In recent days, the Anti Defamation League has attracted severe criticism online for their allegedly over zealous response to perceived anti Semitism.
Twitter/X owner Elon Musk has even got in on the criticism, threatening to bring a lawsuit against the organisation for revenue lost due to their criticisms of the platform.
In 2007, the organisation piled pressure on the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI after his landmark document Summorum Pontificum, which had loosened restrictions on the Latin Mass. The motu proprio led to a boom in young people returning to the faith as well as a significant short term increase in vocations.
As was standard with Pope Benedict XVI’s reign, the media turned an entirely positive event into something not only negative, but altogether sinister, as was the approach of the ADL.
On the same week that the document was published, the ADL published an article which stated:
In short, during the past four decades, the church has made great strides in reversing a 2,000-year history of anti-Semitism.
That is why the decision by the Vatican to restore a wider use of the Latin Mass with the inclusion of the prayer for the conversion of the Jews in the name of taking them out of the darkness is so disturbing. I was in Rome in the days leading up to the announcement of the revival of the Latin Mass containing the conversion prayer, and quickly made my strong objections known in meetings with Vatican officials.
The organisation also spoke to international media outlets, expressing their concerns over the document:
Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a United States-based Jewish civil rights group, was cautious ahead of the publication of the document.
“From second-hand sources, my understanding is they understand our concern, our sensitivity, our distress,” Foxman said in Rome. “And I think they’re not about to add to that distress after all the efforts we’ve made with reconciliation.”
A day prior to the publication, they told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:
The Anti-Defamation League called the decision to revive a Catholic prayer for the conversion of the Jews a “body blow to Catholic Jewish relations.”Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, met this week in Rome with Vatican officials to press Jewish concerns over the revival of the Latin mass and possible beatification of Pope Pius XII. Though he had initially taken a softer line, on Friday Foxman slammed an expected papal order allowing the use of a 16th century prayer which beseeches God to “remove the veil from the hearts” of the Jews, “and that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ.””We are extremely disappointed and deeply offended that nearly 40 years after the Vatican rightly removed insulting anti-Jewish language from the Good Friday Mass, that it would now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words by praying for Jews to be converted,” Foxman said. “This is a theological setback in the religious life of Catholics and a body blow to Cahtolic-Jewish relations.”
In a response to accusations of anti Semitism by the ADL, in 2013 the SSPX addressed the ADL’s attack on their approaches to interfaith relations:
The pro-abortion Anti-Defamation League was quick to praise Koch’s remarks. “…we applaud and welcome Cardinal Koch’s strong and clear re-affirmation of the significance of Nostra Aetate for the Catholic Church,” said Abraham Foxman, ADL National Director.
The ADL press-release lauded Koch’s reaffirmation of Nostra Aetate as “the crucial compass of all endeavors toward Jewish-Catholic dialogue.”
The same press-release quoted Rabbi Eric J. Greenberg, ADL Interfaith Director, saying that the ADL:
respectfully urges that any potential rehabilitation of the SSPX include the requirement that the Society publicly reject their decades of hatred [sic], and that as an expression of their affirmation of Nostra Aetate, be required to remove all anti-Semitic rhetoric from both their online and their print publications."[30]
We cannot too quickly wilt before the charge of “anti-semitism” or “anti-Judaism” until we know exactly how these potboiler terms are defined. Keep in mind this same ADL, in line with Jewish historian Jules Isaac, consider St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Chrysostom, the saints, popes and Fathers of the Church, and the Holy Gospel writers themselves as “anti-Semitic”.[31]
On June 8, 1999, I attended an evening of Jewish-Catholic dialogue at a local Catholic seminary. The two speakers conducting the workshop were Professor James McManus of the United States Bishops Conference and Rabbi Leon Klenicki of the Anti-Defamation League of the B’Nai B’rith.[32]
Rabbi Klenicki claimed that the churchmen of the early centuries (those whom we revere as Fathers of the Church: Augustine, Ambrose, Cyprian, etc.) were operating with a highly imperfect view of what was going on at the time of Our Lord. He even claimed that Pilate was solely responsible for the death of Christ, and that the Pharisees were actually trying to warn Jesus against Pilate’s treachery.
In other words, Klenicki propounded the false notion that the Gospel accounts of the events leading up to the Passion and Death of Our Lord are not trustworthy, which can only mean the Gospels are not truly the Word of God.
Traditional Catholic doctrine, Klenicki told us, was poisoned by alleged “triumphalism” and “anti-Judaism” that manifested itself in the so-called “teaching of contempt” of the Catholic Church in the Medieval ages. This so-called “teaching of contempt,” however, was nothing more than the traditional doctrine of the Church, based on Holy Scripture, that Our Lord brought an end to the Old Covenant by His Passion and Death on the Cross, and by establishing the Catholic Church as the New Covenant.
When we fully realize the disdain some of these powerful Jewish groups hold against Christ, His Gospel and His Church, and when we better appreciate the damage to Catholic doctrine done by Nostra Aetate, we can only tremble when we read the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman praise of Pope Benedict for “dedicating himself to the full implementation of this document [Nostra Aetate], and his genuine and sincere commitment to Catholic-Jewish relations.”
Treating all men, Catholic or not, with love and respect is required by both natural and Divine Law. It is the natural result of the soul who truly loves Christ and patterns his actions on the Divine Model.
Likewise, peaceful relations with non-Catholic religions are legitimate. But reorienting our sacred doctrine to please non-Catholic religions, as was effected by Vatican II, is criminal. Working toward this reorientation of doctrine is, objectively speaking, a sin against Faith itself. For those ordained prior to 1967, the sin is compounded by the breaking of the solemn Oath Against Modernism they swore to God, with one hand on the Bible, on the eve of their ordination.
Certainly, the obvious issue with a group such as this is that their legitimate concerns, which are political in nature, then become conflated with theological ones, such as their interference with prayers on Good Friday.
With Christians currently under daily assault from Zionists in Israel, perhaps some notion of mutual respect would be a better approach.
