THE MYSTERY
OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN HISTORY
By Rev. Frs. Michael Crowdy & Kenneth Novak
Originally printed in the April 1997 issue of
The Angelus magaine.
It cannot be denied that the subject of the Jewish people is both very difficult and very fascinating.
Difficult, because the Jewish people is present in all history both divine and human. There is no period of history about which one can write without mentioning them. Says the Jewish author of Jesus Told by the Wandering Jew (Editions Fleg, p.177):
"There are two mysteries of history. Jesus is a mystery as Israel is a mystery! And when you put these two mysteries together, do I have to tell what results? —A third mystery, more mysterious by itself than the two others!"
And fascinating, because who can concern himself with the Jewish people without a feeling of admiration or pity, or of both at the same time? The Jewish people brought Christ into the world, yet before Pilate it repudiated Him; the people without a nation of their own and yet unable to live together among others.
The Jewish people is still more fascinating because of its many strengths. It is to its credit as achievers that the Jewish people holds positions in governments, in international and party politics, in the direction of national economies, in the complex mechanisms of money, in the media and leisure, and in the influence over lifestyle and public opinion. For two thousand years it has applied itself with unique tenacity.
And when one thinks of this people, who live in the midst of all the nations, through the most varied changes of fortune but always and everywhere intact and incorruptible —one reflects that this people’s lineage is the greatest upon earth!
The Jewish people justly claims the greatest of lineages, because it has six thousand years of indestructible history. The greatest of lineages, because it was in it that Christ, the Son of the living God, took flesh. This is a people which, though a minority, is here and everywhere, as it has been for 20 centuries of Christian history. What is its origin? How and why does it continue? What is its destiny in history? What attitude should one adopt towards it? These are the questions this article hopes to explain.
This article claims to be an explanation of the Jew —a theological explanation —which in this case is the only possible one. Theology is the science of the mysteries of God. These mysteries are the inscrutable judgments of the Most High which are known to us when He deigns to manifest them to us. Without these manifestations we would have no inkling of them.
Catholic theology teaches that the Jewish people is the object of a very special vocation from God. Only in the light of theology can one explain the Jew. Neither merely psychology nor the biological sciences, nor even purely historical studies can explain the Jewish people. This people is a topic of universal and eternal scope which by its very nature requires a universal and eternal explanation that is valid for today, for yesterday and forever. The Jewish people must be considered by an explanation which is eternal, like God; that is to say, a theological explanation.
What emerges from this explanation is not meant in any way to justify either semitic or antisemitic activity. These two terms tend to trivialize a situation that is deeper and more universal. Catholic theology, while throwing light on the mystery of the Jewish people, will indicate the relations between Jews and Christians, who must live apart until the mercy of God disposes their reconciliation.
The Jewish People According to Catholic Theology
The Jewish people is not like the other peoples, who are born today and fade tomorrow, creating admirable civilizations limited to a point in time and space. We remember the great empires of Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans: their glory was the glory of a day.
The Jewish people, a tiny enclave at the crossroads of East and West, was made tiny for its purpose of bearing the mystery of God through the centuries. And to bear this mystery graven in its flesh it was not to create a civilization, because that is a human thing. What was necessary for it was the divine.
The Jewish people is the theological people which God created for Himself. Moses tells us in Genesis how, two thousand years before Jesus Christ, the Lord God called the patriarch Abraham, living at Ur of the Chaldees, in Mesopotamia, and told him:
So the Jewish people, the sons of Abraham, have their origin
in God, because it is He who has chosen them out of the rest of mankind and it
is He that promises His blessing in such a way that in them all the kindred of
the earth shall be blessed. Israel, then, is great with a theological greatness.
But does this greatness consist purely in its bodily descent in the flesh from
Abraham, the patriarch from whose body it was formed, or does it rest on the
faith Abraham had in God’s Promise of a Redeemer? This is an extremely important question. If the blessings of
God are for Abraham’s bodily descendants only, then the Jewish people would be
chosen and blessed among all the nations of the earth only for the fact of being
sons of Abraham. But if the blessings are reserved to faith in the divine
Promise, then simple descent by lineage is valueless. It is necessary to
be a descendant of Abraham by faith in the Promise, that is to say, a
spiritual descent based on faith. Ishmael and Isaac What, then, is the basis of Israel’s greatness in the light
of God’s plan? To make it clear, God gave Abraham two sons. The one called
Ishmael was by his slave-woman, Hagar, and his birth was in the ordinary course
of nature. The other was given him, against all hope, by his wife Sarah in her
old age, in accordance with the Promise of God. He was called Isaac. It was to Isaac and his descendants that God confirmed the
Pact made with Abraham. He also bestowed a blessing on Ishmael, but a purely
material one, promising to make him the head of a great people. From Ishmael
descend the present Arabs, who are in such bitter opposition of the entry of
Jews into Palestine. That is because Abraham was persuaded by Sarah and
commanded by God to show Hagar and Ishmael the door (Gen. 21). What is signified by these two sons of Abraham? St. Paul, the
great apostle of the divine mysteries, tells that two nations are prefigured in
Ishmael and Isaac (Gal. 4). Ishmael, the first to be born and the natural offspring of
the slave, Hagar, represents the Synagogue of the Jews, which glories in its
descent from the flesh of Abraham. But Isaac, born miraculously of the sterile
Sarah according to a Promise of God, represents the Church which, like Isaac, is
born by faith in the Promise of Christ. So it is not lineal descent from Abraham which brings
salvation, but spiritual union with Christ through faith. The Jewish people
which began with Abraham will be able to attain to its salvation not by the fact
of its material descent from Abraham, but in believing in Christ and
assimilating itself to Him in faith. All who are united in Christ form the blessed inheritance of
Abraham and the patriarchs, and are the object of God’s Promises. The Catholic
Church is Sarah made fruitful by the divine power. It is the spirit that gives
life, while the flesh, on the other hand, is worth nothing, as Jesus Christ was
to say: "It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth
nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life." (Jn.
6:64) Could it happen that this people, or a part of it —united to
Abraham by bodily descent —should believe that this same genealogical link alone
is what gives justification and salvation? Yes, it could happen, and it did. St.
Paul comments that, to show it in advance, God so disposed that...: "...Abraham had two sons; the one by the bondwoman and
the other by the free woman. But he who was of the bondwoman, was
born according to the flesh: but he of the free woman was by
Promise." (Gal. 4:22,23) All this was said by way of allegory in order to signify that
the simple fact of fleshly union with Abraham is represented by Ishmael, the
slave’s son; and the imitation of Abraham, by faith in Jesus Christ, is
represented by Isaac, the son of the Promise. And one must also make a distinction between those who are
true Israelites because they imitate Abraham’s faith in God by believing in
Jesus Christ (those represented by Isaac), and the Israelites who descend from
Abraham in the flesh without imitating his faith (who are prefigured by
Ishmael). Ishmael persecuted Isaac. St. Paul, commenting on this, adds: But as then he that was born according to the flesh
persecuted him that was after the spirit: so also it is now (Gal. 4:29). Here we see expressed the theological necessity by which
Ishmael persecuted Isaac, the Synagogue persecutes the Catholic Church, and the
Jews who are united to Abraham by only a union of the flesh persecute the
Christians who are the true Israelites, united to Christ by faith. The same mystery is revealed to us by the two sons granted by
the Lord for the patriarch Isaac —Esau and Jacob. Let us turn to Genesis (ch.
