) were it created? (hexbear.net)

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By this I don't mean the morality of creating such a lifeform, but how your faith would inform the meaning, implications, and ethical ramifications of existing alongside such a being.

I think such a thing is a fascinating question, but when works of fiction featuring such beings incorporate Christianity at all, they tend to either 1) have the creature be a mindless monster that must be killed as an example of Why Man Shouldn't Play God, or 2) have Christians as villains who wrongly believe #1. I'm hoping to hear a different perspective, and I figured this would be the place to ask.

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Pope Leo XIV (hexbear.net)

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It’s weird having a yankee Pope, but he seems to have spent a lot of his time in Latin America and chose to speak in Spanish…so there is that.

I’ve also seen a lot of talk that suggest his taking the name Leo signifies his desire to highlight Catholic Social Teaching as it pertains to capitalism and the problems of our modern world such as his predecessor and most recent namesake did.

I’ve also seen a lot of MAGA people losing their mind and Steve Bannon in an interview saying he’d be a dark horse pick but potentially one of the worst because woke (lol).

Personally, I hope he continues the focus on God’s mercy Francis’s papacy had and continues the Church down the synodal path he set it on.
I hope he continues to advocate for the Palestinian people.
And a bit more selfishly, I hope he doesn’t reverse Francis’s position on the blessing of same sex couples and trans people being allowed to be God parents and baptized.

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

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Soon there will be a new Pope (hexbear.net)

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Idk how to feel about it.

I feel like Francis did a lot to rekindle my faith, but it is still so dim. Now my feed is filled with so many outside voices reporting and politicking and it seems this whole thing will almost be a referendum on his Papacy.

Idk

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Checks out (hexbear.net)

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The new Pope has been chosen in a surprise upset (hexbear.net)

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Muslims who saved Armenians from extermination in 1915 (www.atour.com)

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(Mirror.)

Many unnamed individuals helped their neighbours to escape. For instance, another Armenian survivor I interviewed, Mr. Hagop Arsenian showed me ‘scars’ he carried from that period of his life. Tattoos on his right arm depicted an Arab knife (hançer), the Islamic crescent and star. He always thought that these tattoos were to disguise Armenians as Muslims and were done by local Muslims (mainly Arabs) to save them.⁶

There were also such groups as the Mevlevi order in Konya and the people of Dersim, who helped Christians, as pointed out by Raymon Kevorkian.⁷ Garo Sasuni also reported that the Kurds in the South participated to the massacres to a lesser extent than their northern brethren and that many Kurdish tribes helped Armenians by hiding them. For example, in Dersim⁸ 20,000 Armenians were saved because of Kurdish efforts. In Ras-ul-Ain, while some Chechens attacked Armenians, other Chechens “saved around 400 to 500” deportees and the Jabbur Arabs sheltered many Armenians.⁹

Sefa Kaplan in an interview with Prof. Selim Deringil stated that “[t]here were many Muslims who took great risks in order to save their Armenian neighbours, there were also those who adopted children in order to save them”. Deringil responded: “Yes, of course, this was done despite İttihat ve Terraki’s orders to the contrary. There was such an order, what can we say to that? It is not possible to deny it. There were even commanders who refused to follow orders.”¹⁰

Indeed there were many such functionaries who did not obey orders and for obvious reasons are overlooked in the official narrative in Turkey. Raymon Kevorkian who conducted research on this topic identified a number of government functionaries who contested government orders.

For instance, the Vali¹¹ (governor) of Konya, Celal Bey, did not permit the Konya Armenians to be deported because he knew what would have happened to them if they were sent to the deserts of Deir Zor. Where possible he also tried to prevent Armenians from other places to be sent to the deserts. He was removed from his post in October 1915 but he had already saved many lives. He remained unemployed until 1919.¹²

Other examples include, the Governor of Ankara Hasan Mazhar, who was removed from his post for refusing to deport Armenians in the August of 1915, the Mutasarrıf¹³ of Kütahya Faik Ali Bey, who refused to deport about 2,000 Armenians (later he became permanent undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic) and the mayor of Malatya Mustafa Ağa Azizoğlu.

