Catholic Zionism

Catholic Zionism differs from the forms of Protestant Zionism that require a literalist exegesis of Revelation 20:2, which describes a thousand-year period of Messianic rule during which Satan is “bound” and his power restrained. Catholic Zionism does not see the creation of Israel in 1948 as inaugurating the end times. The death and resurrection of Jesus did that. Catholic Zionism does not support an “apocalyptic” showdown in the Middle East…

Catholic Zionism shares one central feature of Protestant Zionism, however: It affirms that the promise made to Abraham in Genesis matters in our time. The foundation of the State of Israel in 1948 has theological significance. By the providence of God, Jews now have a right to live freely and practice their religion in the Promised Land…

In 1965, in Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council affirmed that God’s covenant with the Jewish people is irrevocable. Lumen Gentium had done the same the year before, concurring with what St. Paul says about biblical Judaism in Romans 11:29 (“For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable”). In 1980, Pope St. John Paul II identified biblical Judaism with post-biblical Rabbinic Judaism. The Catholic Church thus sees contemporary Judaism as remaining in a covenant relationship with God: heir to the gifts, promises, and callings of God.

More than two-thirds of the biblical mentions of the covenant are explicitly linked to the promise of the land. Is that gift still valid?

First we must consider God’s promise of the land to Abraham and his descendants (Gen. 12, 15, 17)…

After the resurrection, in Acts 1:6–8, Jesus affirms the restoration of the “kingdom to Israel.” Any Jewish listener would know that his reference here is to the land…Paul cites the gift of the land in Acts 13:19…

It is telling that, while the author references Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate, he does not include any direct quotes. Here is what they actually say:

The Church, further, "that Jerusalem which is above" is also called "our mother".(Gal. 4:26; cf. Rev. 12:17.) It is described as the spotless spouse of the spotless Lamb,(Rev. 19:7; 21:2 and 9; 22:17) whom Christ "loved and for whom He delivered Himself up that He might sanctify her",(Eph. 5:26.) whom He unites to Himself by an unbreakable covenant, and whom He unceasingly "nourishes and cherishes",(Eph. 5:29.) and whom, once purified, He willed to be cleansed and joined to Himself, subject to Him in love and fidelity,(Cf. Eph. 5:24.) and whom, finally, He filled with heavenly gifts for all eternity, in order that we may know the love of God and of Christ for us, a love which surpasses all knowledge.(Cf. Eph. 3:19.)
—Lumen gentium, 6.
At all times and in every race God has given welcome to whosoever fears Him and does what is right.(Cf. Acts 10:35.) God, however, does not make men holy and save them merely as individuals, without bond or link between one another. Rather has it pleased Him to bring men together as one people, a people which acknowledges Him in truth and serves Him in holiness. He therefore chose the race of Israel as a people unto Himself. With it He set up a covenant. Step by step He taught and prepared this people, making known in its history both Himself and the decree of His will and making it holy unto Himself. All these things, however, were done by way of preparation and as a figure of that new and perfect covenant, which was to be ratified in Christ, and of that fuller revelation which was to be given through the Word of God Himself made flesh. "Behold the days shall come saith the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel, and with the house of Judah . . . I will give my law in their bowels, and I will write it in their heart, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people . . . For all of them shall know Me, from the least of them even to the greatest, saith the Lord.(Jer. 31:31-34.) Christ instituted this new covenant, the new testament, that is to say, in His Blood,(Cf. 1 Cor. 11:25.) calling together a people made up of Jew and gentile, making them one, not according to the flesh but in the Spirit. This was to be the new People of God. For those who believe in Christ, who are reborn not from a perishable but from an imperishable seed through the word of the living God,(Cf. 1 Pt. 1:23.) not from the flesh but from water and the Holy Spirit,(Cf. Jn. 3:5-6.) are finally established as "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people . . . who in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God".(1 Pt. 2:9-10.)
—LG, 9.

Thus it is "the Church … whom He unites to Himself by an unbreakable covenant," the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, which includes Jews and Gentiles, not the ongoing Old Covenant of Jews alone. In this New Covenant Jews and Gentiles are united as one people.

As the sacred synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock.
Thus the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to God's saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. She professes that all who believe in Christ-Abraham's sons according to faith (Cf. Gal. 3:7)-are included in the same Patriarch's call, and likewise that the salvation of the Church is mysteriously foreshadowed by the chosen people's exodus from the land of bondage. 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. Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles.(Cf. Rom. 11:17-24) Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles. making both one in Himself.(Cf. Eph. 2:14-16)
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. She also recalls that the Apostles, the Church's main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ's Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people.
As Holy Scripture testifies, Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation,(Cf. Lk. 19:44) nor did the Jews in large number, accept the Gospel; indeed not a few opposed its spreading.(Cf. Rom. 11:28) 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.(Cf. Rom. 11:28-29; cf. dogmatic Constitution, Lumen Gentium (Light of nations) AAS, 57 (1965) pag. 20) In company with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and "serve him shoulder to shoulder" (Soph. 3:9).(Cf. Is. 66:23; Ps. 65:4; Rom. 11:11-32)
—Nostra Aetate, 4.

Notice in particular the final footnote, in which the statement that "the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable" is made (Rom. 11:11-32):

Hence I ask, did they stumble so as to fall? Of course not! But through their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make them jealous. Now if their transgression is enrichment for the world, and if their diminished number is enrichment for the Gentiles, how much more their full number. Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I glory in my ministry in order to make my race jealous and thus save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the firstfruits are holy, so is the whole batch of dough; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place and have come to share in the rich root of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches. If you do boast, consider that you do not support the root; the root supports you. Indeed you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is so. They were broken off because of unbelief, but you are there because of faith. So do not become haughty, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, [perhaps] he will not spare you either. See, then, the kindness and severity of God: severity toward those who fell, but God’s kindness to you, provided you remain in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off. And they also, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated one, how much more will they who belong to it by nature be grafted back into their own olive tree.
I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers, so that you will not become wise [in] your own estimation: a hardening has come upon Israel in part, until the full number of the Gentiles comes in, and thus all Israel will be saved, as it is written:
“The deliverer will come out of Zion,
he will turn away godlessness from Jacob;
and this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.”
In respect to the gospel, they are enemies on your account; but in respect to election, they are beloved because of the patriarchs. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.
Just as you once disobeyed God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now disobeyed in order that, by virtue of the mercy shown to you, they too may [now] receive mercy. For God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.

The gifts and call are not through a separate and ongoing Old Covenant, but in the one covenant in Jesus Christ, in which the branch broken off because of unbelief "will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again." In Jesus Christ there is no longer Jew and gentile, but one people in one faith.

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