Some damage limitation has been operating since the German Bishops told us how they really felt about Israel. Is it cynical to suspect that this is only because there were so many protests about them likening Israelis to Nazis?

More Catholic and Anglican failure to see the obvious is demonstrated in Dr Irene Lancaster’s The Blind Leading the Blind

Interesting that the Catholic Tablet of March 10th devotes a long article to a Catholic Bishop who supports Venezuelan 'acclaimed populist leader, Hugo Chavez'. The author of this article states that Chavez 'has ... been the object of charater assassination - not least in Britain - which suggests, mendaciously, that he is an anti-Semitic dicator ....'

I think people can judge for themselves.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1157913656782

But then, there was another populist leader once and the Catholic Church turned a blind eye to that one as well, when it wasn't actually endorsing him.

So no wonder it can report the recent statement made by Catholic German Bishops here in the 'Holy Land', in which the Warsaw Ghetto (as seen in Yad Vashem) is compared to the 'Ramallah ghetto', not as a Catholic prejudice but simply as 'Germans re-open old wounds'

Irene points out something forgotten by those who are keen to blame Israel for all the problems of the Palestinians.

As my grandmother, who I never knew, died in the Warsaw Ghetto at the hands of German and Polish Catholics, I take great exception to the present generation of German Catholics comparing Ramallah, which is under the jurisdiction of Hamas, and before that of Arafat and his cronies, to the unspeakable cesspit in which my grandmother and millions like her, perished for the crime of being Jewish.

The writer of the Tablet article (Hugh O’Shaunessy) also dismissed Chavez reference to Bush as “the Devil” as a mere ‘diplomatic blunder’. If Bush called Chavez the Devil, would he laugh that off as a little diplomatic blunder, also? I could make a diplomatic blunder or two about the writer, but enough of that. Mention of the Devil has just reminded me of the St John Chrysostom theory of road resurfacing in hell. Maybe it's paved with a few skulls of journalists as well as bishops.