Malatya was a transit place for those who were deported from the Eastern provinces. The mayor did not have authority to prevent deportation but saved people in his house by providing refuge. Dramatically, he was killed by his son, a member of Union and Progress, for “looking after infidels”.¹⁴ To this list Reşit, Vali of Kastamonu, who was also dismissed for not complying with the extermination campaign and the Mutassarıf of Yozgat, Cemal Bey, should be added.¹⁵ Last, but not least, Tahsin Bey, Vali of Erzurum should also be remembered as one of the heroes who defied orders.¹⁶

[…]

Many other high ranking officials have paid with their lives for disobeying orders. As well as being responsible for massacres against the Armenians and Assyrians, Dr. Reşit Şahingiray, the governor of the Province of Diyarbakır, was alleged to have murdered a number of Turkish officials who refused to carry out his orders: “Vali of Basra Ferit, Mutasarrıf of Müntefek [part of Basra] Bedii Nuri, Kaymakam²⁴ of Lice Hüseyin, Deputy Kaymakam of Beşiri [Batman] Sabit, journalist İsmail Mestan; all socialists and/or humanists”.²⁵

Dr. Reşit also tried to assassinate the Mutasarrıf of Mardin, Hilmi Bey, who was removed from office. His successor Shefik [Şefik] Bey was also removed for not following orders. Finally, Bedri Bey who was willing to carry out Reşit’s orders was appointed as Mardin’s Mutasarrıf.²⁶ A telegram to form the Interior Ministry to the Province of Diyarbakır, dated 28 June 1915 informs the governorate that Şefik was being transferred to Baghdad, while Bedri Bey was being appointed to the post.²⁷

The Dominican priest Marie-Dominique Berré in his comprehensive report on the Massacres in Mardin notes that

[t]owards the middle of May 1915, Doctor Raschid [Reşit] Bey, vali of Diarbékir, sent to Mutasarrif of Mardin, Hilmi Bey, the order to imprison all Christian notables of that city. Hilmi Bey responded by this telegram, the authenticity of which I guarantee: ‘I am not a man without conscience; I have nothing against the Christians of Mardin; I will not execute these orders.’ A few days later Hilmi Bey was discharged. A functionary, his name of which I have forgotten [Bedri Bey], very hostile to Christians²⁸ became responsible of the management of the mutasarrifate.

Sister Issa Wareina from the Dominican Sisterhood of St Catherine de Sienne (Catherinettes) wrote that the Kaymakam of Savur Wahabit (Wahib/Wehbi) Efendi, a native of Mardin, protected her and her niece and 200 other Christians by giving them refuge in his property. Sister Wareina reported that “the Kaymakam was of Muslims who preferred suras of the Koran which prescribed compassion towards the Christians, than the savage preaching of massacre of Giaours [infidels]”.²⁹

(Emphasis added.)

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Mainstream obituaries are erasing Pope Francis’s deep concern for Palestine (mondoweiss.net)

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Significantly absent in the long obituaries for Pope Francis in both the New York Times and the Washington Post were mentions of his deep concern for the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. In Francis’s last public message on Easter Sunday, just hours before he died, he had called for a ceasefire in Gaza, and condemned the “deplorable humanitarian situation” there.

The obits also failed to note that Pope Francis had personally telephoned the Holy Family Church in Gaza just about every evening since Israel invaded the territory in October 2023 — including the Saturday night before Easter. The church’s pastor, Rev. Gabriel Romanelli, remembered: “He said he was praying for us, he blessed us, and he thanked us for our prayers.” Other church members said that the Pope “would make sure to speak not only to the priest but to everyone else in the room.”

Pope Francis’s concern for Gaza and Palestine did not start in October 2023. Rev. Munther Isaac, a Palestinian Christian theologian and Lutheran pastor, told Democracy Now:

I think no Palestinian will ever forget when Pope Francis, in 2014, stopped his car, went down, stepped down and prayed at the separation wall separating Jerusalem from Bethlehem — a moment that touched all of us and continued to speak to us for years.

Full Article

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Parables as Subversive Speech (archive.org)

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For anyone who is interested in left wing/historical materialist inroads to discuss Christianity, i have been reading a physical copy of Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed William R Herzog that i found in a used bookstore.

I cannot recommend it enough, it goes into various aspects of ancient Palestinian history from the worth of a talent to the treatment of day laborers by landowners' hired help, to the proportion of people within various classes in the time period discussed. It directly compares Jesus to Paolo Freire, specifically the period of time where Freire was targeted by the government for the results of his educational methods.