25): v.21: And Isaac besought the Lord for his wife,
because she was barren; and He heard him, and made Rebecca to conceive. v.22: But the children struggled in her womb: and
she said: If it were to be so with me, what need was there to conceive? And
she went to consult the Lord. v.23: And He answering said: Two nations are in
thy womb, and two peoples shall be divided out of thy womb, and one people
shall overcome the other, and the elder shall serve the younger. v.24: And when her time was come to be delivered,
behold twins were found in her womb. v.25: He that came forth first was red, and hairy
like a skin: and his name was called Esau. Immediately the other coming
forth, held his brother’s foot in his hand, and therefore he was called
Jacob. In his Epistle to the Romans, in which he reveals the mystery
of the Jewish people, St. Paul shows how Esau, the elder according to the flesh,
is the Jewish people united to Abraham by a simple blood-tie, while the younger
brother Jacob is the Catholic Church (formed of Jews and Gentiles) which,
because it is united by faith to Christ, is preferred above Esau. In this way
were fulfilled the words of Scripture (when God reproached the Jews for their
ingratitude and lack of pure sacrifice, and called the Gentiles to offer up to
Him in every place an acceptable sacrifice): "I have loved you, saith the Lord: and you have said:
Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau brother to Jacob, saith the Lord,
and I have loved Jacob, but have hated Esau? and I have made his mountains a
wilderness, and given his inheritance to the dragons of the desert." (Mal.
1:2,3) As it is written: "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have
hated." (Rom. 9:13) So it is that the Church overcomes the Synagogue, although
the Synagogue, like Esau... "...always hated Jacob...and he said in his heart...I
will kill my brother Jacob." (Gen. 27:41) The Greatness of the Jewish People We have referred to these figures from among the Patriarchs
as interpreted by the Catholic Church to show that at the very origins of the
Jewish people there is foreshadowed both its greatness and complexity. The Jewish people has a theological lineage, chosen,
consecrated, and sanctified for the purpose of identifying and bringing to us
the bodily reality of our Divine Lord Jesus Christ who had to come, and whom the
Gentiles expected. This is what is awe-inspiring in the Jewish people: its flesh
is sanctified and marked to bring us Him "Who is the Way, the Truth and the
Life." But precisely why is this flesh holy? Why is it of
Abraham’s lineage? Why must it bring to us the Christ? In other words, is
it Christ who sanctifies the Jewish lineage, or the Jewish lineage that
sanctifies Christ? The fact is that Christ, as Isaiah had foretold (Rom. 9:32)
had been placed as a stumbling block, a stone of scandal among his people. If,
with the humility of Abraham, this people believed in Christ as sanctifying
their lineage, then it was called to be the root and the stem of that
flourishing Olive Tree which was to be the Church of Jesus Christ, the Catholic
Church. On the other hand, if it was to reject Christ, confident in its pride of
race, then it destined itself to be the root and stock of a wild vine which
would produce bitter fruits. In the former case, this people will be Isaac, Jacob, and
Abel; in the latter, it is called to play the part of Ishmael, Esau, and Cain. But this chosen line will always take precedence over all the
other races of men. If it accepts Christ, it will be the principal and best part
of the Catholic Church, the root and trunk of that Olive Tree that produces
fruit for eternal life, as the Apostle Paul teaches. If it rejects Christ, it
will be chief in the kingdom of iniquity. The great Apostle, St. Paul, who was
proud to know himself an Israelite, emphasizes the Jewish pre-eminence for good
or ill when he says: "Tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that
worketh evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek…" (Rom. 2:9) What advantage then hath the Jew, or what is the profit of
circumcision? Much every way. First indeed, because the words of God were
committed to them (Rom. 3:1,2). The Jew then is first in the order of goodness, in the
mystery of grace. The trunk of the tree that is the Catholic Church is Jewish.
The Patriarchs are Jews; the Prophets are Jewish, John the Baptist is Jewish;
St. Joseph is Jewish; the Mother of God is Jewish; and our Blessed Savior in
whom all nations of the earth are blessed is Jewish. The Apostles are Jewish;
the Evangelists are Jewish; and the first of the Martyrs, St. Stephen, is
Jewish. What a people, this theological people that is the trunk of
the tree of the Church! In the presence of this Olive Tree, what worth have the
Gentile peoples who are only poor wild olives? What worth has the learning of
the Greeks or the power of pagan Rome? Mere foolishness, says St. Paul, because
these nations did nothing to bring salvation such as the Jewish nation did. If
the Gentile nations–starting with the Greeks–wish to enter the way of salvation
they must do so by charity, profiting by the general rejection of Jewish people
in order to be grafted in. That is why St. Paul says the fall of a part of the
Jewish people has become the opportunity of salvation for the Gentiles: "And if some of the branches be broken, and thou, being a
wild olive, art ingrafted in them, and art made partaker of the root, and of
the fatness of the olive tree, boast not against the branches. But if thou
boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee." (Rom. 11:17,18) But Israel’s greatness, which was predestined to be in
Christ, needs to be matched by a corresponding fidelity to Christ. What unhappy
consequences visit this people if it repudiates the One Who is its salvation!
Judas Iscariot, Annas, and Caiphas were Jewish. It was the Jewish chief priests
who persuaded the people to call for the crucifixion of the Savior and who cried
out, "His blood be upon us and our children!" (Mt. 27:25) Jews stoned St.
Stephen; Jews martyred St. James and laid traps for the apostles. The greatest
crime of all time —the death of the God-Man —was perpetrated by this forlorn
people. What is the root of the errors of the Jews? —It is that "a
part of this people" believed that the promises given to the Jewish people
on account of Christ (who was due to be born from among them) were made to His
flesh, to His lineage. However, the Jewish people, instead of acknowledging that
it was the chosen people because of Christ, rather believed that it was Christ
who had something to boast about on account of His genealogical lineage. Thus, it was not Christ, but the flesh of Abraham, that was
the source of glory. And the Pharisees, the veritable incarnation of this spirit
of iniquity, declared proudly as a reason for not accepting Christ: "We have
Abraham for our father." So their sin consisted in making carnal (i.e.,
material) the promises of God. In that way they attributed substantial value to
what was only a foreshadowing. They expected salvation from what was only a
sign of that salvation. As for the Messiah, the One awaited, who was to bring grace
and truth to the world, they made of Him a political, earthly ruler, who would
assure and perpetuate the greatness of Israel over all the nations. The Carnalization of the Jewish People It will be instructive to distinguish the different stages in
the process of the carnalization of the Jews. We have coined this word —carnalization
—by which we mean to indicate the Jewish people’s historical
material-mindedness. The Sacred Scriptures record that the Israelite people had
always a nature dominated by great pride and avarice. Moses himself distinctly
warned the Israelites: "Know therefore that the Lord thy God giveth thee not
possession of this excellent land for thy justices [righteousness], for thou
art a very stiff-necked [stubborn] people…" (Deut. 9:6) "And again the Lord said to me: I see that this people is
stiff-necked: Let me alone that I may destroy them, and abolish their name
from under heaven, and set thee over a nation, that is greater and stronger
than this." (Deut. 9:13.14) In the period of the Kings, the people’s dishonesty and
materialism became particularly evident. They abandoned themselves to a thousand
perversities and idolatries to such a degree that they were the first to be
broken up and led into captivity in Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar, six
centuries before Christ. This hard captivity lasted seventy years. At the end of
it the Jewish people, returning to Palestine, reformed themselves on new and
firm foundations given by Ezra, whom the Jews considered as great a lawgiver as
Moses. In fact, Judaism, as it was at the time of Christ and as it has remained
until the present day, springs from the reorganization of the people under Ezra. To generalize, it must be said that the Jews are a people
bound to a book, the book above all others, the Law —the Torah. In
reality, the Torah is composed of the first five books of the Sacred Scriptures
[the Pentateuch], written by Moses as inspired by the Holy Ghost. But the
Jews only accept as the Word of God (superior to that of Moses himself) the
Torah together with the interpretations the rabbis have handed down by
oral tradition. These interpretations have been collected and in some way
petrified in a voluminous book called the Talmud. The Talmud is the civil
and religious code of the Jewish people. Judaism The Jews are a people created by the mentality of the rabbis,
especially of the Pharisee rabbis. The Pharisee vividly displays the carnality
of the Jews. We are not using the word carnal with the meaning that they
have a special leaning to sins of impurity, but with the meaning Jesus Christ
gave this word when He anathematized the tendency to give a literal, inferior,
earthly interpretation to what in the mind of God has a superior and heavenly
meaning. The Pharisees, instead of following in the steps of prophets
like Isaiah and Ezekiel who had preached a worship of God in spirit, compunction
of heart, a reform of conduct, and charity to all men, worked to train the
people in a literal following of petty observances and a feeling of pride in the
fact of lineal descent from the patriarch Abraham. "They answered Him: We are
