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Here is an interesting and informative, historical item delivered to a 
religious gathering of the Third Order of St. Francis during the earlier 
part of World War II. The author is one, David Goldstein, a man converted 
from Judaism several decades before and renowned for his speaking ability, 
humor, and for his apostolic works helping to convert other Hebrews. He was 
even given the honored title of a "Knight of St. Gregory" by Pope Pius XII 
for his efforts..

______________________________________________________
Address on Brotherhood

Address Delivered at the National Congress of the Third
Order of St. Francis, Pittsburgh, Pa., Oct. 11, 1941



It is fitting that the first session of the National Congress of the 
Third Order of St. Francis should open with a discussion of Brotherhood, 
for these are days when brothers are in battle array against brothers 
almost the whole world over, through lack of Christian brotherhood. 
Therefore no more opportune time could have been selected to emphasize 
brotherhood from the viewpoint of Brother Jesus and Brother Francis..
While I responded immediately to the request to be part of this 
program, feeling as a tertiary that such a request was a command, I felt my 
inability to deal adequately with such a laudable topic, especially when 
sandwiched between such learned priests and laymen as are listed for this 
session. Thinking of the priest facing our Lord in the tabernacle before 
reading the Gospel at Mass, I said, May Almighty God move my heart and pen 
to make some constructive thought during this session that will advance the 
understanding of brotherhood, and encourage the fulfillment of the 
obligations it imposes upon all of us..
There is a bond that makes us all brothers, differ though we do in 
inheritance, qualities and characteristics, for we have a common human 
nature that came to us from God through our first parents. There is a 
material bond that makes us brothers, for we are dependent upon one another 
for the conditions and things necessary to safeguard our physical 
well-being. There is a spiritual bond that makes us brothers, for each and 
every one of us has a soul made in the image and likeness of God, our 
common Father, that yearns for absolute happiness which we endeavor to 
obtain here on earth, very often failing to realize that it abides in the 
source from which our soul emanated. There is a mystical bond of 
brotherhood made up of persons who are incorporated by baptism into the 
Mystical Body of Christ, our Divine Brother..
Belief in the brotherhood of man is not an exclusively Christian 
concept, for even the Socialists believe in it. But there is no sound basis 
in Marxian Socialism for such a belief, as brotherhood is dependent upon a 
common nature which came from God, our common Father, the existence of Whom 
Socialism denies. It is just as unsound to speak of a brotherhood of man 
minus a Fatherhood of God, as it is to hold the male children of a family 
group to be brothers minus their common male parentage..
Our Christian brotherhood of man is rational, for it has God as the 
Creator of the first man, Adam, and the Author of the nature of man, which 
we descendants of Adam inherit. God did more than create the common human 
nature that unites us into universal brotherly relationship; He elevated 
that nature of man to a supernatural state by assuming it Himself, in the 
person of His Only Begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This 
God did through His love of man, whom he gave the means of occupying a 
mansion in His Eternal Jerusalem. That love of God for man was not for 
white men only; that love of God was not for Americans only; that love was 
not for Christians only. The love that caused God to take on a human 
nature, in union with His Divine nature, was for all mankind, black, red, 
and yellow, as well as white. That love of God for man was for Germans, 
Russians, Italians, Japanese, British, as well as Americans. That love of 
God was for Jews, Protestants, Mohammedans, and Atheists, as well as 
Christians. Hence the exclusion of any race, nationality, or religious 
division of society from the exercise of rights that are a part of their 
common God-given nature, is a violation of the natural and mystical bond of 
brotherhood..
The part that St. Francis played during his holy life was to 
demonstrate the love that springs from the brotherhood that has God as its 
common Father and Jesus Christ as its Brother. That Franciscan concept of 
brotherhood the faithful sons and daughters of the Third Order of St. 
Francis exemplify in their daily lives, in their spirit of charity towards 
their brothers in Christ. Wherever the spirit of St. Francis is expressed 
in the lives of members of his Third Order, there will be found love of 
neighbor, family integrity, economic justice, in a word, charity, the term 
that embodies all these virtues. Socialism shows us the universal contrast, 
for its godlessness leads to a denial of brotherhood in practice. This the 
application of Socialism demonstrated in the Union of Soviet Socialist 
Republics during the last quarter of a century of its "dictatorship of the 
proletariat." It led to depriving 170,000,000 persons of the exercise of 
their natural rights; for Socialism, denying the existence of God, 
logically denies the existence of natural rights. The Socialism of the 
Soviet Union led to the murder of more non war-waging persons, in the 
interest of "Marxian brotherhood," than have lost their lives during any 
non-war times, save during epidemics. The application of its totalitarian 
dictatorial principles gave the totalitarianism of Fascism and Nazism their 
impetus. The perniciousness of godless Marxian principles, that claim to 
have brotherhood as its objective, is seen in the entire disappearance of 
the descendants of Karl Marx, the father of modern Socialism, in its second 
generation, through the practice of birth control and deliberate 
self-murder on the part of his children, who lived according to the 
Socialist principles of their father..
The tranquillity of brotherhood has been greatly disturbed of late by 
racism. The peace of the world, for which all men yearn, even if they 
