Pope Pius IX

Re “Jews Disturbed by Beatification of Pope Pius IX,” Sept. 3: As a former Catholic who left the faith due to its insensitivity and hypocrisy, this attempt to beatify Pope Pius IX is just another example of how the Vatican is out of touch. Pius IX was responsible for the destruction of the papal states by his own actions. He destroyed unity by holding the Scripture in one hand and exalting his opinion higher in the other hand.

The doctrine of infallibility is still to this day a lasting reminder of this arrogance on his part, a doctrine that many of his own theologians said was in error at the time. Pope Pius IX was not the vicar of Christ, he was a precursor to Hitler.

JON KENJIRO

Los Angeles

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* There was more than a “Europe-wide outcry” in 1858-9 over Pope Pius IX’s abduction of the Jewish child, Edgardo Mortara. Many Americans at the time also joined in protests across the nation. According to Morris Schappes’ “The Jews in the United States,” (Citadel Press, 1958), protest meetings were held in 17 cities. Some 3,000 gathered in New York and over 2,000 in San Francisco, at Musical Hall in January 1859, where four Protestant clergymen and other prominent non-Jewish citizens spoke.

Significantly, President James Buchanan declined to criticize the Vatican on the grounds that such action might legitimize European condemnation of our own “domestic institution” of slavery. As Schappes writes, “It was being borne in . . . that issues of Jewish rights could not be separated from the fundamental problem of slavery.”

HERSHL HARTMAN

Educational Director

Sholem Community, L.A.