Call me crazy, but I think we should hold to the inherent teaching of the Bible, the Fathers of the Church, and the saints throughout the ages:
Acts 7:51:52: “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers behaved, so do you also. Which of the prophets have your fathers not persecuted? And they have slain them who foretold the coming of the Just One, of Whom you have now been the betrayers and murderers”.
1 Thess: 2:14-16: [tT]he Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and have persecuted us, do not please God, and are enemies to all men; prohibiting us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they might be saved; to fill up their sin always: for the wrath of God has come upon them to the end".
St. Alphonsus: “Poor Jews! You invoked a dreadful curse upon your own heads in saying: “His blood be on us AND ON OUR CHILDREN!” (Mt.27:25); and that curse you carry upon you till this day, you miserable race, and to the end of time shall you endure the chastisement of that innocent Blood”.
Pope Innocent III: "The Lord made Cain a wanderer and fugitive over the earth, but set a mark upon him, lest anyone finding him might slay him. Thus the Jews, against whom the blood of Christ calls out, although they ought not be killed, nevertheless as wanderers they must remain upon the earth until their faces be filled with shame and they seek the name of Jesus Christ the Lord.
Psalms:“My people did not hear My voice, and Israel harkened not to Me… They gave me gall for My food, and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink… Let their eyes be darkened, and their back bend down always. Pour out Thy indignation upon them: let Thy wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their habitation be made desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in their tabernacles, because they have added to the grief of My wounds. Add Thou iniquity upon their iniquity; and let them not come into Thy justice. Let them be blotten out of the book of the Living, and with the Just let them not be written” (Psalms 80: 12;62:22-29).
St. Augustine: “The Jews wander over the entire earth, their backs bent and their eyes cast downward, forever calling to our minds the curse they carry with them”.
Pope Gregory IX: “Ungrateful for favors and forgetful of benefits, the Jews return insult for kindness and impious contempt for goodness granted. They ought to know the yoke of perpetual enslavement because of their guilt. See to it that the perfidious Jews never in the future grow insolent, but that in servile fear they always suffer publicly the shame of their sin”.
Pope Innocent III: “The crucifiers of Christ ought to be held in continual subjection”.
St. Thomas: “It would be licit, according to custom, to hold the Jews in perpetual servitude because of their crime”.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem: “Since the Jews, through their evil designs against the Savior have been cast away from grace, He has built out of the Gentiles a second holy Church: the Church of us Christians”.
St. Vincent Ferrer: “Since His spouse, the Synagogue, refused to receive Him, Christ answered: “This is a Harlot!” And He gave her a bill of divorce, as we read in Isaias (50:1): ‘Thus says the Lord: Behold, you are sold for your iniquities; and for your evil deeds have I put your mother away. Because I came and there was not a man; I called and there was no one who would hear’. And so the Jews, the sons of the harlot, were repudiated” (St. Vincent Ferrer).
St. Gregory of Nyssa: “Jews are slayer of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, enemies and haters of God, adversaries of grace, enemies of their fathers’ faith, advocates of the devil, a brook of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, men of darkened minds, the leaven of Pharisees, a congregation of demons, sinners, wicked men, haters of goodness”.
St. Cyprian: “Nor is it sufficient that we call Him Who is in Heaven Father. We must add to the name ‘Our Father’. This name rebukes and condemns the Jews who not only spurned Christ faithlessly, but also cruelly executed Him Who was announced to them by the prophets and sent first to their nation. No longer may they call God their Father, because the Lord confounds and refutes them, saying “Your Father is the Devil” (Jn. 8:44). O sinful nation, O people weighed down with guilt, breed of evil-doers, lawless children, you have turned your backs on the Lord and have provoked the Holy One of Israel! We Christians say “Our Father”, since He has begun to be ours, but ceased to be the Father of the Jews who have forsaken Him”.
Are the Church Fathers and the Bible anti-semitic? Of course not. The early Christians and Christ Himself were Jewish. Therefore, they certainly cannot be against someone due to their race. So why did the Church Fathers, and God Himself in the Bible, say what they did about the unbelieving Jews? And so we think we know better than God Himself and all of the Fathers of the Church?
Let us pray that the viel is removed from their eyes so that they will repent and have the curse removed from them. After all, they are the original chosen people. And whatever we do, let us not deceive them into believing that their Covenant was “never revoked by God”, and is “salvific for them”. That would be real antisemitism.
