Journal Entry

I didn't completely understand the hourglass assignment, it was a tiny bit confusing but I am going to make my attempt anyway. This week have visited both the Jewish Synogogue as well as read about the Catholic religion. Both of these have some contradictions in their foundations but beyond religious politics the one contradiction that stands out to me, is the difference in their public perception over the years. How many instances in history can we account for Jewish prosecution? To many. And yet here in the Rome we are faced with a place were Catholicism was brought to be the religion of the state, and no one really thought twice about it. It was slowly accepted without to many issues involved. In this same city we see the Jewish religion pigeonholed into a 5 block radius and forced into work they didn't deserve and lives that they couldn't change. How is this fair? Granted, we can all look back now and admit that but why the Jews? And why not Catholics? Why is it that Catholicism has never had to be explained or had to struggle to gain approval, it was merely chosen and accepted, but why not for the Jews?

As a Christian myself, I know the struggles that each religion has gone through in order to get their freedom from prosecution. And i would never claim that the Catholic religion has not gone through its far share of issues. But it is hard to so often see and be faced with the pains of the Jewish people and that it has been the result of not only a Facist government but of a government that claimed to be Catholic. I do not blame catholics and I do not blame people that practice it, but I do blame the officials of the time who claimed to be religious and simply contradicted those statements with brutal actions.