Our "works" of worship, as I think you mean them, do not claim any salvific power, while the Jews consciously believed they were saved by the Law.
There are two things wrong with this statement. First, in the liturgical churches, the sacraments (which are certainly ceremonials) cause what they signify. And secondly, the Jews never believed they were "saved by the Law" because Judaism was never about "salvation" to begin with. Observance of the Torah was never a means to salvation; it was the reason the universe was created. The purpose of Judaism/Noachism is not "salvation" but tiqqun `olam bemalkhut Shaqqay (recitification of the world in the kingdom of the A-mighty), and this is achieved by Israel observing the Torah (which draws down holiness from the upper realms) and non-Jews observing the Noachide Laws (which spreads this holiness throughout the world).
Have you ever seen a Jewish prayerbook? There are no prayers asking G-d to save one's soul or take on to Heaven when he dies. There are prayers for forgiveness of sins, yes, but this is because sins impede the perfection of the world (just as mitzvot advance it). There are prayers for long life, children, the necessities of life, Torah wisdom, good deeds, fear of sin, and forgiveness of sins, but nothing about "please take me to Heaven when I die." HaShem did not create the material world (the lowest of all the worlds) as a temporary test before Heaven. He created it in order that it, the lowest of the worlds, would be suffused with G-dliness as are the higher worlds and that this would be done through observance of the Torah.
The assumption that the goal of Judaism is "salvation" (as understood by chr*stians) is chr*stianity's great foundational misunderstanding.
I apologize again for "reading your mind" and am relieved to learn that you are not among those who reject any commandment of G-d that offends modern sensibilities. However, you will, I hope, forgive me since I learned long ago that most Catholics tend to be very, very liberal on the Bible (especially the "old testament"). Of all the Catholics on this forum only wideawake makes the effort to step in and defend total Biblical inerrancy publicly. Just last weekend I had quite a shouting match with Catholic FReepers who were shocked--shocked--that I would accuse them of denying total Biblical inerrancy. To the best of my recollection, every one of these offended people admitted to being a theistic evolutionist when confronted.
Please forgive me, but there is something deeply wrong with any religion that produces so many theistic evolutionists and people who dismiss the first eleven chapters of the Torah as "didactic mythology."
Thank you again for making the effort to understand my position.
Let me start off by pointing out that I believed you were getting at rituals in Catholicism that correspond to those in the Torah. That is why I made a distinction between the Sacraments themselves (which really are "works" of God) and the rituals that have grown up around them. The Sacraments are immutable, but the ceremonials in which they are immersed can certainly be modified, or take-on different forms in various parts of the world simultaneously.
I disagree that the concept of salvation did not have a place within Judaism. Certainly, the concept was rather hazily conceived, with very little in the way of specifics. But David speaks of "salvation" constantly in the Psalms, and the idea crops up enough elsewhere in the Old Testament to see clearly that it was not unknown to the Israelites. The purpose of the Law might have been more along the lines of your description, but, for the average Jew living a mundane existence, there was certainly something beyond that to be hoped for. By the time of Christ, anyway, the Sadducees who held that there is no resurrection were quite in the minority. So, from a Christian POV, it seems fair enough to suppose that the revelation of an afterlife was very slowly manifested and with a deliberate incompleteness. This was perhaps to signify two things: one, that salvation was not going to be restricted to the Jews, and its status would remain foggy even with them, to humble them before the world, and, two, that no one would enter Heaven until Christ accomplished His salvific work on the Cross. I imagine you don't agree with that, but, again, it seems to me to be a reasonably coherent observation connecting the two very distinct models of salvation the two faiths envision.
I apologize again for "reading your mind" and am relieved to learn that you are not among those who reject any commandment of G-d that offends modern sensibilities. However, you will, I hope, forgive me since I learned long ago that most Catholics tend to be very, very liberal on the Bible (especially the "old testament"). Of all the Catholics on this forum only wideawake makes the effort to step in and defend total Biblical inerrancy publicly. Just last weekend I had quite a shouting match with Catholic FReepers who were shocked--shocked--that I would accuse them of denying total Biblical inerrancy. To the best of my recollection, every one of these offended people admitted to being a theistic evolutionist when confronted.
