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A reader finds the source of the Church’s disorder: the removal of the Deicide charge against the Jews
George R. writes:
You wrote: “Also, one can imagine an alternative history in which a non-liberal Vatican II removed the collective guilt on the Jews, while declining to declare Muslims ‘fellow adorers of the one God’ whose 1,300 years of jihad against Christendom should be ‘forgotten’ by Christians.”
Unfortunately, removing the collective guilt of the Jews would not have been possible without compromising doctrinal clarity, and without doctrinal clarity the Church is rendered powerless as a source of good order in the world. [LA notes: George is saying that the disorder of the Church in the last 40 years stems from Church’s removal of Jewish guilt.] Now if the Jews are collectively guilty according to Church Doctrine (and they are) to deny this in any way would inevitably lead to the same suicidal tolerance from the Church that we see today in Pope Benedict.
LA replies:
Please explain why doctrinal clarity in the Church requires the belief in collective Jewish guilt.
George R. replies:
Obviously the Jews of today had nothing to do with any event 2000 years ago. Nor can they be guilty of any crime that took place then. Nevertheless, any attempt by the Church hierarchy to remove the stigma of Deicide from the Jews will result in doctrinal confusion for this reason:
Upon the death of the Messiah the Old Covenant was abrogated after which the New Covenant was then offered to the Jews. Those Jews, therefore, who rejected this offer and instead maintained their allegiance to the Jewish religious authorities, i.e. to those who were actually guilty of the crime of Deicide, became rebels, apostates, and also, in a way, accessories after the fact to the crime of Deicide. Furthermore, the Jews of today by not repudiating the errors of their fathers continue in the guilt of their fathers. Therefore, the only way to really cleanse the stain of Deicide from the Jews is to remove the charge of Deicide from those who actually instigated the death of Christ. And the only way to do this is to call into question either the Gospels or the divinity of Christ.
LA replies:
If this was the doctrine of the Church prior to Vatican II, then no wonder they changed it. It’s absurd and vicious. There is no basis in the Gospels for saying that Jews who simply continued as Jews during all the ages since the time of Christ were “accessories after the fact” in the Crucifixion. This is a barbaric notion.
The best Gospel evidence for the thesis of collective Jewish guilt is Matt 27:25:
Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.
Leaving aside the question of how unlikely it is that an entire crowd shouted in unison, “His blood be on us, and on our children,” assuming this was said, who said it? A group of people. A mob. They were not God. They had no divine authority to distribute and assign guilt onto generations unborn. They had no power to determine the ontological status of other human beings, let alone people who did not even exist yet. That’s crazy.
So, Vatican II’s removal of the guilt of Deicide on the Jewish people was a good thing.
Further, there is no logical, necessary connection between the Vatican’s removal of the Deicide charge against the Jews, and the Vatican’s embrace of Islam. The Vatican could have done the first, without doing the second, as I said in the earlier discussion.
- end of initial entry -
Rachael S. writes:
You write:
“There is no basis in the Gospels for saying that Jews who simply continued as Jews during all the ages since the time of Christ were ‘accessories after the fact’ in the Crucifixion. This is a barbaric notion.”
You are wrong, because the Jews were introduced by God for the purpose of bringing about the Messiah. Their entire religion was preparation for his arrival and his gift to the world. We are all guilty through original sin in the reality of Jesus, True Man and True God, having to be sacrificed. This we can agree on as Christians. Further, in looking at the Old Testament, specifically at the book of Numbers, you will see that the disobedience of the few, and of small groups of Jews, lead to the punishment of the entire group of Jews (the destruction of the entire family of a man who had kept trophies from the pagans against God’s commandment, and the exile and wandering in the wilderness of the entire group of Israelites for their collective doubt and disobedience of the order to invade Canaan).
Your website regularly deals with race as a physical reality for human beings.
The spiritual reality for Jews is a connection, down through time, in a covenant with God that involved both spiritual and physical responsibilities.