It takes a lot of the unpalatable and paternalistic metaphorical readings of the kingdom of heaven as a place run by a tyrant, and recontextualizes the stories as being about a real time and place where people lived and struggled.

context- I am an ex Catholic turned transsexual communist, and while I may not follow the tenets of the Church anymore and have resentment for the harm it did to me and countless others, I recognize that it has provided comfort and can be a difficult framework to negotiate with. I'm sharing this less as "see, the Church is cool after all!!" and more "if you have the patience to actually sit down and talk to people, this may be a useful reference."

reposted from news megathread, per a suggestion in a reply.

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Reverend Jeremiah Wright Speech about 9/11 (www.youtube.com)

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And here's a clip of his God Damn America speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYqrXVNfYUI

And here's the full Chickens Coming Home to Roost sermon, it's long but it's also a really cool example of rhetoric and speech and is BASED AS FUCK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUtZNQ0REFA

Yes this is basically a subtweet about how it's ridiculous to demonize "Christianity" because of the Bible.

I am not and have never been a member of the Church of Christianity, nor will I ever, but I respect the liberatory and militant strains within it.

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Fidel & Pope (hexbear.net)

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They meet in 2016

Full Article in English for you anglo-saxon nerds that dont speak spanish

There is curiosity, admiration, and respect in their gazes. Two leaders, face to face. Fidel Castro, 89 years old and retired from public life, but always conscious of being a global icon. And Francis, the Pope of mercy, but also the new global leader, idolized by the masses around the world. The Pontiff who, in less than two years, changed the face of the Church, launched the Vatican Spring, and became an icon of hope for the "discarded."

Two wise people, laden with the life experience that comes with years of living. Surely they both wanted to see each other, greet each other, and speak. Fidel would be eager to meet the Argentine Pope, the first Latin American Pope, the Pope who is exposing savage capitalism and who wants to inaugurate a new era for the "common home" based on mercy and Samaritan peace.

Bergoglio would also be eager to see Fidel, the icon, the commander, the supreme and steadfast leader, the leader for decades of the only communist country in the world that did not persecute the Catholic Church. The Fidel who studied with his Jesuit brothers in Havana. Perhaps that's why the gifts exchanged were aimed at those coordinates.

Fidel gave the Pope a book by Dominican priest Frei Betto, entitled Fidel and Religion, a true classic, to explain the Cuban leader's special religiosity, a kind of devout atheist. And the Pope reciprocated with books by Armando Llorente, the late Jesuit who was Fidel Castro's teacher and mentor at the Colegio de Belén in Havana in the 1940s. His last encyclical, Laudato Si', on integral ecology, was also included.

Two world-famous figures, one in its decline and the other in its heyday. Two icons of their respective revolutions. Fidel's, an attempt at socialism based on equality with evident losses of freedom, in retreat. Francis's, based on the equality of mercy, which could prevail in the 'global village'.

Two men of drive and character. One left his mark on his homeland and even extended his influence, especially throughout Latin America. The other is reaching the hearts of the masses around the world with his actions and his discourse based on the "tenderness of God" and the denunciation of the injustices caused by an "inexigenous system." Both, and logically each in their own way, fought for the dignity of the human person, for the discarded, for those abandoned in the face of life's challenges, for the outcasts of humanity.

It was the long-awaited photo. It will be the photo, or one of the photos, of the Pope's visit to Cuba that will endure in time and go down in history. Two fighters, face to face. Two men who chose to blaze a trail, taking the risk of making mistakes. Because, as Francis says, "I prefer a Church in ruins than at a standstill" or "I prefer to ask for forgiveness than permission."

What they talked about was the least of it. They say it was the environment. What mattered were the glances and the innuendos. Who would have told the old comandante that he was going to greet a Pope from the same land as his beloved Che Guevara, who, if he were alive today, would be 87 years old and happy with his fellow countryman!

And perhaps the Pope thought, like many Latin Americans, that the "Cuban revolution," despite its many flaws and errors, was an example of resilience and, in a certain sense, a preferential option for the people, for the most humble. In the style of Liberation Theology or the Theology of the People, which is what Francis always followed.

A photo that sums up, then, almost a century of Latin American history. With a comandante, who no longer wears the olive-green suit, but rather the blue tracksuit, branded Adidas, one of the great capitalist multinationals. And with a Pope, arrived from the end of the Argentine world, who has lit the flame of the revolution of mercy in the Church and in the world. Angel and devil, some will say. Two great leaders, others will say.

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🙏RIP Pope Francis 🙏 (hexbear.net)

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I know a lot of Hexbear will be crab emoji-ing, but I’m genuine sad at his passing.
I’d like to think it happening on Easter is symbolic of something.

