What is Peter's vision Acts 10 about?

[jaomusic]

Good afternoon,

I have a question about Acts chapter 10. This is the vision of St. Peter where god ask him to kill and eat unclean animals. what is the true interpretation of Catholics on this passage? Jews say that Christians have interpreted Peter’s vision as God’s permission to kill and eat any animal, which it is not. It is a vision to let Peter know that he and other Jewish-Christians were permitted to enter the homes of the Gentiles to bring them the Good News of Jesus Christ.

 

[Fr.Charles_Grondin]

The vision is about both.

It revealed that Gentiles were part of the new covenant, and it also revealed that the ritual laws of the old covenant had been brought to completion.

St. Peter was told to eat the animals that were once considered unclean in his vision, thus God made clear that the ritual laws of the old covenant had been fulfilled

In Romans 14 and Colossians 2:16-23, St. Paul makes quite clear that all food is clean and moral to eat.

And, as the Catechism notes, the Gospel makes this explicit:

**582 **Going even further, Jesus perfects the dietary law, so important in Jewish daily life, by revealing its pedagogical meaning through a divine interpretation: “Whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him. . . (Thus he declared all foods clean.). . . What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts. . .”