That New York Times headline about Catholics witnessing to Jews? Look again ...

GetReligion ^ | December 16, 2015 | Terry Mattingly

[Mrs. Don-o]

Trust me, I know that it is hard to write accurate, easy-to-read articles about complicated Vatican theological documents. This is especially true when dealing with materials focusing on very nuanced issues that continue to cause behind-the-scenes debates among Catholics.

It's even harder to write informative, catchy and, yes, accurate headlines for these kinds of stories.

This brings me to a recent New York Times report that ran with this headline: "Vatican Says Catholics Should Not Try to Convert Jews."

The problem with that headline is that it is simplistic to the point of being inaccurate -- that is, if the goal is for readers to understand the document ("The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable") addressed in this story.

Now here is the ironic part. You can tell that the headline is inaccurate by carefully reading the actual Times story, which means reading past the flawed lede on which the headline is based. Let us attend.

ROME -- Catholics should not try to convert Jews, but should work together with them to fight anti-Semitism, the Vatican said on Thursday in a far-reaching document meant to solidify its increasingly positive relations with Jews.

Then, in the third paragraph, there is this:

Addressing an issue that has been a sore point between the two faiths for centuries, the commission wrote that the church was "obliged to view evangelization to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views." It specified that "the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews."

Did you catch the subtle, but very important, difference between the lede and the actual quote from the document?

The lede says that it is wrong for Catholics -- which would mean priests, laypeople and other Catholic individuals -- to try to win Jewish individuals to Christian faith. But what does the document say? It says that the Catholic Church, as an institution, "neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews (italics added)."

So evangelism by individual Catholics talking with individual Jews is acceptable, while organized efforts targeting Jews alone -- perhaps a Catholic version of Jews for Jesus -- are considered out of bounds.

Thus, the headline and the lede need to be corrected to reflect the actual content of the story and the document on which it is based.

If you want to know more about this complicated issue, let me point you toward a Q&A piece by the conservative apologist Jimmy Akin, writing in The National Catholic Register. It contains lots of detailed quotes drawn from the Vatican document, which is precisely what the Times piece is lacking.

Akin explains that, beginning with the title, this document was clearly crafted to reject a concept called "supersessionism," which argues that the "Church has completely taken over the promises of God regarding Israel, so that today the Jewish people have no special status whatsoever."

The document also addresses another theological issue linked to this -- the "two paths to salvation" concept that says that Christians find salvation through Jesus Christ and Jews through their own covenant. "Two paths" theory is, of course, an open door to full-out Universalism, which argues that all religious and nonreligious paths lead to the top of the same eternal mountain (so to speak).

The problem: What to do with the statement (John 14:6) in which Jesus -- a Jew -- states, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me."

Akin notes that this Vatican document addresses this issue head on, in material that really needed to be in the Times report:

... There are not two paths to salvation according to the expression "Jews hold to the Torah, Christians hold to Christ." Christian faith proclaims that Christ's work of salvation is universal and involves all mankind. God's word is one single and undivided reality which takes concrete form in each respective historical context. ...

Since God has never revoked his covenant with his people Israel, there cannot be different paths or approaches to God's salvation. The theory that there may be two different paths to salvation, the Jewish path without Christ and the path with the Christ, whom Christians believe is Jesus of Nazareth, would in fact endanger the foundations of Christian faith.

Confessing the universal and therefore also exclusive mediation of salvation through Jesus Christ belongs to the core of Christian faith. . . . [T]he Church and Judaism cannot be represented as "two parallel ways to salvation."

There are other complicated subjects attached to that issue, but for the purpose of this story the Times team -- in order to cover the material accurately -- really needed to address the "two paths" section of "The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable" and another section that focuses on PERSONAL, as opposed to INSTITUTIONAL, evangelism.

Akin underlines this crucial passage:

Christians are nonetheless called to bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews, although they should do so in a humble and sensitive manner, acknowledging that Jews are bearers of God's Word, and particularly in view of the great tragedy of the Shoah [i.e., the Holocaust] (GCGI 40).

