NOTE: the comments on this post have gone off on a completely different subject (as frequently happens). Along the way some very harsh things were said, which I was asked to delete, and I’ve done so. But because these comments also were involved in the change of subject, the transition seems to come out of nowhere.
—MH
Around half the membership in our Byzantine Catholic parish is descended
from the Carpatho-Rusin ("Ruthenian") founders of the church, and the rest have
mostly come by way of the Roman Catholic Church.
An exception to this is a middle aged man and his teenage son, who started
in the Episcopal Church, then moved for a long while into one of the small
breakaway Anglican communions. When they realized that there is a problem of
final authority in that denomination, they moved Romeward. Finding the local
liturgies in the Roman Catholic Church pretty intolerable after experiencing
graceful Anglican worship for so long they made their way to the Byzantine
alternative.
I like the fellow very much, as he is witty and intelligent, but we learned
early on to avoid politics, after an initial heated exchange about the war.
Indeed, he is a pretty doctrinaire Republican. His son, let us call him N, kept
pretty quiet during our argument, but I sensed disdain for my antiwar
sentiments. Indeed, it turned out that he was planning on enlisting in the
military right after he graduated from high school, and he was an earnest and
idealistic proponent of the war.
And so, last spring N enlisted. After basic training he was sent to Iraq.
Yesterday I saw him sitting with his father as we waited for the Divine
Liturgy to begin. I saw in the bulletin that he was home on leave, and I
mentally prepared a greeting that communicated concern but steered away from
argument about the war. Arguing with a gung-ho soldier was about the last thing
I wanted. Anyway, it probably wouldn’t be an issue, as I suspected he would
avoid me in the social hall after Liturgy, where coffee and donuts are
served.
To my surprise, though, he walked immediately up to me in the hall, hand
extended in greeting. The first words out of his mouth were "What I have seen
since enlisting has totally changed my mind about the war".
He was eager to talk.
Though his recruiter had told him that he would be trained in military
intelligence he had in fact been assigned to the medical corps, and he had been
a medic in Sadr City, the Shiite slum in Baghdad. A medic in Sadr City. Allow
for a moment the implications of such an assignment to sink in.
It was hellish indeed, and he proceeded to tell me what he had seen:
friends losing limbs and lives as they exploded in front of him. Children caught
in crossfire or injured or killed by bombs. Panicked soldiers firing on
civilians before they realized their mistake. The palpable hatred of the Iraqis
for the American presence.
The war, he thought, was wrong and unwinnable, a sentiment he said was
shared by the other members of his unit.
Nor was his disillusionment only with the cause; he was disgusted by the
military leadership’s apparent indifference to the plight of everyday enlisted
men, some of whom were on their third, even fourth, tour of duty.
He confirmed what I had heard, that the official numbers of American dead
are far too low, that if someone is wounded in Iraq but dies in a hospital in
Germany, he is only counted as wounded and not as a battlefield death.
After N had moved on to talk with other parishoners his dad told me that
the young local marine who had been in the papers last week as the latest Ohio
combat death had been N’s friend and classmate, that they had enlisted
together.
It is sad to see such a young man disillusioned, a true believer
transformed into a cynic.
On the other hand, to be dis-illusioned is to grow in truth. I noted that
he was more fervent during the Liturgy than I had remembered him.
And he has changed his goals: he is no longer intending on the military as
a career. He has found that he loves being a medic, and he hopes to use the GI
Bill after he has served his time to go to college, and eventually on to medical
school.
N is not sure if he will be sent back to Iraq or not.
Please pray for him, that he will be kept safe in the time he has left to
serve, and that he will come to realize his new dream, to trade the weapons of
war for the tools of healing.
—Daniel Nichols
Dear Daniel,
It appears that being uncompromisingly antiwar is something we completely agree on. It’s nice to know that there are serious Catholics out there who think like you do about this. If only there were more who were open to recognizing the bitter reality articulated by your young friend.
In my view, influential Catholic opinion-makers such as Richard John Neuhaus, George Weigel, Deal Hudson, Robert Sirico, Michael Novak, etc., bear a grave burden of responsibility for making the bitter truths seen first-hand by your young friend difficult for American Catholics to discern. These influential opinion-makers have the time, leisure, and training to research the facts for themselves in a way most ordinary, rank-and-file Catholics do not.
