Posted on 07/29/2016 5:36:19 PM PDT by kindred
Pope Francis forgot to mention: the Vatican has walls. He also keeps protecting mistaken Catholic doctrine about Israel.
Pope Francis endorsed the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, including east Jerusalem. This should surprise no well-informed person. Francis, like his predecessor, Pope Benedict, knows where the holiest and most world-significant site of the Jewish People rests. He knows about the theological significance of the Temple Mount and how it casts a question on Catholic dogma. But let me focus on the learned Benedict whom, unlike Francis, one cannot mistake for a Leftist.
Pope Benedict’s dilemma
Professor Joseph Alois Ratzinger, who visited to Israel in 1975 and again in 1994, was not a naïve academic. He understood that an Arab-Islamic state in Israel’s heartland dooms the Jewish State. But given the doctrine of papal infallibility to which Roman Catholics genuflect, the rebirth of the Jewish state in 1948 must stick like a bone in the throat of any Bishop of Rome.
Ratzinger understood that Israel’s rebirth is one of the most significant events in history. This event has had, and continues to have, profound repercussions for a very large part of mankind.
Stunned and embarrassed, Christian (as well as Islamic) theologians have had to perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to account for the return of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland.
Catholic Christianity especially discomfited.
For millennia the Church propagated the theological doctrine that the Jews are eternally damned and rejected by the Almighty for having refused to recognize the Nazarene. No wonder the Vatican refused, until recently, to recognize the Jewish State of Israel.
This passage from the Jesuit revue Civilta Cattolica tells it all:
1827 years have passed since Jesus of Nazareth’s prophecy that Jerusalem would be destroyed, that the Jews would be exiled as slaves among the nations and remain scattered to the end of time…. According to the holy scriptures, it is incumbent on the Jewish people to live forever scattered and wandering among the gentile nations, in order to provide testimony to Jesus, not only via the writings, but by means of their very existence. Being that Jerusalem has now been rebuilt, to become a center for the renewed Israeli State, we are duly bound to add this is a direct contradiction to Jesus’ own prophecy.
In 1948 the Vatican, in an English radio program, hailed the new Jewish state by describing Zionism as a “new Nazism” and Israel as “a grave menace to Christianity.”
Recognize Israel or protect doctrine?
Apparently, the Roman Catholic Church could not recognize the State of Israel without placing in question its own religion. It has compromised itself by its participation and complicity in the persecution and slaughter of millions of innocent Jewish men, women, and children. [See Pathways to the Torah (Jerusalem: Yeshivat Aish HaTorah, 1988), Sect. A14, for a brief survey of some 1,900 years of venomous hatred of the Jewish people by such Christian divines as Tertullian, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory, Pope Innocent III, Pope Paul IV, and Pope Pius VII.]
Consider, also, the horrifying slaughter of Jews by Lithuanian Catholics on June 25, 1941. They tortured, axed, shot, or burned alive more than 10,000 Jews. [See Aaron Sorasky, Reb Elchonon (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Mesorah Publications, 1982), p. 407.]
In February 1992, Argentina opened its files on Nazi war criminals. The files reveal how the Catholic Church aided the escape of these Nazis. One may say much the same of the hierarchy of France’s Roman Catholic Church. [See The Jerusalem Post, Feb. 9, 1992, p. 10.]
Ponder, too, the audiences Pope John Paul II gave to PLO chief Yasser Arafat, the godfather of international terrorism. Some have said in the Pope’s defense he was making a distinction between the sin and the sinner. Judaism also makes this distinction, but the rabbis do not shake the bloodstained hands of murderers – as might paltry politicians. Harsh words? Then let me remind readers of an event that took place in 1929.
The Hebron Massacre
In that year, the Arabs, with British connivance, indulged in an orgy of rape and murder that destroyed the ancient community in Hebron. The British mandatory government invited prominent Jews to Government House, presumably to express condolences for the pogrom which included the most savage mutilation of men, women, and children.
The British Secretary of the Mandatory Government extended his hand to greet Chief Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the religious leader of the pre-state Jewish Community. And that great Rabbi refused the handshake. He said it was a hand “besmirched with Jewish blood.”
By endorsing a sovereign Arab-Islamic state in Judea and Samaria, Pope Benedict (like Pope Francis) was instructing more than one billion Roman Catholics to support the enemies of the Jewish people whom he piously called “brothers.”
One cannot fight a polite war
With genocide staring Israel in the face from Iran, this is no time for politeness. Millions of evangelical Christian Zionists, and many Catholic laymen, identify with Israel vis-à-vis the menace Islam poses to western Civilization. Now these Christians should expose the Vatican to respectful but incisive criticism on both theological and political grounds. When they do that, they can galvanize Catholic Christianity to speak up against the most horrendous enemy of mankind. That enemy: Islam, which is slaughtering Christians in the name of Allah.
Regrettably, the Vatican fears of a flourishing but self-constrained Judaism more than a supremacist and expansionist Islam. They do so even when ISIS stands at the gates. They do it for theological, as well as for reasons affecting their global status. All good men should rally behind Israel. For Israel stands as the authentic champion of ethical and intellectual monotheism that justifies a multiplicity of nations to manifest the plenitude and creativity of God.
I believe that the Roman Church will merge into the one world church with Islam and other cults and become the Woman riding on the back of the beast, the antichrist who will try to destroy the prophecy of God for Israel.