And the logical implication of this is seen in two other statements:

Jesus ... calls his Church from both Jews and Gentiles (cf. Eph 2:11-22) on the basis of faith in Christ and by means of baptism, through which there is incorporation into his Body which is the Church (GCGI 41).

And:

It is and remains a qualitative definition of the Church of the New Covenant that it consists of Jews and Gentiles, even if the quantitative proportions of Jewish and Gentile Christians may initially give a different impression [GCGI 43]

So what is the point, journalistically speaking?

Clearly, at this point, the Times urgently needs a reporter or two willing to listen carefully to the views of doctrinally traditional Catholics, as well as to progressive Catholics. Once again, the goal is not to AGREE with the Catholic doctrines being discussed, but to understand them well enough to cover them accurately and clearly (which is, as I said up top, often very hard to do in a daily newspaper).

If the Times is not willing to hire such reporters, then it would really help the newspaper's coverage if there were conservative Catholics who were willing to seek out Times people and offer insights (with people on both sides recording the exchanges).

Would the Times people listen?

If the goal is journalism, the answer has to be "yes." Liberal Catholics and conservative Catholics have different takes on these kinds of documents and their debates would be illuminating for readers (including legions of journalists elsewhere who read and heed what is printed in the Times).

Talking to worthy, respected voices on both sides would also help the Times avoid the kinds of errors found in this headline which, as I noted, actually conflicts with information quoted in the story.

Correction, please.

[piusv]

Dogmas are not the only thing that is part of the universal ordinary magisterium. That document contradicts and reverses the teaching of the Catholic Church. It teaches that the Church Fathers were wrong and the Church was wrong to teaching "so-called" replacement theology for centuries.

If the Church Fathers were wrong about that, what else were they wrong about? What else taught through the ordinary universal magisterium is wrong Mrs. Don-o? Don't you see the issue here? Apparently not. Why I chose to respond to your posts is beyond me. You are willfully blind.

[Bodleian_Girl]

It is not Heaven. You know that, right? From studying the Bible which is God’s Word.

[Mrs. Don-o]

You'll notice I didn't say Lazarus was in "Heaven." I said he was, as Jesu put it, "in the bosom of Abraham."

AND you'll notice Jesus speaks of Abraham being in "the kingdom of heaven" or "the kingdom of God":

Matthew 8:11
I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

Luke 13:28
There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out.

Context: we were talking about "God's saving plan". and in this very profound teaching parable, Lazarus the poor Jew is in a place of blessedness: he is saved from Hell. And the rich man, Dives, is not.

[Mrs. Don-o]

*ALL* the various view of *ALL* the Church Fathers, cannot possibly be authoritative, as is clear when we see that there are disputes and contrasts and sometimes even contradictions among them.

Thus they cannot all form a part of the deposit of the Faith taught to us by the Magisterium. The hypothesis that God had rescinded all the promises, gifts and ordinances He had previously given to the Jews "forever" "in perpetuity," is a theologoumenon open to criticism and modification.

I would argue that the promises God intended for the Jews --- indeed, assigned to the Twele Tribes by name --- in the End of the Age, will be fulfilled for these Jews by God at the End of the Age.

" Why I chose to respond to your posts is beyond me. You You are willfully blind."

(Oh. Another mind-reader. Spare me.) And a VERY Merry Christmas to you, too, piusv.

[af_vet_1981]

Given an opportunity to affirm your profession to worship and adore the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob you were silent ...
and turned instead to discuss Islam.

Your comments, in general, about me, have been false. By whose spirit do you imagine you prophesy ?

[piusv]

There is no need to read minds. Your posts are very clear.

For hundreds of years, the Catholic Church taught through its ordinary universal magisterium that the Jews, after rejecting Christ, are no longer the Chosen people!

Suddenly, the Church was wrong all that time...and you believe that.

