By Robert Sungenis
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Ever since the end of WWII and the beginning of the ecumenical movement among religions in the 1960s and onward, there has been an ongoing attempt to dilute the soteriological distinctives of Catholicism and to redefine and elevate the beliefs of other religions to the point that they share the same spiritual prerogatives as Catholicism. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the redefinition and promotion of Judaism from an obsolete religion into one in which modern Jewry is said to have its own irrevocable covenant with God who will save all Jews; that the Jews do not need to hear the Christian gospel, join the Catholic Church, nor accept Jesus Christ; and finally that the Jews can expect to see their own version of the coming Messiah apart from the Christian version. So pervasive has this novel belief become that anyone in academic circles who refuses to accept it is often labeled as bigoted or anti-semitic. Here is yet another attempt to rewrite the rules, this time by Robert P. George, a professor at Princeton University, who holds the degrees of MTS and JD from Harvard University and the degrees of DPhil, BCL, DCL, and DLitt from Oxford University, as well as twenty-one honorary degrees. Professor George published “Catholic Teaching on Jews and Judaism” in Public Discourse, “The Journal of the Witherspoon Institute,” on December 6, 2022.
The Covenant
R. George: “that God’s original Covenant with his chosen people is unbroken and unbreakable,”
R. Sungenis: If Mr. George has in view a covenant, still existing today, that is exclusively with the Jews, there is no such official teaching from the Catholic Church. Again, Mr. George gives no citation to his proposal, and he does not define what “covenant” he has in view, even though there are six different covenants in the Old Testament.
The only covenant that God made in the Old Testament that still survives today is the Abrahamic covenant, but that is only because it has become the New Covenant in Christ. But the Abrahamic covenant was not made exclusively for the Jews. From the beginning, it was made for Jews and Gentiles (Rm 2:28-29; 4:9-22; Gal 3:28-29). As Nostra aetate puts it: “As the sacred synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock.”
Even more illustrative of the point is that the original covenant with Abraham (cf. Gen 12:3; 15:6) was made when he was a Gentile at 75 years old—a major point that St. Paul makes against the Jews who claim Abraham as their sole father (cf. Rom 4:9-12; Gal 3:6-8). The Jews were added 25 years later when Abraham himself became a Jew by circumcision (Genesis 17), which covenant of circumcision later became the central part of the Mosaic covenant about 600 years later, a covenant that was then made exclusively for the Jews.
What is Irrevocable?
Many academics today point to St. Paul’s statement in Rom 11:29 (“For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable”) as proof that God has an irrevocable covenant exclusively with the Jews. But St. Paul does not say the Jews have an irrevocable covenant with God. Paul says, rather, “For the gifts and call of God are irrevocable.”
What are “the gifts and call” of God? The gospel of Jesus Christ that is given to both Jew and Gentile. As Nostra aetate says: “She professes that all who believe in Christ, Abraham’s sons according to faith, are included in the same Patriarch’s call.” This is because God never revoked the gifts and call of the Gospel. How could he? The whole reason Jesus came is to seek and to save that which was lost, starting with the Jews (Mt 10:6-7: “Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand’”). Thus Nostra aetate says again: “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues,” This is the more correct way of translating Rom 11:29.1
Has God Rejected His People?
Since God did not revoke his gifts and call, why would the status of the Jews become a question as St. Paul says in Rom 11:1: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people?” The answer is because God did, indeed, judge the Jews, at large, for rejecting Jesus Christ (cf. Mt 23:37-38; Lk 21:20-24; Rom 9:29-33; 10:19-21).
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not? Behold, your house shall be left to you, desolate (Mt 23:37-38).
As Nostra aetate admits: “Holy Scripture testifies, Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation, nor did the Jews in large number, accept the Gospel; indeed not a few opposed its spreading.” So the natural question arising from that judgment is whether the Jews can still be saved. The answer comes in Rom in which St. Paul, a Jew, uses himself as an example that God is still saving Jews:
What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who followed not after justice, have attained to justice, even the justice that is of faith. But Israel, by following after the law of justice, is not come unto the law of justice. Why so? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were of works. For they stumbled at the stumblingstone. As it is written: Behold I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and a rock of scandal; and whosoever believeth in him shall not be confounded (Rom 9:30-33).
