In the January 2020 issue of First Things, a new phrase was coined to advance the ecumenical efforts between Jews and Catholics. That phrase is “Catholic Zionism,” appearing here in the literature for the first time. It seeks to make itself the Catholic version of the more common “Christian Zionism” by divesting itself of the apocalyptic dimensions of the latter but continuing to advance the idea that God still owes land to the Jews and has been fulfilling that promise by giving them the present land of Palestine. The full title is: “Catholic Zionism: The Jewish State is a Sign of God’s Fidelity,” written by Gavin D’Costa. The author tries to convince his reader that Catholics should help in this divine endeavor and by doing so they become “Catholic Zionists.”

First Things' Zionist Beginnings

By way of background, we should remember that First Things was founded by the Catholic convert from Lutheranism, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, when he received a $250,000 grant in 1989 from the Bradley Foundation through the efforts of Jewish Zionists, Midge Decter (aka, Midge Rosenthal Decter) and Norman Podhoretz, two highly influential figures in the neo-Conservative movement during the Reagan-Bush administrations. It is no surprise, then, that First Things has promoted Zionism since its inception.

Before we get to the details of D’Costa’s article, the last time I addressed First Things’ push for Zionism was back in 2005 when I wrote a "Letter to the Editor" concerning an article First Things published in April of that year by Gary A. Anderson, who has a doctorate from Harvard and is a professor of the Old Testament (Theology) at the most prestigious Catholic university in America, Notre Dame. Anderson introduced his article with the not-so-subtle title, “How to Think About Zionism.” At the outset, he stated,

Any discussion of the modern Zionist movement must begin with the biblical claim that the land of Canaan was given by God to the people of Israel. And any discussion of that claim leads back to the call of Abraham in Genesis 12 and its immediate literary context.

Although separated by 15 years, Anderson and D’Costa have the same thesis: modern Jews are to receive the land of Palestine under divine mandate and thus Catholics should prepare themselves to be on the right side of the fence lest they find themselves not only "anti-semitic" but also "anti-God."[2]

To back up his claim that the Jews have always had a divine entitlement to the land of Palestine, Anderson proposed that the Old Testament passages that promised land to Israel are “both irrevocable and unfulfilled.” In pro-Zionist literature, we see the word “irrevocable” quite often. It exudes a legal and impregnable flavor to the alleged entitlement, implying that God is duty-bound to give Palestine to the Jews as if it were from an Irrevocable Living Trust. In further description of his thesis, Anderson holds that “God’s promises to the Jewish people have not come to an end, and that those promises are linked inextricably to the land...” and that “we must insist that the promises of Scripture are indeed inviolable and that Israel’s attachment to this land is underwritten by God’s providential decree.” Anderson doesn’t stop there: “the Bible would seem to allow only one answer: the return to Zion is the beginning of the messianic era.” The “messianic era”? What could this possibly mean? Catholics used to believe that we were already in the messianic era, since Jesus Christ came 2000 years ago as our Savior. Perhaps like the Protestant Zionist preacher, John Hagee, Anderson doesn’t believe that Jesus came as the Messiah for the Jews and thus the Jews cannot be blamed for rejecting him.[3]

Anderson is so influenced by modern Zionism and is so desperate to legitimize the Israeli takeover of Palestine that he creates a fictitious dichotomy in Jewish history that is unprecedented in biblical scholarship:

Some would insist that it has been fulfilled. They would point out that much of the book of Joshua is devoted to showing precisely how the land promised to Abraham came under the control of the Israelite tribes. But to this it must be answered that the book of Joshua is not part of what the Jewish canon (and Jesus himself in the Gospels) identifies as ‘The Torah.’ At the end of this collection of five books, Moses and the Israelite tribes are still waiting to enter the promised land.

Even Christian Zionists in the Dispensationalist ranks who divide the Bible into seven covenants, the last one being exclusively for the Jews, do not do what Anderson does with the Torah. Anderson argues that the ancient Jews never received the land God promised to them because the Jews held the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) in higher esteem than the rest of the Old Testament; and at the end of the Torah, namely Deuteronomy, the Jews don’t possess the land God promised them. So, for all intents and purposes, Anderson argues it was never given to them and thus we await for God to fulfill his promise!

The Land Promised to Israel has Already Been Fulfilled

The audacity of Anderson’s claim is that he realizes there are several post-Deuteronimic passages in the Old Testament that directly deny his thesis. One which clearly states the Jews received all the land promised to Abraham is Joshua 21:43-45:

Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land which he swore to give to their fathers; and having taken possession of it, they settled there. And the Lord gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers; not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one of all the good promises which the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.

