Australian Catholics go wild

First Mel Gibson (or, first, Mel Gibson, again.):

Via The Wrap, quoting from a letter to Gibson from his erstwhile The Maccabees screenwriter, Joe Eszterhas:

"You continually called Jews ‘Hebes’ and ‘oven-dodgers’ and ‘Jewboys.’ It seemed that most times when we discussed someone, you asked ‘He’s a Hebe, isn’t he?’ You said most ‘gatekeepers’ of American companies were ‘Hebes’ who ‘controlled their bosses.’" 

The slurs continued, through their work:

“You said the Holocaust was ‘mostly a lot of horseshit.’ You said the Torah made reference to the sacrifice of Christian babies and infants. When I told you that you were confusing the Torah with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, … you insisted ‘it’s in the Torah — it’s in there!’ (It isn’t)."

And he said Gibson told him that his intention in making “The Maccabees” was “to convert the Jews to Christianity.”

Then, the archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Pell, in a debate with atheist Richard Dawkins.

From the London Daily Telegraph:

I’ve got a great admiration for the Jews but we don’t need to exaggerate their contribution in their early days," he said on ABC television. "They weren’t intellectually the equal of [the Egyptians or Persians] – intellectually, morally … The poor – the little Jewish people, they were originally shepherds. They were stuck. They’re still stuck between these great powers."

Later, Cardinal Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, seemed to suggest the Germans had suffered more than the Jews during the Holocaust.

Asked why god permitted the Holocaust to occur, he said: "He helped probably through secondary causes for the Jews to escape and continue. It is interesting through these secondary causes probably no people in history have been punished the way the Germans were. It is a terrible mystery." When the debate host suggested that the Jews had suffered more than the Germans, Cardinal Pell said: "Yes, that might be right. Certainly the suffering in both, I mean the Jews, there was no reason why they should suffer."

Oddly, Australian media carries little of this, although the Australian Jewish News is on it, and has a "clarification" by the cardinal:

“My commitment to friendship with the Jewish community, and my esteem for the Jewish faith is a matter of public record, and the last thing I would want to do is give offence to either,” he said.

“This was certainly not my intention, and I am sorry that these points which I tried to make on Q&A on Monday did not come out as I would have preferred in the course of the discussion.”

These things come in threes …