This is a setback for transgender people who had hoped Pope Francis might be setting the stage for a more welcoming approach from the Catholic Church.

World Religions

Around the world, major religions have diverse approaches to gender identity, and the inclusion or exclusion of transgender people.

Some examples:

Christianity

The Catholic Church's disapproving stance toward gender transition is shared by some other denominations.

For example, the Southern Baptist Convention - the largest Protestant denomination in the United States - adopted a resolution in 2014 stating that "God's design was the creation of two distinct and complementary sexes, male and female."

It asserts that gender identity "is determined by biological sex, not by one's self-perception"

However, numerous mainline Protestant denominations welcome trans people as members and as clergy.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America elected an openly transgender man as a bishop in 2021.

Islam

In Islam, there isn't a single central religious authority and policies can vary in different regions.

Abbas Shouman, secretary-general of Al-Azhar's Council of Senior Scholars in Cairo, said that "for us, … sex conversion is completely rejected.

"It is God who has determined the … sex of the fetus and intervening to change that is a change of God's creation, which is completely rejected," Shouman added.

In Iran, the Shiite theocracy's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a religious decree, or fatwa, decades ago, opening the way for official support for gender transition surgery.

Hinduism

In Hindu society in South Asia, while traditional roles were and are still prescribed for men and women, people of non-binary gender expression have been recognised for millennia and played important roles in holy texts.

Third gender people have been revered throughout South Asian history with many rising to significant positions of power under Hindu and Muslim rulers.

One survey in 2014 estimated that around 3 million third gender people live in India alone.

Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hindu scriptures, has the vocabulary to describe three genders - masculine, feminine and gender-neutral.

The most common group of third gender people in India are known as the "hijras." While some choose to undergo gender reassignment surgery, others are born intersex. Most consider themselves neither male or female.

Some Hindus believe third gender people have special powers and the ability to bless or curse, which has led to stereotyping causing the community to be feared and marginalised.

Many live in poverty without proper access to healthcare, housing and employment.

In 2014, India, Nepal and Bangladesh, which is a Muslim-majority country, officially recognised third gender people as citizens deserving of equal rights.

The Supreme Court of India stated that "it is the right of every human being to choose their gender," and that recognition of the group "is not a social or medical issue, but a human rights issue."

Buddhism

Buddhism has traditionally adhered to binary gender roles, particularly in its monastic traditions where men and women are segregated and assigned specific roles.

These beliefs remain strong in the Theravada tradition, as seen in the attempt of the Thai Sangha Council, the governing Buddhist body in Thailand, to ban ordinations of transgender people.

More recently, the Theravada tradition has somewhat eased restrictions against gender nonconforming people by ordaining them in their sex recorded at birth.

However, the Mahayana, and Vajrayana schools of Buddhism have allowed more exceptions while the Jodo Shinshu sect has been even more inclusive in ordaining transgender monks both in Japan and North America.

In Tibetan Buddhism, Tashi Choedup, an openly queer monk, was ordained after their teacher refrained from asking about their gender identity as prescribed by Buddhist doctrine.

Many Buddhist denominations, particularly in the West, are intentionally inclusive of transgender people in their sanghas or gatherings.

Judaism

Reform Judaism is accepting of transgender people and allows for the ordination of trans rabbis.

According to David J. Meyer, who served for many years as a rabbi in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Jewish traditional wisdom allowed possibilities of gender identity and expression that differed from those typically associated with the sex assigned at birth.

"Our mystical texts, the Kabbalah, address the notion of transitioning from one gender to another," he wrote on a Reform-affiliated website.

It's different, for the most part, in Orthodox Judaism.

"Most transgender people will find Orthodox communities extremely difficult to navigate," says the Human Rights Campaign, a major U.S. LGBTQ-rights advocacy group.

"Transgender people are further constrained by Orthodox Judaism's emphasis on binary gender and strict separation between men and women," the HRC says.

"For example, a transgender person who has not medically transitioned poses a challenge for a rabbi who must decide whether that person will sit with men or women during worship."

Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for the Orthodox Jewish organization Agudath Israel of America, wrote a blog post last year after appearing on an Israeli television panel to discuss transgender-related issues.

"There can be no denying that there are people who are deeply conflicted about their gender identities.

"They deserve to be safe from harm and, facing challenges the rest of us don't, deserve empathy and compassion," Shafran wrote.

"But the Torah and its extension, halacha, or Jewish religious law, are unequivocal about the fact that being born in a male body requires living the life of a man, and being born female entails living as a woman."

