Foretastes of the Future

Phil Lawler mentions a line from the Passion according to Luke that nearly caused me to lose my place reading the "Voice" part during Mass on Sunday:

Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, "Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed."

That seems an appropriate entry into the discussion of the day.

ADDENDUM:
On a tangential note, Rev. Donald Sensing quotes from a Pew Research study that purports to find an increase in anti-Semitism over the past seven years, somehow related to The Passion of the Christ:

A growing minority of Americans believe that Jews were responsible for Christ's death. Roughly a quarter of the public (26%) now expresses that view. This represents a modest but statistically significant increase in the number holding this opinion when compared with a 1997 survey by ABC News which found 19% feeling this way. But a solid majority of Americans both then and now (60%) continue to say that Jews were not responsible for the death of Christ.

Sensing wonders if this is "a cloud around this silver lining." Here's my comment:

Hmm. A 7% increase in "yes" responses over seven years, and a film released two months ago is to blame?

Frankly, that rise in numbers could be merely the result of people's knowing more about the entire debate, no matter which way they fall. (Note that "don't know" responses have fallen 5% over the same period.)

My phone rings and a surveyor asks me, "Were the Jews responsible for Christ's death?" Well, first of all, the "were" makes it possible to respond as if to "were the specific Jews responsible." As a more theological matter, I might find myself unwilling to say "no, the Jews were not responsible," believing as I do that we all were and are.

So, on most days of the week, I'd likely be included in that 26%. My supposedly implied anti-Semitism will surely come as a surprise to Grandpa Katz.

Commenter Tom also wonders if the relentless slant of the media and the elite against Israel and, more generally, Jews mightn't have something to do with any actual anti-Semitism that the study uncovered.