the seed of Abraham..." (Jn. 8:33) as if it was the flesh of Abraham itself
that brought justification. The Pharisees had drawn up a host of rules on purification,
ablutions, washing and immersion of hands, of the body, of cups and cloths, so
as to preserve the purity of the people. They obliged any of their faithful who
had touched a non-Jew in the street or in the market to wash himself. They
considered the violation of these ritual prescriptions a grave sin. Nothing shows better the carnalized Judaic mentality than the
terrible "Woes" declared by the Jew, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the last
days of His life on earth, when He denounced the hypocritical religion, purity,
and piety of the Pharisees (Mt. 23). Against religious hypocrisy, He said: v.13: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites; because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men, for you
yourselves do not enter it; and those that are going in, you suffer not to
enter. v.15: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites; because you go round about the sea and the land to make one
proselyte; and when he is made, you make him a child of hell twofold more
than yourselves. v.16: Woe to you blind guides.... v.23: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites; because you tithe mint, and anise, and cummin, and have left the
weightier things of the law; judgment, and mercy, and faith.... v.24: Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and
swallow a camel. v.27: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchers, which outwardly
appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones, and of all
filthiness. He denounced simulated worship and piety towards ancestors
when He said: vv.29-32: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites; that build the sepulchers of the prophets, and adorn the
monuments of the just, and say: If we had been in the days of our Fathers,
we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
Wherefore you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of
them that killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. vv.33-35: You serpents, generation of vipers, how
will you flee from the judgment of hell? Therefore behold I send to you
prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them you will put to death
and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute
from city to city: that upon you may come all the just blood that hath been
shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even unto the blood of
Zacharias the son of Barachias, whom you killed between the temple and the
altar. No one in all the course of history has pronounced more
terrible anathemas than those of the Son of God against the perfidious carnality
of His own people. The Sin of the Jews On the 14th of the month of Nisan in the year 33, the Jewish
people, assembled before the praetorium of Pilate the Governor, and urged by the
priests demanded the death of the Promised One: "When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they
cried out saying, Crucify Him, crucify Him. Pilate saith to them: Take Him
you, and crucify Him: for I find no cause in Him. The Jews answered him: We
have a law; and according to the law He ought to die, because He made
Himself the Son of God." (Jn. 19:6,7) The rabbis had said beforehand in a secret council against
Jesus: "If we let Him alone so, all will believe in Him; and the
Romans will come, and take away our place and nation. But one of them, named
Caiphas, being the high priest that year, said to them: You know nothing.
Neither do you consider that it is expedient for you that one man should die
for the people, and that the whole nation perish not." (Jn. 11:48-50) Then these Jews, in the name of their Law, their Torah, and
to serve the material interests of their nation and race, demanded the blood of
Him who had been promised them as their blessing. They stirred up the Gentiles
against Jesus. Using them to carry out their plans, they crucified the One who
was to be raised up as a "sign of contradiction". (Lk. 2:34) God will not exterminate the carnalized Judaism. When the
Jews turn toward the Lord, and say to him as did Cain...: "...My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve
pardon. Behold thou dost cast me out this day from the face of the earth,
and I shall be hidden from thy face, and I shall be a vagabond and a
fugitive on the earth: every one, therefore that findeth me, shall kill me."
(Gen. 4:13-14) ...Then the Lord will say to them, as He did to Cain: "And the Lord said to him: No, it shall not be so: but
whosoever shall kill Cain, shall be punished sevenfold. And the Lord set a
mark upon Cain, that whosoever found him should not kill him." (Gen. 4:15) And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any one who came upon
him should kill him. And ever since, this people marked by God’s seal must
wander through the world. And, what will they be doing? —Bearing in their flesh
witness to Christ in the mystery of iniquity. Jesus Christ chose the flesh of
His own race to, willingly or unwillingly, proclaim that it is He who is blessed
for ever and ever. Jewish flesh proclaims it because Christ comes from that
genealogy. One cannot remember Christ without remembering the Jews, and one
cannot remember them without remembering Christ. The Jewish people, once a mystery of goodness, is now changed
into a mystery of iniquity. It is no longer Isaac, but Ishmael. No longer Jacob,
but Esau. No longer Abel, but Cain. Others have won from it the birthright. To others have been
granted the blessings of the Promise. Those others are all of us who make up the
Church of Jesus Christ–converted Jews at first and later the Gentile converts. The Church of Christ is the true Isaac, the true Jacob, the
true Abel. Christ has sanctified Jews and Gentiles to form a new creation, the
Catholic Church, which adores the Father in spirit and in truth (Jn. 4:23). Faced with the Church, which is Isaac, Jacob and Abel, what
will the Synagogue do? —It will play the part of Ishmael, of Esau, and of Cain.
What did Ishmael do to Isaac? He mocked him and persecuted him (Gen. 21:9). What
did Esau do against Jacob? Genesis tells us: "Esau therefore always hated Jacob for the blessing
wherewith his father had blessed him: and he said in his heart: The days
will come of the mourning of my father and I will kill my brother Jacob."
(Gen. 27:41) That is the part that now falls to the Synagogue, to the Jew
who will not recognize Christ as He revealed Himself and convert: he will set
out to persecute the Church, as the Apostle Paul observes. In this way, just as
in the kingdom of goodness the Jewish people had and still has the first place
(for history is all present together in God’s eyes), so also the first place in
the kingdom of evil must go to it. The other peoples, if wishing to do the work
of evil, follow the example of the carnalized, unrepentant Jewish people. If the
Gentiles want to be carnal, they must judaize. Thus it was with perfect
theological precision that the Fathers of the Church gave the name of Judaizers
to Gentiles who taught heresy. Theological Conclusions There is a theological opposition —that is to say, one
arranged by God —which exists throughout Christian history between the Synagogue
and the Church, between Christians and Jews, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau.
What is indispensable at this point is to put down the theological conclusions
in the light of which history must be interpreted. First Conclusion: The Jewish people, whose
destiny was to bring Christ to us, found Christ a stumbling block. A part of
them believed in Him, and built on Him to form the roots and the trunk of that
Olive Tree which is the Catholic Church. The other part fell, denying Him and
invoking their carnal pride of race and nation. That part of Israel was
rejected, and called upon itself the blood of Christ as a curse. It is this part
that forms Judaism proper, which is the heir and the continuation of the rabbis
who rejected Christ. Second Conclusion: Judaism is inimical to all
nations in general, and in a special manner to Christian nations. It plays the
part of Ishmael who persecuted Isaac, of Esau who sought to kill Jacob, and of
Cain who put Abel to death. St. Paul, the converted Jew, says: "For you brethren, are become followers of the churches
of God which are in Judea, in Christ Jesus: for you also have suffered the
same things from your own countrymen, even as they have from the Jews, who
both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and
please not God, and are adversaries to all men." (I Thess. 2:14,15) Take note of St. Paul’s terrible and very important fact,
written under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, the adversarial
relationship of the Jewish people is not a local enmity, or one based on blood,
or on conflicting interests. It is an enmity disposed by God. The Jewish people,
if it has not converted to Christianity, will, even if it does not wish to, seek
to ruin Christianity, as Jesus Christ said when speaking to the Pharisees: "You are of your father the devil, and the desire
of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he
stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie,
he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof." (Jn.
8:44) Third Conclusion: If the unrepentant Jewish
people are disposed by God to be a theological enemy, the status of this
opposition must be universal, inevitable, and terrible. Universal, because it must extend to all nations.
Wherever Christendom extends, the Jewish people goes, too. There is no way of
avoiding this, because it is theological. Christendom and Jewry are destined inevitably to meet
everywhere without reconciliation or mixing. It represents in history the
eternal struggle of Lucifer against God, of darkness against the Light, of the
flesh against the spirit. It represents in time the spiritual accomplishing and
the fleshly accomplishing of the Scriptures. The Letter must be
everywhere to be the servant of the Spirit. It is with this understanding
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us that the Jewish people is the servant of the
Church. It is a terrible enmity, because it is theological.