Joshua states clearly that Israel fully attained the land God promised to Abraham four hundred years earlier (Gen 12:7; 15:18-21), the same Abraham that Anderson argues was the pivot point, in the Torah, to decide whether Israel was still owed land from God’s promise. This is not the only time Scripture makes a definitive statement that God fulfilled his promise of land to Israel. After Solomon ascended to the throne and was just about to build the temple, he reminds the Israelites how God fulfilled his promise. 1 Kings 8:56 states: “Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised; not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he uttered by Moses his servant.” Notice now that it was “Moses” who was given the promises, and hence Solomon acknowledges the link between himself and the Torah, and thus states, as did Joshua, that “not one word has failed of all his good promise.”

The same truth is reiterated to the Jews coming back from the Babylonian captivity, about a thousand years after Moses and Joshua. Nehemiah 9:7-8 reads:

You are the Lord God, Who chose Abram And brought him out from Ur of the Chaldees, And gave him the name Abraham. You found his heart faithful before You, And made a covenant with him To give him the land of the Canaanite, Of the Hittite and the Amorite, Of the Perizzite, the Jebusite and the Girgashite—To give it to his descendants. And You have fulfilled Your promise, For You are righteous.

Nehemiah, inspired by God to write his commentary, doesn’t see a disjunction between Torah and the rest of the Hebrew canon that Anderson so desperately wishes to impose.

Since the promise of land to Israel has already been fulfilled, the only thing that remains “irrevocable and unfulfilled,” according to St. Paul in Romans 11:25-29, is the salvation of the Jews who wish to come to Christ, Abraham being the first (Rom. 4:1-22). God has promised that the offer of salvation will never be taken away from the Jews. That promise has nothing to do with a piece of real estate in Palestine. Unfortunately, Anderson wasn’t interested in any of these spiritual matters. He was only interested in promoting political Zionism.

The editors of First Things wrote back to me and stated that although they understood my arguments, they could not publish them. Imagine that. Their reaction clearly spells out the modus operandi of First Things. It has become an ideological institution thoroughly committed to Zionism. First Things and their advocates are far too invested in Zionism to look back now, so they will continue to present preposterous biblical and ecclesiastical arguments to the uneducated to make it appear that Zionism is a God-ordained and God-facilitated political and theological position.

Gavin D'Costa's "Catholic Zionism"

We can expect the same misinterpretation of both Scripture and Church documents in the article First Things presented to its readership in the January 2020 issue, “Catholic Zionism: The Jewish State is a Sign of God’s Fidelity,” written by Gavin D’Costa, born in 1958, he is the Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol, Great Britain. He has also written Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II. His Wikipedia biography shows that D’Costa is no slouch and has rubbed shoulders with the high-flyers of academia.

Similar to Anderson, D’Costa is seeking to make the Jewish state legitimate by claiming that the promises to Abraham concerning land for his descendants have yet to be fulfilled. Unlike Anderson who cited the Bible for his authority, D’Costa first attempts to defend his thesis by citing official Catholic documents. In his first sentence he says, “In 1965, in Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council affirmed that God’s covenant with the Jewish people is irrevocable.”

D’Costa uses the same word “irrevocable” that Anderson used. But D’Costa isn’t actually quoting from Nostra Aetate. Nostra Aetate doesn’t say there is an irrevocable covenant between God and Israel, even though D’Costa wants his readers to think so. If the reader doesn’t research D’Costa’s claim, he is misled at the outset.

Before I continue in my analysis of D’Costa, I must digress to an important event relevant to D’Costa’s claim. Culture Wars readers may remember I wrote an article for the January 2008 issue, “Is the Old Covenant Revoked?” Much of the article concerned the erroneous statement made in the 2006 United States Catholic Catechism for Adults on page 131: “Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them.”[4] After I raised the issue in two letters, one to the USCCB and one to the CDF, the USCCB was forced to take the sentence out of the Catechism. In August 2008 the US bishops went into executive session and voted 234 to 14 to remove it. In the following year, 2009, the USCCB received a recognitio from the Vatican CDF approving of the change.

The Error Continues

Perhaps the correction to page 131 has not made the proper rounds, since First Things is still pushing the idea that the Jews have an “irrevocable” or “eternal” covenant with God. In 1988 the USCCB had published a paper stating that “some Christians over the centuries continued to dichotomize the Bible into two mutually contradictory parts. They argued, for example, that the New Covenant ‘abrogated’ or ‘superseded’ the Old, and that the Sinai Covenant [Mosaic covenant] was discarded by God and replaced with another.”[5] Obviously, the 1988 USCCB didn’t approve of traditional doctrine, perhaps leading to the erroneous sentence being included in their 2006 catechism.