happen to be doing the wrong thing to make it a reality, is threatened by a 
political anthropology, a racist theory, that is as unscientific as it is 
unchristian. The assumption of any people that they are the world's 
superior division of the children of Adam, is based upon pride, the first 
of the capital sins that have brought suffering to man while on earth, and 
eternal damnation to the souls that are in the infernal region..
Races are fortunately not by dictatorship established. They are the 
result of natural, territorial, atmospheric, cultural, and environmental 
conditions. The classification of races by impartial anthropologists, 
ethnologists and biologists never resulted in the designation of Germans as 
distinctively Aryan, assuming for the nonce that there is such a racial 
division of man. A close examination of some of the tribes from which the 
German people of today descended will no doubt reveal them to be as 
Oriental as are the tribes to which the Israelites trace their origin. If 
charity ever displaces hatred in the heart of Hitler, which God grant, then 
will he realize that there is more reason to fear corruption of the 
bloodstream of his Germanic following by anti-God racism than by the 
infiltration of Jewish Semitic blood..
As for the Jews, there is no scientific basis for designating them a 
distinctive race, even though they have characteristics that are 
distinctively Hebraic; even though it is a common thing to speak of the 
Jewish race as we speak of the Irish race, despite the fact that they are 
non-existent..
Racism has no warrant in the teachings of the Catholic Church; hence no 
member of the Third Order of St. Francis can rightly be a racist, nor will 
he claim to be one. Pope Pius XI, of blessed memory, condemned the racist 
theory, holding it to be due to "ill-considered exaggerated nationalism." 
"Many people seem to forget," said he, "that in the explicit article of the 
Credo, 'I believe in the Catholic Church,' Catholic means universal, not 
racist, not nationalistic, nor separatistic." The Holy Father declared that 
"the Catholic Church prays for the Jewish people; the Apostolic See has 
protected Jews against opposition"; that "just as every kind of envy and 
jealousy among nations must be disapproved of, so in an especial manner 
must be the hatred which is generally termed anti-Semitism." His Holiness 
expressed opposition to the racist theory prompted by anti-Semitism, by 
deeds as well as words. To cite two instances: When Mussolini caused 
Levi-Civita, the great mathematician, to be rejected by the Italian 
Academy, Pope Pius XI nominated him for the Vatican Academy. And when the 
Pope learned that the family of Heinrich Hertz, discoverer of the Hertzian 
waves, driven from Germany by Hitler, were in distress in England, he 
instructed Cardinal Hinsley to apply his funds for the needs of the family..
The tertiary, being motivated by the law of charity that St. Francis 
exemplified, knows that the falsity of the religious concepts of Jews, 
Protestants, and even Atheists, does not obliterate the fact that the 
persons holding such views are part of the brotherhood of man; that they 
have God as the Author of their being, Adam and Eve as their first parents, 
and that their Brother Jesus Christ laid down His life for them as well as 
for those persons who are blest by being members of the body of His Church. 
The tertiary knows that such a passionate lover of the Lord as St. Francis, 
"who saw God in the running brooks and sermons in the stones; who saluted 
with ecstatic joy heaven's great luminary as Brother Sun, which lights up 
the day and through whom God dost give brightness," expects his faithful 
followers to salute Jews as brothers; to pray that the brightness of the 
Eternal Son of David may lead them to see in Him crucified their Messiah, 
whom Francis served gloriously..
Being of Hebraic stock, being a convert from the Synagogue to the 
Church as well as from Marx to Christ, it is but natural that my remarks 
should center upon Jews in particular..
We all suffer to some extent from failure to searchingly turn our eyes 
into our souls to find the cause of the afflictions that torment us. So it 
is with Jews; they have a tendency towards extremes that often beclouds 
their vision of themselves. It often causes them to assume to be the 
injured party, and to mislead others into that one-sided view, when they 
are the aggressors, as mea culpa is all too rare among Jews, as brotherly 
love is among anti-Jews. This woe-is-me attitude develops in Jews a 
persecution complex that keeps them from seeing conditions and their causes 
as they really are. For instance, Jews are continually harping upon the 
Spanish Inquisition as one hundred per cent unjust. They disregard almost 
entirely the fact that the lineup of Jews in Spain with the forces of the 
Crescent against the Cross; and their voluntary sacrilegious submission to 
baptism, when secretly they were indulging in practices that are 
religiously Jewish, were the primary cause of their deportation from Spain 
in the fifteenth century. The opposition then was not to Judaism, as many 
Jews assume it to have been, but to some of the actions of Jews that were 
objectionable..
This extremism in Jews in the economic world is seen in the tendency of 
all too many of them to be either Capitalists or Socialists, due to their 
super-acquisitiveness as well as departure from religion. This was feared 
by Dr. Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, in his "Jewish State," 
fifty odd years ago. He realized then that it would afflict his fellow-Jews 
in the future, as it has. Dr. Herzl said,
"We are considered contemptible" by being in finance and on the stock 
exchange, into which "modern conditions have forced us. At the same time we 
continue to produce an abundance of mediocre intellects which find no 
outlet, and this endangers our social position as much as does increasing 
wealth. Educated Jews without means are fast becoming socialists. Hence we 
are certain to suffer very severely in the struggle between classes, 
because we stand in the most exposed position in the camp of both 
socialists and capitalists."