There is a mystery of iniquity in the Jewish people, as we are taught by St.
Jerome and St. Justin, echoing Jesus Christ and the preaching of the Apostles.
Jesus Christ anathematized them, calling them hypocrites and liars because the
Pharisees practiced enmity under pretense of doing good. They only perpetuate
what they did once to Christ. Fourth Conclusion: Ever since Christ was lifted
up on Mount Calvary, the world has been subjected to two truly opposite forces:
the Jewish force and the Christian. In the world as it is, there can be only two truly basic
modes, two poles of attraction: the Christian and the Jewish. Only two
religions: Christian and Jewish. All that is not of Christ and for Christ is
done in favor of Judaism. It follows from that, that the de-Christianizing of
the world runs parallel to its Judaizing. Why are only these two modes possible? Because they are the
only ones willed by God, they are the only theological ones. God has divided the
world between Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Cain and Abel, and Christ and
the Anti-Christ. All human energies must serve one front or the other. That is why the Gentile peoples, we to whom the vocation to
the Catholic Church is freely offered, have only two roads ahead to us: to
Christianize ourselves or to Judaize ourselves, to be part of the Olive Tree of
the Church or of the sterile Vine of Judaism, to be sons of Sarah the free
woman, or else of Hagar the bondwoman. If the Gentile people wishes to be free and great, it has no
other solution than to humbly adhere to the Catholic Church. It can have no
other greatness than the incomparable greatness of the Christian nations of the
Middle Ages, which forged saints and heroes, raised the cathedrals, educated the
peoples by the examples of the saints, gave them an understanding of beauty by
Gregorian Chant and the frescoes of Fra Angelico and Giotto, and elevated their
understanding with the Summa Theologica of the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas
Aquinas. If the Gentile people now considers this genuine greatness of
the medieval age as gloomy or obscurantist, and wishes to be great with the
material greatness of Babylon, then it can have it: but only as a servant of
Judaism. In the domain of the material, it is the Jewish people who have the
superiority. History tells us (Werner Sombart) that the renowned greatness of
English and American Capitalism is only a Judaic creation. While Capitalism
fulfills its promises and is unquestionably of incomparable material greatness,
it compromises the work of millions of Christians for the benefit of a much
smaller number of the Jewish people. Fifth Conclusion: The only protection of the
Gentile people against enslaving itself to the material superiority of the
Jewish people is the Catholic life. This is because Jesus Christ alone is the
Savior of all mankind. Note that the Middle Ages did not succumb to material
mastery for centuries. Cautious of its theological disposition, the Catholic Church
applied wise laws to the Jewish people, and was vigilant against their
perversion of Catholics. The Catholic Church, however, has never hated the
Jewish people. On the contrary, it has always prayed and asked prayers for its
spiritual well-being, and defended them against harassment and unjust
persecution. This has not gone unrecognized by the Jewish people itself. So, for
instance, when in France (1807) the Jewish Sanhedrin met publicly for the first
time in centuries, it rendered public homage to the benevolence of the Popes in
a document that one can still read today: "The Israelite Deputies of the Empire of France and of
the Kingdom of Italy, at the Hebrew Synod decreed on the 30th May ult.,
inspired with gratitude for the successive benefits that the Christian
clergy has bestowed in past centuries on the Israelites of different
European States, and full of gratitude for the welcome which diverse Popes
in different epochs have given to Israelites of various countries when
barbarism, prejudice and ignorance combined to persecute the Jews and expel
them from society, declare as follows: That the expression of these sentiments shall be
recorded in the minutes of today so as to remain forever an authentic
witness to the gratitude of the Israelites of this assembly for the
benefits which the generations preceding us have received from
ecclesiastics of different European countries." (From Collection of
the Acts of the Assembly of the Israelites of France and the Kingdom of
Italy by Diogene Tama.) Sixth Conclusion: Under pain of sin, Catholics
cannot hate the Jewish people, cannot persecute them or prevent them to live,
nor disturb them in their private practice of their laws and customs. But, they
must nevertheless preserve themselves from the danger they represent. Catholics
are not to enter into commercial, social, nor political relations which are
bound hypocritically to seek the ruin of Christendom. Jews must not live
together with Christians because this is what their own Jewish laws ordain and
also because their errors and material superiority have virulent consequences
among other peoples. If the other peoples reject these precautions, they will
invite upon themselves these consequences, namely, to serve the Jewish people to
whom belongs superiority in the kingdom of the material. Seventh Conclusion: In the wandering and
pitiable life of the Jewish people one must discover the Christian mystery. This
is magnificently demonstrated by the converted Jew, Fr. Joseph Lehmann, in his
book L’entrée des Israelites dans la société française (p. 3). The Jews
were responsible —directly and/or indirectly —for covering the Just One with
insults, throwing over His shoulders a cloak of contempt, putting on His head a
crown of thorns and into His hands a reed. With striking, spitting, insults, and
injury they lavished on Him every sort of humiliation. They spared Him no shame.
Finally, He was sold for the slave’s price of 30 pieces of silver. Ever since, similar insults have been visited upon the Jewish
people as a chastisement and penalty for its deed. Moses himself warned: "And thou shalt be lost, as a proverb and a byword to all
people, among whom the Lord shall bring thee in [will lead you away]."
(Deut. 28:37) How long must this terrible enmity between Jews and
Christians last? Until God in His mercy brings about the conversion and
reconciliation of the Jewish people. St. Paul teaches us that the day will come
when Israel will recognize Him whom he has denied: "For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, of this
mystery, (lest you should be wise in your own conceits), that blindness in
part has happened in Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come
in. And so all Israel should be saved, as it is written: There shall come
out of Sion, he that shall deliver, and shall turn away ungodliness from
Jacob." (Rom. 11:25,26) When the moment arrives (which is in the hands of God), then
Esau will be reconciled with Jacob, that is to say, the Jews will become
Catholics, and the words of the prophet Ezekiel, five centuries before Christ,
will be fulfilled: "...Thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will take the
children of Israel from among the midst of the nations whither they are
gone: and I will gather them on every side, and will bring them to their own
land. And I will make them one nation in the land on the mountains of
Israel, and one king shall be king over them all: and they shall no more be
two nations, neither shall they be divided any more into two kingdoms. Nor
shall they be defiled any more with their idols, nor with their
abominations, nor with all their iniquities: and I will save them out of all
the places in which they have sinned, and I will cleanse them: and they
shall be my people, and I will be their God." (Ezek. 37:21-23) Then all will be one in Christ because the Jewish people will
convert from its Judaism and the Christians will be Christians in earnest, and
peace will become a reality as the fruit of justice and charity, in Him Who
promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is Jesus Christ, the Blessing of all the
ages. The Jewish and Christian Peoples The relations of Christians and Jews cannot be governed by
the common law of Christians, but only by an exceptional legislation which takes
count of the theological status of the Jewish people. The Catholic Church’s
teaching is that they should neither be eliminated from among us (as
antisemitism seeks) nor given equality of rights, which leads to their
superiority (as is advocated by liberalism or philosemitism). The Catholic Church has always had the habit of praying for
the Jewish people, which was the depository of the Divine Promises up to the
coming of Jesus Christ, in spite of this people’s blindness. More than that, it
has done so on account of that very blindness. Ruled by the same charity, the
Apostolic See has protected this people against unjust vexations, and just as it
