Reporters have asked us what we think about Rev. John Hagee now that Mike Huckabee is going to appear with him on December 23 at Hagee’s church. Here’s a quick glimpse, written by Bill Donohue.
Over ten years ago, I wrote to John Hagee asking him to stop with his Catholic bashing. Specifically, I complained about the falsehoods told about the Catholic Church in his video, Southern Steps: Jerusalem & Bible Prophecy. Hagee never replied.
On April 3, 2000, a Polish Catholic Holocaust survivor, Michael Preisler (Auschwitz No. 22213), wrote to Hagee saying the following: “On May 11, July 11 and December 23, 1999, I asked you to remove the falsehood in your book, Final Dawn Over Jerusalem, accusing Polish Catholics like me of creating the ovens at Auschwitz.” Hagee never replied. Preisler is co-chair of the Holocaust Documentation Committee of the Polish American Congress and a member of the Catholic League.
More recently, Hagee, in his latest book, Jerusalem Countdown (revised edition, 2007), wrote (on p. 114) the following: “Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.”
I could go on and on. Hagee has a long and disgusting record of Catholic bashing. Here are a few more gems from Jerusalem Countdown:
· “Anti-Semitism in Christianity began with the statements of the early church fathers, including Eusebius, Cyril, Chrysostom, Augustine, Origen, Justin, and Jerome…. This poisonous stream of venom came from the mouths of spiritual leaders to virtually illiterate congregants, sitting benignly in their pews, listening to their pastors. They labeled the Jews as ‘the Christ killers, plague carriers, demons, children of the devil, bloodthirsty pagans who look for an innocent child during the Easter week to drink his blood, money hungry Shylocks, who are deceitful as Judas was relentless.'”
· “The Roman Catholic Church, which was supposed to carry the light of the gospel, plunged the world into the Dark Ages…. The Crusaders were a motley mob of thieves, rapists, robbers, and murderers whose sins had been forgiven by the pope in advance of the Crusade…. The brutal truth is that the Crusades were military campaigns of the Roman Catholic Church to gain control of Jerusalem from the Muslims and to punish the Jews as the alleged Christ killers on the road to and from Jerusalem.”
· “The Spanish Inquisition was perhaps the most cynical plot in the black history of Catholicism, aimed at expropriating the property of wealthy Jews and converts in Spain for the benefit of the royal court and the Roman Catholic Church.”
· “Adolf Hitler attended a Catholic school as a child and heard all the fiery anti-Semitic rantings from Chrysostom to Martin Luther. When Hitler became a global demonic monster, the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII never, ever slightly criticized him. Pope Pius XII, called by historians ‘Hitler’s Pope,’ joined Hitler in the infamous Concordat of Collaboration, which turned the youth of Germany over to Nazism, and the churches became the stage background for the bloodthirsty cry, ‘Pereat Judea’…. In all of his [Hitler’s] years of absolute brutality, he was never denounced or even scolded by Pope Pius XII or any Catholic leader in the world. To those Christians who believe that Jewish hearts will be warmed by the sight of the cross, please be informed—to them it’s an electric chair.”
