By Cassidy Bugos
JERUSALEM, January 4, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Wednesday, January 3, LifeSiteNews.com published a press release from Rabbi Yehuda Levin preceding his emergency meeting with Vatican officials. The meeting was to discuss how the Orthodox Jewish community could unite with the Catholic Church to combat the widespread ‘homosexualization’ of the Holy Land and of Western Civilization.
Today LifeSiteNews.com interviewed Rabbi Levin in Jerusalem who related in detail what was discussed in the meeting and the proposal he made to Rome.
Levin stated he met with Bishop Karl Josef Romer, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family and ‘right-hand man’ to Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo; Bishop Brian Farrell of the Commission for the Religious Rapport with Judaism and vice president to Cardinal Walter Kaspar, head of the Office of Christian Unity; and Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro, director of Human Life International in Italy.
Rabbi Levin summarized for LifeSiteNews the progress the Church has made in solidifying a living relationship with the Jewish community.
“The Church has moved toward the Jews in an unbelievable way in the last half a century since Vatican II. They’ve made changes in the Liturgy vis-à-vis the Jews; two popes have visited concentration camps . . . there was Pope John Paul II’s visit to the Holy Wall in Jerusalem, and his asking for forgiveness, and so much more.”
With all that, Rabbi Levin insisted, something is yet lacking.
“There remains a tremendous, glaring paradox: namely, of these people with whom the Church is dialoguing, 90% are opposed to some of the most crucial tenets of the Catholic and the Christian Faith. Instead they hold to abortion-on-demand, internet pornography, radical homosexuality, and no-fault divorce. It is paradoxical that you can talk with these people about the Holocaust and saving the whales, but you cannot talk about the homosexualization of the Holy Land, or about what is going to happen next month in New York. You cannot dialogue about Mayor Bloomberg.”
“Who the Church wants to dialogue with, and what about, far be it from me to say. The Catholic hierarchy knows best, and I salute them. But I suggest here another, a new channel of dialogue: and not high-falutin’ dialogue, in meetings, but a dialogue of activism.”
It is sad, Rabbi Levin noted, how in the last several decades the majority of pro-life and pro-family groups are operated by the laity. Religious leaders have shied away from their leadership, “holding their fingers up to their ears, wondering, ‘Can I speak about this political legislation? Will I lose the flock if I do?’” Politicians, on the other hand, “have asserted themselves as de facto leaders.” They are the ones taking their action to the streets. Rabbi Levin argued that decent people have a right to hear from their religious leadership first, in sermons and in the news, about impending legislation that will affect themselves and their families.
Hence, the Rabbi has addressed himself to the Catholic Church. “I might seem now to be speaking in almost a prophetic way. I have the blood of prophets in my veins. I am saying with certitude—with a logical certitude—that the group in Western Civilization and perhaps in World Civilization with the most potential to act as a catalyst for a moral counterattack, pushing back the barbarians who stand against the gates of Rome and Jerusalem . . . are Catholics. You don’t have to be a prophet to understand that.
“And the personality whom God has placed at the top: I couldn’t have prayed, as an Orthodox Jew, for a better person.”
Indeed, Rabbi Levin had nothing but praise for Pope Benedict XVI. One of the great themes of this pontificate that has been prominent since day one has been the Pope’s unwavering enthusiasm for just such a ‘new ecumenism.’
“Pope Benedict XVI is, I believe, the man of the moment. If he decides that he is willing to gear his attention and his followers’ in reasserting the primacy of leadership, of hands-on pro-life leadership—then we, as junior partners, the Orthodox Jews as junior partners—would be very happy to provide the Jewish flavor in that alliance.”
“But we need an activist papacy . . . And if an activist papacy doesn’t translate into the local churches and the streets, we’re lost.”
Rabbi gave a series of examples of his idea of activist religious leadership.
“Very specifically, if the Catholic Church were to have, just four Sundays in a row, every church and Catholic school send out newsletters on homosexuality, what it is and who is advancing it, and what legislation there is to combat . . . I know as a New Yorker that Evangelical and Latino churches would be happy to follow this example. If ‘the big boy on the block’, the Catholic Church, would follow this example, the buzz on the street would be phenomenal.
“That is the new ecumenism: to get this vitality out to the churches, in the straightest possible way, and from the churches out to the streets.
“As another example: what about a massive, massive rally for family values? The reverberations would be felt across America. Hilary Clinton would stop and swear on a Holy Bible that she was for marriage between one man and one woman.”
If there were such massive rallies, “believe me,” said Rabbi Levin, “the media also would take notice. If 50 million Americans would sign such pledges, if Catholic leaders and priests would rally, believe me, Jews and Evangelicals would follow. This would be a revolution in the finest tradition.”
Rabbi Levin concluded by citing the example of the Orthodox Jewish community late last Fall. “On November 9, 2006, some twenty thousand Orthodox, Hasidic Jews took to the streets of Manhattan, outside the Israeli Consulate, filling several blocks to protest the homosexualization of the Holy Land. If the Church had come out in large numbers, we would have had forty to fifty thousand Jews. The Catholic Church would bring out five times as many.
“We need bishops and cardinals to be out there, leading the flock. This is the martyrdom required in 2007: just to come out into the streets.”
See related LifeSiteNews coverage:
Judaism Teams with Vatican to Counter Worldwide Homosexual ‘Marriage’ Push
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07010307.html