More erroneous teaching was to follow. In 1995, published by Sacred Heart University Press in honor of Cardinal John O’Connor of New York, Toward Greater Understanding, presented essays by well known cardinals, such as, Bernardin, Cassidy, Keeler, Law and O’Connor, along with prominent Jews such as Chaim Herzog, Elie Wiesel, David Novak, rabbi Mordecai Waxman and rabbi Walter Wurzburger, all of them promoting the idea of an eternal covenant between God and the Jews; and that Jews can be saved as Jews and need not convert to Christianity.[6] Incidentally, many of these prominent cardinals were caught up in the pedophile scandal and exposed by the Boston Globe.

These Zionistic teachings began to filter down into popular Catholic apologetics movements of the day. In 2002, Professor Scott Hahn of Franciscan University of Steubenville, who is backed by and speaks often for EWTN, taught the same erroneous doctrine in an interview, saying, “The covenant God made with the Jews is still binding. Yes it is not revoked, and yes, the Jewish people are witnesses of the kingdom.”[7] The clause, “the Jewish people are witnesses of the kingdom” has more meaning than meets the eye. It was the same teaching that Jewish convert, Dr. Eugene Fisher, then Associate Director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs of the USCCB, and appointed by John Paul II as Consultor to the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews stated:

If you put off the moment that Jews will come to recognize Jesus as the Messiah until the end of time, then we don’t need to work or pray for the conversion of Jews to Christianity. God already has the salvation of Jews figured out, and they accepted it on Sinai, so they are OK. Jews are already with the Father. We do not have a mission to the Jews, but only a mission with the Jews to the world. The Catholic Church will never again sanction an organization devoted to the conversion of the Jews. That is over, on doctrinal, biblical and pastoral grounds. Finito.[8]

In 2003, Cardinal Keeler, the USCCB, and prominent Jewish leaders co-authored the document “Reflections on Covenant and Mission,” which stated: “while the Catholic Church regards the saving act of Christ as central to the process of human salvation for all, it also acknowledges that Jews already dwell in a saving covenant with God.”

One of the Jewish consultants of the “Reflections” document was rabbi David Rosen, who was chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultations and director of the American Jewish Committee, who stated the following in an interview in the documentary Jews and Christians: A Journey of Faith that was aired on PBS:

One of the profound areas of focus of the Second Vatican Council was its relationship with the Jews…a document called Nostra Aetate…Basically, what this document says is…the covenant between God and the Jewish people is an eternal covenant, never broken, never to be broken, quoting Paul in support of this position.[9]

In a later statement, Rosen said: “All I can hope for is that, through further dialogue, the full implications of the Second Vatican Council’s affirmation of the eternity of the Divine Covenant with the Jewish people might lead to a deeper understanding of the value of Torah as the vehicle of salvation for the Jewish people.”[10]

In the same year, 2003, Jewish convert to Catholicism, Roy Schoeman, authored Salvation is from the Jews: The Role of Judaism in Salvation History from Abraham to the Second Coming, stating, “the doctrine that the Old Covenant has been superseded, or made null and void by the New Covenant, is an error that dominated Christian theology for much of the past two thousand years.”[11]

There are many more examples that could be cited for this dramatic shift in popular Catholic thinking about the Jews and Palestine, including the 2015 Vatican Commission statement under Pope Francis.[12] Although the Commission states up front that it “is not a magisterial document or doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church, but is a reflection…on current theological questions that have developed since the Second Vatican Council,” it unequivocally teaches there exists an unrevoked and exclusive covenant between God and Israel.

As usual, the official source cited for this novel teaching is Nostra Aetate. Interestingly enough, the 2015 Commission admits that a covenant between God and Israel “cannot be explicitly read into Nostra Aetate,” but then argues that Nostra Aetate is “located within a decidedly theological framework regarding…God’s unrevoked covenant with Israel.” The Commission then attempts to justify its position in a manner similar to D’Costa’s, it is saturated with misinterpretations of Church documents and uncontexualized biblical passages. The Commission concludes:

this covenant puts the Jews on a higher spiritual level with God than the rest of humanity;
the Catholic Church, as an institution, is not required to preach the Gospel to the Jews and the Jews are not required to adopt it; and
all this is permitted because God promised to “save the Jews” and thus He will do so by a means and at a time of which we are not aware.