On the whole, though, the problem of blind support for the war is even worse among evangelical Protestants than it is among orthodox Catholics. And they also comprise a much larger political constitutency than do serious Catholics – in the tens of millions, as opposed to a mere few million or so.
“He confirmed what I had heard, that the official numbers of American dead are far too low, that if someone is wounded in Iraq but dies in a hospital in Germany, he is only counted as wounded and not as a battlefield death.”
I hadn’t thought about this before, but reports are careful to specify “combat deaths” when statistics are involved. Nothing about later deaths from wounds, not to mention accidents, other medical deaths, and suicides.
Is there a watchdog group compiling more truthful statistics?
Michael- I am not so sure that your contention that spport for the war is less among self-styled “orthodox Catholics”, who for the most part are in fact conservative Catholics.
Around a year ago, the Catholic talk show host Al Kresta held a poll on the war for his listeners, who would by and large fall in the orthodox/conservative Catholic camp. Not scientific, I suppose, but at that time, when popular support for the war ran around 35% for the general population, his listeners supported it by 65%. I suppose some of that support has waned, as the war has become an undeniable disaster, but I suspect that support is still roughly double the general population’s. I doubt the evangelicals are much different. And note that the Pope has criticized the war, while evangelical leaders have supported it.
And Kevin- I don’t know if anyone is tracking this real statistic or not. You might check at the Catholic Peace Fellowship site…
“when popular support for the war ran around 35% for the general population, his listeners supported it by 65%.”
What question was asked in both instances? Were they the same? Did they mean the same thing?
It was pretty simple, along the lines of “Do you support the Iraq war?”
I don’t know what “support the war” means at this point. If a pollster put that question to me with yes/no being the only possible answers, I’d probably refuse to answer.
Maclin,
Precisely. Not a good question.
In brief, the Kresta poll is not reliable, because it is not a random sample. This is not to say that ‘conservative’ support of the war was quite strong, just that this poll is not evidence of it.
“Is the war just” is not the same question as “is the war prudent at this time.” One could think it was justifiable, but not prudent. So just because one is against the war does not mean that one thinks it wasn’t or isn’t just.
Also, there is a difference between the question, “Ought we have prosecuted this war in the first place” and “Ought we to continue now that we are there.”
Here is a deeply troubling development, with definite relevance, I would say, to Pope Benedict’s stance on the war in Iraq:
“Neo-conservatism at the Vatican? Kissinger to become Political Adviser to Pope Benedict XVI”
This is the headline of an article by Edward Pentin, in the most recent issue of the National Catholic Register.
The article may be accessed at the following link:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20061130&articleId=4022
Another deeply troubling revelation from the article, one I was not previously aware of:
“Pope John Paul II was close friends with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Polish-born national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, partly because both had a common Polish heritage.”
What in heaven’s name are the Popes doing, consorting in a friendly manner with the most cynically amoral realpolitiker-types among the ruling elite?
Wouldn’t most of you agree with me that Pope Benedict would do far better to consult with the likes of Noam Chomaky than with the likes of Kssinger, Brzezinski, etc., when it comes to international affairs?
However the question was framed, from anecdotal evidence I think the numbers pretty accurate.
The Catholics I am more familiar with around here are Novus Ordo conservatives, overwhelmingly Republican by conviction and temperment.
And Michael, isn’t consorting with unsavory world leaders sort of in the job description of “Pope”? Friendliness need not mean compromise; witness Chesterton’s many friendships with his intellectual enemies.
And Franklin, your snide dismissal of N’s disillusionment misses the point. He went into it buying the romantic neocon vision of America as liberator, and saw first hand that we are viewed as the oppressor. At the least give him a break; he is nineteen years old, for God’s sake. What were you doing at nineteen? Sitting in some classroom?
I used to frequent Latin Masses and I have often run into anti-Semitism in those circles, including literature on the tables at coffee and donuts.
I am not saying that these sentiments are universal amongst the denizens of Latin Masses and regret if my comments were so taken. I have many Latin Mass-attenting friends who do not share such notions.
I do find it hard to believe that you have not encountered anti-Semitism among Traditionalists.
Mr. Nichols,
While I often disagree with Mr. Salzer, and certainly agree that his post above was tactless, I am good friends with a number of the “rarified traditionalists” at his parish. Not only are they frequently more congenial than Mr. Salzer, they are not antisemites. They are good Catholics in communion with their local bishop.