Please do not conclude from what has just been said that all working-class 
Jews are Socialists, or that Socialism and its Bolshevist application in 
the Soviet Union is Jewish. Yet when we view the May Day parades in New 
York City; when we see the countenances of the paying patrons of Communist 
meetings that fill Madison Square Garden, we are not surprised to hear of 
Jews being branded as "Reds." Though one thing is certain, Jews represent 
relatively too large a percentage of the persons in movements that are 
basically antiChristian in principle to keep long at bay the Anti-semitic 
spirit that makes life hard for them..
Jews have never had better friends during some trying times in history 
than the Sons of St. Francis. They stood out boldly in their defense when 
the anti-Jewish frenzy was at its height in England; when ninety-two Jews 
were imprisoned on the charge of having killed Hugh of Lincoln, a Christian 
child, for ritual purposes. So scandalized were the people at the action of 
the Franciscans in defense of the Jews, that they withdraw from them the 
alms upon which they depended for the conduct of their holy work. Yet at 
one time the Franciscans were compelled to strenuously oppose the Jews for 
their usurious exploitation of the poor of Italy. The Sons of St. Francis 
organized credit societies, pawn shops, called Montes Piatatis, to protect 
Christians from Jewish exactions..
We tertiaries know ourselves to have too many faults of our own to keep 
harping on the faults of others. Besides, our duty is to help our fellowman 
overcome those faults that place him at a disadvantage, by bearing ever in 
mind the fact that Jews are souls that the God we worship loves as ardently 
as He does the souls of non-Jews. Their faults, objectionable though they 
be, never warranted Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," that designates Jews as 
murderers of nuns and friars; poisoners of wells; as being the cause of the 
Black Death; as being guilty of killing Christian children for sacrificial 
purposes, disregarding the fact that no Jewish ritual ever called for human 
blood for sacrifice. Nor do the faults of the Jews warrant them being 
falsely charged today with being the authors of the dastardly "Protocols of 
the Elders of Zion."
Shakespeare was more considerate of Jews than was Marlowe. While he 
portrayed Shylock as a ruthless type of money-lender, intensifying his 
acquisitiveness by insistence upon the fulfillment of the letter of the 
contract for a pound of flesh, his Merchant of Venice, rightly understood, 
is a defense of the Jews against the hatred of them that is nowadays called 
Anti-semitism. Shakespeare presents Shylock as more sinned against than 
sinning, declaring with dignity that "sufferance is the badge of all my 
tribe," as it has been ever since its hand has been against Jesus the 
Messiah, Who "came to His own and His own received Him not." No more 
eloquent plea against the uncharitable and unbrotherly spirit of 
Anti-semitism has been penned than the words Shakespeare placed on the lips 
of Shylock,

"Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, 
affections, passions? fed from the same food, hurt from the same weapons, 
subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled 
by the same summer and winter as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we 
not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not 
die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

Those sentiments of Shakespeare, supplemented by St. Paul's glorious 
discourse on charity, are in the hearts of all true tertiaries when dealing 
with Jews. Yet that does not mean that tertiaries are obligated to refrain 
from frankly letting Jews know that the cause of their persecution lies in 
themselves rather than in their enemies. Tertiary brotherly regard for 
Jews, as children and brothers of Jesus Christ, would be very superficial 
if it were limited to a protest against their persecution; if it were 
limited to gaining and maintaining for them the freedom of exercising the 
rights with which God has endowed Jews as well as Christians. These are 
times for straight talk; these are times when the Jews should be told, in a 
spirit of charity, that the cure for their affliction lies in the Messiah 
they reject today, as did most of their forebears nineteen hundred years 
ago. Jews may deny that their forebears cried back to Pilate, let "His 
blood be upon us and our children," but they cannot deny the fact that 
their Temple was destroyed; their priesthood and sacrifices abolished; that 
for nineteen centuries they have been exiled, dispersed, persecuted, and 
that they have suffered the vengeance of God ever since. God, who has set a 
mark upon Cain for killing his natural brother Abel, seems to have set a 
mark upon Jews for causing the death of their Divine Brother, Jesus the 
Messiah..
Jews should be positively reminded that looking elsewhere than to the 
denial of Christ as the cause of their suffering is in vain; that their 
affliction is due, as I said a moment ago, to denial of the faith of their 
fathers in Israel; that And-semitism, like the present World War, is an 
affliction that God permits in order to bring Jews to Himself, as Pope Pius 
XII said in his appeal for a deeper faith..
Any other attitude towards Jews but flatters them into the belief that 
the cause of their unjust treatment lies in the Hitlerites rather than in 
themselves. The traits in Jews that are objectionable to Christians do not 
warrant racist hostility, nor deportation, yet they exist, and they must be 
expected to bring a reaction in our country in the not far distant future, 
as they did in Germany. Those traits are irreligious traits, and they 
spring from the Judaism of the diaspora being hostile in principle to the 
Judaism of pre-Christian times, and to the Messiah Who came in fulfillment 
of the promise made to Israel..
We have a duty as tertiaries to do our part in bringing Anti-semitism 
to an end, in the only way that will finally put an end to its periodical 
unbrotherly manifestations. That is by prayerfully encouraging Jews to 
Christianize their intense spirit, as was the hateful spirit of Saul of 
Tarsus changed to the spirit of charity in St. Paul, through its 
Christianization. In the Messiah on the Cross Jews will alone find the 
culmination of their afflictions, as love and the Cross are one, as they 
were on the body and in the heart of St. Francis..
Charity demands that we do for our Jewish brethren the best there is in 
our power to do. The best is to bring them to their Messianic King, whom 
David, Isaiah, Daniel, and the other prophets of old foretold to come, and 
did come unto His own, the children of Israel. It is not too late for Jews 
to receive Him. Let us see that they do..

[From Goldstein's book "LETTERS: Hebrew-Catholic to Mr. Isaacs" 
which is provided in its entirety on the Catholic Dispatch web site 
choosing "Hebrew-Catholic" from the short-cut menu.]








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