The Commission also argues that this new development in doctrine is needed because preaching the Christian Gospel to the Jews often leads to anti-semitism and catastrophic events like the Holocaust. Since these new teachings remove major obstacles from both sides, Catholics and Jews can then proceed in their ecumenical relations and social actions unhampered by traditional doctrinal divides. This kind of détente is what the liberals from both sides of the fence have been desiring for over 70 years.

What Does Nostra Aetate Actually Say?

Obviously, Nostra Aetate is the “go to” passage for all things Zionistic. But does it say what these advocates are making it say? If the 2015 Vatican Commission already admitted that an irrevocable covenant exclusive between God and the Jews “cannot be explicitly read into Nostra Aetate,” then all the interpretations we have seen from Zionists are what they infer from the document, not what the document actually says. Let’s take a close look.

Nostra Aetate, a relatively short document of less than 1500 words, mentions a covenant with the Jewish people in only two places. But in neither of them does it state that God has continued the covenant or that said covenant is “irrevocable” or “unfulfilled.” Here is the first:

The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant.[13]

Although “concluded the Ancient Covenant” is somewhat ambiguous,[14] the fact remains that Nostra Aetate is simply saying the Church received the Old Testament from the Jews. Here is the second and last place Nostra Aetate mentions the word “covenant”:

The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kinsmen: ‘theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh’ (Rom. 9:4-5), the Son of the Virgin Mary.[15]

Here Nostra Aetate is quoting from Romans 9:4-5. This verse is a little tricky because the original Greek does not have a verb in the subordinate clause. Thus we read in the Catholic New American Bible (1971): “They are Israelites; theirs the adoption (ὧν ἡ υἱοθεσία), the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; theirs the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Messiah.” This translation changes in other bibles, such as the Protestant Revised Standard Version (1952), which has: “They are Israelites, and to them 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.”

As you can see, the 1952 RSV (a Zionist influenced translation) could imply by its addition of the intransitive verb “belong” that the “the sonship, glory, covenants, law, worship, and promises” could presently be divinely sanctioned possessions and practices of the Jews, whereas the NAB, that actually follows the Greek, simply states that “the sonship, glory, covenants, law, worship, and promises” were identity markers for the “Israelites” in Old Testament times with no indication they are to be practiced under divine sanction in the New Testament. The Jews, of course, are to be honored and respected for what they possessed and what they gave us, namely, Christ the Messiah, but once the Old Covenant accomplished its purpose of providing the Messiah, it was superseded and set aside (Heb 7:18; 8:7-13; Mt 5:17-18).[16]

Incidentally, when the US bishops agreed that the Mosaic covenant was revoked and thus voted to take out the erroneous sentence from page 131, the USCCB editor chose to replace the erroneous sentence with a verbatim quotation from Rom. 9:4-5. But guess what translation he chose? Not the Catholic NAB, but the Protestant RSV, perhaps because the RSV, which adds a forward-looking verb to the verse “belong,” makes it appear, however faintly, that the Jews might still possess “the sonship, glory, covenants, law, worship, and promises.” The 234 bishops that voted to replace the erroneous sentence probably aren’t aware of these grammatical nuances in the Greek, and thus the shell game continues with the liberal leadership at the USCCB, which is, at heart, Zionist and ecumenical with unconverted Jews.

As for the word “irrevocable,” Nostra Aetate doesn’t use it, and the only place someone might infer its usages is in this statement: “Nevertheless, God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues-such is the witness of the Apostle.”[17]

Here Nostra Aetate is making a paraphrased citation from Romans 11:28-29. The closest translation to Nostra Aetate paraphrase is the Douay-Rheims Bible, which says: “they are most dear for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.”

More importantly, notice that while D’Costa interprets Romans 11:28-29 to say that, “God’s covenant with the Jewish people is irrevocable,” the word “covenant” does not appear in either of the two verses. It appears only in the verse prior, Rom. 11:27, where it is a quote from Jeremiah 31:31-34: “and this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.” Rom. 11:26 says something similar: “The Deliverer shall banish ungodliness from Jacob,” which is a quote taken from Isaiah 59:20: “he will come to Zion as Redeemer, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, says the Lord.”