They were apart from others, in order to preserve the proper worship of God and bring about the Messiah. Any Jews that continued in the tradition of their fathers (taking on the responsibilities of the Jewish race) while not acknowledging that Jesus was its fulfillment engage in repudiation of God’s laws.
The deicide charge may sound harsh, but I see it as a legalistic pronouncement on what Judaism continues to do to the Messiah; renounce him and put up a false promise in his place. That is a way of killing Jesus all over again. What is required to fulfill ones responsibilities as a Jew is to accept Jesus. The people who “continued as Jews” during and after the time of Christ were continuing in false Judaism. Christians should, above all, hold fast to this point and stress it firmly when the subject of modern Judaism comes up.
In the Latin Mass there are prayers made for the conversion of the Jews. This demonstrates a deicide charge does not indicate the Church wanted to harm Jews, but to bring them back to their destiny, the acceptance of their Messiah.
There might be a different way of saying it besides deicide… but the Church still needs to stress the enormity of the collective body of Judaism’s betrayal of their Christ. If the Church does not do this, it demeans the historical importance of the Jews in the continuum of God’s plan.
p.s: I have included the email that I sent you earlier this week about this topic.
You write:
“Also, one can imagine an alternative history in which a non-liberal Vatican II removed the collective guilt on the Jews, while declining to declare Muslims ‘fellow adorers of the one God’ whose 1,3000 years of jihad against Christendom should be ‘forgotten’ by Christians.”
I think a Jewish person accepts a technical charge of guilt upon himself by keeping to an incorrect interpretation of Judaism, namely, that Jesus was not the Messiah.
For the sake of this argument, we accept these objective realities:
1. The Jewish race was inaugurated by God (through his covenant with Abraham) for the purpose of preserving worship of the One True God, and bringing about the Messiah for all mankind.
2. Jesus was and is that Messiah.
3. The correct interpretation of Judaism would then have been corporate acceptance of Jesus at the time of his sojourn on Earth.
God is not going to collectively punish the Jewish race because that punishment no longer exists. But the technical charge would still hold for someone who follows the Old Law but does not accept Jesus as its fulfillment.
The religious obligation of the true, believing Jew is to accept Jesus, because racially he has been graced since antiquity with that honor and responsibility.
If we accept the above, it would be enough to simply behave humanely towards the Jews, and not “remove” the technical stigma by a Church pronouncement. The old mistreatment of Jews by Catholics could simply be chalked up to the understandable rivalries between religious and ethnic groups; anything above and beyond those natural tendencies need not be blamed on Catholic dogma but on individual human failings.
And if all the above is acceptable according to Christian understanding (which we would accept as the continuation of Judaism through the arrival of Jesus Christ), then it is not to be wished that anyone make allowances for the modern, false interpretation of Judaism that draws Jews away from Christ and encourages them in that error.
Rachael S.—(a traditionalist Catholic)
LA replies:
It is unreasonable to expect that the Jews as a people should have seen Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and to blame them for not doing do.
The Messiah that was expected by the Jews would be the fulfillment of the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. But the teaching of Jesus meant the end of the Jewish religion.
To understand this, we simply need to think about the core nature of each religion.
In Judaism, the Jewish people come into relationship with God by collectively following God’s laws.
In Christianity, the individual person comes into relationship with God through individual relationship with Jesus Christ.
Thus these are two different and mutually incompatible religions.
The Jews were the recipients of God’s first great revelation of himself. They were loyal to that dispensation. To expect them to have given it up is unreasonable.
Tom S. writes:
What part of “Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do” do these people not understand?
Dimitri K. writes:
May I comment on the subject even though I am not a Christian. I believe what the reader means is that removing stigma of Deicide from the Jews, in his opinion, undermined the image of the Church as the only lawful inheritor of the covenant, because Jews also claim the ownership. Thus, since the Church is not the only owner, the logical consequence, according to the reader, is to share it with everybody, including Muslims. That logic however does not take into consideration that the Covenant may be inherited by Church lawfully without demonizing the previous owner, but with a full respect to him. On the opposite, the Church did not inherit anything from Muslims, and therefore it has no obligations to them.
