Page 79 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg 9

anything beside it. For, not only were the disparagers of Christianity
persecuted but also men faithfully devoted to it, who however spoke
out for free thought and inquiry, were mercilessly trampled down,
hounded through every countiy, stabbed and burnt. Roger Bacon,
Galilei, Bruno are examples of the clearest sort.
A Copernicus piously dedicates his writing to the pope, the
latter places his work under the ban of the Church, sets all books
that teach the heliocentric world-system on the index, where they
th
stood until late in the 1 century. This rigid Roman system answered
even in 1904 more tolerant efforts within the Catholic clergy with a
sharpening of church censorship. If things went according to the
will of Rome entire works of science would even today be burning
in the flames.
That is quite logical: if one has the entire truth in one's
possession, everything else is a lie and must be destroyed. Doubtless
the great part of our Catholics think otherwise and understand their
faith as a symbol like the believers of other confessions; but that
does not prevent one from recognising the correctness of the
observation above. That is why it can also go so far that German
Catholic prelates "reject with indignation" the art of a Goethe as a
"vulgar poison". If a German pastor has so little understanding of
the work of the greatest of all Germans he reveals therewith a gap
that is to be traced back only to the influence of an entirely foreign
mind.
A Jewish historian who became a convinced Catholic abbot,
Temann, made, in his work L 'entree des Israelites dans la societe
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franqaise (Paris, 1886) the correct observation that the people
who were anti-Semitic contested at the same time the Roman
Catholic principle (Again, I do not have the Catholic religion of the
Germans in view).
This observation is based on the feeling that is certainly not
expressed that there is something in common at the basis of the
spirit of Rome and of Jerusalem. After what has been said above I

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[Abbe Joseph Lemann (1836-1915) was a Jew who converted to Christianity
from Judaism and became a Catholic priest. He wrote several works about the
relations between Catholicism and Judaism.]
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