We see that the “covenant” in Rom 11:27 says nothing about land promises or land acquisition for the Jews, but somehow D’Costa sees them there, which is a classic case of “reading into” the passage what one wants to see. According to Paul’s words, the sole purpose of the “covenant” is to take away the “ungodliness” and “sin” of the Jews. There is only one covenant that can do so, the New Covenant, established at the death and resurrection of Christ: “Now he has obtained so much more excellent a ministry as he is mediator of a better covenant, enacted on better promises.” (Luke 22:20; Heb 8:1-13; 10:16-18). That covenant, however, is for both Jews and Gentiles (cf. Gal 3:6-8; 17-29; John 3:16),18 and it refers exclusively to salvation; not land acquisition for the Jews; not special favor for the Jews; and certainly not an exemption from having to hear the Gospel for salvation. In fact, there is no covenant still existing that is exclusive for the Jews. Their one exclusive covenant with Moses ended at the Cross (2Cor 3:4-14; Col 2:14-15). Their one exclusive covenant with Abraham by circumcision, which promised an inheritance of land (Gen 12:7; 15:18-21) was already fulfilled and came to an end (Josh 21:43; Neh 9:7-8; Mt 24:1-2). The only covenant remaining is the spiritual covenant from Abraham, not exclusively for the physical descendants of Abraham, but rather for both Jews and Gentiles, and only for salvation; (cf. Gen 12:1-3; 15:6; Gal 3:6-8; 17-29; Rom 4:1-22). But this is not what D’Costa and many other Zionist-influenced theologians want you to believe.

So what’s in it for the Jews? Plenty. They can fulfill the “covenant” of Rom 11:27 by being included in the New Covenant that forgives their sins. The first sin for which they can repent is their rejection of Christ, which is why the rest of Romans 11 consistently seeks for the Jews to convert to Christ (vr. 5: “So also at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace”; vr. 14: “in order to make my race jealous and thus save some of them”; vr. 23: “And they also, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in”; vr. 31: “by virtue of the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy”).

Now that we know what the “covenant” of Romans 11:27 is, we can understand the “gifts and calling” in Romans 11:28-29. They concern one thing, and one thing only: the gifts and calling from God within the New Covenant to have their “sins forgiven.” This message of saving the Jews from their sins has been preached to them since the time of Abraham (Rom 4:1-11; John 8:56; Heb 4:2,6); and up to the present day (Acts 2:21-32; Rom 9:32-33; 11:5-6). God promised this gospel to Abraham and his seed, and thus it will never be taken away (Gal 3:16). The Jews become part of that “seed” when they accept Christ, as do the Gentiles who accept Christ (Gal 3:26-29).

All in all, the “gifts and calling” is the gift of salvation through the call of the Gospel (Eph 4:8; Phil 3:14; 2Thess 1:11). This Gospel was promised by God from the beginning (Gen 3:15) and will not be taken away until the end of time (Mt 24:14; 2Cor 6:1-2). It is one promise that God will not “repent of,” and in that sense it is “irrevocable.”19 The only time we might say that God withheld this promise is, as Paul says in Romans 11:7-11, in Old Testament times when he hardened many of the Jews because of their constant sin and unbelief: “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that should not see and ears that should not hear, down to this very day” (vr. 8). Even then, God allowed a remnant to be saved: “So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace” (Rom. 11:5) and anticipates more to come who escape disobedience and unbelief (Romans 11:14, 23, 31).

Unfortunately, D’Costa misses all these spiritual features and thus the foundation of his article for First Things begins upon a total misconception about what the Bible and the Church teach about the covenants and the Jews.

[…]

This is just an excerpt from Culture Wars Magazine, not the full article. To continue reading, purchase the March 2020 edition of Culture Wars Magazine.

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Culture of Death Watch

Black Frankenstein Turns on its Jewish Creators - E. Michael Jones

Does the Catholic Church Still Want to Make Converts? - John Beaumont

Features

“Catholic Zionism” Contradiction in Terms - Robert Sungenis

Reviews

A Cultural Marxist Critique of Logos Rising - David Hawkes

Footnotes:

