Culture Wars By Â
Born in Bene Vagienna on 27 March 1823, and older brother of Cardinal Luigi, Fr. Giuseppe Oreglia di Santo Stefano was among the founders of the well-known and prestigious magazine of the Italian Jesuits, La CivilitĂ Cattolica, founded in Naples in 1850. A literary genius and one of the most brilliant Jesuit polemicists of the 19th century, he wrote for forty years in the well-known magazine, of which he was also editor from 1865-1868, devoting himself to contemporary news, books and polemics with liberal and anti-clerical magazines. Remaining faithful to the fourth vow of the Society of Jesus, namely fidelity and direct service to the Pope, he identified Freemasonry as the true enemy of the Church. Starting from these convictions, which continued to mature after his transfer to Rome in 1871, he began a series of studies on the Freemasons, their rituals and statutes and their relation to Judaism and Jewish Kabbalah. In his later years, at the insistence of the doctors, he left Rome and moved to Chieri in search of a better air for his health. On the evening of October 29, 1895, Fr. Giuseppe quietly passed away in the Torinese city, where, on August 10, 1842, as a nineteen-year-old boy, abandoning the world to follow Christ, he had been welcomed as a novice in the Society of Jesus.1
Part I
How since the beginning the Christians have not persecuted the Jews, but rather the Jews have always persecuted the Christians.
Of the Pro Iudaeis of the Jew Treves, disguised as a false Christian under the guise of Corrado Guidetti, Doctor in letters, we believe to have in the ten articles published so far demonstrated sufficiently the notable vanity. And although many other points of his booklet could still provide us with abundant material for a literary duel in the hall of Reason in Padua where he set us an appointment without maintaining it (and who has since heard from or seen him?); however in order not to continue after a fugitive, not preoccupying ourselves more with him but moving on, we will come now to keep the promise made to our readers in article X published on page 173 in Vol. 1 of this series. The promise is to show that Christians never persecuted Jews as the Jews and liberal judaizers and freemasons continually lie, but that instead the Jews always persecuted the Christians according to the truth of history. And that if here or there we cross paths with Treves-Guidetti, we will not fail to greet him in passing without entering further with those who do not show up for the long and more detailed discussions. So let us begin again with a new treatise on the proposed subject, which is not entirely useless, as we believe.
Sinceâeven not wanting to take into account those many Jews and non-Jews, who possessed by Satan, by demons or by spirits, that is, moved by a satanic hatred of the Christian name, and for this always ready not only to swallow but also to cook up every day calumnies and paradoxes as long as they shame and spite Christianity: and therefore, like every other error and lie, they easily admit this one specifically concerning the Christian persecution of the Jewsâeven, we mean to say, without wanting to take these into account, it is nevertheless sufficiently clear that right now there are even among the not unlearned and bad Christians those who, frequently and too easily allowing themselves to eat the food made by their enemies, willingly lend them their faith, as in the rest, also in this most false point: that is, that it was not the Jews that always persecuted Christianity above all else, and even now continue to fiercely do so, but that instead the Christians always have and continue even now to persecute the Jews wherever and whenever they can. So much so that, thanks no less to Jewish perfidy than to our own gullibility, it now passes as definitive and incontrovertible that the Jewish people is a martyr people and we Christians are therefore its tyrants and its executioners. For this, the Jew, among us, rightly laughs at us. Take for example the Vessillo israelitico [Israelite Banner] of Casale, which on page 47 of its February issue of the year 1886 clearly reports triumphantly that Pietro Sbarbaro, in his periodical Le Forche Caudine [The Caudine Forks], on 13 January 1885, wrote, âI cannot, without trembling, fix my attention on the long and infamous epic of the misfortunes and the secular martyrdom of the glorious Jewish race.â How the Ghettos must laugh seeing one who boasts of being a Christian proclaim a glorious martyr the Jewish race and cruelly attack his own Christian race! And if only many other Christians more knowledgeable than Sbarbaro, which doesnât take much, did not daily say even worseâby which the Jews are prodigiously emboldened and hold us in profound contempt. We read, in fact, to cite just one example, on page 137 of the Les DĂ©icides [The Deicides] of the Jew Cohen published in Paris in 1861 that:
The irresistible truth torn from the conscience of the Reformer Galileo at the last moment of his life was: Father forgive them because they know not what they do…