LA replies:
I agree 100 percent with what Dimitri just said.
Dimitri continues:
It is amazing how many people find that the reason for current liberal disorder is Jewish guilt and removing the charge from Jews. This is also associated with the Holocaust denial. The deniers believe that by their denial (which is equivalent to blaming Jews for falsification) they resist the Political Correctness, and hence, the Islamisation of the West. I agree that there was a mistake of European Jews to support the laws that enforce the [belief in the?] Holocaust (if they ever did it), because the same laws are now used against Islam critics. But the laws themselves as well as the tradition of enforcement of opinions have nothing to do with the Holocaust or Jews. It is a European tradition. It is unfortunate that the Holocaust is used as a justification of such a policy, but maybe it is a part of the evil plan. As the result, the policy that hurts Jews most of all will be again blamed on Jews.
James N. writes:
I think God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 is absolute, unconditional, and good for all time.
LA replies:
Explain further in the context of the discussion.
James N. replies:
The “abrogation” of God’s covenant with the Jews is an invention.
God does not give an account in the New Testament of His plans for the future of his chosen people, but the works of His mighty hand are clearly evident in these latter days.
Tom S. writes:
Real quick;
1) The whole concept of “collective guilt” is abhorrent to the Christian religion; we sin, and are forgiven, as individuals.
2) Even since Maimonides, I believe, and possibly earlier, the Jewish religious leadership has condemned the killing of Jesus, as contrary to Jewish law, and has stated that Jesus was a special person with a special mission. Jews today do NOT accept what was done in Judea by some of their co-religionists two-thousand years ago. Jews are not “accessories after the fact”—they repudiate the crime. Just because Jews do not believe that Jesus was the Christ does not mean they approve of His judicial murder. Check out “The Jewish Encyclopedia” under the topic of “Jesus” for more details.
3) Since there is no collective guilt, Jews today are no more guilty of “killing Jesus all over again” than are the adherents of any other religion that does not accept Christ as the Messiah. Yet one never hears of Buddhists or Musselmen accused of deicide.
4) Jesus asked God to forgive those who crucified him. Would He really have wanted those who claim to speak in his name to hold a grudge? For once, Vatican II got it right.
I’m a Christian, but not a theologian, may be wrong, but that’s how I see it…
George R. writes:
Please allow me to respond to the criticisms of my position:
You write:
“If this was the doctrine of the Church prior to Vatican II, then no wonder they changed it. It’s absurd and vicious. There is no basis in the Gospels for saying that Jews who simply continued as Jews during all the ages since the time of Christ were “accessories after the fact” in the Crucifixion. This is a barbaric notion.”
I did not argue the Gospels as the basis for the collective guilt of the Jews. I argued that the guilt of the Jews can be traced back to their continued adherence to their religious authorities who were actually guilty of the crime—the supposition being that those who support murderers have a share in their guilt. And those who support the murderers of God have a share in the crime of Deicide. I know that sounds “vicious” and “barbaric,” but we must look beyond sounds of words to their logic. [LA replies: The logic is barbaric, and also very stupid, as though the Jews of the Middle Ages in France were following the religious authorities in Jerusalem of 30 A.D. The Jewish people are simply to be treated as single individual, just as, in tribal cultures, an entire tribe is guilty for the acts of any member of the tribe. Only with the Jews the guilt and punishment continue throughout history and on every continent, following the Jews wherever they go, bringing misery and ruin on the Jewish people for century after century. I am a strong critic of the Jewish/liberal campaign to indict the Catholic Church as such of anti-Semitism. But if George is accurately representing the traditional Catholic position, then he is doing a great job of supporting that indictment.]
