Constantine's Sword Page #6

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passport from Pious the 9th...

in March 1870...

at the very end of the Pope's authority

over the Jews.

In November of that year the citizens

of Rome voted to join a unified Italy...

and the walls of the ghetto

were torn down.

The Jews were liberated

after more than 300 years.

The Pope had to flee from his palace

in the centre of the city...

and retreat to the Vatican.

The Italian army entered Italy

ended the power of the church...

and Rome became part of a unified Italy...

and that's when the ghetto

was closed, in 1870.

But the Jews have continued

to live here...

because it is a place to which

they feel they belong.

The Roman Jews thought they were free...

and they were for sixty years.

Free to go anywhere and to practice

their religion without pressure to convert.

The zeal to convert others to Christianity

may start with good intention.

This mission passed from the Catholic Church

to the Protestants.

Today it is alive and well in Colorado.

So this is our family getting together

to say we are about two things.

Knowing God and making God

known in our generation.

And so we would love to engraft you

as part of the family tonight...

and I think by the end of tonight

you may just want to.

But everybody,

there is a purpose behind it.

Just take a second and listen to it.

First Corinthians,

chapter 4, verse 20.

For the kingdom of God...

is not a matter of talk,

but of power.

We got a scenario going on

in our generation right here...

where they are saying

that only 4 per cent of us...

are going to be Evangelical

Bible believing people.

but there are those of us

that will say...

and are saying here tonight

at New Life Church,

"Not on my watch."

So we can now go out...

and make a difference

in Colorado Springs...

in every college,

at the academy and beyond.

It's kind of the moment where we will say

"Here am I God, send me."

Come on all over this room, let's pray.

Our father in the name

of the Lord Jesus Christ

Look down on this gathering,

this body of believers in you

Tonight we give you everything

and we pray in the name of Jesus

that you would send us out God

ship us out into our generation

to carry this powerful Gospel story

of your promises that never let go,

that never relent

that never quit, that never stop

that never say die, that never surrender

Taking that good news into our generation

Talk is cheap, we are ready for action

So here we are God

Send us in Jesus name

We are ready Amen.

A shuttle bus takes

cadets back and forth

between the academy and

the New Life Church

They will come to my room

and just try to talk me into becoming saved...

to resist this kind of pressure and intense

this kind of weight on me...

Can this not be an issue,

can this please not be an issue...

can this just be something we don't discuss

and just go about our lives?

The academy is difficult enough,

I don't need this.

They tell you you should go out

and get people to come to Christ.

That that is a part of your job as a Christian

if you are not doing that you know

you are not being a good Christian.

I don't know if they think...

about that perspective of those people

that they are talking about

that they are going to burn in Hell.

That's me.

I don't think that

by and large people feel like they are being

violated at the air force academy.

I do think that it is part of freedom to...

have to hear other

people's point of view...

when you don't actually want to hear it.

I drink Coke.

I have to listen to Pepsi commercials.

I drive a Chevrolet.

I have to listen to Ford commercials.

It is all part of living

in a pluralistic society.

If cadets come to your church

and they are convinced fine.

That is a totally different exercise

than infiltrating...

and that is what was going on down there.

It was the infiltration.

Senator Gary Hart was one of the first...

to see a danger of state sponsored

religion at the academy.

Many fundamentalist right-wing

religious organizations...

are headquartered in Colorado Springs.

There was an attempt

by those organizations...

to indoctrinate air force cadets

and faculty members.

The drum beats were getting louder...

when conservative Christian evangelical

ideology becomes the norm...

for the Air Force.

Then anything that appears other...

needs to be at least moved to the side...

if not banished and denigrated

and humiliated.

And what is most visibly other...

to conservative Christian evangelicals

is Jewishness.

I always say the same thing.

If you want an absolute guarantee

of eternal life,

Jesus is that guarantee.

If you want to try to work it out

on your own...

you got that freedom.

But if you want a guarantee,

This is the way to do it, so...

So that's what I told Barbara Walter,

Tom Brokaw and now you.

I wasn't the only one to make an nostalgic

visit back to Germany this summer.

The newly elected Pope,

Benedict the 16th,

came home to say mass

in a field for a million children.

World Youth Day,

the catholic Woodstock.

But he made another historic visit

while he was here in the Rhineland.

Pope Benedict here in Cologne...

reminded people of the Third Reich...

and quite properly in speaking

to a Jewish group...

he begins by acknowledging

the tragedy of the Shoah, the Holocaust

There was a way in which his acknowledgment

of the Shoah was incomplete.

He said Nazi hatred of Jews was...

"born of Neopaganism"...

as if that's the only source of it

Well, it was born

of Nazi Neopaganism...

but that hatred had two parents

And the other one...

the long tradition of Christian

anti-Judaism, he did not mention.

The story which most shockingly

reveals the church's involvement..

took place right here

in the Rhineland.

Within two weeks of Adolf Hitler coming

fully to power in March 1933...

Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli,

the Vatican foreign minister,

sent him warm greetings.

Treaty negotiations began

between Pacelli...

and Hitler's vice chancellor,

Franz von Papen.

In July they signed the so called

Reichskonkordat...

and the Vatican became

the first foreign power...

to enter into a bilateral treaty

with Hitler.

It included a secret provision...

in which the Church defend the Jews

who had converted to Catholicism.

But indicated

that it would have nothing to say...

about Nazi assaults

against other Jews.

Only after a few days after signing

the treaty for Hitler,

Franz von Papen represented the Fuhrer

at the unveiling of the robe in Trier.

The robe that would not be shown

again until 25 years later when I saw it.

The same robe that had come into the Gospels

as proof that the Messiah had come.

That robe...

had become the centre of the celebration

of the church's treaty with Hitler.

Over the next three weeks...

more than two million pilgrims

poured into Trier to see the robes.

Now the symbol of this alliance

between church and state.

Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli went on

to become Pope Pious the 12th.

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