Yes, as I said, I too have many friends who are Latin Mass attendees and are not anti-Semitic. However, I have encountered such attitudes too many times not to note it, and way more often there than among other Catholics.
If F’s parish is entirely free of such attitudes, God bless it.
This is what my wife calls “nyah-nyahing.” Time for it to stop.
What does anti-Semitism mean? How does one tell when someone (else)is an anti-Semite?
rjp- Well, how about promoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, saying that “the Jews” are plotting against Christians, that “the Jews” control the media, are responsible for the pornography epidemic, work to exploit racial tensions between blacks and whites to further their own ends, that the holocause either didn’t happen or if it did it wasn’t that bad, etc., all things I have personally heard from the Latin Mass crowd.
My many friends who are not anti-Semitic and attend the Latin Mass readily acknowledge that such nonsense is widespread in the movement.
I am certainly not among those who cry “anti-Semite” every time Israel is criticized; indeed I was called an anti-Semite on the Crunchy Con blog for precisely this, when Israel invaded Lebanon.
Regarding the “Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism” equation that is so common and so widely taken for granted in today’s political discourse:
The best proof of the utter illegitimacy of this equation may be found in traditional Orthodox Judaism itself. Until the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust, Orthodox Jews universally denounced secular Zionism as an apostasy, since it fundamentally involves the violent wresting of God’s purposes into man’s own hands. This violent appropriation of God’s purposes into man’s own hands is in turn predicated upon a basic faithlessness in the God of their Fathers among the secular Jews who promoted, and continue to promote, the Zionist project.
Today, only small remnants even among Orthodox Jews hold to this theologically and ethically principled rejection of secular Zionism; most even among the Orthodox have been seduced into making fatal ethical and theological compromises by the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust. While psychologically understandable, the compromise is nevertheless a severe one, and the Bible indicates (in places such as Zech 12 and 14) that compromises such as these with the apostasy of secular Zionism will eventually incur God’s severe judgment against the Jews.
But small remnants of Orthodox Jews who hold the only possible ethically and theologically correct position – on that condemns secular Zionism – exist still today. Do a google search on “Neturai Karta,” and I think you will see that there exist no opponents of secular Zionism who are more ferocious in their opposition than they. (Try the following link: http://www.jewsnotzionists.com – or maybe it was -.org.)
Obviously, these truly faithful Jews are not anti-Semitic. They merely see the ultimate fulfillment of being Jewish in clinging faithfully and steadfastly, with prayer and suffering, to the God of their Fathers – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
MtA, I don’t think the Orthodox non-Zionism is sufficient to counter the observation that, particularly in traditionalist Catholic circles, there is a psychological connection between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitic attitudes which Dan lists, particularly and horribly, the ‘holocaust was not all that bad’ one, coexist too commonly with anti-Zionism amongst tradders for it to be absolutely coincidental. As I say, I believe it is a psychological link rather than a logical or even a ‘common-sensical’ one.
Daniel,
Your answer to rjp gives signs or of anti-semitism but doesn’t define anti-semitism. Nor do the signs you give necessarily indicate an anti-semite. For instance, a very ignorant person might think the Holocaust did not occur, based on some convincing propaganda he has read — does that alone make him an anti-semite? Does the conviction that Jews control the media make one anti-semitic? Or could he be just mistaken? Belloc thought Sovietism was a movement largely made up of Jews — did that opinion make him an anti-semite?
“Anti-semite” is a phrase bandied about too loosely nowadays — rather like “fascist” among leftists or “liberal” or “commie” among conservatives. What is the essence of anti-semitism?
Seems pretty obvious that anti-Zionism is sometimes a cover for anti-Semitism. It’s not always easy to tell. Nobody much wants to confess to being anti-Semitic, so identifying it sometimes has to be an intuitive thing, the way you pick up on certain forms of genteel anti-Catholicism, by an overall tone and attitude.
Christopher, the essence of it, surely, is hostility to Jews as Jews. The term is certainly over-used, but the thing exists, just like communists did even though John Birchers were seeing them where they weren’t.