Also, in response to Rachel S. You write:
“The Messiah that was expected by the Jews would be the fulfillment of the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. But the teaching of Jesus meant the end of the Jewish religion.
To understand this, we simply need to think about the core nature of each religion.
In Judaism, the Jewish people come into relationship with God by collectively following God’s laws.
In Christianity, the individual person comes into relationship with God through individual relationship with Jesus Christ.
Thus these are two different and mutually incompatible religions.
The Jews were the recipients of God’s first great revelation of himself. They were loyal to that dispensation. To expect them to have given it up is unreasonable.”
This contradicts the teaching of the Church. The idea that the religion of the Jews and Christianity “are two different and mutually incompatible religions” would be unintelligible to orthodox Catholics. Now, you argue that this your understanding of the two religions would effectively exculpate the Jews. I agree. But this is precisely why I argue that any attempt by the Church to exculpate the Jews would involve tampering with Catholic Doctrine. [LA replies: Fantastic: You judge the Jews from a point of view completely external to that of the Jews themselves. You deny the reality of what the Jewish religion is to the Jews. The Jews are simply supposed to accept the Catholic incorporation of the Jewish religion into a Catholic framework; and if the Jews don’t do that, they are guilty. I have criticized Jews for ignoring the subjectivity of non-Jews, but evidently the ignoring goes both ways.]
Tom S. writes:
“What part of ‘Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do’ do these people not understand?”
The fact that Our Lord is asking that they be forgiven, does that not imply guilt? Moreover, Our Lord was referring to those who were His actual tormentors and murderers. Is Tom S. suggesting that even these were not guilty?
James N. writes:
“The ‘abrogation’ of God’s covenant with the Jews is an invention.”
Let’s see. Jerusalem was destroyed. The temple was destroyed. The Jewish priesthood was extinguished. And the Jews have not produced a single (non-false) prophet in 2000 years. There’s my evidence. Where’s yours?
Tom S. Writes:
“Jesus asked God to forgive those who crucified him. Would He really have wanted those who claim to speak in his name to hold a grudge? For once, Vatican II got it right.”
Honestly now. Is it really plausible that the liberal insurgency at Vatican II got anything of importance right? [LA replies: The validity of a position is to be judged by the objective merits of the position itself, not by the validity of other positions that the same party may have taken. But that is a truth that cannot be comprehended by George’s corporate way of seeing humanity and judging moral issues.]
LA adds:
By the way, I did not mean to suggest that George represents the traditional Catholic position. I don’t think he does. I think he represents an extreme hard-line position toward the Jews that would have been opposed in the pre-Vatican II Church.
Tom S. writes:
George R wrote: “The fact that Our Lord is asking that they be forgiven, does that not imply guilt? Moreover, Our Lord was referring to those who were His actual tormentors and murderers. Is Tom S. suggesting that even these were not guilty?”
Yes, of course the people who actually crucified Christ were guilty—and He asked His Father to forgive even them! If he asked forgiveness for those who were actually guilty, how much more should we forgive those whose only “crime” is one of descent? Jesus asked forgiveness for his tormentors—how about we do what he asked, for once? Besides, as noted, almost all Jews regard the judicial murder of Christ as a wrong, and have for at least the past four-hundred years, maybe longer. Indeed, there were plenty who regarded it as such at the time, as a reading of the Gospels will show.
And as for owing allegiance to authorities in lineal descent from those who did wrong: Thomas Jefferson owned slaves; I owe my political allegiance to a man who, in authority, is directly descended from him. Does that make me complicit in slavery?
Gintas writes:
You said,
“The Jews were the recipients of God’s first great revelation of himself. They were loyal to that dispensation. To expect them to have given it up is unreasonable.”