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He has risen yayy - wolfy (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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By wolfythewitch

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Happy Easter (hexbear.net)

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Palestinian Christians reject U.S. Catholic Bishops collaboration with pro-Israel group - mondoweiss (mondoweiss.net)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Palestinian Christians are condemning a move by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to collaborate with a leading pro-Israel advocacy group on an online tool that aims to define Palestinian resistance as antisemitic.

In a letter sent late last month from Kairos Palestine to the USCCB Committee’s head, Bishop Timothy Broglio, sixteen Palestinian Christian leaders representing Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant denominations and church organizations express their deep disappointment regarding the USCCB’s endorsement of the American Jewish Committee’s online resource, Translate Hate. The bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, in partnership with the AJC, added its own annotations to the AJC’s resource, which offers glossary of “antisemitic terms, phrases, conspiracies, cartoons, themes, and memes” and titled it, Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition.

The Kairos Palestine letter charges the bishops’ document was “adopted without any form of consultation with Palestinian Christians, rendering us invisible and nonexistent in a discourse that directly impacts our lives and communities.”

It comes, they write, “at a time of immense suffering for our people, as tens of thousands are being killed, starved, and displaced under Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem—actions condemned by leading international and Israeli human rights organizations.”

Full article palestine-heart

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Religion - the 7 meaning of Marx" Religion is the opium of the Masses" (www.youtube.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Óscar Arnulfo Romero - New General Megathread for the 24th-26th of March 2025 (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Óscar Romero was an Archbishop of San Salvador and social activist who was assassinated on this day in 1980 after giving a sermon where he urged government soldiers to desert their ranks and stop carrying out state oppression.

Romero spoke out against social injustice, assassinations, and torture happening during the Salvadoran Civil War. Although initially perceived as a conservative, Romero became an activist after the assassination of his friend and fellow priest Rutilio Grande in 1977.

During the civil war, Romero was a prominent figure in El Salvador, giving popular radio sermons in which he reported disappearances, tortures, murders, and other repressed information each Sunday. In a media landscape that was heavily censored, Romero became an important source of news for what was going on in the country. According to listener surveys, 73% of the rural population and 47% of the urban listened regularly.

In 1980, Romero was assassinated while celebrating Mass in the chapel of the Hospital of Divine Providence, the day after he gave a sermon urging soldiers to listen to "God's orders" and desert their ranks rather than continuing to oppress the domestic population. Romero's funeral was interrupted by smoke bombs and rifle shots from surrounding buildings that were fired into the mourning crowd, killing dozens.

In 2000, The Guardian named Oscar Perez Linares as the assassin, using declassified CIA documents as evidence. Investigations by the UN-created "Truth Commission for El Salvador" concluded that the extreme right-wing politician and death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson had given the order to kill Romero. Both died before being brought to justice for their role in Romero's murder.

"A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — what gospel is that?"

Óscar Romero

Hexbear links

🐻Link to all Hexbear comms https://chapo.chat/post/1403966
📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube](https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies
🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread https://hexbear.net/post/4474329
⚔ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread https://hexbear.net/post/4474295
✨ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread https://hexbear.net/post/4474253
👊 Share your gains and goals with your comrades in the New Weekly Improvement thread https://hexbear.net/post/4476362
🧡 Disabled comm megathread https://hexbear.net/post/4476260

reminders:

💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
💜 Sorting by new you nerd
🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

Theory:

❤️Foundations of Leninism
❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

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Christian Greetings to the Lutherans (www.youtube.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Oh, come on! (chapo.chat)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Something I am guilty of (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The inauguration made my soul hurt. (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The first thing I see when tuning in is some choir singing the Battle Hymn of The Republic.
There is something really perverse about taking a song about freeing slaves and singing it in honor of a man who is about to unleash fascist goon squads on immigrants.

“His truth is marching on”
is it!!??

Carrie Underwood singing “America The Beautiful” all somberly after Trumps speech full of racist dog whistles and petty grievances made my eyes want to roll out the back of my skull.
And I had to turn it off when the Rabbi and Reverend and whoever else were going to start leading prayers.

It’s all just show to these people…just ritual they never bother trying to internalize.
They don’t care about God’s Grace…or His Will…or Filial Love.
It fills my heart with such deep sadness, it’s hard to describe.

This is how we Hallow His Name?
I feel such deep shame in being a Christian and an American and a human.
Every day we fail him and it’s only by his everlasting love and steadfast mercy we will be spared.

christianity

Welcome to c/Christianity

✝️❤️❤️❤️☦️