We don’t have a Pope. We have an anti-Pope.
Indeed.
Yup..
It wouldn’t be the first time the Roman church, or its predecessor organization since getting mixed up with the state in a way that there was no biblically recorded mandate to carry out, got itself into theological tangles.
It ain’t to say that modern Protestants have it perfect either.
But we would be very wrong to deny the “in part” limitation upon the degree to which the hardening came to Israel. There is no blanket authorization in the New Testament to pan the Jewish people as a whole. Prior to the explicit revelation of Christ, all salvation had to be private (as it was to the psalmists). A day is coming when all surviving Israel will behold and accept the explicit public revelation of Christ. They are running behind the church, but not without promised blessings of God.
Also, more modern Roman theology is friendlier to Israel than older Roman/Orthodox theology was.
The creation of the State of Israel has no theological significance for Catholic theology. Its recognition by the Vatican was purely a diplomatic act, not a theological act. The State of Israel was recognized because a secular Jewish state has established sovereign control over the land. It was not recognized as the legitimate continuation of the Old Testament Covenant.
Get a life.
“He also keeps protecting mistaken Catholic doctrine about Israel.”
There are no “mistaken Catholic doctrine[s] about Israel.”
And this was a mistake, with respect to the Hebrew people gathering to populate it. The modern Israel may not have realized all of the Lord’s promises yet, but God’s promise did not get yanked out from under the whole Hebrew people like it was a cheap rug.
Every time the “Palestinians” get into a self destructive rage and have their heads handed to them by the modern Hebrew people, it seems that some anti-Zionists have to chew out the latter people, not the former, for what transpired. The Hebrew people themselves have shown themselves to mostly be of generous inclination. If the “Palestinians” wanted to live in peace, rather than choosing to let themselves be driven by evil Islam, they’d be in fat city among the Jews right now, who have to waste so many resources on protecting themselves from “Palestinian” rage. What do you do with a people who has a perpetual chip on its shoulder?
It’s only a flesh wound.
We have a Life. That is why we speak of Him.
Always thought of myself as pretty hip when it comes to Christian doctrines but I never knew this; doesn't seem to have much scriptural foundation. In fact, runs up against some clear prophecies about the restoration of Israel such as in Ezekiel 37 not to mention the teachings of Paul.
I don’t really keep up on current events, but isn’t the Pope the guy that wears silly looking hats and dresses up in Superhero capes and robes and is a devoted Marxist ? Maybe I’m confusing him with some other Month Python character.
Any fair discussion of this issue would need to include them. Any fair discussion of the issue.
What the Scriptures teach vs the Roman Church teaches is different. All Christendom that has abandoned Scripture is in mortal danger as the heresy therein is so very ungodly and damaging. The Scriptures teach that Jesus Christ will bring Israel back into the land once again after their punishment for the cross of their Messiah, and God did this in 1948 and will begin to build them up for war against their enemies world wide. These enemies will develop under the man of peace, the antichrist, who will then begin to overcome the world and control all who hate Christ and His people Israel and will bring in the final war of Armageddon, fought in Zion under the antichrist and his armies, who is Satan’s man and a great world leader. Jesus Christ will return to the mount of Olives in the last day of the 7 year tribulation and destroy His enemies and their armies in Israel and bring in the Kingdom age according to the Scriptures. This is true doctrine as taught by God in His Word by His Holy prophets and by His apostles. All should have the book of God and should read it for themselves. No church or cult or creed or religions can change the will and work of God by Christ Jesus, Lord and Saviour of those who believe on Him for salvation and for truth.
The Roman Catholic Church.
Are you sure? Search the Scriptures, Jesus said, for in them you think you have life and they are they that speak of me. The Jewish nation of Israel is the nation God has chosen to finish His work of salvation on the earth with that tiny strip of land and its people therein. It is there He will deal with both the Jewish and Gentile nations who mock Him.
“It’s only a flesh wound.”
That’s how we were healed: 1 Peter 2:24. Israel needs the Physician and yet they still reject Him.
You need to reread Saint Paul. In Jesus Christ there is no longer any distinction between Jews and Gentiles. All are now called, Jew and Gentile alike, to salvation in the one covenant of Jesus Christ. This is true Biblical doctrine.
“...since Jesus of Nazareth’s prophecy that Jerusalem would be destroyed, that the Jews would be exiled as slaves among the nations and remain scattered to the end of time…. Being that Jerusalem has now been rebuilt, to become a center for the renewed Israeli State, we are duly bound to add this is a direct contradiction to Jesus’ own prophecy.”
Nonsense. Jesus said Jerusalem would be TROD DOWN by the gentiles, UNTIL the time of the gentiles was fulfilled.
Not that the “tredding down” would last forever. It would come to an end.
and
“So when they came together, they asked Him, “Lord will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus replied, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.” (Acts 1:6,7)
IOW, Israel will be restored, just not at the moment that Jesus was speaking.
Jew and Gentiles of the Church age which began with the eleven apostles of Jesus and then Paul, all Jews, and then God began the body of Christ when He sent Peter to Cornelius house, a gentile who loved Israel and prayed to God, who Peter witnessed to. Then, while Peter yet spoke of the works of God and His Christ, the Holy Ghost fell on him and on his household and they began to speak with tongues and this astounded Peter and the six Jews with him that God brought in the Gentiles also. The church, the body of Christ, Jew and Gentile for some 2000 years now.
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