See “Top NeoConservative Catholics Drive Anti-Protestant Schism Campaign” in Church and State, 2006. http://churchandstate.org.uk/2015/02/top-neoconservative-catholics-drive-anti-protestant-schism-campaign/
As the ADL put it in a press release: “The notion that Jews are religiously inferior or imperfect because they do not accept Christian beliefs was the basis for 2,000 years of church-based anti-Semitism” and is “rank Christian supersessionism and has been rejected by the Catholic Church and the vast majority of mainstream Christian denominations.” (Oct. 12, 2007, http://adl.org/PresRele/ASUS_12/5149_12.htm).
John Hagee is pastor of a 19,000-member Protestant church in San Antonio In his book, In Defense of Israel, Hagee makes the astounding claim that the Jews cannot be blamed for rejecting the Messiah because Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah. He insists that Jesus’ demise was purely a Roman plot: “Jesus did not come to earth to be the Messiah. Since Jesus by word and deed refused to claim to be the Messiah, how can the Jews be blamed for what was never offered.” He also states: “In Christian theology, the first thing that happens when Christ returns to Earth is the judgment of nations. It will have one criterion: How did you treat the Jewish people? Anyone who understands that will want to be on the right side of that question. Those who are anti-Semitic will go to eternal damnation” (p. 118). On one television broadcast he asked the audience, “Is your Church teaching Replacement Theology?” “Does your Church teach that it is the New Israel?” He recently appeared on the Fox News show, “Life, Liberty and Levin,” with the Jewish host Mark Levin (Dec. 2019). Some time ago, Hagee was awarded the “Humanitarian of the Year” award by the San Antonio B’nai B’rith Council, the first time the award was ever given to a gentile. He was presented the ZOA Israel Award by U.N. Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick, and the ZOA Service Award by Gov. Mark White, and numerous other honors and accolades from national Jewish Organizations for his unwavering support of Israel. His message goes to 160 television stations, 50 radio stations, and to 99 million homes each week.
The inside cover states: “The United States Catholic Catechism for Adults was developed by the Ad Hoc Committee to Oversee the Use of the Catechism of the Catholic Church of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). It was approved by the full body of bishops at its November 2004 General Meeting, received the subsequent recognitio of the Holy See, and has been authorized for publication by the undersigned, Msgr. David J. Malloy, STD, General Secretary, USCCB.”
1988 Paper on the Liturgy & Seder Meals, ¶6.
John Thavis, Catholic News Service, Nov. 7, 2002.
http://old.post-gazette.com/nation/20020814catholicsjews0814p4.asp
The Jewish Week, January 25, 2002, previously at www.thejewishweek.com but has since been removed.
Jews and Christians: A Journey of Faith, 2007, a documentary by Gerald Krell and Meyer Odze, which aired recently on PBS (Public Broadcasting System) produced by Auteur Productions, Ltd., and which can be obtained at www.jewsandchristiansjourney.com.
“Jewish regret at Pope’s ‘missed opportunity’ in rewritten prayer,” TimesOnLine, Feb 6, 2008, Ruth Gledhill, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3315419.ece
Salvation is from the Jews, Ignatius Press, 2003, p. 352. Like D’Costa, Shoeman makes a general citation to “Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate” as his source for the “definitive rejection” of supersessionism, but fails to cite any statements from the document supporting his contention.
Published December 10, 2015. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/relations-jews-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20151210_ebraismo-nostra-aetate_en.html. The signers to the Commission’s document are: Cardinal KURT KOCH: President; The Most Reverend BRIAN FARRELL: Vice–President; The Reverend NORBERT HOFMANN, SDB; Secretary
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html
Abraham had two covenants with God: (1) one for him and his spiritual progeny (Gen 12:1-3; 17:8-9), which is now the New Covenant in Christ, which includes Jews and Gentiles (cf. Gal 3:6-8; Rom 11:1-11); and (2) one only for his physical Jewish progeny (Gen 12:7; 15:18-21; Rom 9:6). The other covenants are: (3) the Mosaic covenant only with the Jews (Gal 3:17; 2Cor 3:14); or (4) the Old Testament itself as the “Old” Covenant (as implied in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶121: “The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value, for the Old Covenant has never been revoked”). The juxtaposition of “Old Testament” and “Old Covenant” in ¶ of the 1992, 1994, 1997 Catechism of the Catholic Church has caused undue confusion among parishioners. The Old Testament is the inspired revelation from God in the 73 books of the Bible. The Old Covenant should be understood as referring to one of the specific covenants within the Old Testament. The Catechism should have been more clear on these words so that its people can make the proper distinctions. To sort out this somewhat confusing references to the “covenant,” covenants #1 and #4 continue, but covenants #2 and #3 were terminated (Col 2:14-15; Heb 7:18; 8:1-13; 10:9). But covenants #1 and #4 continue because they are not exclusively with the Jews, but is the New Covenant in Christ that incorporates both Jews and Gentiles (Rom 1:16-17; 2:9-10), which was prophesied in the Old Testament (aka “Old Covenant”) in such passages as Jer 31:31-33 cf. Heb 8:7-13.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html
