Cardinal apologises for describing Jews as intellectually inferior

CARDINAL George Pell has moved to clarify demeaning remarks he made about Jews on TV, calling them intellectually lesser than the Egyptians, including Jesus Christ.

During the ABC's Q&A TV debate with atheist advocate Richard Dawkins on Monday night, he also suggested that ''no people in history were [as severely] punished as the Germans were'', apparently ignoring the Holocaust, for which the Germans were punished.

After the Executive Council of Australian Jewry conveyed its ''serious concern'', Cardinal Pell, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, released a statement saying he was sorry the points did not come out as he preferred...

...In a hole during the debate, Cardinal Pell kept digging, saying ''the poor, the little Jewish people, they were originally shepherds'' stuck between the great powers of their time such as the Egyptians and Babylonians, and that this reflected their intellectual development.

Asked if he included Jesus, who was Jewish (but born about 1800 years after the prophet Abraham, by which time there was a significant Jewish civilisation), the cardinal replied: ''Exactly.''...

...In his statement Cardinal Pell said that ''historically'' or ''culturally'' unequal might have been a better term than ''intellectually''.

He said his reference to the Germans was intended to illustrate ''the mysterious way great crimes'' are punished.

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/cardinal-apologises-for-describing-jews-as-intellectually-inferior-20120412-1wwng.html

NorthOfNorth wrote on Apr 13^th, 2012 at 10:38am:



Card Pell is an atheist ???

Do we REALLY need ANOTHER one of these threads? Why the heck dont you use one of the ones that are already there?

SOB

Anti semetic stereotypes are so confusing.

Jews are so stupid but they cheated me out of my money

Jews are so ugly but they are infiltrating all of society 

It is like that cat that guy had in a box but the cat is a neo nazi. Bald cat... sphynx?

The hypocrite does not even believe in the book he is peddling.

Adam and Eve? That's just mythology, says Pell

AUSTRALIA'S Cardinal George Pell has described the biblical story of Adam and Eve as a sophisticated myth used to explain evil and suffering rather than a scientific truth.

Cardinal Pell last night appeared on the ABC's Q&A program, where he was debating British evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins.

Cardinal Pell said humans "probably" evolved from Neanderthals but it was impossible to say exactly when there was a first human. "But we have to say if there are humans, there must have been a first one," he said.

According to Genesis, God created Adam and Eve as the first man and woman.

Asked by journalist Tony Jones if he believed in the existence of an actual Garden of Eden with an Adam and Eve, Cardinal Pell said it was not a matter of science but rather a beautiful mythological account.

"It's a very sophisticated mythology to try to explain the evil and the suffering in the world," he said.

"It's certainly not a scientific truth. And it's a religious story told for religious purposes."

Cardinal Pell argued that the "great atheist movements" of Hitler and Stalin were the personification of social Darwinism.

"It's the struggle for survival, the strong take what they can, and the weak give what they must and there's nothing to restrain them." he said. "And we've seen that in the two great atheist movements of the last century."...

...Towards the end of the debate, the head of the Catholic Church in Australia appeared to lament his struggle to promote Christ.

"My life would be much easier if I didn't have to go into bat for . . . Christian principles," he said.

Cardinal Pell then mused that he sometimes wondered if he should regret his life's work, before asserting: "No, no."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/adam-and-eve-thats-just-mythology-says-pell/story-e6frg6nf-1226322379822