Someday you will see.

[af_vet_1981]

There is no need to read minds. Your posts are very clear.

For hundreds of years, the Catholic Church taught through its ordinary universal magisterium that the Jews, after rejecting Christ, are no longer the Chosen people!

Suddenly, the Church was wrong all that time...and you believe that.

Someday you will see.

I am persuaded that theological antisemitism is the mother's milk feeding those Catholics who want to follow Martin Luther but, so far, but reject Vatican II and linger on the fringe of the holy catholic apostolic church in word.

How odd to see an erstwhile Catholic disavowing blessed Saint John Paul II and a Jew praising him.

As we approach the 40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate - the ground-breaking declaration of the Second Vatican Council which repudiated the deicide charge against Jews, reaffirmed the Jewish roots of Christianity and rejected anti-Semitism - we take note of the many positive changes within the Catholic Church with respect to her relationship with the Jewish People. These past forty years of our fraternal dialogue stand in stark contrast to almost two millennia of a "teaching of contempt" and all its painful consequences. We draw encouragement from the fruits of our collective strivings which include the recognition of the unique and unbroken covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish People and the total rejection of anti-Semitism in all its forms, including anti-Zionism as a more recent manifestation of anti-Semitism.

For its part, the Jewish community has evinced a growing willingness to engage in interreligious dialogue and joint action regarding religious, social and communal issues on the local, national and international levels, as exemplified in the new direct dialogue between the Chief Rabbinate in Israel and the Holy See. Further, the Jewish community has made strides in educational programming about Christianity, the elimination of prejudice and the importance of Jewish-Christian dialogue. Additionally, the Jewish community has become aware of, and deplores, the phenomenon of anti-Catholicism in all its forms, manifesting itself in society at large.

On the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps, we declare our determination to prevent the reemergence of anti-Semitism which led to genocide and the Shoah. We stand together at this moment in time, following major international conferences on this problem, most recently in Berlin and at the United Nations in New York. We recall the words of Pope John Paul II that anti-Semitism is a sin against God and humanity.

[piusv]

From the Baltimore Catechism:

During the life of Our Lord and for a short time after His death they preached in only one country, viz., Palestine--now called the Holy Land--in which country the Jews, up to that time God's chosen people, lived.

I guess the Baltimore Catechism in 1885 was also teaching error. And I guess Pope Pius XI was also teaching error in his Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a liturgical prayer issued simultaneously in 1925 with his encyclical Quas Primas.

Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of that race, once Thy chosen people: of old they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Savior; may It now descend upon them, a laver of redemption and of life.

[piusv]

I am persuaded that theological antisemitism

So the ordinary universal magisterium was teaching "theological anti-Semitism" for all those years? I am persuaded that those that charge others with "theological anti-semitism" do so only to keep them from teaching what the Church has always taught ....because they love the new religion.

[af_vet_1981]

So the ordinary universal magisterium was teaching "theological anti-Semitism" for all those years? I am persuaded that those that charge others with "theological anti-semitism" do so only to keep them from teaching what the Church has always taught ....because they love the new religion.

Antisemitism is a grave sin. If one denies the two commandments one has denied the Messiah. One may find a full quiver of antisemitic faith communities and religions to cling to, but not the one holy catholic apostolic church.

[Mrs. Don-o]

The Church does not teach, in her Magisterium, this very extreme and sweeping theological opinion: that every single gift, promise, ordinance and bond God ever made with the Jews is forever revoked and rejected.

True, many of His promises have already been fulfilled by Christ or by the Church as the "ingrafted branch" of the Jewish olive tree. But some of these promises to the Jews have yet to be fulfilled, because the time of their fulfillment--- the End of the Age-- has not yet come.

All of the eminent Catholic Jews, people like Alphonse Ratisbonne, the late Cardinal Lustiger, the Venerable Francis Liberman, and St. Teresa Benedict of the Cross (Edith Stein)--- have understood themselves to be as Catholics saved by Christ, while still members of the Chosen People with a role to play in Salvation History as Jews.