reproves all hatred between peoples, so it condemns hatred against the people
formerly chosen by God, that hatred that ordinarily goes by the name of
Antisemitism (from the Decree of the Holy Office, 25 March, 1928). The Jewish people must live among Christians as a blind
witness to the Christian truth, like a spur to keep us faithful. The Catholic
Church teaches that it must not be exterminated (for the Jewish people bears the
mark of Cain given it by God so no one would kill it) nor frequented (for God
warns of its danger). As once they treated Christ, ever since, to persecute
Christianity is their theological preoccupation. "Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of
promise. But as then he, that was born according to the flesh [i.e.,
Ishmael], persecuted him that was after the spirit [i.e., Isaac]; so also it
is now." (Gal. 4:28,29) This theological law is stronger than all human plans and
expedients. The Jewish people realizes this law. The law contained in the
Talmud, which governs Jews, orders enmity with Christians. The celebrated rabbi, Paulus L.B. Drach, who converted to the
Catholic Church, authored a valuable work on the Talmud, De l’harmonie entre
l’église et le synagogue (ed. Paul Melier, Paris 1844). The Talmud is the
corpus of Jewish doctrine, to which the most authentic teachers of Israel in
different periods have contributed. It is the complete civil and religious code
of the Synagogue. Its object is to explain the Law of Moses in conformity with
verbal tradition, and includes discussions of doctors. Although the Christian
reader will sometimes be repelled, for one reason or another, he will get
valuable information to help explain obscure passages in the New Testament. From
the time of the Captivity in Babylon (586 BC), the authority of the rabbis took
the place of that of Moses and the Prophets. Rules for the temporal development
of the people got more important than rules for religious betterment. The Talmud got particularly virulent after Christianity
appeared. Insolent and sacrilegious infamies against Christ and Christians were
written into it, which is why copies were burnt by order of Christian rulers and
popes. Hence, a Jewish synod in Poland in 1631 ordered all in the Talmud that
related to Christ and Christians to be suppressed, saying: "...when you publish a new edition of these books, leave
blank the pages referring to Jesus of Nazareth, making a circle like an O;
and every rabbi or other teacher will take care not to teach these passages
except verbally. In this way, learned Christians will have nothing to
reproach us with on this, and we will live in peace." We have already discussed the spiritual greatness of the
nation from which Christ came. Israel is so great in whatever he does that it is
unable to perpetrate evil except also in a great, a terrible way. We will
discuss four of these ways. He is a consecrated lineage which, if he saves us in
Christ, ruins us in the Antichrist. Yet, Christians cannot hate him, only lament
him. Jewish writers like Barnard Lazare recognize this, the Jewish people forged
as it is by the spirit of the rabbis. The rabbis had separated Israel from the community of
nations; they had made the people a wild solitary people, rebellious against all
law, hostile to all fraternity, shut against every beautiful, noble and generous
ideal; a miserable little nation made bitter by isolation, made brutish by a
narrow education, demoralized and corrupted by an unjustifiable pride (l’Antisemitisme,
v.1, p.57). 1. The Jewish people persecute Christendom. St. Paul denounces it for persecution: "...for you also have suffered the same things from your
own countrymen, even as they have from the Jews, who both killed the Lord
Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are
adversaries to all men; prohibiting us to speak to the Gentiles, that they
may be saved, to fill up their sins always: for the wrath of God is come
upon them to the end." (I Thess. 3:14b-16) See also St. Justin in his Dialogue with the Jew Tryphon
(XVI, 133). St. Basil affirms that the Jewish and pagan people were formerly at
enmity, but joined together against Christians, as is confirmed by Tertullian,
Origen, and Gregory Nazianzen. See Leclerc, Les Martyres (Paris, 1905,
v.1, p.103); and the article of J. Vernet, "Juifs et Chretiens" in
Dictionnaire d’apologétique. Since the 12th century these persecutions became rare because
of the Church’s vigilance. But we find them allied to heretics repeatedly:
Cathars, Vaudois, Hussites. As the Jew Darmesteter himself said (Les
prophètes d’Israel), all revolutionaries in spirit go to the Jews for
arguments. 2. The Jewish people conspire against the Christian State. Some facts: In Spain (694) the Jews conspired with the Jews
in Africa to let the Arabs into Spain; in 711 they allied with the Arabs; in 952
they handed over Barcelona. In 854, Bordeaux was delivered to the Normans by the
Jews; at the end of the 12th century they made common cause with the Mongols
against the Christians of Hungary. 3. The Jewish people win control of property by usury.
[The main vice of the Gentile people is its sensuality. To satisfy this, it
spends itself into debt and must seek moneylenders.—Ed.] The Jewish
people were forbidden to lend at interest among themselves. "Thou shalt not lend to thy brother money to usury, nor
corn, nor any other thing: but to the stranger [i.e., foreigner]. To
thy brother thou shalt lend that which he wanteth, without usury:..."(Deut.
23:19,20) St. Thomas Aquinas says (II-IIae, Q. 78, A. 1) God permitted
them to lend usuriously to foreigners, not as though it were lawful, but in
order to avoid the greater evil, that is, through the avarice to which they were
prone (Is. 56:11) that they should take usury from their own Jewish people who
worshipped the true God. Jansen, the great historian of the Reformation wrote: "The Jews not only monopolized money-changing; the real
source of their wealth was usury...they gradually became the bankers and
financiers for all classes." Jansen cites that in 1338, Emperor Louis of Bavaria allowed
the Jews to charge interest rates as high as 32½% upon the citizens of
Frankfurt, Germany; 43% for foreigners in the city. At Ratisbon, Augsburg, and
Vienna, the legally permitted interest was as high as 86%. One of Jansen’s
contemporaries wrote: "The Jewish usurers now install themselves in fixed
places in even the smallest towns; when they advance five florins they take
security representing six times the value of what is lent; then they claim
interest and compound interest, so that the poor man is deprived of all he
had (Erasmus of Erbach" 1487) The superiority of the Jewish moneylenders and the
extravagant wastefulness of the Gentiles is exemplified by the fact that when
Philip Augustus expelled the Jewish people from France in the 12th century, they
owned a third of the land, and had so gotten hold of the money, that when they
left, it was difficult to find any anywhere. 4. Jews are known to kill Christians. Already St. Justin (3rd century) said so. The Talmud allows
it. History confirms it. It is certain that lives of Christians have been taken:
St. William of York, 12 years old (1144); St. Richard of Paris (1179); St.
Dominic de Val, crucified at Saragossa, Spain (1250); Bl. Henry of Munich
(1345); Bl. Simeon (1475); the controversial martyrdoms of Fr. Thomas of
Cangiano and his aide (1840) in Damascus. As grisly as they are, these four accusations can be
documented in every period and country where Jews live with Christians. In
earlier times the Jews could only act directly against Christians who were
well-cautioned about them. But now that Christians are de-Christianized, the
Jews pursue their aggression with the help of the Christians themselves. Judgments of Popes Regarding the Jewish People There are at least 15 papal documents warning the Catholic
Church against the dangers presented by the Jewish people. Catholic theology has
always recognized that the Jewish people are a sacred people. In one sense, the
Jewish people is the Father of the Church, because the oracles of God were given
to it; and however perverse a father may be, he is owed protection and respect.
Antisemitism is condemned because it is persecution of the Jewish people without
taking account of their sacred character nor the rights that come from this. An
excerpt from one of the papal documents regarding the Jewish people tidily
summarizes the Catholic teaching: "They are the living witnesses of the true Faith. The
Christian must not exterminate or oppress them....We must not molest them in
the exercise of the privileges accorded them....As they seek our help, we
accept and take them under our protection; and following our predecessors
Callixtus, Eugenius, Alexander, Clement and Celestine, we forbid the forcing
of baptism on a Jew, also harming them in any way or taking their goods,
etc., or violating their cemeteries and digging up corpses to find money.
The punishment for disobedience to these dispositions is excommunication."
