Since the late 1960s, it has been a continuous refrain in Catholic and most mainline Christian Churches that “Jews didn’t kill Jesus, the Romans did.” The rationale advanced to support this statement is that crucifixion is a Roman form of capital punishment. Jews in Jerusalem did not and could not use crucifixion to kill enemies. Therefore, since Jesus died by crucifixion, He was killed by the Romans for being a threat to the Roman government in Jerusalem in some fashion.
I never found this presentation of Jesus’ murder a convincing nor a rationally acceptable interpretation of the Gospels’ text, because there are so many passages in the Gospels that undermine it. That blindly obedient Roman soldiers, not all Romans, with Pilate’s reluctant approval killed Jesus by crucifixion is incontestably documented. What is also incontestably documented is that many Jewish religious leaders were explicitly seeking for a way to kill Jesus for two to three years before His crucifixion. Their intimidation of Pilate is what brought Pilate to order Jesus’ execution, even after he personally and publicly said, “I find no guilt in this man” (Lk 23:4, 23:22; Mt 27:23; Mk15:14; Jn 18:38, 19:4, 19:6). This intimidation is the documented cause, without which there would not have been a crucifixion.
Today, President BIden is called “Genocide Joe” and this session of Congress is called the “Genocide Congress” or the “AIPAC Congress,” because of the absolute military and monetary support of both for Israel ‘s murderous ethinic cleansing of Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza. BIden and the U.S.Congress, like Pilate, are just intimidated and cowardly political apparatchiks looking out for their own survival and self-interest. Threaten their status or standard of living as some Jews did 2000 years ago with Pilate, and as many Jews today are doing with President Biden and the members of Congress, and they will do anything to save the “good life” they have.
Doing anything includes supporting the murder of the Innocent One twenty centuries ago and supporting the murder of ten of thousands of innocent ones in the last four and a half months in Gaza with a superabundance of assistance from Joe Biden and the members of the U.S. Congress, without which there could not have been such a genocidal orgy of murderous devastation.
Acquiring and ruling Gaza by savage violence may make a few or many Jewish people a great deal of money because of what the land holds beneath its surface. But as sure as Yahweh exists, neither Shalom nor the Shekhinah will ever abide there. Gaza, like Auschwitz, will forever be for humanity an “ichabod” space in time because of the unalloyed idolatry, infidelity, mercilessness and evil that large numbers of the Chosen People have brought to earth there.
Joe Biden is the American Pontius Pilate, or perhaps, Pontius Pilate is the Roman Joe Biden. In either case the pusillanimous Pontius Pilate had Jesus tortured and put to death out of fear of some Jews and the pusillanimous Joe Biden and the equally craven members of the U.S. Congress have had Jesus tortured and put to death tens of thousands of times over, “Whatever you do to the least you do to me,” out fear of some Jews.
To the extent that Joe BIden and the members of U.S. Congress are Christian, it has to be asked by sane people, “What in hell church do they attend?” “Who in hell are its leaders?” “Who in hell is their god?”
The Best of Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