Yes, the Jews have a role in Salvation History from Abraham to the Second Coming. That is NOT the same as saying that they, or anyone, can be saved without faith in Christ.

Landless, prophet-less, priest-less, king-less, the Jewish people have nevertheless been preserved by God's Providence for 2,000 years since the destruction of the Temple. Divine Providence has kept the Jewish Identity alive when 10,000 other "tribal identities" have faded into the dust.

Nobody is disputing the fact that faith in Chrirst is needed for salvation. But the idea of the Jewish people as such having an ongoing role, a role recognized by the Church and guaranteed by Our Lord in Sacred Scripture, is something I would invite you to consider, ponder and respect.

We may--- who knows? --- live to the End Times, to see those 144,000 Jews from every tribe of Israel, marked with the seal of God. I hope I may be preserved faithful to the end, to say "Come Lord Jesus," "Tol'ja", and "Shalom."

[Bodleian_Girl]

If you agree that you worship the same god as the Muslims, which you have affirmed that you do, that’s you’re right as an American to worship the Muslim god.

I however, do not and would not worship the Muslim god, even unto my death. I’d die first. I’ll never forsake God, no matter what the Muslims and Catholics believe.

That’s the beauty of America. You are free to believe in the Muslim god. I am free to believe in and worship the Only God.

However, please keep in mind that followers of the muslim god would gladly murder me in certain countries.

But as I mentioned, feel free to believe in the same god as the Muslims. It’s a free country.

For now.

[Bodleian_Girl]

You said salvation was a mystery. I replied to you that according to the Word of God salvation is not a mystery and you replied with the comment about Lazarus.

Back to the original point: salvation is not a mystery.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I think you and I may be using the word "mystery" in different senses.

Catholics use the word "mystery", not to indicate something totally opaque and impossible to grasp in any sense, but as something which has an eternal, infinite and absolute dimension which is "out of our league" no matter how much we learn.

It is not like running into a brick wall. It is more like swimming through a clear coral sea. You're seeing more than you've ever seen before, but realizing that the whole thing extends farther than you can swim in every direction.

Or like being a bit of sponge floating in the ocean. The sponge may be as full of water (knowledge) as it could possible be, saturated in fact, and yet the ocean itself infinitely exceeds the capacity of the sponge to absorb.

In the same way, we can say we KNOW about salvation, but that is not to say we have fully catalogued and exhausted God's saving plan. He has more ways than we know. That's because He's God and we're not. The Bible explains this "mystery" aspect in these words:

"For high have the heavens are above the earth, So high are My ways above your ways, And My thoughts above your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:9)

[Bodleian_Girl]

The Lord God has told us the way of salvation. There are not additional ways or paths that are unknown to man.

Thanks you for the conversation.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Tagline.

And thank you as well.

[Mrs. Don-o]

We may be getting ito a bug-tussle here about something we actually agree on.

Adverting once again to the article at the top of the thread, I affirm, as you do:

"Confessing the universal and therefore also exclusive mediation of salvation through Jesus Christ belongs to the core of Christian faith. . . . [T]he Church and Judaism cannot be represented as "two parallel ways to salvation."

An entirely different question, is whether the Jewish people as such have an ongoing significant role in Salvation History. This is distinct from the strictly soteriological question. Cyrus of Persia, for instance, had a positive role in Salvation History: nothing definite can be adduced from that as to his eternal destiny.

Another, different, question, is whether we can exhaustively understand HOW a person might affirm Jesus Christr has their savior, even though they do not know the man Jesus even exists, had existed or would exist. We know that Moses and Elijah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (to name just a few) have their place in the Kingdom of Heaven; yet they lived centuries before Jesus.

St. Paul, the great Apostle who rightly insisted on faith in Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation, nevertheless told the pagans at the Areopagus (Acts 17:26-28):

From one ancestor He made all nations ... so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for Him and find Him ---though indeed He is not far from each one of us. For 'In Him we live and move and have our being'; for 'we too are His offspring.'

