Selections from La Civiltà Cattolica on the Jewish Question — The 1880s Articles

For other nations have not inflicted on us and on Christ this wrong to such an extent as you have, who in very deed are the authors of the wicked prejudice against the Just One, and us who hold by Him. For after that you had crucified Him, the only blameless and righteous Man — through whose stripes those who approach the Father by Him are healed — when you knew that He had risen from the dead and ascended to heaven, as the prophets foretold He would, you not only did not repent of the wickedness which you had committed, but at that time you selected and sent out from Jerusalem chosen men through all the land to tell that the godless heresy of the Christians had sprung up.

Yet you not only have not repented, after you learned that He rose from the dead, but, as I said before, you have sent chosen and ordained men throughout all the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilaean deceiver, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. Moreover, you accuse Him of having taught those godless, lawless, and unholy doctrines which you mention to the condemnation of those who confess Him to be Christ, and a Teacher from and Son of God. Besides this, even when your city is captured, and your land ravaged, you do not repent, but dare to utter imprecations on Him and all who believe in Him. Yet we do not hate you or those who, by your means, have conceived such prejudices against us; but we pray that even now all of you may repent and obtain mercy from God, the compassionate and long-suffering Father of all.

The Christians are assailed by the Jews as foreigners.

With that general label of unholy sect, of which is held disgraceful and prejudiced opinion by all because it practices wicked and nefarious crimes, according to which the Jews lied among the pagans against the Christians, St. Justin wanted to indicate precisely that which the Pagans then believed of us, because of the Jews, as is revealed by Tacitus and other writers; that is, that we were atheists, stained ourselves of all infamy at our feasts, fed on children, adored the head of an ass and all the rest of which is full of the pagan and sacred literature of the first centuries.

Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano — La Civiltà Cattolica, 11 December 1880 (inaugural article of the series)

The Jews are literally masters of the public fortune … insolent usurers, they ruin Christian families.

— Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano, inaugural article, La Civiltà Cattolica, 11 December 1880. Translated and cited in Jean Meyer, La fábula del crimen ritual: El antisemitismo europeo (1880–1914) (Tusquets Editores, Mexico, 2012), p. 56.

Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano — La Civiltà Cattolica, December 1880

[Yet they complain] at the first shout by anyone who dares raise his voice against this barbarian invasion by an enemy race, hostile to Christianity and to society in general.

Eternal insolent children, obstinate, dirty, thieves, liars, ignoramuses, pests and the scourge of those near and far.

Exceptional laws for a race that is so exceptionally and profoundly perverse.

The whole nerve of modern Judaism … consists in its fundamental dogma according to which the Jew can recognise as his neighbour only the Jew and sees in all Christian and non-Christian men … enemies whom he must hate, persecute, exterminate.

— Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1881. Translated and cited in Jean Meyer, La fábula del crimen ritual (Tusquets, Mexico, 2012), p. 57.

Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano — La Civiltà Cattolica, 1881

The Jew, like the devil, is condemned for his rebellion against Christ.

— Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1881. Translated and cited in Jean Meyer, La fábula del crimen ritual (Tusquets, Mexico, 2012), p. 57.

Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano — La Civiltà Cattolica, 1881

Jewish hatred is satanic in the same way that satanic hatred against Christ and the Church is Jewish.

— Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1881. Translated and cited in Jean Meyer, La fábula del crimen ritual (Tusquets, Mexico, 2012), p. 57.

La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 32 (1881), no. 5, p. 727

Jewish hatred … against mankind — Jews excepted.

The anti-social spirit of Judaism … and the necessity of hating it.

Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano — La Civiltà Cattolica, 1880

Oh how wrong and deluded are those who think Judaism is just a religion, like Catholicism, Paganism, Protestantism, and not in fact a race, a people, and a nation! … For the Jews are not only Jews because of their religion … they are Jews especially because of their race.

Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano — Chronicle title, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1881

How from an authentic and unpublished process, preserved in the Vatican Archives of the Holy See, it is proved beyond doubt that the Hebrews cannot celebrate their Passover in a holy manner if it is not with Christian blood.

— Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano, chronicle title, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1881. Translated and cited in Jean Meyer, La fábula del crimen ritual (Tusquets, Mexico, 2012), p. 215.

La Civiltà Cattolica — Chronicle, 7 July 1881

To use his blood to make unleavened bread on the feast of Passover, according to the fundamental law of the Talmud and practised by the Jews, as is recorded in many trials.

— La Civiltà Cattolica, chronicle, 7 July 1881. Translated and cited in Jean Meyer, La fábula del crimen ritual (Tusquets, Mexico, 2012), p. 60.

La Civiltà Cattolica, 21 January 1882, p. 214

Every year the Hebrews crucify a child … and in order that the blood be effective, the child must die in torment.

Mingling unleavened bread with Christian blood, every year, at Passover … the present Jewish use of Christian blood in paschal bread and wine … the reality of the use of Christian blood in many rituals of the modern Synagogue.

[The journal’s earlier coverage of the Tiszaeszlár blood-libel trial, which it treated as established fact.]

Jews are required, in view of their piety, religion and rite to kill Christians and take their blood for their own liturgical and sacramental rites.

[Published as the Tiszaeszlár trial — in which 15 Jews were charged with the ritual murder of a 14-year-old Catholic girl, Eszter Solymosi — was proceeding. The journal continued to insist the crime was “irrefutably proven” even after Hungary’s supreme court, the Kúria, established that the recovered body had been dressed in the victim’s clothes to simulate her death.]

Fr. Oreglia — “Dell’ebraica persecuzione contro il Cristianesimo,” Part II, La Civiltà Cattolica (1886)

On this universal Jewish conspiracy against the nascent Christianity touches very briefly but very clearly the anonymous writer of the Letter to Diognetus written in the first century by a contemporary of the Apostles. He says, in fact, at the end of Chapter 5 that: “The Christians are assailed by the Jews as foreigners.” But of the cunning with which this war was devised, St. Justin martyr — called the Philosopher in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew — narrates to us curious details.

Sources

Primary Sources — La Civiltà Cattolica:

Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano, S.J., inaugural article of the 1880s series, La Civiltà Cattolica, 11 December 1880.

Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano, S.J., articles on Judaism and theological enmity, La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 32 (1881), nos. 5–6, pp. 603, 608, 727.

Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano, S.J., chronicle articles on the blood libel, La Civiltà Cattolica, 7 July 1881 and 21 January 1882, p. 214.

La Civiltà Cattolica, articles on ritual murder and the Tiszaeszlár case, vol. 34 (1883), no. 1, pp. 606ff.; and the article of 25 October 1883.