Another thing that gets lost in many cases where these group hostilities come into play is that there are degrees. Let’s take a group that’s less of a hot button–Kentuckians, say. One could have a vague general dislike of the state of Kentucky and its people, tell jokes about stupid Kentuckians, and avoid them where possible, but otherwise not give them much thought. Or one could have a demented hatred of Kentuckians and want to kill them all. To call both these “anti-Kentuckian” is pretty imprecise.
Mr Zehnder,
Following on from Mr. Horton, I would say that what makes, for instance, Belloc’s attitude anti-Semitic is that he believed that many Soviet communists were *Jews* because they were Jews as such per se etc. Jews are in this perspective irretrievably and inevitably allied with whatever wickedness is going.
The chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Jonathan Sacks, once remarked in a series of radio talks on the fact that the ‘masters of suspicion’ of the nineteenth and early twentieth century’ – like Marx and Freud – were ex-Jews. He argued that the reason why ex-Jews took these rationalist and anti-religious stances is that, once one leaves a tradition one has no perspective on morals, and loses one’s moral compass. So here you have Jonathan Sacks discussing the same evidence as Belloc but in a quite different light.
Sacks’ observations are interesting in that the phenomenon of leaving one’s tradition and losing one’s moral compass happened in Judaism first, but was very far from being confined to Judaism – it came along a bit later amongst ex-Christians.
Belloc leaves no space for thought about why Jews in the 1920s became communists; and thus no space for thought about whether it is likely that post-traditional cultures outside Judaism would soon be following in their footsteps down the road to amoralist ideologies.
It seems to me that for the past century or more, communism (as a world movement) and the Catholic Church have been the major worldwide movements which were open to all comers. Thus, someone who has no homeland, or is alienated from the one they have, may be drawn to the one or the other.
There are other such worldwide “homelands” (the fine arts, the “democracy now” cause, mercenaries for hire) but they are either more demanding or more dangerous.
The recent comments about anti-Semitism in traditionalist Catholic circles are quite interesting. I do think that part of it may be due to invincible ignorance, if all a person in such circles is ever exposed to – and inclined to take seriously from an intellectual standpoint – is propaganda which persuasively argues that the Holocaust didn’t really happen.
There are basic principles of the sociology of knowledge at work here: As a general matter, which sources of information a person takes seriously, and which they do NOT choose to take seriously, is strongly influenced by broadly accepted attitudes and beliefs in that person’s social environment. This social environment, in turn, is to a large extent involuntarily determined – by the circumstances into which one happens to have been born.
Insofar as these considerations help to account for anti-Semitism in traditionalist circles, I myself would regard it as largely inculpable.
In addition, Evangelical Protestants have correctly pointed out a THEOLOGICAL basis for anti-Semitism that may also be operative in these Traditionalist circles, and that has certainly helped to account for the considerable amount of anti-Semitism that has historically existed within Christianity of many different forms.
Basically, the theological difficulty consists in not being able to account adequately, from a theological standpoint, for the continued existence of the Jews as a distinct people. The reasoning goes as follows: Since the Jews were cast off by God due to their rejection of their Messiah, God is finished with them as a people. As such, one would naturally expect their disintegration as a distinct people, and their gradual absorption into surrounding nations following their dispersion in antiquity. But they have NOT been absorbed – despite being cast off by God. Since God has completely rejected them, and since their continued existence is inexplicable on purely natural terms, it must be some kind of DEMONIC supernatural cause that accounts for their continued existence.
This flawed theological logic, as I say, partly underlies much of the anti-Semitism that has historically afflicted Christendom. However, it IS fatally flawed, for the following reason: It is simply false to say that God has completely rejected the Jewish people for havingi rejected their messiah. In Romans 11, Paul makes very clear that the Jews who do not accept Jesus as Messiah do still VERY MUCH figure into God’s plan, and that they HAVE NOT been cast off completely. In fact, Paul predicts their eventual conversion to Christianity as a people, and he even gives reasons for this: Among them, that the gifts and the calling extended to the Jews are irrevocable; and also, that if their rejection of Christ was of great benefit to humanity by making possible the acceptance of salvation by the Gentiles, then how much even more than this will the eventual ACCEPTANCE of Jesus as Messiah by the Jews be of benefit to humanity.
I encourage all of you to read Romans 9-11, especially 11, with care. It specifically refutes (both by explicit assertion and by implication) several theological errors regarding the Jews that have historically underlain Christian anti-Semitism, and that continue to do so in Traditionalist circles.
