Poisoning The Catholic Bible With Anti-Semitism

Some of my friends tell me the New World Order conspiracy is “Judaeo-Masonic.” This article will show that this is exactly what the popes of Rome want you to think! They frame others to deflect blame away from themselves.

FOOTNOTES are an essential part of Roman Catholic bibles printed in the language of the common people. They have been required since the Council of Trent. Their necessity was decreed anew by the Congregation of the Index in Rome on June 13, 1753. This decree ordered that: “Versions of the Bible in the common tongue shall not be permitted, unless they have been approved by the Apostolic See, or are accompanied by annotations from the Holy Fathers of the Church.”

The obvious purpose of these footnotes or ‘annotations’ is to explain away the contradictions between the evident meaning of the Bible text and the teachings of the Catholic church.

In 1942, Catholic publicity agents gave a countrywide build-up to a new and revised English edition of the Roman Catholic New Testament. It was hailed as the result of many years of devoted labor on the part of “eminent Catholic scholars.” It was published by the Episcopal Commission of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, after being examined and approved by the pope acting through his Roman Biblical Commission.

This new edition is an improvement over its outdated predecessor in the sense that it modernized the English and discarded a few of the many obvious mistranslations that had long been ridiculed by Protestant critics. Unnoticed, however, in this Revised Catholic New Testament was the insertion of other footnotes that in some instances are loaded with social and political propaganda and have nothing to do with religion, much less with the Bible itself. In fact, some of these uncalled for annotations flatly contradict the biblical texts to which they refer. These indoctrinating footnotes take a prejudiced stand on two of the most burning questions of the day, namely, labor unionism and anti-Semitism.

This malicious editing of the Revised New Testament was outdone in a condensed version for the Armed Forces, published at Government expense. It is entitled, “My Daily Reading from the Four Gospels and the New Testament”. It was compiled by Father Stedman, pro-Franco propagandist, whose version of the Roman Catholic Missal was sufficiently anti-Semitic to induce Father Coughlin to distribute it to his readers free of charge. One million copies of Stedman’s mutilated version of Catholic New Testament selections were distributed at Federal expense to Catholic soldiers and sailors. Plans had been made to print many more with Government money.

Among several thinly-veiled disparaging references to Labor and the Jews there is a footnote to chapter 2, verse 9, of The Apocalypse (called by Protestants “The Book of Revelation”) which is unbelievably vicious. The verse to which the footnote is attached reads as follows:

“I know thy tribulation and thy poverty, hut thou art rich; and thou art slandered by those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.”

The footnote to this verse (on page 701 of the whole Bible and page 559 of Father Stedman’s “Readings”) stands in brazen contradiction to the word of Scripture. It says:

“The Jews are the synagogue of Satan. The true synagogue is the Christian Church.”

This phrase, “Synagogue of Satan,” was a favorite of the popes during the past two hundred years in their encyclicals condemning Freemasonry and other liberal underground organizations who fought for democracy and liberty against the aggressive power of popes and kings. The popes in these encyclicals condemn Freemasonry as the instigator of the great revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — beginning with the American Revolution and followed soon after by the French Revolution — that brought democracy and freedom to the modern world. The popes called these revolutions the work of Satan, and borrowed this phrase, “Synagogue of Satan,” and applied it especially to the Lodges of the Freemasons.

(Note: It’s interesting that Freemasonry, according to Lehmann, at least in the past, may have been an agent for good in the world. Today I think they are all under Jesuit influence.)

Since the European Catholic mind has been conditioned by the Jesuits to combine Jewry and Freemasonry as the co-plotters of the destruction of the Catholic church and the tyranny of kings, the phrase, “Synagogue of Satan,” was made applicable to both Jews and Freemasons. It was Father Coughlin who first made public use of the phrase in this country applying it to Jews and Freemasons alike. In a series of three articles in his Social Justice magazine, Oct.-Nov. 1939, entitled “Freemasonry in the Scheme of Satan,” the author repeats the assertion that Freemasonry is allied with the Jews and Communists for the overthrow of Christianity, and ends the last article by calling it, in the words of Pope Pius IX, “The Synagogue of Satan.”¹

Bryce Oliver, news commentator, speaking over Radio Station WEVD in New York, April 9, 1943, in regard to the above-mentioned anti-Semitic texts, said that “at last a way has been found to make church-going people in America think about the Jews as Hitler wants them to think.”

The Associated Press, the United Press and the International News Service refused to print this well-documented story of the teaching of Fascist principles through biblical footnotes. Further evidence of the subservience of the press to the propaganda interests of the Catholic church is seen in the fact that practically all New York and Washington newspapers turned down direct releases of this story. Much credit is due to The Protestant and In Fact for the courageous and widespread publicity given it.

The Greater New York Council of the CIO representing half a million members sent a strongly worded protest to President Roosevelt on April 26, which, among other things, said: “This editorial handling of the Bible is malicious in its treatment of labor unions and of our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

This protest of the CIO took particular exception to an editorial subhead on page 333 of the Army edition above mentioned, which contains the story of the silversmith Demetrius in Acts 19:23-40. This heading is entitled, “Abuses of La bor Unions.” It is entirely gratuitous, for the text makes no reference to labor unions.

Professor Ward of Union Theological Seminary in New York said of this Stedman Army edition of “Readings” from the New Testament:

“These are not Bibles but edited selections and never should have been printed and distributed at Government expense because in the selection as well as in the footnotes and subheads they put over an editorial point of view. Thus they violate the fundamental principles of separation of church and state.”

As a result of our protest against this poisoning of the Catholic Bible for anti-Semitic purposes, the Jesuit magazine America, most influential Catholic periodical in the United States, was forced to print the following humiliating admission in its issue of May 15, 1943:

“In the interest of religious charity, the footnote to ‘Apocalypse,’ 2:9, has been altered in the Army-Navy edition of the Holy Scriptures.”

In the latest authoritative work on the Jewish question, Jews in a Gentile World, by eighteen noted university professors, Professor Ellis Freeman of the University of Tampa sums up the traditional attitude of the Catholic church toward the Jews as follows:

“One is constrained to ob serve at this point that the policy of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church waxed and waned with the fortunes of whatever interests were successful in palace revolutions in the Vatican. There is no unequivocal evidence of any sustained effort by the Church to throw its weight against anti-Semitism.”

This article by former Roman Catholic priest Leo Herbert Lehmann was first published in 1944 by THE CONVERTED CATHOLIC MAGAZINE and made available online by The Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry LutheranLibrary.org.