"In Judaism, each gender has its particular life-role to play," he added.

"The bodies God gave us are indications of what we are and what we are not, and of how He wants us to live our lives."

• First published in Religion News Service
• David Crary is an author at Religion News Service. Mariam Fam and Deepa Bharath are reporters with The Associated Press' global religion team.

When we consider that our Lord Jesus, our Blessed Mother Mary, St. Joseph, the twelve apostles, and the very first disciples were practicing religious Jews.

We also need to consider that the Christian New Testament is firmly rooted in the Jewish Scriptures of the Old Testament.

Having considered, how can we not have but the highest respect for Judaism.

But having the necessary deep respect for Judaism does not therefore mean that Christians must also have respect for the unjust policies of the state of Israel toward Palestinians.

Opposing Israeli government injustice is not antisemitic. On the contrary, it calls Israel to a high moral standard in the spirit of the great Jewish prophets.

Human rights

Sadly, decades of human rights violations have occurred.

Violations like denying adequate supplies of water, blocking access to family farms and olive groves, as well as building Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

These are among the injustices Palestinians have long suffered in the Occupied Territories, especially in Gaza which is known as the world's largest outdoor prison.

The Oct. 7, 2023, brutal terrorist attacks by Hamas upon Israel, resulting in the deaths of approximately 1,200 Israeli children, women and men, was not right either.

Combined with the abduction of more than 200 Israeli hostages it is unconscionable and deserving of our condemnation.

But Israel's brutal response, resulting in over 30,000 deaths of mostly innocent unarmed civilian Palestinians in Gaza is also an act of terrorism.

It is an even worse terrorism than that suffered by Israel.

More 11,500 Palestinian children have been killed from Israeli bombs and missiles.

These were mostly supplied by the U.S. and several other nations resulting in large profits for numerous arms manufacturers.

Israel's determination to kill every single member of Hamas has resulted in the collective punishment of all Gazan Palestinians.

Hospitals, schools, neighbourhoods, and churches have not been spared from Israel's wholesale non-stop bombing.

Most Palestinians in Gaza have little or no access to clean water and sanitation, food, medicine and fuel due to Israel's blockade. United Nations experts have accused Israel of "intentionally starving" Palestinians in Gaza.

Genocide

Collective punishment is both gravely immoral, and an act against international law.

The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to ensure that all vital supplies are to immediately be made available to every needy Gazan. And that all efforts to end hostilities are to be made.

However, Israel is ignoring international law and moral law.

Having suffered so terribly from the Holocaust, one would think that committing large scale murder of innocent children, women and men would be unthinkable for Israel.

Yet, almost unbelievably, Israel is committing genocide - yes, genocide - upon the innocents.

Furthermore, Israel is not even following the Mosaic principle of reciprocal justice, that is, measure for measure which states "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" (Exodus 21:23-27).

Instead, Israel has inflicted far more death and destruction upon mostly innocent Palestinians in Gaza, than it suffered from the deadly attacks of Hamas.

And of course, for Christians we must take to heart, and put into action, the most relevant words of the Jewish Jesus, the Christ, the Lord:

"You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, offer no [violent] resistance to one who is evil.

When someone strikes you on [your] right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. …

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you".

Pray for Peace

Therefore, let us tirelessly pray for peace in Gaza, and everywhere.

And let us unite with Pope Francis in his urgent call: "Stop the bombs and missiles now!"

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated Catholic social justice and peace columnist.

We might even say the first Christians were Jewish heretics because, unlike their fellow Jews, they believed Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah.

After Pentecost, the Jewish Christians continued to go to the temple to pray.

If they were outside of Jerusalem, they would go to the synagogue on the Sabbath and on Sunday they would gather for a meal, imitating the Last Supper celebrated by Jesus.

Because they kept talking about Jesus as the Messiah, their fellow Jews finally got fed up and kicked them out of the synagogue.

My guess is that these excommunicated Jews started meeting on the Sabbath for their own synagogue service.

Like their fellow Jews, they would read from the Jewish Scriptures, hear a sermon, say prayers and sing psalms. But to this service they added stories about Jesus, which became the Gospels, and letters from Christian leaders like Paul.

At some point, people started complaining, "Why do we have to meet twice? Can't we combine these two services?"

Thus, the adapted synagogue service became the Liturgy of the Word followed by a meal that was modeled on the last Passover celebrated by Jesus.

