Posted on 10/30/2010 6:11:12 AM PDT by Pride_of_the_Bluegrass
“Catholic Church: Christ nullified God’s promises to the Jews,” reads the headline on the Israel Today website. That is not quite true: At the just-concluded Synod of Middle East Bishops, a cleric from the tiny group of Melkite Greeks, Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros, made such a statement on behalf of the Melkites, not the Catholic Church.
The head of the same church, the Syrian-based Patriarch Gregorios III Laham, also attacked priestly celibacy before the Synod. He wasn’t speaking for Rome, either. Clerical marriage hasn’t helped the Melkites; they claim just 1.3 million members worldwide, fewer than the Korean Methodist Church or the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea. Their actual numbers are much smaller.
The concerns of Greek Christians will fade before long, for in two or three generations there will be no Greek Christians in the Middle East, nor indeed Christians of any sort in the Middle East. Nor, for that matter, will there be many Greeks; with a fertility rate of only 1.37 children per female, one of the world’s lowest, Greece by mid-century will have a population two-thirds of which exceeds the age of sixty, and very little population at all by the end of the century. In a hundred years, modern Greek will be a dying language.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
Your distortions of authentic Catholic teaching are not beneficial to anyone.
Further, there is zero ambiguity.
The Second Vatican Council issued Nostra Aetate as a summary of the teaching on this matter, and John Paul II and Benedict XVI have written extensively in detail on these matters.
Whereas Nostra Aetate seems actually ambiguous about the status of Jews, there is no such ambiguity concerning Islam!
http://www.nostreradici.it/enaetate.htm
...The apostle Paul maintains that the Jews remain very dear to God for the sake of the patriarchs since God does not take back the gifts he bestowed or the choice he made...
...lt is true that the Church is the new people of God, yet the Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from holy Scripture...
...The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth,[1] who has also spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the bidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own. Although not acknowledging him as God, they worship Jesus as a prophet, his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly invoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, almsdeeds and fasting.
Over the centuries many quarrels and dissensions have arisen between Christians and Muslims. The sacred Council now pleads with all to forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding; for the benefit of all men, let them together preserve and promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values...
I see no ambiguity in this statement.
There you go again with the ambiguity. Your statement is factually correct on the face, but deceptive by omission. The Abrahamic promises had always been contingent upon reciprocal faithfulness. Jesus repeatedly taught that such faithfulness required following Him. He also condemned the Chief Priests and Pharisees for an unfaithfulness that disinherited them from the Abrahamic promises.
These teachings are repeated by Paul and other Apostles many times in the New Testament. It is clear that Church leaders and Hebrew Christians continued in the inheritance of Abraham. Those who did not follow Jesus were cut off. "Broken off" from the tree is how Paul puts it even as he warns Gentiles "grafted on" not to be boastful. The teaching is sometimes misleadingly called replacement but more accurately described as continuation of the inheritance within the Church.
From the earliest times until the 1960's, Church officials never wavered from the teaching. Documents of Vatican II obfuscated, but never overturned the doctrine. Since then, countless officials employed ambiguity that misled the uninitiated into thinking the Church had changed her teaching on the Jews.
Sometimes officials make statements that sound like a break from the past, but can never hold. For instance, the US bishops put out a document called "Reflections on Covenant and Mission" which taught that rabbinical Jews still had a covenant distinct from the New Covenent of Christians. This teaching was denounced by traditionalists as "dual covenant theory" the US bishops were forced to issue a correction.
The fact remains, as taught by the Council and as taught before it: that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah of Israel.
We Gentiles who acknowledge him are aline, grafted branches in a naturally Jewish tree.
When the Jewish people acknowledge the Messiah the inheritance which God has decreed for them, which He has maintained for them all along and never excluded them from, will be bestowed upon them.
And we Gentiles - then as now - will be the adopted sons of the Messianic Kingdom and they will still be the natural sons.
Compared to DIGNITATIS HUMANAE from about the same time, it is very ambiguous.
“This Vatican Council likewise professes...”
“This Vatican Council declares...”
compared to
“The Apostle Paul maintains...”, perhaps letting us know that this is subject to Scriptural interpretation.
So do the Jews of today have a claim on the historic Land of Israel according to Biblical promise and the official teachings of the RCC?
