Bishop Holds Anti-semitism is Challenge to Catholic Church; “christian Front” Hit

Anti-Semitism is a “challenge” to the Catholic Church, declares Bishop Robert E. Lucey of Amarillo, Tex. in the September issue of The Voice, publication of the Committee of Catholics for Human Rights. The so-called Christian Front is also condemned as “un-Christian and un-Democratic” in an article reprinted from the current number of Christian Social Action” published by Catholic laymen in Detroit.

Bishop Lucey asserted that anti-Semitism was a challenge to the Church because it opposed her championship of the human race.

“The natural law,” he wrote, “demands that all human rights be accorded to all human beings. As the interpreter of the natural law the Church insists that human rights are God-given and she demands that the rights of the Jew, as a human being and our brother in God, shall not be made a mockery. Anti-Semitism either denies the right of the Church so to interpret the natural law or flouts her ancient teaching in that regard.

“To scorn a man for his race or blood is not only a crime against God and religion but it violates one of the finest traditions of the American people. In the very beginning we wrote into the Declaration of Independence our firm conviction that all men are created equal and all have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The man who would deny or minimize one such right to any citizen must first repudiate a fundamental principle of democratic government. The lowest form of human life in America is the man who slanders his brother on the basis of heredity.”