Christians are the inheritors of the mantle of “God’s People.” The Old Covenant has long been abolished—it had served its purpose. A reading of Galatians shows that purpose of the Old Covenant was not to make a righteous people, but basically to keep them out of major trouble around until the Christ arrived. Note: the promise of Christ was made to Abraham (not Moses), some 400+ years before the Law was given; the Covenant with its laws and regulations was made through Moses, right as they gained their liberation from Egyptian slavery. Note: Abraham and his descendants lived for 400 years as God’s people without the Law as given at Sinai.
One of the first things they did upon that liberation from Egypt was to make a golden calf and worship it. The sons of Abraham were in mortal danger of spinning out of God’s orbit, so to speak. Thus,
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 20 Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.
21 Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. [Galatians 3:19-26, English Standard Version]
The Old Covenant (Law) was a guardian, added because of transgressions. It kept the Jews captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith in Christ would be revealed. It didn’t generate life and righteousness. It wasn’t meant to, and trying to use it for that is a distortion. Now that faith in Christ is revealed, there is no need of it.
I think the thing that throws people is that the Old Covenant is not some man-made religion or some weird distortion of God’s revelation. It was from God. But God obsoleted it. But it’s still something that had come from God, so the Jews are in a halfway state. They’re not misled, they’re “half-led.” It’s a natural advantage, they don’t seem to take advantage…maybe Rabbinic Judaism has led them too far afield.
A study of the letter to the Hebrews shows a number of ways how there were signposts pointing to the Messiah planted throughout the Old Testament. Someone who really understood the whole picture would see Christ and say, “Ah hah! Here is the promised One!” Whoever didn’t accept the Messiah didn’t really understand the Old Covenant, was holding to the shadow (the signposts), not the substance / reality (the Christ). The letter is really an exhortation for some Jews to keep to the Christ, and not revert to the Old Covenant.
As far as the Deicide charge, to me it’s quite a reach to say it’s needed for doctrinal clarity. In fact, this is the first time I’ve even heard the idea!
LA replies:
The Christian reading of the Old Testament is profound. At the same time, the issue is, should the Jews all have seen this Christian perspective? Are they wrong for not seeing it? Were they wrong for not seeing that their own religion was “obsoleted”? Of course, they had strong grounds for continuing to believe in the revelation and dispensation that God had given to them. And that’s my point.
I don’t know that any scholar has ever made the argument I’m making here. But to me it seems true and resolves the age-old problem. The Christian revelation is the highest, fullest revelation of God. But the Jews had had an earlier revelation of that same God. The history of these events—God revealing himself first to the Hebrews, as their national God, then, out of the Hebrew religion, the advent of Jesus Christ to all mankind—created this inherent problem in the structure of history. History was constructed by God in such a way that there would be this new religion, and the old religion, and the two religions had to figure out a modus vivendi.
And let me add: the hard-line Catholic view (which is not the mainstream Catholic view, but is nevertheless a part of the Catholic thing) that the Jews are to be blamed and placed under bans for not accepting Christ is analogous to the Islamic view of infidels. Muhammad says that infidels by the very fact of not accepting Allah and his prophet are deeply, eternally blameworthy, and are to be hated and punished, especially the Jews, because they rejected the M man’s claim that he was the Jewish messiah. The hardline Catholic view says the same thing about Jews who reject Christianity. It forms a fixed concept of the Jews as eternal enemies, or as an intolerable disruption in the universe (at least until they all convert). Which, by the way, is analogous to the MacDonaldites’ racial view of the Jews as genetically determined racial enemies of gentiles. So it’s really great for the Jews. They’ve got the hard-line Catholics, and the far whites, and 1.25 billion Muslims, all regarding them, the Jews, as the cosmic enemy. Why? Just for existing. Not to mention the entire continent of Europe which regards Israeli oppression of Palestinians (translation: Israeli self-preservation) as the cause of all Islamic jihad and terror; and the American Buchanites who feel the same and seek the destruction of Israel.
Truly, as Tom Lehrer sang:
Oh the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Hindus hate the Muslims
And everybody hates the Jews.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 10, 2007 12:53 PM | Send
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