Culture Wars Letter

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Geremia

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I received a snail-mail letter from Culture Wars Magazine about E. Michael Jones’s book The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit. I have no idea how they got my address. Has anyone else received this letter? Regardless, it has made me think about how Catholics should help convert the Jews, not accept that their Old Covenant is still valid and that extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the [Catholic] Church there is no salvation”) no longer applies today.

For example, here’s a quote from the USCCB’s Catechism on the relationship between Jews and Catholics:
The Catholic Church also acknowledges her special relationship to the Jewish people. The Second Vatican Council declared that “this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts he makes nor the calls he issues.” When God called Abraham out of Ur, he promised to make of him a “great nation.” This began the history of God’s revealing his divine plan of salvation to a chosen people with whom he made enduring covenants. Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them.
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John Paul II’s CCC even says “the Old Covenant has never been revoked.” This is perhaps saddest thing about the false ecumenism resulting from the commonest interpretation of the Vatican II document Nostra Ætate on the relations with non-Christian religions. John Paul II said numerous times that the Jews’ covenant is still valid and that they can be saved with it, i.e. outside the Catholic Church 😦 . People often justify this with St. Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” But it’s clear from extra Ecclesiam nulla salus that this does not imply the Old Covenant is still valid for salvation. Bishop Challoner’s remark on St. Matthew 5:17 says: “By accomplishing all the figures and prophecies; and perfecting all that was imperfect.” The Old Covenant was imperfect, therefore Jews cannot save themselves with it.
 
For a real eye-opener (at least for me), read Roy Schoeman’s Salvation is from the Jews. It’s a wonderful book on the important and continuing role of the Jewish people.
 
Geremia, regarding the quote from the USCCB’s catechism here is the current news.

From the USSCB site:
WASHINGTON (CNS) – The U.S. bishops have voted to ask the Vatican to approve a small change in the U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults to clarify church teaching on God’s covenant with the Jewish people.

The proposed change – which would replace one sentence in the catechism – was discussed by the bishops in executive session at their June meeting in Orlando, Fla.,… The change, which must be confirmed by the Vatican Congregation for Clergy, would remove from the catechism a sentence that reads: "Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them."

Replacing it would be this sentence: "To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his word, ‘belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ’" (Rom 9:4-5; cf. CCC, No. 839). …

John Paul II said numerous times that the Jews’ covenant is still valid and that they can be saved with it, i.e. outside the Catholic Church

Will you post the sources for the ‘numerous times’ please.

With due respect to Bishop Challoner, we may agree with his opinion but it doesn’t carry the weight of a pronouncement from the Magisterium which would be binding on Catholics.
 
yinekka said:
The change, which must be confirmed by the Vatican Congregation for Clergy, would remove from the catechism a sentence that reads: "Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them."

Replacing it would be this sentence: "To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his word, ‘belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ’" (Rom 9:4-5; cf. CCC, No. 839).
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Yes, I have read the proposed replacement before. It is no better for two reasons:

  1. *]It quotes Romans 9:4-5 out of context. This chapter is about St. Paul who has “great sadness and continual sorrow in [his] heart” for the conversion of Jews, his “kinsmen according to the flesh.” He quotes Isaiah that, sadly, only a “remnant shall be saved” (reliquiæ salvæ fient) through their conversion.
    *]Here is 839CCC:
    “Those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways.”
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    The relationship of the Church with the Jewish People. When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People, “the first to hear the Word of God.” The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews “belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ”, “for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”
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    It makes no mention about the necessity for the Jews’ conversion for salvation despite this doctrine’s being upheld for hundreds of years, e.g. in this ex cathedra statement from Pope Eugene IV’s 1442 Bull Cantate Domino:
    It [the Catholic Church] firmly believes, professes, and teaches that the matter pertaining to the law of the Old Testament, of the Mosiac law, which are divided into ceremonies, sacred rites, sacrifices, and sacraments, because they were established to signify something in the future, although they were suited to the divine worship at that time, after our Lord’s coming had been signified by them, ceased, and the sacraments of the New Testament began; and that whoever, even after the passion, placed hope in these matters of the law and submitted himself to them as necessary for salvation, as if faith in Christ could not save without them, sinned mortally.
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    yinekka said:
    John Paul II said numerous times that the Jews’ covenant is still valid and that they can be saved with it, i.e. outside the Catholic Church

    Will you post the sources for the ‘numerous times’ please.
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    Performing a Google search on the Vatican website, I list chronologically the speeches I found. Italian translations are mine and are fairly literal.

    1. *]
      This is our certainty: we know that Jesus is a man like us, but at the same time he is the “Word Incarnate”, He is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity become a man; and therefore in Jesus human nature, and therefore the whole of humanity, is redeemed, saved, ennobled to the extent of participating in “divine life” by means of Grace. (27 December 1978 speech)
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      If Christ saves “the whole of humanity” (“tutta l’umanità” in Italian) then Christ saves the Jews even if they do not convert to Catholicism?
      *]
      E, mediante la partecipazione a questa verità e a questo amore, egli fa di nuovo di noi, in se stesso, i figli del suo eterno Padre; ottiene, una volta per sempre, la salvezza dell’uomo: di ogni uomo e di tutti, …] (27 April 1980 homily)
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      And, through the participation in this truth and in this love, he makes us again, in himself, the children of his eternal Father; He obtains, once and for all, the salvation of man: of each man and everyone, …]
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      So, if Christ saves “each man and everyone,” then Jews are saved without converting to Catholicism?
      *]
      L’Eucaristia: il sacramento dell’alleanza del corpo e del sangue di Cristo, dell’alleanza, che è eterna. Questa è l’alleanza che tutti comprende. Questo sangue raggiunge tutti e tutti salva. (6 June 1985 homily)
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      The Eucharist: the sacrament of the covenant of the body and blood of Christ, of the covenant, that is eternal. This is the covenant that all understand. This is the blood that reaches everybody and saves everybody.
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      Again, if Christ saves everyone, then why must Catholics help them by converting them?
      yinekka said:
      With due respect to Bishop Challoner, we may agree with his opinion but it doesn’t carry the weight of a pronouncement from the Magisterium which would be binding on Catholics.
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      Cantate Domino carries more weight. 🙂
 
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