May I attempt here with some distinctions? Here are some different positions, some of which I think are anti-semitic and some not.
1. All Jews, simply by virtue of being Jews, are bad, dangerous to the human race, etc. They should be killed or otherwise restricted. Obviously this is anti-semitic.
2. All non-baptized Jews, simply by being Jews, are members of the synagogue of Satan, and working (objectively at least) against the Church. (This as I understand it, is the position of Michael Jones, of Culture Wars.) This also is anti-semitic.
3. Most non-baptized Jews, to one degree or another, are de facto trying to ruin whatever is left of Christian civilization. While I think this position is false, I’m not sure that it is anti-semitic.
4. Historically, many Jews were and are involved in destabilizing Christian civilization. Sometimes the Jews who did so had much to excuse their actions because of bad conduct on the part of Christians. I don’t think this position is anti-semitic.
5. The modern Zionist movement, and even more so the State of Israel, has very often engaged in unjust actions and in fact done the same sorts of things to the Palestinians that they object were done to Jews. I do not think this is anti-semitic.
Dear Tom,
I think your distinctions are very valid and helpful, and can perhaps be further elucidated in theological terms:
“1. All Jews, simply by virtue of being Jews, are bad, dangerous to the human race, etc. They should be killed or otherwise restricted. Obviously this is anti-semitic.”
“2. All non-baptized Jews, simply by being Jews, are members of the synagogue of Satan, and working (objectively at least) against the Church. (This as I understand it, is the position of Michael Jones, of Culture Wars.) This also is anti-semitic.”
I would say that both these forms of anti-Semitism root at least partially in the false theological assertion that God is completely finished with the unbelieving Jews as a people as of 70 ad. See my post of Dec. 4, 8:51 am, for more on how this false premise leads logically to your positions 1 and 2 as conclusions. (Referring to earlier posts seems to me a better approach than making my present posts unduly long by recopying the relevant parts.)
“3. Most non-baptized Jews, to one degree or another, are de facto trying to ruin whatever is left of Christian civilization. While I think this position is false, I’m not sure that it is anti-semitic.”
“4. Historically, many Jews were and are involved in destabilizing Christian civilization. Sometimes the Jews who did so had much to excuse their actions because of bad conduct on the part of Christians. I don’t think this position is anti-semitic.”
Whether 3 and 4 are true or not is, in the end, a strictly empirical question. Either unbelieving Jews DO in fact disproportionately behave in these ways, or they do not. I agree with you that the belief that empirical reality substantiates either 3 or 4, or both, is not in and of itself anti-Semitic. However, it is possible than some people who hold either of these to be true (e.g.: E Michael Jones, perhaps) do so without sufficient empirical warrant, on the basis of applying the Fallacy of Hasty Generalization to a small handful of individual unbelieving Jews behaving in these ways. But again, if the anti-Semitic prejudices leading one into this fallacy can be accounted for based on considerations related to the sociology of knowledge that I discussed in my post of Dec. 4, 8:39 am, then I do not see these anti-Semitic prejudices as morally culpable. (Possibly some considerations such as these may exonerate E Michael Jones in the eyes of God, for example.
“5. The modern Zionist movement, and even more so the State of Israel, has very often engaged in unjust actions and in fact done the same sorts of things to the Palestinians that they object were done to Jews. I do not think this is anti-semitic.”
On this point, I agree completely with the Orthodox Jewish position that Zionism is inherently apostate, and therefore inherently displeasing to God. But this is as little anti-Semitic as is Orthodox Judaism itself. It is merely the result of a theologically and morally principled Jewish self-understanding. See my post of Dec. 2, 2006, 11:01 am, for further discussion of this theological angle.
One addendum regarding Tom’s Point 5 in my previous post:
If secular Zionism IS in fact apostate, and thus inherently displeasing to God, then there is every reason to expect that the attempt to put it into practice would result in exactly the kinds of moral transgressions of which the secular Zionists are, and have been, so abundantly guilty. For apostasy has sin as its inevitable result. None have perhaps catalogued these moral outrages perpetrated over the 20th century by secular Zionists so painstakingly as the few remaining principled opponents of secular Zionism among Orthodox Jews.
–Total agreement with Francesca’s last comment above.
