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In 1857 officials raided a home in the Jewish ghetto in Bologna, Italy and forcefully removed a 6-year old child based on the testimony of a servant that he had been baptized as an infant and was, therefore, Christian. At the time Bologna was under the direct rule of the Pope (back in the day the Pope ruled over a chunk of Italy as a sovereign). While Catholic canon law stipulated severe penalties for baptizing a Jewish child without the consent of their parents, once a baptism did take place it was considered valid, and sometimes that child was removed to be raised in a Christian home or religious house. Jewish children being abducted because of surreptitious baptisms had happened before, but this particular case happened after a tipping point in small-l liberal sentiment in Europe, and became exhibit A for the perception that the Church was increasingly out of touch. A diplomatic storm arose as emperors, prime ministers, and the newly liberated European Jewish community all put immense pressure on the Vatican to release the child back to his parents. However, Pope Pius IX wouldn\u2019t budge because of his sincere religious interpretation, and there\u2019s some evidence that the capture of this Jewish boy was one of several straws that broke the camel\u2019s back, eventually leading to the invasion of the Papal States and the destruction of the Pope\u2019s temporal power in Italy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On a personal level, Edgardo was adopted by the Pope, who showed a warm fondness for the boy, and by the time the Pope\u2019s power collapsed and the Jewish community was in a position to get Edgardo back he was of age and had already made his decision to pursue a religious life as a devout priest. (Sidebar: Stephen Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein were both going to do movie versions of this book with A-list actors all lined up, but Spielberg pulled the plug after he couldn\u2019t find a child that fit the part, and well, we all know what happened to Weinstein).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n First, a disclaimer, then Latter-day Saint insights from the Catholic side. This post is not an anti-Catholic screed. If we recognize Brigham Young\u2019s religious authority and providential virtues while also recognizing that he was subject to the racist failings of his day, we should extend the same courtesy to our Catholic friends with a Pope who, while in many ways progressive for his day, had attitudes that towards Jews that don\u2019t look great in the year 2022. More generally speaking, compared to the contemporaneous alternatives the Vatican has been on the right side historically much, much more than they get credit for. (For a more in-depth discussion on stereotype versus reality, see Rodney Stark\u2019s book <\/span>Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History<\/em>).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Pope Pius IX was the longest serving Pope ever, with a tenure that was almost coterminous with Brigham Young\u2019s as President of the Church. My understanding is that the social science literature suggests that after a certain age our opinions stop changing and calcify; therefore, the \u201cprogress happens one funeral at a time\u201d idea has some bearing in empirical reality<\/a>, and in institutions that are presided over by older people like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it\u2019s not unlikely that the framework of the leader was developed nearly a half century before most of the other members developed theirs.\u00a0Having a young leader that serves for a long time comes with risks as well as benefits. One of the benefits is that they hold the line against the winds of change, and one of the risks is that they hold the line against the winds of change.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s sort of an unspoken article of faith among the left that the the winds of change are almost always good, and on the right that they aren\u2019t, but it\u2019s not that hard to find examples of both. Spiritualism was all the rage back in the day of the Godbeites, and some people tried to co-opt the Church and its pulpits (including the creator of Sherlock Holmes) to push this new spiritual fad; people who were with the times were into mediums and seances. Similarly, eugenics were very hip with very modern thinking celebrity crowd, and during the beginning of the sexual revolution getting rid of age of consent laws was considered a very forward thinking, liberal position (and was much more mainstream than people realize, it\u2019s only in the past half century that that Overton window on the left has constricted to exclude that position.) While popular mythology holds that the class of right thinking, reasonable people have always had the same social opinions, the fact is that the history of our social moral development is replete with false starts and broken branches, and it\u2019s harder to know where we’ll end up than some people think.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This book gives a front row seat to the tumultuousness of the Catholic Church figuring out which lines had to be held even if it conflicted with small-l liberal society and new ideas like the separation of Church and state. There is a scene in the book when Pope Pius IX writes to Father Mortara and explains how much Mortara\u2019s Christianity has cost him, but that he cares for him and would do it again, and for a moment it\u2019s kind of touching before you remember that he\u2019s talking about kidnapping a child from his parents. The leader who refuses to budge is either, as President Hinckley said, \u201ca man of judgment who isn\u2019t blown about by every wind of doctrine,\u201d or he\u2019s just all the more recalcitrant, depending on what they are not budging on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n From the Jewish side, this book helped me to feel, in painful detail, why there is incredible sensitivity around Jewish-to-Christian conversion. Of course I knew the reasons on a fact-based level: pogroms, periodic confiscation of assets, massacres, ridicule and intense pressure to convert, blood libel, etc., but it\u2019s one thing to know the historical facts, it\u2019s another to read the actual letters and accounts. Lather, rinse, and repeat this process for a hundred generations and it\u2019s amazing the Jewish people still exist and don\u2019t all hate Christians.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Even if I left the Church I\u2019d still feel there was something divinely providential about the Jewish people. (However, as a gentile who I believe\u00a0follows the seven laws of Noah<\/a>, my understanding is that I can have the best of both worlds and still get into Jewish heaven while eating BLTs and going mountain biking on Saturdays.) The oldest archaeological documentation we have of Israel is an ancient Egyptian inscription that \u201cIsrael is laid waste and his seed is not.\u201d And for 3,000 years since people have been trying to bring that to pass. The irony, of course is that ancient Egypt has been gone for around ~2,000 years, whereas the seed of Israel is still with us, fulfilling Jeremiah\u2019s prophecy that \u201cthough I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s clear in Latter-day Saint scripture that the descendants of Judah have an important part to play in the Latter-days as Jews<\/em>. D&C 133 commands that those \u201cwho are among the Gentiles flee unto Zion. And let them who be of Judah flee unto Jerusalem.\u201d About a decade later Joseph Smith sent Orson Hyde to Palestine to dedicate it for the gathering of the Jews, 2 Nephi 29 makes it clear that the Jews still have a special status before God as His people (and that the gentiles will be punished for their anti-semitism), and D&C 68 makes it clear that God still recognizes the validity of Jewish priesthood lineages for offices in the Aaronic priesthood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, the Book of Mormon is meant for the converting of \u201cthe Jew and the Gentile,\u201d so if missionaries tract into a Jewish home it\u2019s not like they\u2019re going to skip it, but at the same time Jews aren\u2019t especial targets for conversion. Furthermore, D&C 45 makes it clear the big grand conversion will happen after the miraculous second coming, not as a result of this-worldly proselytizing efforts. On one hand I do unapologetically believe that the only path to exaltation is through Jesus Christ, on the other hand while reading the book I was cheering the Jews not converting to Christianity (and here I am talking about Christianity in general\u2014there\u2019s a reason the Nazis reprinted Martin Luther) like I would cheer the fact that no Jehovah\u2019s Witness in the concentration camps renounced their faith and simply walked out as they could have done. In a respectful marketplace of ideas the theological disagreements would be more salient, but once the Nazi hammer starts falling on them, then by gosh I have a testimony that Joseph Rutherford is a prophet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, because of our theology of afterlife conversion we have the luxury of being more flexible about religious diversity. As I\u2019ve written about<\/a>\u00a0(and have been interviewed about<\/a>) elsewhere, if you believe that the unbaptized are going to hell for all eternity then that logically changes your moral calculus, including on issues of religious freedom (and is one reason why the people who came up with idea of eternal physical torture will, ahem, have hell to pay in the hereafter for every devastated mother whose children wandered from the faith).<\/span><\/p>\n