Address on Brotherhood 

Address Delivered at the National Congress of the Third
Order of St. Francis, Pittsburgh, Pa., Oct.11,1941
   It is fitting that the first session of the National Congress of the Third Order of St. Francis should open with a discussion of Brotherhood, for these are days when brothers are in battle array against brothers almost the whole world over, through lack of Christian brotherhood. Therefore no more opportune time could have been selected to emphasize brotherhood from the viewpoint of Brother Jesus and Brother Francis.
   While I responded immediately to the request to be part of this program, feeling as a tertiary that such a request was a command, I felt my inability to deal adequately with such a laudable topic, especially when sandwiched between such learned priests and laymen as are listed for this session. Thinking of the priest facing our Lord in the tabernacle before reading the Gospel at Mass, I said, May Almighty God move my heart and pen to make some constructive thought during this session that will advance the understanding of brotherhood, and encourage the fulfillment of the obligations it imposes upon all of us.
   There is a bond that makes us all brothers, differ though we do in inheritance, qualities and characteristics, for we have a common human nature that came to us from God through our first parents. There is a material bond that makes us brothers, for we are dependent upon one another for the conditions and things necessary to safeguard our physical well-being. There is a spiritual bond that makes us brothers, for each and every one of us has a soul made in the image and likeness of God, our common Father, that yearns for absolute happiness which we endeavor to obtain here on earth, very often failing to realize that it abides in the source from which our soul emanated. There is a mystical bond of brotherhood made up of persons who are incorporated by baptism into the Mystical Body of Christ, our Divine Brother.
   Belief in the brotherhood of man is not an exclusively Christian concept, for even the Socialists believe in it. But there is no sound basis in Marxian Socialism for such a belief, as brotherhood is dependent upon a common nature which came from God, our common Father, the existence of Whom Socialism denies. It is just as unsound to speak of a brotherhood of man minus a Fatherhood of God, as it is to hold the male children of a family group to be brothers minus their common male parentage.
   Our Christian brotherhood of man is rational, for it has God as the Creator of the first man, Adam, and the Author of the nature of man, which we descendants of Adam inherit. God did more than create the common human nature that unites us into universal brotherly relationship; He elevated that nature of man to a supernatural state by assuming it Himself, in the person of His Only Begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This God did through His love of man, whom he gave the means of occupying a mansion in His Eternal Jerusalem. That love of God for man was not for white men only; that love of God was not for Americans only; that love was not for Christians only. The love that caused God to take on a human nature, in union with His Divine nature, was for all mankind, black, red, and yellow, as well as white. That love of God for man was for Germans, Russians, Italians, Japanese, British, as well as Americans. That love of God was for Jews, Protestants, Mohammedans, and Atheists, as well as Christians. Hence the exclusion of any race, nationality, or religious division of society from the exercise of rights that are a part of their common God-given nature, is a violation of the natural and mystical bond of brotherhood.
   The part that St. Francis played during his holy life was to demonstrate the love that springs from the brotherhood that has God as its common Father and Jesus Christ as its Brother. That Franciscan concept of brotherhood the faithful sons and daughters of the Third Order of St. Francis exemplify in their daily lives, in their spirit of charity towards their brothers in Christ. Wherever the spirit of St. Francis is expressed in the lives of members of his Third Order, there will be found love of neighbor, family integrity, economic justice, in a word, charity, the term that embodies all these virtues. Socialism shows us the universal contrast, for its godlessness leads to a denial of brotherhood in practice. This the application of Socialism demonstrated in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the last quarter of a century of its "dictatorship of the proletariat."  It led to depriving 170,000,000 persons of the exercise of their natural rights; for Socialism, denying the existence of God, logically denies the existence of natural rights.  The Socialism of the Soviet Union led to the murder of more non war-waging persons, in the interest of "Marxian brotherhood," than have lost their lives during any non-war times, save during epidemics. The application of its totalitarian dictatorial principles gave the totalitarianism of Fascism and Nazism their impetus. The perniciousness of godless Marxian principles, that claim to have brotherhood as its objective, is seen in the entire disappearance of the descendants of Karl Marx, the father of modern Socialism, in its second generation, through the practice of birth control and deliberate self-murder on the part of his children, who lived according to the Socialist principles of their father.
