Champion for Catholics -- Jewish Rabbi Yehuda Levin

(Please note that throughout the article, there are parenthesis that bear the comments of Fr. Z and many thanks to him for bringing this to our attention)

Left Wing of the Catholic Church Destroying the Faith Says Orthodox Rabbi

By Hilary White, Rome correspondent
Wednesday February 11, 2009

ROME, February 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The dissident, leftist movement in the Catholic Church over the last forty years has severely undermined the teaching of the Catholic Church on the moral teachings on life and family, [fantastic!] a prominent US Orthodox rabbi told LifeSiteNews.com. Rabbi Yehuda Levin, the head of a group of 800 Orthodox rabbis in the US and Canada, also dismissed the accusations that the Holy See had not sufficiently distanced itself from the comments made by Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) on the Holocaust.

"I support this move" to reconcile the traditionalist faction in the Church, he said, "because I understand the big picture, which is that the Catholic Church has a problem. There is a strong left wing of the Church that is doing immeasurable harm to the faith." [Peter was Jewish. Can Rabbi Levin be Pope after Pope Benedict? Maybe 20 years from now?]

Rabbi Levin said that he understands "perfectly" why the reconciliation is vital to the fight against abortion and the homosexualist movement. [The man-centered view of the left detaches morals from reality.]

"I understand that it is very important to fill the pews of the Catholic Church not with cultural Catholics and left-wingers who are helping to destroy the Catholic Church and corrupt the values of the Catholic Church." This corruption, he said, "has a trickle-down effect to every single religious community in the world." [What an admission!]

"What’s the Pope doing? He’s trying to bring the traditionalists back in because they have a lot of very important things to contribute the commonweal of Catholicism. [YES YES YES!]

"Now, if in the process, he inadvertently includes someone who is prominent in the traditionalist movement who happens to say very strange things about the Holocaust, is that a reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater and start to condemn Pope Benedict? Absolutely not."

During a visit to Rome at the end of January, Rabbi Levin told LifeSiteNews.com that he believes the media furore over the lifting of the excommunications of the four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X is a red herring. He called "ridiculous" the accusations that in doing so Pope Benedict VXI or the Catholic Church are anti-Semitic and described as "very strong" the statements distancing the Holy See and the Pope from Williamson’s comments.

Rabbi Levin was in Rome holding meetings with high level Vatican officials to propose what he called a "new stream of thinking" for the Church’s inter-religious dialogue, one based on commonly held moral teachings, particularly on the right to life and the sanctity of natural marriage.

"The most important issue," he said, is the work the Church is doing "to save babies from abortion, and save children’s minds, and young people’s minds, helping them to know right and wrong on the life and family issues."

"That’s where ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue has to go."

Although numbers are difficult to determine, it is estimated that the Society of St. Pius X has over a million followers worldwide. The traditionalist movement in the Catholic Church is noted for doctrinal orthodoxy and enthusiasm not only for old-fashioned devotional practices, but for the Church’s moral teachings and opposition to post-modern secularist sexual mores. [And this is why progressivists will fight their reintegration in the mainstream Church.] Liberals in the Church, particularly in Europe, have bitterly opposed all overtures to the SSPX and other traditionalists, particularly the Pope’s recent permission to revive the traditional Latin Mass. [The TLM is the monster under their bed.]

The Vatican announced in early January that, as part of ongoing efforts to reconcile the breakaway group, the 1988 decree of excommunication against the Society had been rescinded. Later that month, a Swedish television station aired an interview, recorded in November 2008, in which Bishop Richard Williamson, one of the four leaders of the Society, said that he did not believe that six million Jews were killed in the Nazi death camps during World War II.

At that time, the media erupted with protests and accusations that the Catholic Church, and especially Pope Benedict XVI, are anti-Semitic.

Rabbi Levin particularly defended Pope Benedict, saying he is the genius behind the moves of the late Pope John Paul II to reconcile the Church with the Jewish community. [HO HO! The libs aren’t going to like that suggestion! They will attack the Rabbi especially on this point, suggesting that it was all JP II and had nothing to do with Card. Ratzinger… who is German, btw.]

"Anyone who understands and follows Vatican history knows that in the last three decades, one of the moral and intellectual underpinnings of the papacy of Pope John Paul II, was Cardinal Ratzinger.