Thus there are two truths to learn here. First, we learn from the Gospels and Epistles that the Jewish nation, at large, was judged and rejected. Second, we learn that Jewish individuals, like Paul, can still be saved, and that is why St. Paul concludes in Rom 11:5: “So also at the present time there is a remnant [of Jews], chosen by grace.”
Why does it appear, then, that Jewish conversions to the Catholic faith are minimal, at best? Because according to St. Paul, opposition to the Gospel has been a perennial problem for the Jews at large. To demonstrate this truth, St. Paul gives the example in Rom 11:2-11 of the Jews in Elijah’s day (circa 800 BC) who, in a nation of millions, had only 7,000 who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Thus in that day, only a “remnant” of Jews were saved; and this is why Paul says the same is true in his day, circa 60 AD: “So also at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.”
For this reason, St. Paul’s object everywhere was “to annul this law,” taught St. John Chrysostom, “And with much reason; for it was through a fear and a horror of this that the Jews obstinately opposed grace” (Homily on Romans, 6:12). St. Chrysostom explained that those who live by the Law actually annul the promise God made to Abraham:
“It was promised Abraham that by his seed the heathen should be blessed; and his seed according to the flesh is Christ; four hundred and thirty years after came the Law; now, if the Law bestows the blessings even life and righteousness, that promise [to Abraham] is annulled. And so while no one annuls a man’s covenant, the covenant of God after four hundred and thirty years is annulled; for if not that covenant but another instead of it bestows what is promised, then is it set aside, which is most unreasonable.” (Homily on Galatians, Chapter 3).
Sadly, it appears the same proportion of saved Jews is true after Paul’s day. Still, God holds the Gospel out to the Jews because “God’s gifts and call are irrevocable” (Rom 11:29) so that, as St. Paul says in Rom 11:23: “if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.” But it cannot be done by telling the Jews today that they have an exclusive covenant with God and need not convert to Christianity, which is the new gospel being preached today by many Catholic clerics. Irenaeus taught:
These things, therefore, which were given for bondage, and for a sign to them, He cancelled by the new covenant of liberty. But He has increased and widened those laws which are natural, and noble, and common to all, granting to men largely and without grudging, by means of adoption, to know God the Father, and to love Him with the whole heart (Against Heresies, Bk IV, Ch 13; Bk IV, Ch 16.5).
The Church adopted laws that were, “natural, noble, and common,” but these laws were then put under the legal jurisdiction of the New Covenant, not the Mosaic covenant since the Mosaic covenant had been legally abolished. As the Catechism of the Council of Trent put it: “But, lest the people, aware of the abrogation of the Mosaic Law, may imagine that the precepts of the Decalogue are no longer obligatory” (Part 3).
Note that the “precepts” are obligatory not because the Mosaic law is still in force [since it was abrogated] but because the New Covenant in Christ adopted various teachings from the Mosaic covenant and put them under the custody of the New Covenant (cf. Rm 13:1-10), which the same Catechism then explains in Part 2 as:
It is most certain that we are not bound to obey the Commandments because they were delivered by Moses, [since the Mosaic covenant has been revoked] but because they are implanted in the hearts of all [by the New Covenant] and have been explained and confirmed by Christ our Lord.
Our Brothers and Sisters in Faith?
R. George: “…our bond with the Jewish people is a spiritual bond, rooted in a common spiritual patrimony, and that our Jewish neighbors are indeed our brothers and sisters in faith.
R. Sungenis: No they are not brothers and sisters in the faith. The Jews, at large, rejected and still reject Jesus Christ as God and Savior. The whole religion of the Jews, whether Reformed, Hasidic or otherwise, is based on a rejection of Jesus Christ, as their core belief. So how can the Jews be “our brothers and sisters in faith” if they reject the very essence of the Christian faith? The only Jews today who are our brothers and sisters in faith are the Messianic Jews who have accepted Christ, but even then, most Messianic Jews are Protestant.
