Liberal Deacon Has No Response

[GoodTony]

Lent is a time for reflection and edification as we Catholics walk to the foot of the cross on Good Friday. However, a Catholic Church in Pennsylvania sees spiritual edification during Lent a different way. At that church, a liberal deacon is giving four classes (one per week) on the Jewish culture at the time of Jesus. He is using the book entitled “The Jews in the Time of Jesus” by Rabbi Wylen. The book is published by Paulist Press as an ecumenical outreach, I guess. The deacon talks to the students about the Jewish sects at the time of Jesus. When asked by his students about Rabbi Wylen saying that the New Testament is unreliable, the gospel writers are unreliable, Jesus sinned when he evicted the money changers from the temple, the New Testament should not be under the same binding as the Old Testament, etc., the deacon has no response.
Have the forum members read this book? Do the forum members have a response?

 

[jwinch2]

Many current theologians and apologists have been very successful at looking into our Jewish roots in order explain our faith more effectively. Books by Scott Hahn and Brant Pitre immediately come to mind. I guess I don’t have a problem with the idea, but why the Deacon could not have simply used a faithful Catholic source escapes me.

You labeled him “Liberal” in your title and post. Do you have other information as to why or is it on the basis of this situation? Also, how are you coming by this information? Are you member of this parish who has experienced it or is this hearsay?

 

[MidnightSun12]

While I think it’s ok to look towards the practices and customs of other faiths, I think it’s a dangerous thing to start studying the moral theory of these religions (especially from within the Catholic church). At the end of the day, the Catholic faith represents the one, true faith on earth. I don’t think we should ever be looking towards other faiths to try to explain what can already be found within the church’s infallible teachings.

 

[ChadS]

It’s also quite possible that the Deacon hasn’t studied the book as well as he should have and isn’t familiar with the Rabbi’s argument as he should be. So when asked about a specific point in the argument he didn’t have an answer at hand. Unless this Deacon has specifically advocated that point it might not be fair to go off the rails and accuse this Deacon of accepting this viewpoint or labeling him a liberal or whatever else comes to mind.

ChadS

 

[jwinch2]

While I think it’s ok to look towards the practices and customs of other faiths, I think it’s a dangerous thing to start studying the moral theory of these religions (especially from within the Catholic church). At the end of the day, the Catholic faith represents the one, true faith on earth. I don’t think we should ever be looking towards other faiths to try to explain what can already be found within the church’s infallible teachings.

Many things within Jewish tradition can and do help us to understand our own traditions within the Church. A simple and obvious one is the Passover meal. If you do not understand Jewish tradition on the Passover, you do not really understand the Sacrifice of the Mass and more specifically, Holy Communion. Again, check out Scott Hahn and Brant Pitre for great stuff on this: amazon.com/Jesus-Jewish-Roots-Eucharist-Unlocking/dp/0385531842/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330816779&sr=1-16

You can also look to the role of the Queen Mother in the Kingdom of David to help us understand the role of our Blessed Mother in interceding for us with Christ.

 

[OraLabora]

While I think it’s ok to look towards the practices and customs of other faiths, I think it’s a dangerous thing to start studying the moral theory of these religions (especially from within the Catholic church). At the end of the day, the Catholic faith represents the one, true faith on earth. I don’t think we should ever be looking towards other faiths to try to explain what can already be found within the church’s infallible teachings.

Well except that our own faith grew out of Jewish tradition, Jesus was Jewish, and many vestigial Jewish practices remain in our faith.

It is much easier to understand the context of Jesus’s life if we know who the Pharisees, Samaritans, Sadducees, etc. are, if we understand the history of the Israelites, etc.

Our own moral theology is said by Jesus to complete the Jewish law, not replace it. So the Church’s infallible teachings include the entire corpus of the Old Testament and how Jesus has been prophesied since earliest recorded Jewish history. As for morality, we still, for example, retain the decalogue as one of the fundamental pillars of our morality.

You can no more separate Catholicism from Judaism than you can separate the Son from the Father.

 

[Ancient1]

If the Deacon has chosen a book that makes heretical statements and he cannot answer what they mean, he is obviously unqualified to be teaching this particular class.

I would politely and with explicit examples such as you have here, ask the priest why this text is being used and that confusion rather than knowledge may be the outcome of this class.