You all saw how the pope went beyond the 1962-65 Church conference called Vatican II which revolutionized Roman Catholic doctrine in its attitude toward Jews. Decided then was that the old doctrine according to which every Jew in every generation bore the guilt for killing a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth was now no longer “operative” – as the Nixon White House said during the Watergate mess. They liked to say that every day when exposed lying the day before, so that the previous day’s statements were called “inoperative.”

So that was really great, what happened in Vatican II in 1965. The Church ruled that only the Jews alive at the time were guilty. And here today’s pope has narrowed it down even further to just the big shots in the Jewish community associated with the Temple at the time.

Two things about this story: I have been surprised if not overly by how little attention has been paid to this story. Which is evidence, I guess, of how unimportant the Roman Catholic Church has become. I have thought for years they were a dying institution, leastwise since the sex scandals began to make the news of billion-dollar class action suits by thousands of men molested by their clergymen. I don’t think they can survive that, because now who cares what Roman Catholic priests say about anything?

I also imagine that Pope Benedict here may be reacting to his very insignificance by reaching out to the Jewish people because he sees the rising tide of Islam all around him in Europe and he is frightened. The Churches are empty in Europe. Christianity no longer is the elan vital of the continent.

And that is one reason Europeans are so confused in the face of the rising tide of Muslims all around them. In this they are like Israelis like Bibi who cannot draw on a religious identity to confront the menace of Islam – which for sure is a menace.

One wonders how Pope Benedict might react if Jews filed a class action suit against his church for damages resulting from this lie, this slander. I mean, this was the quintessential libeling of the Jews, calling us all homicides and deicides, since Jesus was both man and god, and as a result a lot of Jews suffered big time, to put it mildly.

Like the men today who sue the Church for their abuse at the hands of its predatory employees, might not us Jewish people go to court?

Well, I suppose that could make us look like greedy Jews trying to rip off the Church; all we care about is money. What we might do is waive monetary compensation and just demand moral compensation, moral support. I mean, this pope may be okay with Jews but the Vatican is a whole bureaucracy with all kinds of newspapers, magazines, columnists, publications and it has its share of antiJews consistently supporting the Ancient Ones in their war against us.

Why not then ask not for monetary reparations but just a change of Vatican heart? Let us see this pope say not only was this a 2,000 year-old lie about the Jews, so is Palestinian Nationalism another lie which like his Church’s classical doctrine has made Jew-killing an act of holiness in the holy war, the jihad. Like Catholicism’s aggression against al-Yahud, so Palestinian Nationalism has legitimized murdering us in ghastly violence.

Now that might make a bigger headline than his new book: “Pope says the Palestinian people is an antisemitic hoax”…