R. George: “One of the great stains on the history of the Catholic Church is the contempt—and sometimes worse—that some Catholics, including some leaders of the Church, have over the centuries expressed for Jews and Judaism. Catholics were never required as a matter of doctrine to hold anti-Jewish attitudes or support, much less participate in, the persecution of Jews. For centuries, however, the posture of the Church as an institution toward the Jewish faith and the Jewish people was decidedly negative—often hostile.”
R. Sungenis: Unfortunately, Mr. George does not make the proper distinctions, and they are absolutely crucial. Yes, the Catholic Church, as an institution toward the Jewish faith and the Jewish people, was decidedly negative, but that was because after the first fifteen years of the Christian Church, the Jews at large refused to accept Jesus Christ, and were, in turn, trying to influence Jewish Catholics to return to Judaism. The whole book of Hebrews is about warning Catholic Jews not to return to Judaism.
By the second millennium, when the Jews had made their way from Babylon and into Russia and then into Europe (circa 1100 AD), the Jews officially declared they did not want or need the Catholic Church for salvation because they had their own salvation through Moses and Judaism. This prompted the Catholic Church under, Pope Boniface VIII, to issue the 1308 bull, Unum Sanctum, which declared that no Jew, heretic, or schismatic could be saved outside the Catholic Church. Here the Church protected Catholics by warning against the Jewish religion. In the wake of that warning, some Catholics took things into their own hands and ostracized the Jews, but that is not what the Catholic Church taught as doctrine or encouraged as policy.
In 1642, Pope Urban VIII, in Profession of Orthodox Faith, said: “Similarly, we profess that the legalities of the Old Testament, the ceremonies of the Mosaic Law, the rites, sacrifices, and sacraments have ceased at the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ; they cannot be observed without sin after the promulgation of the Gospel.”
Likewise, Pope Benedict XIV, in Ex Quo Singulari, 63, of 1742, stated: “The second consideration is that although the ceremonial precepts of the old Law have come to an end with the promulgation of the Gospel, and the new Law does not contain any precept which distinguishes between clean and unclean foods, nevertheless the Church of Christ has the power of renewing the obligation to observe some of the old precepts for just and serious reasons, despite their abrogation by the new Law.”
The fact is, all popes prior to our modern age made very strong statements against fraternizing with or excusing the Jewish religion. We see this taught also in the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII in the 1900 encyclical Tametsi; Pope Pius XI in the 1925 encyclical Quas Primas, and his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno are quite clear concerning these dangers.
The Holocaust
R. George: In the wake of the Holocaust, this began to change. No doubt part of the explanation is that Catholics, especially those in leadership positions in the Church, rightly perceived that, though the Nazis were anti-Catholic and anti-Christian, the long history of European Christian hostility to Jews helped to shape the conditions that made the murder of Jews on an industrial scale by Hitler and his thugs possible.
R. Sungenis: The fact is, most Jews are also “anti-Catholic” and “anti-Christian.” Be that as it may, in the modern age, many have come to the eye-opening realization that the Jews were not murdered on an “industrial scale” by Hitler. It is only because the victor gets to write the history that it is now the popular belief that 6 million Jews were murdered during World War II. To the contrary, the 1933 and 1948 Jewish World Almanac’s state that the world population of Jews increased by over 400,000 from 15,315,000 in 1933 to 15,753,000 in 1948. Similarly, the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, published in 1948 at Geneva, states that only 272,000 people died in German concentration camps, and only half of them were Jews, and most of the deaths were from typhoid.
But today, the 6-million figure, used by Jews in the media since the late 1800s, is exploited to no end. Even Jewish authors recognize the exploitation, as is the case with Jewish author Norman Finkelstein in his recent book The Holocaust Industry. Although Jewish ideological organizations like the ADL consistently stigmatize those who don’t accept the 6-million figure as “holocaust deniers” and/or “anti-semites,” the facts are clear that the Jewish population after World War II was virtually the same as it was prior to World War II. It is time that we stop being intimidated by ideologues like the ADL that have long outlived their usefulness as they suck every dollar they can from Jewish people by instilling fear in them.
