'CATEGORY DISLIKES'

Bishop Mathew Condemns Evil of Anti-Semitism
Some Catholic defences against the evil of anti-Semitism were urged by Bishop David Mathew in the course of a speech made at the annual genelal meting of the Council of Christians and Jews.
The Bishop saw anti-Semitism as a type of " category dislikes " which he explained as follows: " Dislike by category is always evil. always unjustified, whether the category is the Jewish people, the negroes in the United States, or the Roman Catholics or any other body. I have an example fairly close home in the feeling of widespread indignation rooted in the population of Northern Ireland with regard to Roman Catholics. The first thing to be said about such dislike by category is that though it is evil in itself it attacks wide sections of the population. It becomes a mass instinct added to local patriotsm. It needs a degree of enlightened 'attachment to tolerance to stand up against He pointed out that Christian ministers are in a particularly good position to fight this sort of category dislike, because they came across whole sections of the population in a way that did not often obtain in the case of the liberal minded laity, who " may never pass beyond the stage army of the good."
DEEP SPIRIT OF' CHARITY
" Dislike." he. said, " is manifest by anybody who refers to a category of people, The Communists do so and so,' 'The Jews do so and so,' The Romanists do so and so: You will know at once that the man who says that is anti-Communist, anti-Jewish, or anti-Raman Catholic, as the ease may be. Here comes our particular job. What we need is the deep spirit of charity, and one of the ways in which we can show charity is in helping our neighbour in the way in which our neighbour cannot help himself."
After referring again to the position in Northern Ireland, Bishop Mathew stated that the great line of attack was intolerance, was Sinful, that any form of intolerance issuing in act was contrary, to the mind and teaching of Christ and definitely a sin. Beware, said the Bishop, of the man who eacepta the good Jews he has known. " He must have a good Jew to justify himself before his own conscience?'
VENERATION FOR JEWISH TRADITION Concluding, Bishop Mathew put forward the emotional charging that Catholics would need in order to carry them forward with energy in dealing with the evil of anti-Semitism.
" For myself it is this deep veneration—a veneration amounting to love —for the whole tradition of the Jewish faith, a matrix in which, speaking as a Christian, the life of Bethlehem and Nazareth was formed. With that alms goes the sympathy that I have for the Rabbinate. 1 as a Roman Catholic— as a guardian of tradition in that special sense—have a great feeling for those who have the holy duty of guarding through centuries of persecution, such as we Christians have never experienced, that precious and invaluable heritage."