Well, again, I think part of your problem with Christianity is what you consider Biblical laxity among many of the people with whom you formerly associated. That's unfortunate, to be sure, but it doesn't follow that the Faith itself has similar official positions. Anyway, modern Judaism, if anything, has an even greater range of beliefs on the subjects of inerrancy and literalness, yet that fact doesn't stop you from allying yourself much more to their thought processes than to Christianity's. If you can get almost rabid in your disdain for most Christians, I wonder why you don't feel the same way about the legions of (effectively) apostate Jews in the world today. I guess I'm looking to understand what I see as a glaring inconsistency here.
As for how Catholicism views this, I must admit that there is no "infallible" pronouncement on the subject beyond the fact that the Church affirms that the entirety of the Bible is the inspired Word of God. It is inerrant in the truths it seeks to convey, though it is not "required" of Catholics to believe that every word is 100% literal. The language employed in both Testaments "handicaps," if you will, the ability of God to transmit his truths in ways that humans can understand; the limits of human language cannot be stretched beyond a certain point, and the limits of man's prior knowledge (with with he makes sense of new information - in this case, revelation) are not boundless. This creates a situation, for example, where the notion that the earth is flat and supported by pillars seems legitimate according to Psalm 75:4. If one is to conclude that absolutely everything in the Bible is to be taken literally, then one is forced to conclude that the earth is sustained on pillars. Yet we know this is not so. So, is the Bible 100% literal or not? If only 99.9999%, can one suppose it's only 99.9998%?
The way to explain this is to understand that the Bible is not a science book, and God was not obliged to give us scientific knowledge of things in His creation. He left it to us to "fill the earth and subdue it" in Genesis, and, I dare say, scientific discovery through our own sweat and effort is part of "subduing" the earth. The exact methodology of how God created the heavens and the earth is way beyond the scientific and linguistic capacities of the Israelites who hear Moses' account; God described it in a way they could understand. As it is, very little of either Testament is even "eligible" to have this non-literal approach applied to it. In Revelation, for example, one can imagine the beast with seven heads and ten horns is very likely to be symbolic of something, and not literal. No one would follow such a grotesque monster if it literally looked like that. But the overwhelming majority of Scripture relates history in a credible way when taken literally, and there's no reason to suppose such history is not literal.
I'm sure that doesn't sit too well with you, but remember, at least, the pillars of Psalm 74. Anyway, it may please you to know that the Catholic Church still requires assent to the belief that Adam and Eve were literal "first parents" of the human race, and that all human beings descend from them. It makes no room for multiple origins of the human race, and definitely holds that the sin of Adam put all mankind outside of the scope of heavenly salvation until the Second Adam, Christ Himself, restored sanctifying grace to humanity, and opened the gates of Heaven for us.
That the Catholic Church doesn't insist that every word of the Bible must be taken literally seems to be a real stumbling block for you. But ask yourself: are you arrogating to yourself more "authority" here than you should? Is ZC such an authority that his decisions in this matter must take precedence, or is it possible that ZC is wrong about this? You take your spelling conventions for pagan deities somewhat to an extreme on your own authority, is it possible that this is emblematic of going overboard in other areas, too? I don't mean this in a sarcastic or mocking way; you have taken the time and trouble to dialogue sincerely and without sarcasm; I am trying to respond in kind. But I do wonder if your objections are more "your objections" rather than things that are really that important. And I sincerely wonder why you hold Catholicism and "liturgical" churches to a different standard on this than you seem to do with Judaism, which, as is obvious to anyone, has more than its share of "inconsistency" in this regard. As you said somewhere in this discussion: "what's good for the goose is good for the gander."