Today's Christian Eucharist is a combination of the Jewish synagogue service and Passover meal as adapted by the early Jewish Christians. If we forget our Jewish roots, we will never understand the Eucharist or anything else about Christianity.

The reform of the liturgy after Vatican II had a tremendous impact on the Liturgy of the Word.

When I was a child, the liturgy was in Latin and the selection of Scripture readings was very limited.

During weekday Masses, we often heard the parable of the wise and foolish virgins because that Gospel was used on the feast day of a virgin saint. In any case, the priest in preaching would often ignore the readings.

After Vatican II, the service was put into English so people could understand the Scripture readings and prayers.

The homilist was encouraged to preach on the readings, not on some extraneous topic. And a new lectionary was created so that over a three-year period, the Sunday readings would present a more comprehensive selection of Scripture readings.

Likewise, the weekday readings presented much of the Bible over a two-year cycle.

After centuries of neglect, Catholics are being encouraged to read the Scriptures, something Protestants still do at greater rates than Catholics.

Catholicism today has some of the best Scripture scholarship in the world, but sadly little of that gets down to the parish level.

Seminaries still do a poor job of training priests to preach on the Scriptures.

Bible study is not a big part of parish life as it is in evangelical churches.

One of the best ways to prepare for the Eucharist is to study and pray over the Scripture readings before going to church.

The structure of the Liturgy of the Word is one of "proclamation and response."

Keeping this in mind helps us understand what parts of the liturgy need emphasis and what can be downplayed.

For example, the confession of sins at the beginning of the liturgy is not essential.

It actually puts the "response" ahead of the proclamation of the Scriptures.

It can also put the congregation on a roller coaster when, after a joyous opening song, the people are told to think about how bad they are and their need of forgiveness.

Then we go up again, singing or reciting the Gloria. All of this before we hear the Scriptures.

The responsorial psalm is a response to the first reading and the homily should help the congregation understand how to respond to the proclaimed Word.

The homily should explain the Scriptures and help the congregants apply what they have heard to their lives.

Jesus told us about the Father's love and our duty to respond to his love with love for him and our neighbor. The homilist should do the same.

The creed can also be seen as a response to the Scriptures, but originally the creed was part of Baptism, not the Eucharist.

It was added to the Western liturgy by Pope Benedict VIII at the insistence of Emperor Henry II in 1014.

Overemphasizing the creed can limit our response to an intellectual assent rather than a life of Christian action.

The prayers of the faithful should also be a response to the Word we have heard, turning to our loving Father as proclaimed in the Scriptures and asking him to help us and our brothers and sisters.

In ancient time, the prayers of the faithful often ended with the Lord's Prayer and a kiss.

Early Christians often concluded prayers with a kiss, just as a family might conclude saying the rosary with hugs and kisses. Tertullian (d. 220) asks, "What prayer is complete without the holy kiss?" For him, the kiss was an affirmation, an "Amen," to everything that went before it.

The kiss at the end of the Liturgy of the Word was a sign of our common commitment to our covenant with God as described in the Scriptures.

It was a "shaking on a deal."

It is possible that Christians ended their synagogue service with a kiss while it was still on Saturday, before the service was joined to the Christian meal on Sunday.

When the services were joined, the kiss remained and some then reinterpreted it in the context of Matthew 5:23-24: "if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift."

But its original meaning was an affirmation of what went before, not a preparation for what followed.

However, when the Lord's Prayer was moved closer to Communion, the kiss went along with it.

During the pope's recent visit to Congo (Jan. 31 to Feb. 3), we see a different arrangement of the Liturgy of the Word.

The Congolese Rite begins with an invocation of saints and ancestors who are asked to "Be with us" as we celebrate the Eucharist.

The penitential rite and sign of peace come after the homily, which better fits the "proclamation/response" ideal.

My only problem with this sequence is that it makes confession of sin the only possible response to the Scripture readings.

The Scriptures call us to do a lot of things other than confess our sins.

It especially calls us to follow the example of Christ in living lives of justice, healing and love.

It calls us to continue his mission in the world.

Sin does not have to be the principal focus of every Liturgy of the Word.

Proclamation and response are at the core of the Liturgy of the Word.

The Word is proclaimed, and we are called to respond.

An integral part of that response is celebrating the Eucharist.

We respond to the Word by celebrating the Eucharist, in which we give praise and thanks to the Father for his actions in the world.