(from the Constitution Licet Perfidia Judaeorum, Pope Innocent III,
1199) Nevertheless, though the Jewish people must be protected, it
was recognized it was dangerous enough to be isolated into its own
neighborhoods. Was this an offense against its natural human rights? —No, for
this people refuses to assimilate itself into the country that gives it
hospitality, and lives by Talmudic laws contrary to the common good. The policy
of the Catholic Church is to extend liberty to the Jewish people to develop and
live within its legitimate laws while guarding Catholics, however,
against its domination. The Church’s Wisdom The Catholic Church perceives the deep desire of the Jewish
people to impose its material superiority and the guilt of Catholics who seek
this people to get material gain. The enslaving of Christians and Christian
nations began by the fault of Christians. If Christians wish to remain free, let them avoid
entanglements with the Jewish people. It dominates in every branch of commerce
and finance, in philosophy and the universities. Its action is felt in the
consequences of the French Revolution, in the socialization of socialist
countries, and in the slavery of Communism. If the Gentile people wishes for a
civilization based on economic greatness and the comfortable life, with
everything set at the epitome of organization and technical development–then it
can have it, with the Jewish people as master and the all the rest as slaves. Since Christ came into the world, a civilization where Mammon
is king is only possible under the Jewish people because, as said previously,
the gift of dominance has been given it in all that is of the flesh, the world. Theology rules history. History has a meaning, a theological
one; because God knows how to profit from all the successes and failures of men
to realize His plan. God gave two enemies to the nations that flourished under the
Church’s guidance in the Middle Ages: an internal one, the spirit of
rebellion against the spiritual in order that worldly greatness be achieved; and
an external one, the Jewish people, who live among the Christians to be a
goad and a spur. Christendom under holy kings and popes knew how to guard
against these dangers. Christendom perceived in a truly theological manner the
Jewish people’s domination of the material world and so isolated this sacred but
perfidious people. But in the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation, carnal
instincts rebelled, and by a theological necessity stronger than men’s
calculations, the emancipation of the Jewish people necessarily followed: an
emancipation that under Capitalism and Communism turned into domination. Fault is not to be charged to the Jewish people for the evils
that have come upon society. It is realizing the program which, in God’s plan,
is its task to bring to completion. The fault is on the Catholics, unfaithful to
their great vocation, who have sought with its help a material, carnal, worldly
greatness–which ends in rivers of Christian blood. The Jewish People and the De-Christianized Peoples The true defense of Christendom is not police measures, but
Jesus Christ. Woe to the world if it forgets Him! At the end of the Middle Ages,
the Gentile people committed great sins, especially the clergy. Thus weakened,
this people succumbed to the brain and hand of Judaization —through the
Renaissance, the French Revolution, and Communism. Judaism would give mental
ammunition to the rebels, e.g., Renaissance skeptics and 18th-century
libertines. Werner Sombart, the authoritative historian of Capitalism who is
neither Catholic nor antisemite, shows in his book Les juifs et la vie
économique how some Protestant sects, especially the Puritans, are Judaic.
Close relations formed between Judaism and some of the Reformation sects and a
great keenness for Hebrew studies swept Europe. In England alone, for instance,
a sect named the "Levellers" called themselves Jews and wished to make the Torah
the English code of law, Cromwell was urged to imitate the Sanhedrin by
numbering 70 members in the Council of State, and it was proposed (1629) in
Parliament to change the Sunday worship to Saturday. Whatever influence Judaism had in the Renaissance and
Reformation, it certainly profited. The Jewish author, Bernard Lazare, says: "The Jewish spirit triumphed with Protestantism." (l’Antisemitisme,
x.I, p.225) From the breach thus opened in the structure of Christendom,
the Jewish people hope to exercise their astuteness to realize their ancient
dream of a world empire. Having rejected Christ, it awaits the messiah promised
in the Talmud who will "give to the Jews the scepter of the world." To penetrate Christendom, the masses must be captivated and
rebellion fomented against its two pillars —Pope and King. The formula prepared
by Judaism for their destruction: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. This
formula was introduced first to the malcontents making up the membership of the
Freemasonic lodges. The lodges proclaim inoffensive programs about the
improvement of humanity, but the real aim is to "destroy all that the
Catholic Church has done in the world" (Etudes sur la franc-maçonnerie
américaine, A. Preuss). There are solid proofs of their deadly activity in the public
record, especially in confiscated Masonic documents and the public claims of the
Masons themselves. The Jewish author Isaac Wise reported: "Masonry is a Jewish institution, whose history,
regulations, duties, recommendations and explanations are Jewish to the
end." (The Israelite, August, 1855) Under the deceitful slogan of the Rights of Man, Christian
society has become ripe for conquest. Firstly, by Capitalism, all wealth
falls to centralized control. Secondly, by Liberalism and Socialism,
the understanding of nations is perverted and their heart corrupted. Thirdly, by
Communism, all opposition is eliminated and the remaining people are
submitted to a yoke from which they cannot escape. Capitalism The essence of the capitalist regime in force since the
French Revolution which has produced the material greatness of the modern world
is the regime of financial wealth as the prime mover of all economic affairs.
The financial power concentrated in the banks assures the development of all
commercial, industrial, and agricultural activity. By means of credit and
lending at interest, finance capital mobilizes great wealth, which in turn
increases that same finance capital. The banks enrich themselves rapidly by
lending at interest. By being loaned, money acquires a magnetic power. Lending
at interest, in a regime with monetary stability, tends to create two
well-defined classes. The lending, capitalist class necessarily goes on
getting richer, because the money cannot help increasing. The working
class must work both for itself and for the lender. The moment comes when the
work done does not cover what is due to the lender, and then it goes into debt. Another way by which bankers enrich themselves is the
numerous operations of loans and repayment of loans. It is a real creation of
money for the use of the banker. Credit is money, and in creating it, they
become wealthy. It is public knowledge that the Jewish sector, relatively
small compared to the Gentile sector which devotes itself to the creation of
wealth, controls especially the financial power that is exercised through banks.
Wise Solomon observes for us under the power of the Holy Ghost: "By slothfulness a building shall be brought down, and
through the weakness of hands, the house shall drop through. For laughter
they make bread, and wine that the living may feast: and all things obey
money." (Eccl. 10:18,19 [emphasis added]) The gifted Jewish bankers have created a controlled economy
whose ultimate end is the multiplication of money. Even money-strapped
governments become their obedient clients. Governments could break their
financial bonds except that, despite many other circumstances, these bankers are
also national or international at will and can bring pressure to bear from
nearly any point. International Judaism has created international capitalism to
gain international wealth. Werner Sombart’s voluminous work (Les juifs et la
vie économique, Payot, Paris, 1923 [translated from the German]) shows how
Judaism has created Capitalism and could not be otherwise explained without it.
Demo-liberal Corruption and Socialism Beyond its financial influence, Judaic thinking comes to
dominate the cultural and educational fields. The pattern repeats: Jews get into
posts of influence, and submit society to a high degree of corruption in ways of
thinking and acting, which leads to a reaction of public opinion against them. But demo-liberalism is only a stage. The next step is
socialism, whose seminal thinkers, from Marx to Leon Blum, were of the Jewish
people. The construction of both Capitalism and Socialism, two opposing forces,
is to further divide and conquer. Capitalism robs Christians of what they have.
Socialism poisons those who have not, and so starts the Class War. Catholicism,
however, which constructed Christendom, is confined to sacristies and convents. The people are Judaized: the rich with Liberalism, the poor
with Socialism. It thinks and acts in the manner of Judaism. Thinking itself
free, it thinks with the Judaized mind of the media. "The great ideal of Judaism is that the whole world
should be imbued with Jewish teaching, and that in a universal fraternity of
nations —an enlarged Judaism —all separate races and religious should
disappear.... By their activity in literature and science, by expressing
their dominant passion in every branch of public activity, they are
gradually pouring into Jewish molds all non-Jewish systems and ideas." (Jewish
World newspaper, Feb. 9, 1863) Communism It is a matter of public historical record that Communism was
financed by Jewish money. Jacob Schiff and his banking partners, Felix and Max
Warburg, financed revolutionary propaganda among Russian prisoners of war in
different countries and helped Trotsky. Schiff publicly declared (1917)
that the revolution had succeeded thanks to his help. A Jewish review declared that Communism had achieved "the
emancipation of Jews and the triumph of Judaism," because it had "been
created, realized by Jews" (Vu, April, 1932). Capitalism is only a transition stage toward the egalitarian
leveling of Communism. That Communism was created by Judaism does not mean it
has the control of it as it once had, especially since 1947 when the alliance
broke into two blocks. In Russia now there is a general anti-Judaism feeling and
though Judaism still promotes Communism, it prefers to see it realized in
another manner. Will the Jewish people succeed in its ambitions? To what
extent? God knows. He has His plans, and knows how to combine human acts to
further them. The amalgamation of the Jewish and Gentile peoples has been
catastrophic; but God has allowed it, so something good will come of it. One of the goods will be that Catholic nations will expiate
for their centuries of infidelities. These nations who, headed by France, should
have been the heralds of Christ to the peoples of East and West have instead
been heralds of sin. As the Jewish people were punished in 70 AD, so the Gentile
people. For the Christian peoples, yesterday it was Russia; tomorrow, the world.
