Saturday, June 27, 2015

True Israel and the Jews

The question of the Church's relationship to the Jews, the Mosaic covenant, and the New Covenant (New Testament) with Christ at its foundation, is an ongoing one among Catholics and other Christians. I remember hearing a very bright Lutheran student of mine, who went on to work for First Things and then to become a woman pastor of a Protestant denomination, once say in class that Jews ought to be excepted from those whom we as Christians seek to evangelize. The assumption seemed to be that they were already "God's people," already, in effect, "saved." Something like this also seems to be assumed by some Protestants of a more evangelical stripe, who see the nation of Israel as "God's chosen people" today, even if they should be evangelized and come to know Jesus. This raises all sorts of questions about supersessionism, about what covenants obtain today, etc., which I don't plan to go into here.

A recent combox debate in this blog raised the issue again, however; and so I simply post for your consideration this piece by our pugnacious and irascible friend, once known as "Amateur Brain Surgeon" (my favorite appellation), and now known as "Raider Fan," "Raider Fan won't shut up but he will put up (1)" (The Nesciencent Nepenthene, June 27, 2015), which begins with this provocative declaration:
It is possible for a country, France, to suffer a revolution and commit Regicide and yet still be able to recover much of its tradition at some point in its future but a country, Israel, which commits Deicide has committed national suicide and can never recover even the tiniest portion of its tradition; it's only hope is to corporately confess that Jesus is the Messias and convert to Catholicism, the new Israel.
There is, of course, this beautiful promise of Scripture: "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son" (Zechariah 12:10), which is cited by the Apostle John (19:37). Nearly one third of Pascal's Pensees is devoted to prophecies of the Messiah of this sort.

13 comments:

Jeff said...

I'm not sure that either simple answer completely satisfies me.

But as to the "regicide so zero" argument, I am not persuaded.

"Father forgive them, for they KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO."

As Newman says, original sin infects and poisons the intellect as well as other things. People are capable of believing the most arrant nonsense and acting on it in good will.

Son of Ya'Kov said...

RF post is worthless and his own source betrays him.

First he cites no magisterial document to back up his misguided neo Marcionism which are becoming even more obscure but I will cite two & use his own mis-citation of Aquinas against him.

First there is the Roman Catechism formally promulgated in the wake of Trent:

”And it can be seen that our crime in this case is greater in us than in the Jews. As for them, according to the witness of the Apostle, 'None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.' We, however profess to know him. And when we deny him by our deeds, we in some way seem to lay violent hands on him."

The Roman Catechism represents at least the ordinary teaching of the Church as such it requires assent thus we would put it above Aquinas' opinion as cited by RF. The teachings of the Fathers are subject to the formal teaching of the Church and are interpreted according to the Church's pronouncements.

Also there is the Second Vatican Council

"the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ;(13) still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures."

From the CCC.

The historical complexity of Jesus' trial is apparent in the Gospel accounts. The personal sin of the participants (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone. Hence we cannot lay responsibility for the trial on the Jews in Jerusalem as a whole, despite the outcry of a manipulated crowd and the global reproaches contained in the apostles' calls to conversion after Pentecost.385

With this in mind it seems Aquinas implicitly agrees with the above as cited by RF.

Objection 1. It would seem that the sin of Christ's crucifiers was not the most grievous. Because the sin which has some excuse cannot be most grievous. But our Lord Himself excused the sin of His crucifiers when He said: "Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). Therefore theirs was not the most grievous sin."

I answer that, As stated above (Article 5), the rulers of the Jews knew that He was the Christ: and if there was any ignorance in them, it was affected ignorance, which could not excuse them. etc

Reply to Objection 1. As stated above, the excuse made by our Lord is not to be referred to the rulers among the Jews, but to the common people.

In the Hierarchy of culpability the Jewish Rulers had more knowledge and thus more responsibility, second to the average Jew and less to those outside the Old Covenant at the time. This is just to whom much is given much is expected. However we who are in the New Covenant are culpable above the Jewish Rulers who turned Christ over to Pilate.

Also no Pope has ever put the genocide of the Jews called the holocaust above the Holocaust of Christ & the Jews themselves call it the Shoah "Disaster" not Korban Olah/holocaust/burnt offering.

I am a bitter enemy to all those who seek to withhold the Gospel from the People of the Old Covenant & claim that belonging to the Old Covenant is sufficient and they should be exempt from Evangelization.

