Latest Musings (9/15/2023)

Blog and Pod Updates:

  • The five-part Blessed Hope Podcast series “The Future” has wrapped up. Look for follow-up episodes on the future of Israel, the antichrist, and the problems with using the optimism/pessimism paradigm when evaluating someone’s eschatology.

  • Speaking of the Blessed Hope Podcast, we just passed a huge milestone for downloads—25K! Thank you all so much for listening and telling your friends!

Currently Reading: G. K. Beale, Union with the Resurrected Christ: Eschatological New Creation, and New Testament Biblical Theology. This is an important book and I am going through it slowly and carefully—too much here to digest quickly.

Recently Finished Re-Reading:

This is a remarkable and troubling book. Edgardo Mortara was born to a Jewish family in Bologna, Italy, in August of 1851. It was common during this time for Jewish families to employ Gentile servants to perform household duties on the Jewish Sabbath, and who managed the household while the family engaged in business travel, etc. In this case, the Mortara family hired an eighteen year-old Catholic girl named Anna Morisi. She was responsible for the care of the infant Edgardo. At the time, Bologna was under the direct authority of the Papal States and had its own Dominican inquisitor.

Edgardo fell ill while under the care of Miss Morisi, who feared the boy’s situation was serious enough that he might die. As a pious Roman Catholic, Morisi worried that should the Jewish boy not survive his illness, he would be be cast into hell. So she administered an “emergency baptism.” Miss Morisi reasoned this would allow the child to enter purgatory and not face eternal punishment. Jewish families during this period often worried that Roman Catholic servants would secretly administer baptism to Jewish children (the families often had household servants sign contracts stating that they would do no such thing), and canon law required that household servants gain permission to baptize from the parents—except in those cases where death appeared imminent.

Some time later, when Roman authorities heard rumors that a Jewish child had received Christian baptism, they began a formal investigation (Kertzer recounts the horrific details). When Miss Morisi was asked about what she had done, she admitted that she had performed a baptism of Edgardo in the name of the triune God. She never told the parents and Edgardo subsequently recovered from the illness. The Mortara’s were soon to be cast into a living hell beyond all human expectation.

In light of the situation and action taken by Miss Morisi, the investigators concluded that the child had indeed received a proper (and legal) Christian baptism, and subsequently ruled that the Inquisition and canon law required that the boy receive a proper Christian education. That meant Edgardo’s removal from the Mortara home. To the Mortara family’s horror, military police showed up at their door with papal representatives, forcibly entered their apartment and seized the now six-year old Edgardo, permanently removing him from his family. The small Jewish community in Bologna protested vociferously, but to no avail. But the protests spread widely, and Jewish leaders throughout Italy and Europe were understandably outraged. World opinion turned decidedly against Rome’s action, and tremendous diplomatic pressure followed. So much so that it led to the eventual collapse of the Papal States and the emergence of a unified Italy. Rome’s actions are still condemned down to the present day and Jewish anger resurfaced during the beatification of Pius IX in 2000.

I’ll leave it to David Kertzer to unpack the details, but as the story unfolded over the next several decades, Edgardo Mortara actually grew up in the papal household under the personal care of Pope Pius IX, and was ordained to the Roman priesthood at age 21. Edgardo died in 1940, at the age of 88. An Italian film about the Mortara case was released this year (2023). It will likely make its way to Netflix.

The book is hard to read (the story is so outrageous), but is well written and documented. You can find it here: Kertzer: The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara

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Previous Musings: End of Summer Musings (9-2-2023)

Video: Her agent calls. “Hey, good news. I’ve got a commercial part for you, but . . .” The actress responds, “that’s great, but why the hesitation?” The agent sheepishly replies, “you have to sing about diarrhea . . . with a giddy smile.”

MusingsKim RiddlebargerEdgardo Motara, More insight from Godfrey, Snakes monkeys racoonsComment