The Church teaches that all God's promises to them are real and eternal.
The difference between the Church and post-classical Judaism is what each party believes about the identity of the Messiah who is the guarantor of these promises.
Not ambiguous? Let's take a look.
The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God...
Again, note the characteristic omission. Christianity teaches that the one God revealed Himself more fully in the New Testament as consisting of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Son (also called the Word) was born to the Virgin Mary with a fully human nature alongside His divine nature.
Over the centuries many quarrels and dissensions have arisen between Christians and Muslims. The sacred Council now pleads with all to forget the past
The most significant quarrel is over the nature of Christ and the Council is scarcely authorized to give that up.
Then Jews inherit the Abrahamic promises, including the Land of Israel, when they come home to the Catholic Church. Correct?
Wideawake gave you an evasive response. Let me be more direct. Jews within the Church have that claim along with the rest of the Church. Nobody outside the Church can make that claim.
Though as I understand it "Melkite Greeks" are not ethnic Greeks but simply Byzantine Rite Arabs in communion with the Pope (as opposed to Byzantine rite Orthodox Arabs and non-Chalcaedonian Arabs who don't use the Byzantine rite).
Eastern Orthodoxy, a non-proselytary religion, is suffering from a declining birthrate. Meanwhile the Jews, who also practice a non-proselytary religion, are thriving. Interesting.
Ironically, however proselytary the Catholic Church may be in Africa and Asia (and the Orthodox world), in the USA they remain an ingrown ethnic church almost allergic to the very idea of missionary activity--especially among the embarrassing part of the population that lives in trailer parks.
?
They have the promises now. The promises are their birthright.
Just because the Jews have not recognized Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah does not mean that their inheritance is taken away or that it is transferred.
Jews within the Church have that claim along with the rest of the Church. Nobody outside the Church can make that claim.
No, the Jews have the inheritance and the promises as Jews - whether they are Jews who acknowledge their Messiah or whether they are Jews who do not.
The Church's belief, now as always, is that the Church (composed of both Jewish and Gentile members) is a pilgrim on this earth, and that only when the Messiah returns in glory will the pilgrimage end.
At this very moment, the Jewish people have a right to claim their inheritance. But neither Catholic nor Orthodox Jew believes that this rightful inheritance can be truly secure until the Messiah sits on the throne of David in glory.
You continue to equivocate. I will not ask you to cite a reference since it is still not clear what you are saying. You appear to say that Jews have inherited by blood the Abrahamic promises, blessings of which the bible repeatedly states can only be acquired through faith.
We agree that Jewish people have a right to claim their inheritance but you did not say whether this would require faith in Christ. Neither did you say whether the Church theologically supports an inherited right of modern Jews to take land away from the Palestinians.
I would point out that there is a difference between the physical land of Israel and the Kingdom of Heaven.
The right to the former and the gift of the admission to the latter are not identical. The former comes through descent, the latter by faith.
The teaching of the Church on these questions thus remains what it always has: All men are in need of Christ for salvation (even if through innocent ignorance they may be able to be saved without explicit recognition of Christ in this life), the gospel is to be preached to all men (including Jews), and that before the Second Coming there will be a corporate conversion of the Jewish people.As the Catechism says, "The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by ‘all Israel,’ for ‘a hardening has come upon part of Israel’ in their ‘unbelief’ toward Jesus [Rom. 11:20-26]. . . . ‘For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?’ [Rom. 11:15]. The ‘full inclusion’ of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of ‘the full number of the Gentiles’ will enable the People of God to achieve ‘the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,’ in which ‘God may be all in all’ [Eph. 4:13; 1 Cor. 15:28]" (CCC 674).
So there is a dual covenant. Sons of Abraham by blood, as approved by rabbis, inherit the land while sons of Abraham by faith, Christians, inherit Heaven. This as Catholic teaching?
There was a promise and the promise stands.
The promise - i.e. the land of Israel being the physical birthright of the Jewish people - is a foretaste of the Kingdom, not the Kingdom itself.
The hope of the Apostles and the Fathers was not that they would one day have title to the land of Israel, but that they would have life everlasting in Heaven.
That is the covenant, and that covenant is accessible in only one way: the free grace of Jesus.
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