Wednesday, January 27, 2016

An Open Letter to Pope Francis from a Jewish Convert: I Want my Money Back!


The following is a full online reprint of a recent blog post by the writer and historian Michael Hoffman. It's not a real letter, of course, but a dramatization or parody. I'm running it below because I think it's quite good--perhaps the sharpest piece that I've yet read on the subject. In a sense, all it does is declare the obvious. But too often these days that is the least obvious thing to do.

Hoffman has unpopular views on a number of subjects. Some of his views are strange. A few are diametrically opposed to the views that I have put forward on this blog. For example, Hoffman doesn't seem to like Israel very much.

For the purposes of this post, I don't care. Sue me, Chris Ross

If you are a faithful Catholic or traditional Christian, read the following and tell me where or how Hoffman gets it wrong. How can his argument (in parody/dream form) be answered? Why should, given the most recent Vatican pronouncements on the subject, Jews convert to Catholicism or Christianity? Or worse, from the point of view of Catholic teachings, why shouldn't Catholics convert to Judaism? After all, according to Church teachings, my Christian baptism and Catholic conformation do not guarantee that I will be saved. So, wouldn't I have a better chance by, as it were, just pulling a Sammy Davis?

Or is the Covenant a purely racial thing (as Hoffman suggests)? I'm sure I have a Jewish ancestor somewhere.

More to the point, why did God come to Earth (in Israel), preach (primarily to Jews) and suffer and die at all?

(Shut up. Because mercy.)

(Shut up yourself. Go to hell.)

See, dialogue is a beautiful thing.

An Open Letter to Pope Francis by Michael Hoffman:

His Holiness, Pope Francis
Vatican City
January, 2016

Dear Holy Father

I am a Jew. I have the assurance, as did Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, of direct descent from King David on my father’s side (my mother, I was assured was descended of Hillel).

I am 74-years-old. I converted to the Roman Catholic Church at the age of 17 in the last year of the pontificate of Pope Pius XII. I did so because I was under the conviction that I had to accept and have faith that Jesus Christ was my savior, and I believed it. And I believed that I had to be a baptized member of his Church to have a chance of salvation. So I converted and was baptized in the Catholic Church, and then I was confirmed.

Over the years I have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to both Peters’ Pence (the pope’s own treasury about which you of course must be very familiar), and my local parish and diocese.

During that time I attended thousands of Masses, hundreds of holy hours and novenas, said thousands of rosaries, and made hundreds of trips to the Confessional.

Now in 2015 and 2016 I have read your words and those of your “Pontifical Commission.” You now teach that because I am a racial Jew, God’s covenant with me was never broken, and cannot be broken. You don’t qualify that teaching by specifying anything I might do that would threaten the Covenant, which you say God has with me because I am a Jew. You teach that it’s an unbreakable Covenant. You don’t even say that it depends on me being a good person. Logically speaking, if God’s Covenant with me is unbreakable, then a racial Jew such as I am can do anything he wants and God will still maintain a Covenant with me and I will go to heaven.

Your Pontifical Commission wrote last December, “The Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews…it does not in any way follow that the Jews are excluded from God’s salvation because they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah of Israel and the Son of God.”

You are the Pontiff. I believe what your Commission teaches under your banner and in your name, and what you declared during your visit to the synagogue in January. As a result, I no longer see any point in getting up every Sunday morning to go to Mass, say rosaries, or attend the Rite of Reconciliation on Saturday afternoon. All of those acts are superfluous for me. Predicated on your teaching, I now know that due to my special racial superiority in God’s eyes, I don’t need any of it.

I don’t see any reason now as to why I was baptized in 1958. There was no need for me to be baptized. I no longer see why there was a need for Jesus to come to earth either, or preach to the Jewish children of Abraham of his day. As you state, they were already saved as a result of their racial descent from the Biblical patriarchs. What would they need him for?

In light of what you and your Pontifical Commission have taught me, it appears that the New Testament is a fraud, at least as it applies to Jews. All of those preachings and disputations to the Jews were for no purpose. Jesus had to know this, yet he persisted in causing a lot of trouble for the Jews by insisting they had to be born again, they had to believe he was their Messiah, they had to stop following their traditions of men, and that they couldn’t get to heaven unless they believed that he was the Son of God.

Your holiness, you and your Commission have instructed me in the true path to my salvation: my race. It’s all I need and all I have ever needed. God has a covenant with my genes. It’s my genes that save me. My eyes are open now.

Consequently, you will be hearing from my lawyer. I am filing suit against the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church. I want my money back, with interest, and I am seeking compensatory and punitive damages for the psychological harm your Church caused me, by making me think I needed something besides my own exalted racial identity, in order to go to heaven after I die.

I am litigating as well over the time that I wasted that I could have spent working in my business, instead of squandering it worshipping a Jesus that your Church now says I don’t need to believe in for my salvation. Your prelates and clerics told me something very different in 1958. I’ve been robbed!