–Substantial agreement with Tom’s list, although a few quibbles: number 3 is, in any actual instance, very likely anti-Semitic, although I agree that it isn’t necessarily so; and re number 4, I think the misdeeds of secular Zionism (aka the state of Israel) are often painted in a somewhat disproportionate manner which sometimes has anti-Semitism at its root, but just as often springs from other views, such as left-wing politics, which, whether right or wrong, are not anti-Semitic. (I don’t want to get into the yeah-well-what-about-this exchange of atrocity stories normally generated on this topic, I just want to put my opinion on record.)
–Re MtA’s conjectures as to culpability, I’m a lot less understanding of anti-Semitism on the Catholic right (the theological right): I think it’s eminently culpable, and arises more out of the general attitude of suspicion and paranoia which is all too widespread there than from cultural influences.
–I would like to add, too, that some of the most inspiring witness I know of these days is coming from Jewish Catholics like Roy Schoeman and Dawn Eden. Salvation is, after all, from the Jews.
Sorry, I meant to say Tom’s point #5, not #4, above.
Mr Storck,
I can’t see the difference between your positions 1 & 2 (which you claim are anti-Semitic) and your positions
3 and 4. Take 3:
3. Most non-baptized Jews, to one degree or another, are de facto trying to ruin whatever is left of Christian civilization. While I think this position is false, I’m not sure that it is anti-semitic.
Anyone who thinks *most* non-Baptized Jews are busy trying to ruin Christian civ is anti-Semitic. Orthodox Jews – like Jonathan Sacks – busy trying to destroy Western Civ? I mean, not just that this is a nasty position, but that it is so lacking in empirical backup that anyone who holds it does so from a position of anti-Semitism.
I don’t think your position 4 is very far from this:
4. Historically, many Jews were and are involved in destabilizing Christian civilization. Sometimes the Jews who did so had much to excuse their actions because of bad conduct on the part of Christians. I don’t think this position is anti-semitic.
Historically, almost no Jews had much influence to speak of on Christian civilization before the French Revolution. Nearly all the moves toward a secular culture were thus made outside of Jewish influence. One clear example of where Jews had influence only after severe cultural breakdown had taken place is Russia.
Francesca, I took Tom’s #4 to be a reference to prominent revolutionaries like Marx, Freud, Lenin, et.al. If that’s not what he meant–if he meant something broader– then I don’t agree with it, either.
Pax, Francesca.
All I was trying to do was to distinguish between those who claim that all Jews are ipso facto something nasty, and those who claim that, while Jews may be engaged in doing bad things, this is accidental, i.e., not inherent in their being Jews. While those holding the latter positions are often wildly mistaken in their claims, I am not convinced that the term anti-semite should belong to all those holding such positions, especially as there are many nunances and many reasons for holding positions. The term “anti-semitic,” it seems to me, is both more useful as an analytic device and more accurate, if we are precise about applying it.
I am not much a maker of fine distinctions in this area. Where the 90% of the bell curve tends to reside is in answer to this question:
Do you believe Judaism to be a materially deficient belief system for attaining salvation?
For 90% of folks, how they answer this question will determine any number of additional views. As Francesca notes with Protestant views toward Catholicism, modern sensibilities seem to require one affirm another’s beliefs in order to affirm another person. In prior times, to claim that Judaism was materially insufficient to acquire salvation was not understood to mean that a given Jew did not have the means of attaining salvation. Today, the latter view is often placed upon the former view.
Suppose some people on a Protestant list were having a discussion about anti-Catholicism, and someone said, let’s make some distinctions. There are five things, and only two of them are anti-Catholic.
1. To say all Catholics as Catholics are evil and sbould be killed is anti-Catholic
2. To say all Catholics belong to the Whore of Babylon is anti-Catholic.
but
3. To say most Catholics are trying to ruin Christian civilization is not anti-Catholic
and
4. To say that most Catholics have not been detrimental to Christianity is not anti-Catholic.
Few Catholics would accept the distinction between 1 and 2 on the one hand and 3 and 4 on the other – because someone who didn’t hold at least 2 would not hold 3 or 4.
Miss Francesca’s re-working of the second item on Tom Storck’s list brings up an important distinction, I think.
“2. To say all Catholics belong to the Whore of Babylon is anti-Catholic.”