We unite ourselves with Christ's sacrifice and pray that by the power of the Eucharist we may be transformed into the Body of Christ continuing his mission of love and justice in the world.

But that is for next week's column.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

The order, established in 1831, recognises personal service or unusual labour in support of the Catholic Church.

Rabbi A. James Rudin, the longtime interreligious affairs director for the American Jewish Committee, is about to join the few to be honoured in this way. The reason - his decades of work on Jewish-Catholic relations.

A Reform rabbi and also a writer, Rudin has contributed hundreds of columns over the years to the Religion News Service publication.

He has travelled widely, meeting with popes, presidents, Protestant denominational leaders and world-famous evangelists. His aim every time: to improve Jewish-Christian relations in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.

"For more than 50 years, Rabbi James Rudin has worked to advance Catholic-Jewish relations and interfaith relations on a wider scale, with extraordinary skill, dedication, and success," says Cardinal Sean O'Malley, archbishop of Boston.

"The impact of this work continues to grow as successive generations build on the foundation Rabbi Rudin has established."

Rudin, 88, says his relations with Catholics go back to his youth in Virginia, when Jews and Catholics were vastly outnumbered by white evangelicals who viewed them with a certain disdain.

Rudin, the only Jew in his grade school class, had to leave the room during a reading of the New Testament. So did his two Catholic classmates.

"That was my first introduction to Catholic-Jewish relations: little kids singled out and humiliated standing outside the classroom," Rudin says.

Later, as an Air Force chaplain in Japan and Korea, his closest colleague was a Catholic priest. They cooperated on Catholic-Jewish programming together.

He joined the American Jewish Committee in 1968. There he developed a close working relationship with another priest, John O'Connor, who went on to become archbishop of New York and ultimately a cardinal.

Rudin also co-founded the St Leo University's Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies, where he has taught Judaism for several years.
His papal knighthood investiture will take place at the Center on 20 November.

O'Malley will represent Pope Francis at the ceremony.

Rabbi Eric J. Greenberg, who helped nominate Rudin for the knighthood, says the honour comes at a critical time of growing antisemitism.

"This knighthood clearly demonstrates the evolving positive relations between Catholics and Jews," says Greenberg. He is the director of United Nations relations and strategic partnerships for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

"Rabbi Rudin well deserves this historic, international honour."

Source

• Religion News Service

And the Catholic Church was not his first spiritual home. He had grown up in London in an Anglican family and turned to Catholicism in his 20s. Read more

That's the sort of exhibition Michael Clements, president of the New Zealand Jewish Archives has just held. His week-long display at Wellington's Jewish Community centre showcased a snapshot of Jewish life in New Zealand over the past 170 years or so.

Clements says he'd like to see the Catholic Church and others join him in mounting a combined exhibition.

"The Church must have a number of artefacts tucked away that would be worth displaying," he suggests.

Making a collection obviously takes commitment, particularly if you start from scratch.

"There was only a small collection when I started looking after it 40 years ago," he says.

Just two drawers in a filing cabinet, to be exact.

These days, thanks to Clements' foraging from one end of the country to the other, it's grown enormously since then and includes just about everything.

There are birth and death records, Seder dishes, an illuminated address to Wellington's first rabbi, religious texts, prayer shawls, kippah (skull caps), art works, biographies and personal possessions from prominent Jewish New Zealanders.

Some items are serious acquisitions, some are on loan. Some are in constant use like the Wellington synagogue's Torah scroll it took a scribe six months to write (on kosher vellum).

Others are fascinating ritual objects - a yad (a pointer used when reading to Torah to prevent the parchment being finger-marked), the shofar - a musical horn made of ram's horn used for religious purposes, the beautiful sets of rimonim bells and the Torah shields.

"I'm an avid collector," he says.

Why does he do it? "Because I can," he replies.

Despite the graft this involves (and dare one mention his age … someone mentions "80's") he shows no sign of slowing down.

After all, there's still the possibility of a bigger, interfaith exhibition to consider.

Source

• Juliet Palmer
• Image: Juliet Palmer

The menorah is an ancient symbol of faith.

Rome's Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni said the unprecedented joint exhibition, more than three years in the making, showed the "evolution in the dialogue between Jews and Catholics".

The exhibition will run from 15 May to 23 July at the Vatican museums and the synagogue complex.

Rome once housed one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. Read more

248. Dialogue and friendship with the children of Israel are part of the life of Jesus' disciples. The friendship which has grown between us makes us bitterly and sincerely regret the terrible persecutions which they have endured, and continue to endure, especially those that have involved Christians.