The Hebrew passages use two distinct words to convey the fact that the Mosaic covenant (the Old Covenant) has been revoked: ἀθέτησις: “to annul, to set aside, to abolish, to make of no effect, declare invalid, remove” (Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich and Danker, Greek lexicon, p. 21); ἀναρεῖ: “to take away, to destroy, to do away with, to eliminate” (Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich and Danker, Greek lexicon, p. 54)
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html
As John Paul II noted in a speech in Miami, September 11, 1987: “the Jewish people are partners in a covenant of eternal love that was never revoked.”
The word “repent” is what some Bible translations render as “irrevocable” in Rom 11:29. It is the Greek word αμεταμéλητα (pronounced: a-me-ta-ME-le-ta). In normal Greek parlance, the lexical meaning is: “unregretted” (Louw-Nida); “not to be repented of” (Liddell and Scott); “not repented of; unregretted” (Thayer); “not to be regretted” (Gingrich); or “incapable of being changed” (Friberg). The Zionist-flavored translations chose to render it as “irrevocable,” as if it is some kind of legal term in a will (e.g., 1998 Complete Jewish Bible; 1970 New American Bible; 1995 New American Standard, 1984 New International Version, 1952 Revised Standard). Older translations without a Zionist slant render it: “not repented of” (e.g., 1901 American Standard, 1609 Douay-Rheims, 1885 English Revised, 1611 King James, 1833 Webster Bible, 1595 Bishop’s New Testament).
The other curious feature of the Catechism’s “for the Old Covenant has never been revoked” in ¶121 is that it has no footnote attached to it, which is not the case with the sentence before it or after it. This means that the Catechism’s author could not find any reference to this clause in authoritative Catholic sources, including Vatican II.
Mulieris Dignitatem, V, 11 (“At the beginning of the New Covenant, which is to be eternal and irrevocable, there is a woman: the Virgin of Nazareth”); Redemptoris Custos, VI, 32 (“This just man, who bore within himself the entire heritage of the Old Covenant, was also brought into the beginning of the New and Eternal Covenant in Jesus Christ. May he show us the paths of this saving Covenant…”); Dominicae Cenae, II, 9 (“This restoration cannot cease to be: it is the foundation of the new and eternal covenant of God with man and of man with God”); The Church and Racism, III, 20 (“If the people of Israel were aware of a special bond with God, they also affirmed that there was a Covenant of the entire human race with him and that, also in the Covenant made with them, all peoples are called to salvation: ‘All the tribes of the earth shall bless themselves by you,’ God told Abraham”); Evangelium Vitae, 25 (“It is the sprinkled blood. A symbol and prophetic sign of it had been the blood of the sacrifices of the Old Covenant, whereby God expressed his will to communicate his own life to men, purifying and consecrating them (cf. Ex 24.8; Lev 17.11). Now all of this is fulfilled and comes true in Christ: his is the sprinkled blood which redeems, purifies and saves; it is the blood of the Mediator of the New Covenant ‘poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’ (Mt 26.28)”); Pastores Dabo Vobis II, 12 (“The priest finds the full truth of his identity in being a derivation, a specific participation in and continuation of Christ himself, the one high priest of the new and eternal covenant”); Familiaris Consortio II, 13 (“Indeed, by means of baptism, man and woman are definitively placed within the new and eternal covenant, in the spousal covenant of Christ with the Church”); Gaudette in Domino II (“Such is the joy of the Mosaic Passover, which happened as the prefiguring of the eschatological liberation which would be wrought by Jesus Christ in the paschal context of the new and eternal Covenant”).
In 1971, the 43-year old Sharon, knowing that Gaza was filled with Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war, brought in dozens of bulldozers to smash 2,000 houses to the ground, uprooting 16,000 people (London Independent, 1971). Stunned by what it was discovering about Sharon, the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, did an investigation. It reported that beginning in 1953 Sharon was part of Unit 101, a special squad organized to attack Arabs. Ha’aretz writes: “Unit 101’s purpose was that of instilling terror by the infliction of discriminate, murderous violence not only on able-bodied fighters but on the young, the old, the helpless.” In August 1953 Sharon attacked the innocent refuge camp of El-Bureig, south of Gaza, where 50 refugees were killed, mercilessly. Sharon would trap the people in houses with machine gun fire and then throw incendiary devices through the windows to blow them up. Two months later, Sharon attacked Qibya on the West Bank where 60 Jordanians were slaughtered by the same tactics. Even Moshe Sharett, Israel’s foreign minister, said Sharon’s attacks were a “stain that would stick to us and not be washed away for many years.” Avi Shlaim, Israeli historian, called Sharon’s actions a “war crime.” Finally, the