But conspiracy mongering (Jews are all racists) and accusations of being Christ Killers well I fail to see how that crap is constructive to this nobel end?

Anonymous said...

John Paul II thought that Christians should not have a mission to Jews.

Hrodgar said...

I will say I don't think much of the idea that modern Jews, that is, Jews who deny that Christ is the Messiah, despite that Moses wrote of Him (John 5), are somehow our spiritual fathers or elders is nonsense. If they are to be counted as elder to the Church, it can only be as Cain was elder brother to Abel.

Though I don't see how you think that emphasizing Aquinas' opinion that the rulers' guilt is worse than the commoners' is contradicting anything RF has said.

Son of Ya'Kov said...

@Hrodgar

At this point I believe RF has shifted the goal posts to the point nobody knows what he is talking about. He has gone from charges the Pope in collusion with the Jews are trying to put the ww2 holocaust above the sacrifice of Christ to the idea they are all collectively guilty of the worst of sins.

On all counts I believe I have proven him wrong. If you choose to reject really and substitute your own be my guest.

As for modern jews denying him well some either do so motivated by culpable ignorance or malice on the one hand or invincible ignorance on the other. Those who are the later can't be called Cain now can they? Also those of the later who are moved by extra-ordinary grace are fit to be Older brothers. As per Pius IX we really can't know who is who but if I where to speculate it's kind of hard to read the spiritual writings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov & not feel God's hand was on him.

>Though I don't see how you think that emphasizing Aquinas' opinion that the rulers' guilt is worse than the commoners' is contradicting anything RF has said.

At this point I have shown not all Jews are guilty & thus collective guilt is wrong via the teaching of the Church. It goes from the Rulers who plotted Christ's death, the common pressure crowd who cried for this blood and the Roman pagans who legally condemned him and nailed him up. Not all Jews living then nor any Jews living today are in that cabal of sin.

Those are the facts.

Boniface said...

http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-israel-is-not-israel.html?m=1

Son of Ya'Kov said...

@Boniface

What does the modern State of Israel have to do with anything? Now this conversation is going really far off into irrelevant tangent-vile.

I know Father Friedman who founded the Association of Hebrew Catholics (& not too few individuals in the Vatican) saw the Jews gathering in the Holy Land and founding a Jewish State as having some cosmic significance. Thought Fr. Friedman's view was quite conservative & modest compared to that of the Dispensationist Protestant heretics. He saw it as a Sign of the Times and that old Israel was moving into a phase of salvation that would prepare them to receive the Gospel. It's a good idea regardless as we should share he Gospel with the original target of the Gospel.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

To interested lurkers. The objections, complaints, and ignorant assertions ny Son of Ya'kov were not only anticipated by this writer, they have been answered at the crummy blog he operates.

Pope Francis did call the holocaust (not the real one, the faux political one) the greatest evil ever - the quote is reproduced. A Prince of the Church did th same thing and his quote is reproduced there.

As to the AHC, the priest brother of its original spiritual advisor (also a priest) resigned in protest over their many heresies and this writer would be happy to explain that to he who wonders far off topic after criticising others for wandering off topic

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dear Brother Boniface. Excellent and how did ABS ever not see this before?

When Theodore Herzl was grated an audience with Pope Saint Pius X, he asked his Holiness to recognize the state of israel and the Pope, rightly, told him he would do no such thing for the Jews refuse to recognize Jesus as Messias.

The Judaised protestants just can't wait to be the servant of the Jews in the future and so it is an open question as to just how Christian they actually are

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

It is a Tradition of the Messias-Deniers that the Jews are responsible for the worst crime ever, Deicide; that is, the Rabbis took responsibility for the killing of Jesus

Son of Ya'Kov said...

RF/ABS

I don’t want to be too hard on you because of your personal tragedies but your responses well they are getting just plain odd.

>Pope Francis did call the holocaust (not the real one, the faux political one) the greatest evil ever - the quote is reproduced. A Prince of the Church did the same thing and his quote is reproduced there.

Where does he use those words? Where does Pope Francis say the Shoah is a Korban Olam greater than the Korban Olam of Our Lord Yeshua? He doesn’t. You wont’ even reproduce the Pope’s actual words here or on your blog? Why?