249. God continues to work among the people of the Old Covenant and to bring forth treasures of wisdom which flow from their encounter with his word. For this reason, the Church also is enriched when she receives the values of Judaism. While it is true that certain Christian beliefs are unacceptable to Judaism, and that the Church cannot refrain from proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Messiah, there exists as well a rich complementarity which allows us to read the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures together and to help one another to mine the riches of God's word. We can also share many ethical convictions and a common concern for justice and the development of peoples.

On May 26, the Pope kissed the hands of half a dozen Holocaust survivors and heard their stories of persecution by the Nazis.

He left an inscription in the Yad Vashem guest book.

"With shame for what man, who was created in the image of God, was able to do.

"With shame for the fact that man made himself the owner of evil.

"With shame that man made himself into God and sacrificed his brothers.

"Never again, never again."

The inscription is signed "Francisco" and the date.

Pope Francis crammed 10 events and five private meetings into the last day of his trip.

He visited the Al-Aqsa mosque at the Dome of the Rock, the third holiest site in Islam, and met the Chief Mufti of Jerusalem.

A Vatican spokesman said this was the first time Pope Francis had entered a mosque.

Pope Francis pleaded for "all communities who look to Abraham" to come together in tolerance and respect.

He also visited the Western Wall, the remnant of the Second Temple, which is sacred to Jews, and placed a written prayer in the wall.

In a meeting with Chief Rabbis, the Pope called the progress made in Catholic-Jewish relations "a genuine gift of God".

Pope Francis showed just how much interfaith relations have improved by laying a wreath at the Mt Herzl memorial, the resting place of Zionism pioneer Theodor Herzl.

When Herzl met with Pope Pius X in 1904 to plead for the establishment of a Jewish state, Pius rejected the request.

"The Jews have not recognized our Lord; we therefore cannot recognize the Jewish people," Pius told Herzl.

At the request of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on May 26 Pope Francis also stopped at a West Jerusalem memorial for victims of terrorism.

The Pope was shown the section dedicated to the victims of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish association in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

The Pontiff also celebrated Mass in the Cenacle, believed to be the site of the Last Supper.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• The Tablet
• Al-Jazeera
• Haaretz.com
• Image: Ynet News

Pope John Paul II did so in March 2000, and Pope Benedict visited in 2009. I was privileged to participate in welcoming the Pope on both occasions.

However, this time, I will be out of the country at the time of the visit, so I will welcome Pope Francis on this blog.

Who would have imagined that the third pope in 15 years will be visiting Israel — the nation state of the Jewish people — and Palestine and Jordan? This would have been unthinkable only a few decades ago.

Why is he coming to the region at this time? What message will he bring with him for us?

The official answer is not directly related to Israel or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Pope's office in an official press release has described the visit to the Holy Land as "a pilgrimage of prayer" and has said that the "main purpose" of his three-day visit is "to commemorate the historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras, which took place on 5 January 1964 exactly 50 years ago."

Athenagoras' successor as Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), Bartholomew I, who is recognized as "first among equals" in the leadership of the 250 million-member worldwide Orthodox Church, attended the inauguration of Francis as Pope in St Peter's Square on March 19, 2013 — the first time in over a thousand years that a leader of the Orthodox Church attended this inauguration.

Now, he has invited Francis to join him in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first encounter between a Pope and an Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople since the Great Western Schism in 1054. Continue reading.

Rabbi Dr. Ron Kronish serves as the founder and director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel. Born and raised in the U.S., he has lived in Jerusalem for 34 years.

Source: HuffingtonPost

Image: Betham

Christian reawakening to the Jewishness of Jesus began in the late nineteenth century but received greater attention as Christians devoted increased attention to Jews and Judaism in light of the Shoah.

From the 1960s onwards, a desire for reconciliation with, and greater understanding of, Judaism became commonplace, epitomised by Vatican II and the publication of Nostra Aetate in 1965.

Nearly all Christian studies now take the Jewishness of Jesus seriously, but what is less well known is the work of Jewish scholars who similarly have re-awoken to the fact that Judaism nurtured Jesus the Jew.

In the latter part of the twentieth century, David Flusser and Géza Vermes, both of whom built on the pioneering work of a small number of Jewish scholars in the early twentieth century (notably Martin Buber, Joseph Klausner and Claude Montefiore), have been followed by three new Jewish scholars - Shmuley Boteach, Daniel Boyarin and Amy-Jill Levine.