U.S. State Department demanded that those responsible “should be brought to account.” Sharon tried to cover his tracks by claiming that he thought the houses were empty. In 1969 Sharon was reassigned to Israel’s Defense Force where he continued to bring terror on Palestinians. In 1973, Sharon decided to capture control of the Suez Canal. Upon questioning from the Israeli military tribunal, Sharon was found to have violated strict orders. He was soon dismissed from the military altogether. Sharon then managed to find his way back as an advisor for Yitshak Rabin and later as an agricultural minister under Menachem Begin. Here Sharon used his newly acquired political muscle to establish Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, causing further agitation in the region. In 1982, against U.S. demands, Israel invaded Lebanon and attacked West Beirut. Here Sharon massacred 3000 refugees over 62 hours in the camps of Sabra and Shatilla. These were defenseless civilians, as were all refugees. Not only were they killed, but Ha’aretz reported that they were “mutilated or disemboweled before or after they were killed.” So outrageously demonic were these attacks that a special commission was formed to investigate the incident, headed by Yitzhak Kahan, president of Israel’s Supreme Court. Siding with Sharon, they whitewashed his crime by saying he was only “indirectly” responsible for the massacre because he “hired” the Phalange militia who did the actual killing. The United Nations General Assembly, although very cautious about criticizing Israel, stated that the attacks on Sabra and Shatilla were “acts of genocide.”
Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, para. 29: “…the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished…but on the gibbet of His death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross”; Pope Benedict XIV, Ex Quo Primum, 61: “Similarly, we profess that the legalities of the Old Testament, the ceremonies of the Mosaic Law, the rites, sacrifices, and sacraments have ceased at the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ”Catechism of the Council of Trent: “…the people, aware of the abrogation of the Mosaic Law…”; Council of Florence: “that the matter pertaining to the law of the Old Testament, of the Mosaic law…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”; Council of Trent: “but not even the Jews by the very letter of the law of Moses were able to be liberated or to rise therefrom”; Cardinal Ratzinger: “Thus the Sinai [Mosaic] Covenant is indeed superseded” (Many Religions – One Covenant, p. 70); St. John Chrysostom: “Yet surely Paul’s object everywhere is to annul this Law….And with much reason; for it was through a fear and a horror of this that the Jews obstinately opposed grace” (Homily on Romans, 6:12); “And so while no one annuls a man’s covenant, the covenant of God after four hundred and thirty years is annulled; for if not that covenant but another instead of it bestows what is promised, then is it set aside, which is most unreasonable” (Homily on Galatians, Ch 3); St. Augustine: “Instead of the grace of the law which has passed away, we have received the grace of the gospel which is abiding; and instead of the shadows and types of the old dispensation, the truth has come by Jesus Christ. Jeremiah also prophesied thus in God’s name: ‘Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah...’ Observe what the prophet says, not to Gentiles, who had not been partakers in any former covenant, but to the Jewish nation. He who has given them the law by Moses, promises in place of it the New Covenant of the gospel, that they might no longer live in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the spirit” (Letters, 74, 4). Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Gal. 3:12: “I answer that he is speaking here about keeping the commandments of the Law insofar as the Law consists of ceremonial precepts and moral precepts” (Aquinas Scripture Series, trans., F. R. Larcher, p. 83).
Veritatis Splendor, I, 12.
The PBC has made various errors in its statements, even though most are reliable. For example, the 2001 PBC document makes this highly ambiguous statement: “The definitive fulfillment will be at the end with the resurrection of the dead, a new heaven and a new earth. Jewish messianic expectation is not in vain. It can become for us Christians a powerful stimulant to keep alive the eschatological dimension of our faith. Like them, we too live in expectation. The difference is that for us the One who is to come will have the traits of the Jesus who has already come and is already present and active among us,” possibly suggesting that the Jews have a different Messiah that does not have the traits of Jesus, and which many Jews have exploited. This statement thus stands in contrast to other clear statements of the same document that Jesus is the Messiah of the Jews: “…the New Testament itself clearly recognises in Jesus of Nazareth the promised Messiah, awaited by Israel (and by the whole of humanity): it is he, therefore, who fulfils the promise” and “These Jews call the Christian faith into question; they do not accept that Jesus is their Messiah (Christ) and the Son of God. Christians cannot but contest the position of these Jews.”
See The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians by Jewish author, Moshe Lieberman.

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