Certainly, anyone who thinks the claims of the Catholic Church are false must be anti-Catholic and that the Catholic Church is an institution promoting error; he cannot think of it as something benign. And, it would quite true to say that, if Catholicism (in everything that makes it unique and itself) were false, Catholics belong to an institution that promotes error. The equivalent as regards Jews would be anti-Judaism, not anti-semitism — the distinction being between a religion and a nation or race that holds that religion.
In other words, anti-Judaism might be an opposition to a religion because one thinks it is a false religion while anti-semitism would be a prejudice against a race based on an assumption that there is something intrinsically perverse about that race.
Pax Mr Storck and Everyone
I agree it’s quite reasonable to talk about why it was that de-racinated Jews, after European emancipation, quickly moved toward a – to use a useful shorthand – hermeneutic of suspicion of all traditions. But I’d do so rarely and extremely cautiously, and I prefer it when such discussions are conducted or led by Jews themselves, like Jonathan Sacks. The reason is that people quickly abuse such discussions for the purposes of denigration (or, back to 1 and 2). It’s not just the latent anti-Semitism in cultures, it’s the tendency of all discussions about race difference to degenerate in a denigratory direction (one reason we don’t have them). It’s a bit like the psychological osmosis between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism – it is not logical or rational, but, in fallen human beings, all kinds of hatreds and other emotions seep into an otherwise reasonable discussion.
On Mr. Zehnder’s point about anti-Judaism: most contemporary theologians I know of, including Ratzinger in “One Covenant, Two Peoples,” go with MtA’s non-supersessionist reading of Romans 9.
Moreover, thinking a religion is not the whole truth or sufficient is not equivalent even to anti-that-religion. I can think Buddhism is insufficient, but like some parts of it, or, on the other hand, I can think Buddhism is not only insufficient but also the sum of all distortions of the truth and the worst thing since Atzek child sacrifice. Only the latter would make me anti-Buddhist.
I can’t really accept a clear distinction between anti-Semitism as racial and anti-Judaism as a religion, because
1) Judaism *is* a people. Membership is defined by having a Jewish mother. Judaism has the occasional convert, but it’s not essentially a religion of conversion. Quite recently, a famously rude British interviewer, John Humphries, interviewed Rowan Williams, some Muslim guy and Jonathan Sacks. Only Sacks came out of it on top. Humphries began by asking, ‘how are you going to convert me?’ and Sacks replied he didn’t want to.
2) The question about Judaism is whether it’s got anything going for it after Christ. If the answer is no, then God ceased to have any interest in the Jewish people as such after Christ. The reason why leading modern theologians like Barth amongst Protestants and Ratzinger amongst Catholics have revisited Romans 9 is that it is difficult to hold merely that Judaism is insufficient as a religion without regarding it (in light of the history of God’s original choice of Israel) not just as only partially truth but also as self-excluded from God’s grace.
Well said, Francesca. Have you read Roy Schoeman’s book?
Francesca,
Yes, the recent move in the Catholic Church towards a non-supersessionist reading of Romans 9-11 is a step in the right direction. But I believe a full working out of the logic of drawing a clear, theologically substantial distinction between the Church, and Israel as a Chosen People with whom God is not finished, involves the recognition that there are many, many Old Testament prophecies relating to the Jewish nation that remain as yet unfulfilled.
Dispensationalists and other Biblical literalists within Protestantism had confidently been predicting the reconstitution of Israel as a nation for over 150 years before that event took place – based on their understanding of many Old Testament prophecies that attested to this. And not only that, but it was clear to them that God would initially permit this regathering to take place while the Jews were in a state of apostasy. In this way, the reconstitution of Israel as a nation – in its present apostate condition – must be regarded as an important sign that we are nearing the end of the present age, and that Jesus’ return as Messianic King is not far off. There are many, many as yet unfulfilled prophecies regarding the Jewish nation that are closely associated with this promised return – including an unprecedented tribulation to afflict the nation of Israel that is very distinctly predicted in Zechariah 12-14 (among other places). God will permit this, as he has permitted much Jewish suffering in the past, in order to cleanse them of their apostasy, and prepare them to “gaze upon Him Whom they had pierced, and mourn for him as for an only son (Zech 12:10)” at the time of Our Lord’s glorious return. This will also be the moment when Paul’s prediction in Romans 11:27 of the Jews’ conversion to Jesus as a people will find its fulfillment.
I haven’t heard of Shoeman, no. Is his book worth buying?