While Flusser portrayed Jesus as a charismatic figure whose teaching demonstrated an extraordinary sense of mission, Vermes depicted Jesus as a Galilean Hasid and holy man.

For both, Jesus was a charismatic teacher, healer and prophet. Vermes in particular has had the greater impact, demonstrated by the title of his first book, Jesus the Jew, which in 1973 seemed revolutionary but now is taken for granted in New Testament scholarship. Continue reading.

Source: The Tablet

Image: Rockland411

The convergence of these two holidays won't happen again for another 77,798 years, according to some calculations.

Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, is celebrated for eight days beginning at sundown on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2013. On the Hebrew calendar, the dates are 25 Kislev to 2 Tevet in the year 5774.

An eight-day celebration, Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the second century B.C.E. during the Maccabean revolt against oppressive Greek rulers.

It is one of the most widely observed Jewish holidays and is celebrated by lighting a nine-branch candelabrum, commonly called a menorah.

(Technically, the candelabrum for Hanukkah is called a hanukkiah to distinguish itself from the seven-branch menorah used in the Temple and described in Exodus 25.)

The story of Hanukkah is one of revolution and miracles: Greek influence over the Jews in the Land of Israel had become an affront to Jewish culture and ritual.

Antiochus, the Greek ruler, forbade Jewish religious practice, so a small group of Jews, the Maccabees, revolted. These Jews eventually prevailed and, as a first order of business, restored the Holy Temple, which had been desecrated.

The menorah in the Temple needed to be re-lit because, according to tradition, it should burn continuously. The Temple liberators found one vial of olive oil, enough for one day of light.

Miraculously, the oil lasted for eight days. Continue reading.

Source: Huffington Post

Image: npr.org

Contrary to what many believe, the Spanish Inquisition did not target Protestants or people who had been Jewish or Muslim from birth. Rather, it was concerned with the issue of heresy and apostasy in Spain. According to the Catechism, "Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith." (CCC 2089) In the 1300s there were many Jews in Spain who had converted to Catholicism, called "conversos," who were believed to have committed apostasy by returning to the practice of Judaism. James Michener points this out in his book Iberia:

"So far as I was able to ascertain, no Jew was ever executed by the Inquisition. If a man under investigation could say simply, ‘Yes, I'm a Jew and have never been otherwise,' his gold and silver were confiscated and he was banished from Spain, but he was in no way subject to the Inquisition and certainly he was never burned. The Jews who did suffer, and in the thousands, were those who had at one time been baptized as Catholics, had been legal Catholics and had committed apostasy by reverting to Jewish practices. These were rooted out with great severity, but when they were burned, it was as Catholics, not as Jews."(1) Continue reading

Sources

• Vassallomalta
• Image: Firmus et Rusticus

Leonard Cohen's autumnal years have been afflicted, and his writing nuanced, by more than a simple awareness of his own mortality. The Canadian singer-songwriter spent most of the 1990s in a Zen monastery in California, during which time his manager (and former lover) Kelley Lynch siphoned off several million dollars' worth of earnings, mostly from the sale of his publishing company to Sony. Not being particularly astute in such matters, it took Cohen several years to work out what had happened, by which time he was facing a severely diminished bank account and a rather larger tax bill.

The resulting legal squabbles no doubt sapped Cohen's creative powers, and used up even more of his diminished funds. That Lynch was ordered to pay him back was little consolation — she hasn't done so, and is now in prison for harassing him. Yet Cohen was able to cast a ruefully theological spin on events and all the time he was forced to spend in other people's offices. As he put it to one Canadian journalist in 2009: ‘If God wants to bore you to death, I guess that's His business.' Such, we might think, is the wisdom of Cohen. His music has always awakened impulses in his devotees to see him as some sort of mentor for the melancholic. But this impulse took a new twist once Cohen's own fortunes looked bleak: what would, or could, he do in the face of this personal crisis?

The reality, of course, was that Cohen needed to find some cash. His output had never been prolific (he has released a dozen studio albums in a 45-year recording career) and, in any case, his critical acclaim has never been matched in sales figures. Where he had always been able to turn a respectable profit was through live shows, though he hadn't toured since the early 1990s. Through necessity rather than any particular inclination, Cohen went back on the road. Continue reading

Sources

• Tim Footman in Aeon Magazine
• Image: The Telegraph