   The tranquillity of brotherhood has been greatly disturbed of late by racism. The peace of the world, for which all men yearn, even if they happen to be doing the wrong thing to make it a reality, is threatened by a political anthropology, a racist theory, that is as unscientific as it is unchristian. The assumption of any people that they are the world's superior division of the children of Adam, is based upon pride, the first of the capital sins that have brought suffering to man while on earth, and eternal damnation to the souls that are in the infernal region.
   Races are fortunately not by dictatorship established. They are the result of natural, territorial, atmospheric, cultural, and environmental conditions. The classification of races by impartial anthropologists, ethnologists and biologists never resulted in the designation of Germans as distinctively Aryan, assuming for the nonce that there is such a racial division of man. A close examination of some of the tribes from which the German people of today descended will no doubt reveal them to be as Oriental as are the tribes to which the Israelites trace their origin. If charity ever displaces hatred in the heart of Hitler, which God grant, then will he realize that there is more reason to fear corruption of the bloodstream of his Germanic following by anti-God racism than by the infiltration of Jewish Semitic blood.
   As for the Jews, there is no scientific basis for designating them a distinctive race, even though they have characteristics that are distinctively Hebraic; even though it is a common thing to speak of the Jewish race as we speak of the Irish race, despite the fact that they are non-existent.
   Racism has no warrant in the teachings of the Catholic Church; hence no member of the Third Order of St. Francis can rightly be a racist, nor will he claim to be one. Pope Pius XI, of blessed memory, condemned the racist theory, holding it to be due to "ill-considered exaggerated nationalism." "Many people seem to forget," said he, "that in the explicit article of the Credo, 'I believe in the Catholic Church,' Catholic means universal, not racist, not nationalistic, nor separatistic." The Holy Father declared that "the Catholic Church prays for the Jewish people; the Apostolic See has protected Jews against opposition"; that "just as every kind of envy and jealousy among nations must be disapproved of, so in an especial manner must be the hatred which is generally termed anti-Semitism."   His Holiness expressed opposition to the racist theory prompted by anti-Semitism, by deeds as well as words. To cite two instances: When Mussolini caused Levi-Civita, the great mathematician, to be rejected by the Italian Academy, Pope Pius XI nominated him for the Vatican Academy. And when the Pope learned that the family of Heinrich Hertz, discoverer of the Hertzian waves, driven from Germany by Hitler, were in distress in England, he instructed Cardinal Hinsley to apply his funds for the needs of the family.
   The tertiary, being motivated by the law of charity that St. Francis exemplified, knows that the falsity of the religious concepts of Jews, Protestants, and even Atheists, does not obliterate the fact that the persons holding such views are part of the brotherhood of man; that they have God as the Author of their being, Adam and Eve as their first parents, and that their Brother Jesus Christ laid down His life for them as well as for those persons who are blest by being members of the body of His Church. The tertiary knows that such a passionate lover of the Lord as St. Francis, "who saw God in the running brooks and sermons in the stones; who saluted with ecstatic joy heaven's great luminary as Brother Sun, which lights up the day and through whom God dost give brightness," expects his faithful followers to salute Jews as brothers; to pray that the brightness of the Eternal Son of David may lead them to see in Him crucified their Messiah, whom Francis served gloriously.
   Being of Hebraic stock, being a convert from the Synagogue to the Church as well as from Marx to Christ, it is but natural that my remarks should center upon Jews in particular.
   We all suffer to some extent from failure to searchingly turn our eyes into our souls to find the cause of the afflictions that torment us. So it is with Jews; they have a tendency towards extremes that often beclouds their vision of themselves. It often causes them to assume to be the injured party, and to mislead others into that one-sided view, when they are the aggressors, as mea culpa is all too rare among Jews, as brotherly love is among anti-Jews. This woe-is-me attitude develops in Jews a persecution complex that keeps them from seeing conditions and their causes as they really are. For instance, Jews are continually harping upon the Spanish Inquisition as one hundred per cent unjust. They disregard almost entirely the fact that the lineup of Jews in Spain with the forces of the Crescent against the Cross; and their voluntary sacrilegious submission to baptism, when secretly they were indulging in practices that are religiously Jewish, were the primary cause of their deportation from Spain in the fifteenth century. The opposition then was not to Judaism, as many Jews assume it to have been, but to some of the actions of Jews that were objectionable.
   This extremism in Jews in the economic world is seen in the tendency of all too many of them to be either Capitalists or Socialists, due to their super-acquisitiveness as well as departure from religion. This was feared by Dr. Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, in his "Jewish State," fifty odd years ago. He realized then that it would afflict his fellow-Jews in the future, as it has. Dr. Herzl said,