Here Paul envisions that a pagan --- who, as well, is God's offspring --- might grope for Him and find Him.

Paul of course follows this up with robust preaching about the resurrection of Christ. By some grace, mystery or miracle, "might" encounter Christ in a way unknown --- maybe in a dream, a personal revelation (I've heard of this happening to Muslims who then seek Him)--- maybe a few might just "see the Light," a few who never heard of Christ "Ask" and they receive, "Seek" and they find, "Knock" and the door is opened unto them.

And yet it is not sufficient to say a pagan person "might" encounter Christ and accept His salvation in some hidden manner. It is necessary, like Paul, to preach Christ.

But the only savior of the World is Jesus Christ Our Lord. How He reveals himself to the otherrs, that they may believe in Him-- that is a mysery. But He is perfectly capable of revealing Himself --- as Light --- to "every man that cometh into the world."

[piusv]

So you charge Pope Pius IX with so-called "theological anti-Semitism":

the Catholic Church has always been accustomed to pray for the Jewish people, who were the depository of divine promises up until the arrival of Jesus Christ, notwithstanding their subsequent blindness, or rather, because of this very blindness. Moved by that charity, the Apostolic See has protected the same people from unjust ill-treatment, and just as it censures all hatred and enmity among people, so it altogether condemns in the highest degree possible hatred against the people once chosen by God, viz., the hatred that now is what is usually meant in common parlance by the term known generally as anti-Semitism.

Those who believe that the Jewish people are no longer the Chosen People are actually Catholic. They believe what the Catholic Church has always taught. They are not anti-Semitic unless one believes that pre-Vatican II Catholic teaching is anti-Semitic. Pope Pius IX proves that it is not because in his quote above he shows that one can believe that the Jews are no longer the Chosen People and still condemn hatred for them.

To suggest that anyone who proclaims Church teaching as it was always taught as an anti-Semite is a lie and lacks charity towards one's neighbor.

Please do not post to me anymore.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"So you charge Pope Pius IX with so-called "theological anti-Semitism"

Since a certain dear soul FReeper-Who-Cannot-Be-Named has instructed me to to post no more --- (and -- sniff--- how rejected I feel!) --- I must note that you and I, vet, have both been charged with saying things we did not say. And even charged with saying things we explicitly rejected.

I take this as a sign that "confirmation bias" LINK is a real and powerful force. I also take it as a warning that I should examine my own aggravating biases on a frequent basis to make sure I am not doing the same.

We all do share a flawed human nature, don't we?

But the Lord is good, and will help us.

O - O - O - O, Happy fourth day of the O Antiphons!

"Key of David, and scepter of the house of Israel, who opens and no man shuts, who shuts and no man opens: come, and bring forth the captive from his prison, he who sits in darkness and in the shadow of death."

O CLAVIS DAVID!

[af_vet_1981]

So you charge Pope Pius IX with so-called "theological anti-Semitism":

False; Pope Pius IX has not denied Vatican II, Nostra Aetate, which is binding on every Catholic.

"All the doctrinal decisions of the church are binding on a Catholic, including the Second Vatican Council and all its texts," Cardinal Koch said when asked if the SSPX would be expected to accept all the teachings of Vatican II. "The 'Nostra Aetate' declaration of the Second Vatican Council is a clear decree and is important for every Catholic," he added.

To suggest that anyone who proclaims Church teaching as it was always taught as an anti-Semite is a lie and lacks charity towards one's neighbor.

I certainly lack charity towards Martin Luther; to pray or not to pray ...

If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it. All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death. We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not. And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. First John, Catholic chapter five, Protestant verses sixteen to twenty one,
as authorized, but not authored, by King James

Please do not post to me anymore.

There are no safe rooms on FR for the "do not post to me" poster; just stop posting and no one will post to you.