"And therefore, a lot of the things that Pope John Paul did vis-à-vis the Holocaust, he [Benedict] might have done himself, whether it was visiting Auschwitz or visiting and speaking in the synagogues or asking forgiveness. A lot of this had direct input from Cardinal Ratzinger. Whoever doesn’t understand this doesn’t realise that this man, Pope Benedict XVI, has a decades-long track record of anti-Nazism and sympathy for the Jews."

Tyburn Memorial to over 400 Catholics UK

Council plans new memorial to the Tyburn martyrs
By Simon Caldwell
30 January 2009

A monument in honour of hundreds of Catholics executed for their faith is to be erected in the heart of central London.

Consultations are underway to install a striking memorial on the former site of the Tyburn gallows at the western end of Oxford Street, the capital's busiest shopping street.

Between 1535 and 1679 nearly 400 Catholics were executed on the spot, and 105 of these have been recognised by the Vatican as martyrs, with a number canonised as saints.

Since the Fifties the site of the gallows has been marked simply by a stone roundel in a traffic island at the intersection of Edgware Road and Bayswater Road, near to Marble Arch, bearing the image of a plain black cross and the words: "The site of the Tyburn Tree."

But Westminster City Council has begun looking for ideas for a more fitting memorial.

The council's Public Art Advisory Panel has discussed some of the proposals at a private meeting, including an etching of the shadow of the Tyburn Tree into pavement brickwork.

Another proposal is understood to involve three illuminated pillars to stand above the site once occupied by the three-sided gallows.

Rosemarie MacQueen, strategic director for built environment at Westminster City Council, said funding was needed and hoped the Catholic community would be able to contribute.

"We have been looking at ways to make the memorial to the Tyburn martyrs more substantial and informative in the future provided we can secure funding for the project, as we feel that the hangings which happened there should be clearly marked for anyone who might want to understand the area's history," she told The Catholic Herald.

"We are looking at the possibility of commissioning an artist or designer who could make the plaque an even more fitting and substantial tribute to the men and women who died there from the 1500s onwards for their religious beliefs. If any of your readers would be willing to sponsor such a memorial we would be more than happy to hear from them."

Tyburn became a place of public execution in the 12th century, and, as the "King's gallows", was used in particular for those people convicted of capital offences against the Crown. The first martyrs of the Protestant Reformation - St John Houghton and companions - were executed together for treason there on May 4 1535 after they refused to accept King Henry VIII as the head of the Church in England.

In 1571 Queen Elizabeth I erected the Tyburn Tree, triangular gallows purposely built for multiple executions, with 24 men and women executed there together in one instance.

Catholics to die there included St Edmund Campion, the first English Jesuit martyr, who wrote in his "brag" to Elizabeth's Privy Council, that the Jesuits would never cease to work for the conversion of England "while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn".

The last Catholic Tyburn martyr was St Oliver Plunkett, the Archbishop of Armagh, executed on July 1 1679, the last of 25 innocent victims of the Titus Oates plot.

Most men were hanged, drawn and quartered - a slow death that involved castration and disemboweling before the head was struck off and the body quartered - but Catholic women, such as Mary Ward and Anne Line, were hanged instead.

Public executions continued for common criminals for a further century until they were transferred to the area outside Newgate Prison.

London priest Mgr Anthony Stark, the master of the Guild of Our Lady of Ransom, an organisation which leads annual pilgrimages to the site, said he was delighted that the council was planning to honour the English Catholic martyrs.

He said: "It is the one site in the country where more people died for their Catholic faith than anywhere else. It is very important."

Catholics were executed at other sites in London and in other parts of the country, most notably Lancaster, York and Chester. An unknown number died in prison while refusing to recant their faith.

The Tyburn roundel was taken up by the council last summer when road works were carried out around the traffic island, prompting an outcry from Catholics who feared that its removal was permanent.

Benedictine nuns from the nearby Tyburn Convent later succeeded in persuading the council to put the roundel back. But they were told that the stone would remain on the site only temporarily while plans for a grander memorial were being drawn up. The nuns hope to acquire the roundel for the martyrs' reliquary in the convent's crypt.