"We are considered contemptible" by being in finance and on the stock exchange, into which "modern conditions have forced us. At the same time we continue to produce an abundance of mediocre intellects which find no outlet, and this endangers our social position as much as does increasing wealth. Educated Jews without means are fast becoming socialists. Hence we are certain to suffer very severely in the struggle between classes, because we stand in the most exposed position in the camp of both socialists and capitalists."

Please do not conclude from what has just been said that all working-class Jews are Socialists, or that Socialism and its Bolshevist application in the Soviet Union is Jewish. Yet when we view the May Day parades in New York City; when we see the countenances of the paying patrons of Communist meetings that fill Madison Square Garden, we are not surprised to hear of Jews being branded as "Reds." Though one thing is certain, Jews represent relatively too large a percentage of the persons in movements that are basically antiChristian in principle to keep long at bay the Anti-semitic spirit that makes life hard for them.
   Jews have never had better friends during some trying times in history than the Sons of St. Francis. They stood out boldly in their defense when the anti-Jewish frenzy was at its height in England; when ninety-two Jews were imprisoned on the charge of having killed Hugh of Lincoln, a Christian child, for ritual purposes. So scandalized were the people at the action of the Franciscans in defense of the Jews, that they withdraw from them the alms upon which they depended for the conduct of their holy work. Yet at one time the Franciscans were compelled to strenuously oppose the Jews for their usurious exploitation of the poor of Italy. The Sons of St. Francis organized credit societies, pawn shops, called Montes Piatatis, to protect Christians from Jewish exactions.
   We tertiaries know ourselves to have too many faults of our own to keep harping on the faults of others. Besides, our duty is to help our fellowman overcome those faults that place him at a disadvantage, by bearing ever in mind the fact that Jews are souls that the God we worship loves as ardently as He does the souls of non-Jews. Their faults, objectionable though they be, never warranted Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," that designates Jews as murderers of nuns and friars; poisoners of wells; as being the cause of the Black Death; as being guilty of killing Christian children for sacrificial purposes, disregarding the fact that no Jewish ritual ever called for human blood for sacrifice. Nor do the faults of the Jews warrant them being falsely charged today with being the authors of the dastardly "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
   Shakespeare was more considerate of Jews than was Marlowe. While he portrayed Shylock as a ruthless type of money-lender, intensifying his acquisitiveness by insistence upon the fulfillment of the letter of the contract for a pound of flesh, his Merchant of Venice, rightly understood, is a defense of the Jews against the hatred of them that is nowadays called Anti-semitism. Shakespeare presents Shylock as more sinned against than sinning, declaring with dignity that "sufferance is the badge of all my tribe," as it has been ever since its hand has been against Jesus the Messiah, Who "came to His own and His own received Him not." No more eloquent plea against the uncharitable and unbrotherly spirit of Anti-semitism has been penned than the words Shakespeare placed on the lips of Shylock,

"Hath not a Jew eyes?  hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?  fed from the same food, hurt from the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter as a Christian is?  If you prick us, do we not bleed?  If you tickle us, do we not laugh?  If you poison us, do we not die?  and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

Those sentiments of Shakespeare, supplemented by St. Paul's glorious discourse on charity, are in the hearts of all true tertiaries when dealing with Jews. Yet that does not mean that tertiaries are obligated to refrain from frankly letting Jews know that the cause of their persecution lies in themselves rather than in their enemies. Tertiary brotherly regard for Jews, as children and brothers of Jesus Christ, would be very superficial if it were limited to a protest against their persecution; if it were limited to gaining and maintaining for them the freedom of exercising the rights with which God has endowed Jews as well as Christians. These are times for straight talk; these are times when the Jews should be told, in a spirit of charity, that the cure for their affliction lies in the Messiah they reject today, as did most of their forebears nineteen hundred years ago. Jews may deny that their forebears cried back to Pilate, let "His blood be upon us and our children," but they cannot deny the fact that their Temple was destroyed; their priesthood and sacrifices abolished; that for nineteen centuries they have been exiled, dispersed, persecuted, and that they have suffered the vengeance of God ever since. God, who has set a mark upon Cain for killing his natural brother Abel, seems to have set a mark upon Jews for causing the death of their Divine Brother, Jesus the Messiah.
   Jews should be positively reminded that looking elsewhere than to the denial of Christ as the cause of their suffering is in vain; that their affliction is due, as I said a moment ago, to denial of the faith of their fathers in Israel; that And-semitism, like the present World War, is an affliction that God permits in order to bring Jews to Himself, as Pope Pius XII said in his appeal for a deeper faith.
   Any other attitude towards Jews but flatters them into the belief that the cause of their unjust treatment lies in the Hitlerites rather than in themselves. The traits in Jews that are objectionable to Christians do not warrant racist hostility, nor deportation, yet they exist, and they must be expected to bring a reaction in our country in the not far distant future, as they did in Germany. Those traits are irreligious traits, and they spring from the Judaism of the diaspora being hostile in principle to the Judaism of pre-Christian times, and to the Messiah Who came in fulfillment of the promise made to Israel.
   We have a duty as tertiaries to do our part in bringing Anti-semitism to an end, in the only way that will finally put an end to its periodical unbrotherly manifestations. That is by prayerfully encouraging Jews to Christianize their intense spirit, as was the hateful spirit of Saul of Tarsus changed to the spirit of charity in St. Paul, through its Christianization. In the Messiah on the Cross Jews will alone find the culmination of their afflictions, as love and the Cross are one, as they were on the body and in the heart of St. Francis.
   Charity demands that we do for our Jewish brethren the best there is in our power to do. The best is to bring them to their Messianic King, whom David, Isaiah, Daniel, and the other prophets of old foretold to come, and did come unto His own, the children of Israel. It is not too late for Jews to receive Him. Let us see that they do.


 

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