A global chastisement is due for both Jew and Gentile alike, for both have
offended God for centuries and need purifying. Afterwards then will appear men
of sanctity, full of the genuine Catholic faith and charity of the martyrs. A
weak and hypocritical Catholicism will no longer be possible. Only after this
purification will be possible the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau, Christian
and Jew. St Paul teaches that when the knowledge of the Catholic Faith shall
have reached all nations, Israel will convert en masse. In the shared
pain of a common chastisement, all will understand that we are brothers in Him
who was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; in Whom all nations of the earth
are blessed. There will be an outpouring of the Spirit of God in the coming
collision of the forces of evil against the few who will resist. He will inflame
hearts through the flames of material punishment. He will enter them and teach
them to meet together in Him who is "meek and humble of heart." Because
we all have been ruined by pride and materialism, and must be saved in
the humility of Christ. The Mystery of History and Eschatology The Jewish people are of exceptional importance in human
history. Other peoples have been dominant, but only for a time. To begin to
understand the mystery of the Jewish people in history, let us make some
theological considerations about history. History begins with the Creation. Here the initiative was
with God. God continues to act on humanity, to continue what He made good at the
start. He can give direction and meaning to otherwise absurd acts of men. Man,
however, has the initiative in doing evil. Looking at things from a human viewpoint, one can see
two histories, one written by the intervention of God, and the other, by
man. In the divine history of God, Christ is the center. Profane
history is the history of successive civilizations. In the profane history of
civilizations, it seems that man’s will prevails. In it, however, one sees a
strong dose of fatality, by which Divine Providence directs the progress of
human affairs for purposes it does not reveal. In reality there is only one history, that
written by God with the cooperation of all His creatures. It is a magnificent
drama. The Creation. The disorder introduced by human sin. The profit of God
from this fault. The Incarnation. The conflict with Evil. The Resurrection.
Christ Risen is at the center, and with Him, His chosen ones. When the Mystical
Body of Christ is complete, all history will end. Profane history, written by
man and his passions, is only a secondary element in God’s great unique history. The key to this one history is given by St. Paul: "...for all are yours; and you are Christ’s, and Christ
is God’s." (I Cor. 3:22a,23) The world is for the benefit of the faithful, to teach them
something, to serve them. The faithful are for Christ, and Christ —as Man —is
ordained to God. As St. Thomas Aquinas says, the movement of history as made
by men does not have its end in itself, but outside itself, that is, the
filling-up of the number of the elect which will bring the movement of all
history to a close (De Potentia 3,10 ad 4). God knows how to make men’s perverse designs serve His
purpose exactly. (St. Thomas Aquinas gives the example of Joseph and his
brothers.) Profane history is what St. Augustine thinks of under the phrase
"City of Man," as distinct from the "City of God." The Bible gives us
the profane history up to Abram. After that, God is in control. It is divine
history. It seems as though God abandoned the City of Man to its own devices. We
could even venture to say that the life of the Gentile nations fell under "the
Prince of this world": not because they were bad in themselves, but because
Satan had gotten possession of them since Man yielded to his suggestion. St. John seems to indicate the logic of the great laws of
civilizations: St. John juxtaposes divine and profane history. "We know that we are of God, and the whole
world is seated in wickedness." (I Jn. 5:19 [Emphasis added]) In his Epistles, St. Paul contrasts the dialectic of the
world —i.e., rivalries between Jew and Greek, Master and Slave, Man and
Woman —with the City of God: "For you are all the children of God by faith, in Christ
Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on
Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free:
there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And
if you be Christ’s, then are you the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the
Promise." (Gal. 3:26-29) Many authors show how civilizations decline, how there are
laws of birth, growth, and death of civilizations. Their common error is to
think that profane history of nations is the only history. In fact, profane
history aids the true divine history, because the latter makes use of the
former. It is inserted into it, mixed with it. "And we know that to them that love God, all things work
together unto good, to such as, according to His purpose, are called to be
saints." (Rom. 8:28) St. Thomas Aquinas comments: "What happens to the good, who are the noblest part of
the universe, is not done for the benefit of others, but for themselves. The
reprobate, and inferior creatures, are ordained for the good of the elect." History exists to give time for the preaching of the Gospel.
"And this gospel of the kingdom, shall be preached in the
whole world, for a testimony to all nations, and then shall the consummation
come." (Mt. 24:14) But the preaching of the Gospel is continually frustrated by
Judaism. This historical fact is given us by St. Paul, especially in I
Thessalonians: "Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and
have persecuted us, and please not God, and are adversaries to all men;
prohibiting us to speak to the Gentiles, that they may be saved, to fill up
their sins always: for the wrath of God is come upon them to the end." (I
Thess. 2:15,16) "Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of
promise. But as then he, that was born according to the flesh, persecuted
him that was after the spirit; so also it is now." (Gal. 4:28,29) While the Catholic Church opposed the amalgamation of the
Jewish people with Christians, it insisted the Jews be treated with respect in
view of the greatness of their ancestors: a sacred people, but inimical. When
Catholic fervor cooled and pagan influences entered, then Christian nations
imprudently opened their doors to the Jews. Nowadays, nations no longer have
missionary ambitions or political aims; they are moved purely by economic
welfare, in which they cannot succeed except in dependence on the Jews. The Mystery of the Tension Between the Jewish and Gentile
Peoples St. Paul discusses this mysterious dispensation of Providence
in his Letter to the Romans, chapters 9 and 11. Further testimony from Sacred
Scripture highlights this tension in relation to history. 1. The Jewish people is superior to the Gentile
people. "But glory, and honor, and peace to every one that
worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." (Rom. 2:9) "What advantage then hath the Jew, or what is the profit
of circumcision? Much every way. First indeed, because the words of God were
committed to them." (Rom. 3:1) And so Israel should be saved, as it is written: There
shall come out of Sion, he that shall deliver, and shall turn away ungodliness
from Jacob. And this is to them my covenant: when I shall take away their
sins. As concerning the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake: but as
touching the election, they are most dear for the sake of the fathers (Rom.
11:26-28). 2. But this superiority comes from faith, not from the
flesh. The Jewish people’s constant temptation is to think it comes from the
flesh. This is indeed great, but great only because it was to bring us the
Savior. 3. The Jewish-Gentile tension and the superiority of
the Jewish people over the Gentile people come to an end in Christendom. This
end is not temporal, but supra-historical. "For you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal. 3:29b) 4. There is a mystery regarding the Jewish people:
that a part of this people has been rejected so the Gentile people may be saved. "And Isaiah crieth out concerning Israel: If the
number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall
be saved....And as Isaiah foretold: Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had
left us a seed, we had been made as Sodom,and we had been like unto Gomorrah.
What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who followed not after justice,
have attained to justice, even the justice that is of faith." (Rom.
9:27,29,30) "I [Paul] say then: Hath God cast away his people? God
forbid. For I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of
Benjamin. God hath not cast away his people, which he foreknew. Know you not
what the scripture saith of Elias; how he calleth on God against Israel?