Sincerely,
Pinchus Feinstein
2617646 Ocean View Ave.
Miami Beach, Florida 33239

P.S. I'm transmitting this letter to Hoffman, an ex-AP reporter from New York, in the expectation that he will bring it to the attention of those who should know about it. I am transmitting it to him in the form of a dream, but nevertheless, it represents the feelings of many victims of your robber Church.—Pinch

17 comments:


  1. It's high time the "Declaration" Nostra Aetate be 'clarified.' And by clarified it needs to be stated categorically that the document is not part of the ordinary magisterium of the Church, that at most it was a good will gesture, and, in hindsight, a really stupid document theologically.

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    1. Let's put this modernistic myth of Vatican II being a "pastoral" and not an infallible council to bed, once and for all.
      All the requirements for infallibility were met By Vatican II. The council documents were promulgated by Paul VI, as Pope and directed to the teaching of Faith, Morals, Discipline and Governance to the Universal Church.
      Furthermore, Montini himself stated in General Audience on 12 January, 1966:
      “In view of the pastoral nature of the Council, it avoided any extraordinary statements of dogma endowed with the note of infallibility but it still provided its teaching with the authority of the Ordinary Magisterium which must be accepted with docility according to the mind of the Council concerning the nature and aims of each document.”
      So, whilst the Council did not invoke the SOLEMN MAGISTERIUM,it did invoke the infallible authority of the ORDINARY MAGISTERIUM!
      That is out of the horse's mouth!
      The misconception that ONLY the solemn magisterium defining dogmas ex cathedra is infallible is incorrect:
      Vatican I (Dz 1792), Pope Pius IX (in Tuas Libenter, 1863) and also the Syllabus of Errors, (22), have unambiguously specified that Catholics must believe and adhere to, by Divine and Catholic faith, those things contained in Scripture or Tradition and also those proposed for belief as divinely revealed by the Church’s authority,either through:
      (a) Solemn pronouncements (by ecumenical councils, or popes ex cathedra)
      (b) UNIVERSAL ORDINARY MAGISTERIUM - teaching of the bishops together with the pope, either in council, or spread throughout the world.
      If Paul VI was a true Pope, then the teachings of Vatican II are infallible and binding on all Catholics.

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    2. Glad you finally arrived at the answer....Paul VI was not a true pope...ergo....we are in a pickle!

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    3. I fully believe in whatever the turgid, lengthy, compromise, saccharine, gaseous documents might clearly teach, if anything, with specificity, and, of course, all anathemas.

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    4. LOL! You are a good Catholic bear!

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  2. Dear Mr. Feinstein,

    We apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced. People of Jewish decent will go to heaven provided that they remain Jewish and not forsake the covenant of their forefathers. By becoming Catholic you have renounced that covenant for the new and everlasting covenant in Jesus Christ. Prior to your conversion, nothing was required of you.

    Please note that now that you are Catholic, you are required to continue going to mass, confession, donations, and any other obligations the Church deems fit to impose on you (re-cycling?), or face the pain of everlasting damnation.

    Thank you for you patience.
    Love,
    Pope Francis

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  3. Dear Pinch....why bother me, I'm just an impostor from the Freemason/Communist/Talmud coalition trying my bestto finish the work of the Vatican Council and finally destroy the Church. Get a life.
    Sincerely,
    Comrade Bergoglio

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    Replies
    1. Bravo, Darby ! Bargiglio is my fave word in the Ital.-Eng. Dictionary , along with Barbogio.

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  4. I've been seeing red ever since Cardinal Koch threw Jesus under the bus for his photo op with the rabbi. The (non-magisterial) document is not only wrong and offensive, its incoherent.

    But Lumen Gentium reserves it's only real threat of damnation for Catholics who leave the Church. So I'm afraid our Hebrew friend is between two stools.

    If he leaves the Church, he's damned.

    If he relies on his magical Jew powers conferred on him by the Vatican, he's saved.

    However, there's always the possibility that Jesus was right, and Pope Francis is wrong.

    But that's crazy talk.

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    1. "You are either with Me or against Me". Francis isn't with Him.

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  5. Hey, wait...

    Pinky makes a good point. But if Pinky gets all his money back, what about my son-in-law? He is in RCIA and has to drive a long way. He has Jewish blood from something like 4 or 5 generations back. Should we tell him "No Mas" and tell him to submit a bill to Pope Francis for his gas mileage?

    I mean if Pinky gets all his dough back seems my SIL should at least be able to collect a few bucks to offset his drive time.

    Yes, folks, this is how low it can get. Do we have a single Bishop who will resist this man to his face? WHEN?

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    1. This has been a priority in the Church ever sense Malachi Martin was a double agent for Jewish interests during Vatican II.

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  6. I think the Elderly Gentleman from Argentina would have quite a bit of hectoring for the "absolutism" of the Carpenter from Nazareth. His dogmatic certainties. No, no, no they just won't do.

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  7. After reading Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate, I realize I can't leave the Church without loosing my salvation, but given N.A.'s praise of pagan religions, I do feel free to incorporate some Hindu beliefs into my Catholic faith. I can hardly wait to celebrate Dwali! And I've decided that purgatory may just be soul refreshment before moving on to my next life.

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  8. There are still some of the material facts explained there and one nearly had to put his best concern towards understanding and giving everything to it. proposal letters for business

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