Jules Isaac and Anti-Semitism
As for other prominent Jews who exploit the myth of a holocaust, the author Jules Isaac, one year after World War II ended, published, Jesus and Israel, and he became the first modern Jew to accuse the Catholic Church of being “anti-semitic.” But Isaac went much further. He also said the four Gospels were anti-semitic, particularly Matthew and John, and that the Church Fathers perpetuated the same anti-semitism, particularly St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine. Of course, Mr. Isaac failed to make the proper distinctions. The early Fathers were of one mind on this issue. As St. Ignatius said long ago:
It is absurd to speak of Jesus Christ with the tongue, and to cherish in the mind a Judaism which has now come to an end. For where there is Christianity there cannot be Judaism. For Christ is one, in whom every nation that believes, and every tongue that confesses, is gathered unto God. And those that were of a stony heart have become the children of Abraham, the friend of God; and in his seed all those have been blessed who were ordained to eternal life in Christ” (Letter to the Ephesians, Ch 10: “Beware of Judaizing”).
Justin Martyr says the same:
Now, law placed against law has abrogated that which is before it, and a covenant which comes after in like manner has put an end to the previous one; and an eternal and final law – namely, Christ – has been given to us, and the covenant is trustworthy…Have you not read…by Jeremiah, concerning this same new covenant, He thus speaks: ‘Behold, the days come,’ says the Lord, ‘that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah’ (Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 11).
St. Augustine:
Instead of the grace of the law which has passed away, we have received the grace of the gospel which is abiding; and instead of the shadows and types of the old dispensation, the truth has come by Jesus Christ. He who has given them the law by Moses, promises in place of it the New Covenant of the gospel, that they might no longer live in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the spirit (Letters, 74, 4).
The Gospels, the Church Fathers, and the Catholic Church were against the anti-Christian religion of the Jews, not the Jews as a people made in the image of God (James 3:9). As Nostra aetate says: “We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God.” In fact, history shows that the Catholic Church continually protected the Jews from much more hostile factions in the world.
R. George: “To their credit, Catholics and Church leaders were represented among those who courageously protected, and in many cases rescued, Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Many of the Jews who survived attribute their survival to Catholics, ranging from peasants and laborers who took in Jewish neighbors to the Pope himself, on whose orders Jews were hidden in convents and other religious houses.”
R. Sungenis: Which proves that Catholics and its Church leaders cared for the Jews as members of the human race, but none of these Catholics condoned the religion of the Jewish people, unlike Mr. George who claims that Jews and Catholics are “brothers and sisters in faith.”
It is the Jewish animus against Christianity which caused popes throughout Christian history to issue their edicts against the Jews – to protect Christians from the false religion of Judaism, and to tell the Jews that there was only one way of salvation, Jesus Christ.
In his 1751 encyclical A Quo Primum, Pope Benedict XIV cites a whole line of popes previous to him who forbade Catholics from defending the Jewish religion. For example, he cites Alexander II stating: “Our ways of life and those of the Jews are utterly different, and Jews will easily pervert the souls of simple fold to their superstition and unbelief” (Decretal, Ad Haec). And Benedict XIV concludes with:
If any should ask what is forbidden by the Apostolic See to Jews dwelling in the same towns as Christians…he has only to read the Constitutions of the Roman Pontiffs, Our Predecessors, Nicholas IV, Paul IV, Saint Pius V, Gregory XIII, and Clement VIII, which are readily available, as they are to be found in the Bullarium Romanum.
In 1943, Pope Pius XII, in Mystici Corporis Christi, 29-30, warned against fraternizing with the Jewish religion:
the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished…but on the gibbet of His death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross. On the Cross then the Old Law died, soon to be buried and to be a bearer of death, in order to give way to the New Testament of which Christ had chosen the Apostles as qualified ministers…
[…] This is just an excerpt from the March 2023 Issue of Culture Wars magazine. To read the full article, please purchase a digital download of the magazine, or become a subscriber!