{"id":188,"date":"2009-01-26T13:22:31","date_gmt":"2009-01-26T13:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs.html"},"modified":"2009-01-26T13:22:31","modified_gmt":"2009-01-26T13:22:31","slug":"chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs.html","title":{"rendered":"Chief Rabbi Says Vatican Needs to Examine Its Conscience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is the Pope right? Is the Pope wrong? Could he be both? My comments to follow&#8230;<br \/>\nIMMEDIATE RELEASE<br \/>\nJanuary 25, 2009<br \/>\nUpon learning of Pope Benedict XVI&#8217;s lifting the excommunication of Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin said &#8220;the Pope has muddied the waters of truth and compromised his own religion, specifically the Gospel of John 8:32, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.&#8221; Bishop Williamson has mentioned on national television that there were no gas chambers and the highest estimates of Jews killed during the Holocaust were up to 300,000.<br \/>\nThe Chief Rabbi of Efrat and recent founder of the first orthodox Jewish center to religiously dialogue with Christians (Ohr Torah Stone: Center for Jewish Christian Understanding &amp; Cooperation &#8212; CJCUC) added that &#8220;this was more than a near fatal blow to the advancement of Jewish-Catholic relations; it&#8217;s staining the essence of sacrament within the church.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n&#8220;With the re-introduction of the Latin Mass last year calling for the conversion of Jews, senior Vatican official Cardinal Renato Martino of the Peace &amp; Justice Commission sharply criticizing Israel&#8217;s actions and likening the Gaza Strip to a concentration camp, and now the Pope admitting a Holocaust denier into the hierarchy of the Catholic Church should concern Jews worldwide,&#8221; Riskin commented. Noting that the Pope plans to visit Israel this year, Riskin said &#8220;that how will he walk into Yad Vashem and plant a wreath for the six million, when he just reinstated a bishop who denies that very historical fact within the greater truth of the Shoah? It is time for the Vatican to examine its conscience.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is the Pope right? Is the Pope wrong? Could he be both? My comments to follow&#8230; IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 25, 2009 Upon learning of Pope Benedict XVI&#8217;s lifting the excommunication of Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin said &#8220;the Pope has muddied the waters of truth and compromised his own religion, specifically the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Chief Rabbi Says Vatican Needs to Examine Its Conscience - Windows and Doors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chief Rabbi Says Vatican Needs to Examine Its Conscience - Windows and Doors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Is the Pope right? Is the Pope wrong? Could he be both? My comments to follow&#8230; IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 25, 2009 Upon learning of Pope Benedict XVI&#8217;s lifting the excommunication of Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin said &#8220;the Pope has muddied the waters of truth and compromised his own religion, specifically the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Windows and Doors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-26T13:22:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Brad Hirschfield\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Chief Rabbi Says Vatican Needs to Examine Its Conscience - Windows and Doors","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Chief Rabbi Says Vatican Needs to Examine Its Conscience - Windows and Doors","og_description":"Is the Pope right? Is the Pope wrong? Could he be both? My comments to follow&#8230; IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 25, 2009 Upon learning of Pope Benedict XVI&#8217;s lifting the excommunication of Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin said &#8220;the Pope has muddied the waters of truth and compromised his own religion, specifically the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs.html","og_site_name":"Windows and Doors","article_published_time":"2009-01-26T13:22:31+00:00","author":"Brad Hirschfield","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs.html","name":"Chief Rabbi Says Vatican Needs to Examine Its Conscience - Windows and Doors","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-01-26T13:22:31+00:00","dateModified":"2009-01-26T13:22:31+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/#\/schema\/person\/dec8532a46bb6f29d8866269e398424d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/01\/chief-rabbi-says-vatican-needs.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Chief Rabbi Says Vatican Needs to Examine Its Conscience"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/","name":"Windows and Doors","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Rabbi Brad Hirschfield","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/#\/schema\/person\/dec8532a46bb6f29d8866269e398424d","name":"Brad Hirschfield","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/612\/612c840fab7383fcd474af006f999c1fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/612\/612c840fab7383fcd474af006f999c1fx96.jpg","caption":"Brad Hirschfield"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/author\/brad_hirschfield"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}