One of the best pieces of Catholic non-supersessionism I ever read is in Ida Gorres’ book “Broken Lights.” It’s written in the 1950s, I think. She is reading Jewish stuff, the tales of the Hasids, Buber, and she feels really torn between the strictly non-supersessionist attitudes of the RC church at the time, and her own feeling that she’s encountering genuine mysticism in Buber and the Hasidic writers. [That’s what I love about the immediate pre-Vatican II generation – they felt strongly enough *both* the church and their own intellectual consciences to feel torn between the two, on occasion]. Eventually, she comes up with the idea that present day Judaism is ‘shadowing’ Christianity until the end of time. It’s not the ‘shadow side’ of Christianity, in a Jungian sense, but the shadow cast by the light of Christ, genuinely following after Christ ‘from behind’ as it were.
I think the ‘shadow side’ idea could have a wider purchase with reference to Christianity and the non-Christian religions. It works on both a theological and an empirical level. The empirical level is that most non-Christian groups are likely to be affected by Christianity on a cultural level (eg, the Shi’a developing a passion play). The theological level is that God is making this happen.
Pascal in his Pensees says, “To show that the true Jews and the true Christians have but the same religion. The religion of the Jews seemed to consist essentially in the fatherhood of Abraham, in circumcision, in sacrifices, in ceremonies, in the Ark, in the temple, in Jerusalem, and, finally, in the law, and in the covenant with Moses.
I say that it consisted in none of those things, but only in the love of God, and that God disregarded all the other things.”
Okay, Francesca, I have to confess I haven’t finished the book–I got distracted and haven’t gotten back to it. But it’s called Salvation is from the Jews. The effect it had on me was one of those flashes of recognition: Wow, it’s really true–Christian faith and worship really are in direct continuity with Jewish faith and worship. I think there was a part of me that I wasn’t really aware of that feared our claim was maybe a bit of a stretch, with perhaps some retro-fitting involved. I think it’s perfectly accurate to say, in a certain sense, that Christianity and Judaism are the same religion, and Schoeman made that real to me.
I’m with Pascal on the Jews.
I was thinking that what I said about ‘it might be true that many Jews after emancipation were the first in the line for the hermeneutics of suspicion – but we oughtn’t to discuss it much’ sounded ghastly and high minded. One tremendous problem for conservativism in the 20th century after WWII is that Nazism wasn’t based on *lies* alone – it used some half truths, putting them in a total context which utterly distorted them. An Hungarian political philosopher, Aurel Kolnai, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, wrote a book in the 1930s called “The War Against the West.” It quotes dozens and dozens of ‘Nazi philosophers’ and just slams into them. Kolnai wrote in Vienna – trying to warn the West while there was still time. In his Memoirs (which I edited), written around 30 years later, he says that he was unjust to some of the authors he cites – there is in *some* of them a genuine thread of conservative thinking. The evil fantasy of Nazi collectivism drew on some genuine criticisms of the atomizing effects of liberalism on German culture.
While I agree that the Christian religion comes from Judaism and the Christian Church, as the People of God, is a continuation of Israel (it is the new Israel), and that God has not rejected the Jewish people, it seems the discussion here lacks some precision. Perhaps I misunderstand, but here is where I think I disagree with you all.
First, the Christian faith is not a series of true propositions but a unity centered on the person of Jesus Christ. Judaism or any other non-Christian religion is not simply a basically true religion with a few errors, but a false religion that contains truth. The true religion shows us how we might attain union with God, and that union is through Jesus Christ alone. Judaism, in its current form, specifically rejects Jesus Christ and so in itself cuts off those who follow it from the only way to salvation. If individual Jews are saved, it is not through Judaism per se (which points to another way beside Christ) but through the truths that Judaism contains and on account of an impediment that keeps the individual from coming to know the fullness of truth.
The Christian faith contains all the truths that Judaism proclaims; insofar as adherents of Judaism believe the truth, they are Christian or their religion is indistinguishable from the Christian religion. (The same would be true for adherents of other religions.) What distinguishes them is the errors they hold — namely, that salvation can be had through any other name than that of Christ.
Leite says that Fred Luz, Flamengos general director, told him of an approach from Jose Mourinhos side.
PA:Press Association4Could Spurs make a move for Wilfried Zaha again in the summer He would cost aro.