Because following the links there and here I only get these direct qutoes from the Philip Pullella article cited by Dr. Blosser. “ He spoke of the "tragedy of the Shoah," using the Hebrew term for the Holocaust. "The great powers had the pictures of the railway lines that brought the trains to the concentration camps like Auschwitz to kill Jews, Christians, homosexuals, everybody. Why didn't they bomb (the railway lines)?" Discussing World War One, he spoke of "the great tragedy of Armenia" but did not use the word "genocide". “ END QUOTE

He doesn’t even use the term “holocaust/burning sacrifice/Korban Olah” but Shoah “catastrophe”.
Calling it the greatest disaster of our age is not equivalent to saying it “superseded the one true Holocaust(i.e. sacrifice of Christ)”. That is just reading weird nonsense into things. It’s paranoid and just well….weird.

>As to the AHC, the priest brother of its original spiritual advisor (also a priest) resigned in protest over their many heresies and this writer would be happy to explain that to he who wonders far off topic after criticising others for wandering off topic

??????????????????????????
I got nothing this doesn’t make any sense. Does anybody know what he is talking about?

>It is a Tradition of the Messias-Deniers that the Jews are responsible for the worst crime ever, Deicide; that is, the Rabbis took responsibility for the killing of Jesus


Yet the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church says in Her formally promulgated Roman Catechism that it’s Catholics who deny Our Lord is the greatest of Sins. The Jews aren’t responsible for Deicide. Rather the Priestly rulers and the Jewish Mob and the Gentile executioners are responsible (listed in descending order of culpability) not all Jews then living or any Jews today.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...


Finally, the truth about the Jews and their false and superstitious religion from a text that once was in regular use in seminaries;

https://archive.org/stream/christologyadog00pohlgoog#page/n36/mode/2up (pages 29-30)

With a desire to create a political arrangement with our enemies, the Prelature was constrained to disappear such orthodox texts (hate truths?) with the results that more and more local Franchises of Spiritually Dead Diocese Inc. America are hosting seders etc.

So what if an Ecumenical Council condemned that form of Judaising?

Our prelature has severed connections with the past and we are al expected to supinely accept all of their Judaising novelties or be subject to character assassination by the Pathos Posse and others.

It won't work with ABS, his skin is thicker than Hilary's ass and tougher than Titanium and one who has not been attacked as an antisemite truly can not be said to be a Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Traditionalist.


Son of Ya'Kov said...

At this point ABS/RF/MJY you are more ambiguous then you claim Vatican II is.....

Judaising is the heresy that teaches Gentiles who join the Catholic Church are obligated to observe the ceremonies of the Old Law for salvation. It can & was further developed by the Church to mean Jews in the Church where obligated to observe the ceremonies of the Old Law. Which is also condemned.

To put it in a complete & final Catholic formulation and too borrow from Theologian Taylor Marshall it is the belief the Sacraments of the Old Law, since the Publication of the Gospel, are still binding and or valid acts of worship and or validly convey (even if in an inferior way and not necessary for salvation) the grace of external lawful purity for which they where originally instituted.

Or to put it simply the sacraments of the Old Law are abrogated and to observe them since the publication of the Gospel is the mortal sin of superstitious worship.

I am not certain this is infallible teaching since it was promulgated by Florence during Session XI and only Session VI was considered infallible and Session 8 or maybe it was 9 contains teaching that was later abrogated by more definitive acts of the Magesterium.

Never the less I give Session XI my assent infallible or not but obviously it should be filtered threw the teaching of Pope Benedict XIV who wrote in an Encyclical.

"If a man should perform acts for a different end and purpose (even with the intention of worship and as religious ceremonies), not in the spirit of that Law nor on the basis of it, but either from personal decision, from human custom, or on the instruction of the Church, he would not sin, nor could he be said to judaize. So when a man does something in the Church which resembles the ceremonies of the old Law, he must not always be said to judaize. [Ex Quo, 67]

Quote" But others remarked wisely that some, surely, of the ceremonial rites of the old Law could be observed under the new Law if only they were not done as obligations of the old Law, which was abrogated, but as a custom, or lawful tradition, or as a new precept issued by one enjoying the recognized and competent authority to make laws and to enforce them, as Vasquez observes (vol. 3, in the 3rd part of the Summa, disp. 210, quest. 80, art. 7). [Ex Quo, 74]"END QUOTE

Ecumenical Councils are defined & interpreted by the Popes. Also I fail to see how political or social alliances with Jews constitutes the heresy of "Judaizing" in either case? Seders aren't bad unless one participates in a Samaritan or Ultra Orthodox Jewsih Seder which involves animal sacrifice.

Words mean things unless you are channeling your inner Justice Kennedy. Your imprecise use of terms is not helpful.