Lord, they have slain thy prophets, they have dug down thy altars; and I am
left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the divine answer to
him? I have left me seven thousand men, that have not bowed their knees
to Baal. Even so then at this present time also, there is a remnant
saved according to the election of grace." (Rom. 11:1-5) St. Paul says the Gentiles have received the Faith so that
the jealousy of the Jewish people might be aroused to receive it as well. "I say then, have they [the Jews] so stumbled, that they
should fall? God forbid. But by their offense, salvation is come to the
Gentiles, that they may be emulous of them." (Rom 11:11) 5. The reprobation of Israel is allowed until the
fullness of the Gentile people comes in. "For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, of this
mystery, (lest you should be wise in your own conceits), that blindness in
part has happened in Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come
in." (Rom. 11:25) 6. Until that time, however, the Jewish people will be
jealous of the Gentile Christians. Unfortunately, this will not inspire them to
seek the salvation enjoyed by the Gentile Christians, but provoke it to enmity. 7. In the course of history, some Jews will be saved. 8. One day, all of Israel will convert. (See Ps. 147;
Ps. 126.) "Now if the offense of them [the Jewish people] be the
riches of the world, and the diminution of them, the riches of the Gentile;
how much more the fulness of them." (Rom. 11:12) "And so all Israel should be saved..." (Rom. 11:26a) "Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it
in the islands that are afar off, and say: He that scattered Israel will
gather him: and he will keep him as the shepherd doth his flock. For the
Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and delivered him out of the hand of one that was
mightier than he. And they shall come, and shall give praise in mount Sion:
and they shall flow together to the good things of the Lord, for the corn,
and wine, and oil, and the increase of cattle and herds, and their soul
shall be as a watered garden, and they shall be hungry no more....Thus saith
the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: As yet shall they say this word in the
land of Juda, and in the cities thereof, when I shall bring back their
captivity: The Lord bless thee, the beauty of justice, the holy mountain."
(Jer. 31:10-12, 23) "For I say to you, you shall not see me henceforth till
you say: Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord." (Mt. 23:39) "And they shall fall by the edge of the sword; and shall
be led away captives into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down
by the Gentiles; till the times of the nations be fulfilled." (Lk. 21:24) 9. The conversion of the Jewish people to the Catholic
Church will be in the course of history. 10. History proceeds towards an eschatological state
where Jew and Gentile are one. "For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and
breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh;
making void the law of commandments contained in decrees; that he might make
the two in himself into one new man, making peace; and might reconcile both
to God in one body by the cross, killing the enmities in himself. And
coming, he preached peace to you that were afar off, and peace to them that
were nigh....Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus
Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building, being
framed together, groweth up into an holy temple in the Lord. In whom you
also are built together into an habitation of God in the Spirit." (Eph.
2:14-17,20-22) The Jewish People and the End-Times We must consider the role of the Jewish people in those last
events which, already outside history, have a gravitational pull on all history.
The order of these events seems to be: 1. The fullness of the nations (as prophesied by St.
Paul) coming into the Catholic Church. 2. At the same time, conversions amongst the Jewish
people multiply. These developments enrage the central core of Judaism, and it
succeeds in its stepped-up propaganda among the Gentile people. Thus will come
the universal Apostasy. "Let no man deceive you by any means, for unless there
come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition,
who opposeth, and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is
worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as if
he were God." (II Thess. 2:3,4) 3. The Apostasy will be contemporaneous with the
Antichrist (II Thess. 2:3). He will be recognized as the messiah of the Jews and
master of the Gentiles. He will arrive by Satan’s suggestion. 4. The conversion of the Jewish people will follow,
chiefly by the preaching of Elias (and Enoch). "Behold I will send you Elias the prophet, before the
coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the
heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their
fathers:..." (Mal. 4:5,6) 5. And with the Apostasy and Antichrist will come the
Great Tribulation announced by our Lord. "For there shall be then great tribulation, such as hath
not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be." (Mt.
24:21) 6. Following that... "...the sun will be darkened...then shall appear the sign
of the Son of man in heaven:...and they shall see the Son of man coming in
the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty....And he shall send his
angels with a trumpet, and a great voice: and they shall gather together his
elect from the four winds, from the farthest parts of the heavens to the
utmost bounds of them." (Mt. 24:29,30,31) 7. Then, the General Judgment. "And when the son of Man shall come in his majesty, and
all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the seat of his majesty
[judgment]: And all nations shall be gathered together before him, and he
shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep
from the goats." (Mt. 25:31,32) 8. But when the glory of the Lord appears, the heavens
will pass away and the earth will dissolve. "But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which
the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be
melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be
burnt up." (II Pet. 3:10) 9. There will be a new heaven and a new earth. "But we look for new heavens and a new earth according to
his promises, in which justice dwelleth." (II Pet. 3:13). "For behold I create new heavens, and a new earth: and
the former things shall not be in remembrance, and they shall not come upon
the heart." (Isaiah 65:17). "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first
heaven and the first earth was gone, and the sea is now no more. And I John
saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." (Apoc. 21:1,2) 10. An eternal banquet in heaven. "That you may eat and drink at my table, in my kingdom:
and may sit upon thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (Lk. 22:30) Just as Israel has a primordial mission in historical time,
so it has in the eschatological events. The Jewish people is great with a triple
greatness: in its name Israel given by God, in the benefits received from God,
and that it gave flesh to Jesus Christ. The Gentile people, grafted into this
Olive Tree, have a mission to accomplish in God’s plan, too, that is, to
accelerate (unwittingly) the evangelization of the world. But at the end, when the nations have entered the messianic
kingdom, Israel, by being newly inserted into the Olive Tree (i.e., the
Catholic Church) from which it has been partially detached, will announce by its
conversion to the Catholic Church the moment of the start of the great events
which prepare the Second Coming of the Son of Man. And in the consummation of
eschatology, in the eternal banquet of Divine contemplation, called in from the
East and the West "they will come and sit with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in
the Kingdom of Heaven." Epilogue The Jewish people is the bearer of salvation in Christ. One
cannot adequately evaluate the people that has given us Mary and Jesus. With
them we touch the Divine. The Jewish people should have acknowledged their
littleness in comparison to them. But a part of Israel was consumed by pride.
For the wrong reasons, it thought itself greater than all other races, greater
than even Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Thinking itself superior to
all, it put a fence round itself to prevent contamination from others, and
worked to dominate them. In the system of carnal, worldly greatness they have
raised up with the de-Christianized peoples, the Jews are the masters, and no
power seems able to resist their hidden power. So, must the Christian peoples resign themselves to a
degrading slavery? In no way. The Catholic life can be summarized: Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is
the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself (Mt. 22: 37-39). Love means seeking the good of those whom we love, that is,
God’s good, which is that His Name should be glorified by the doing of
His will, and Man’s good, which is that all rights necessary for him to
obtain his temporal and eternal welfare be afforded him. Infractions against
these "goods" should be prevented and/or punished by responsible authority.
Charity, remember, is not sentimentality. It is to seek the real good of
others and to hate evil. These things understood, the ambitions of the Jewish people
can be prevented in two ways at the same time. Firstly, the
Catholic life of Gentile nations must be strengthened. Since there is a
theological law proved in history that de-Christianization allows the ascendancy
of Judaism, the revivification of the Catholic spirit in private and public life
is the only way to ensure its decline. Secondly, acts of
aggression by Judaism must be resisted. A characteristic strategy of Judaism is
to perpetrate falsehood. "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of
your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood
not in the truth; because the truth was not in him. When he speaketh a lie,
he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof." (Jn.
8:44) The Gentile Christians are eradicated under the pretense of
security, enslaved in the name of liberty, scorned under pretense of fraternity,
mastered under guise of equality (of democracy), robbed under pretense of giving
credit, endarkened under pretense of enlightenment. It is unthinkable to Catholics that the Jewish people should
be repressed simply for being Jewish. The Catholic argument is not hostile to
Jewishness as such. Rather, it is a defense of the true Jewish heritage, the
glory of which is Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. "The Jews must not be persecuted or chased like
beasts....They are living signs that remind us of the Passion of our Lord.
Besides, they are scattered through the world so that, while they pay for
such a crime, they can be the witnesses of our redemption." (St. Bernard of
Clairvaux, Letter 363) "The [Catholic] Church has a nobler triumph over the Jews
by making them see their errors or converting them than by killing them. It
is not in vain that the Church has prayers for the incredulous Jews: for it
would be pointless to pray for them if we did not hope that they may come to
believe." (St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 365)
The Catholic Church defends the true Jewish heritage, that is, the principles of Christianity, by outlawing its infection by pharisaism. It is the prayer of the Catholic Church that true Israelites understand they cannot attain to the true greatness of their people until they themselves take sword in hand to clean out from within themselves the leaven of the Pharisees that perverts them, and adhere to Him who came to save all men.