Dealing With Anti-Semitism Masquerading as "Pro-Life" and "Conservative"

Over the past few days, a couple of social media groups I have been part of have engaged in some discussions which, frankly, have me a bit concerned.  One of the groups called the "Pro-Life and Anti-Communist League," has had an influx of people spouting some very volatile and controversial stuff on it, and frankly, it needs to be addressed.   I am only going to deal with this briefly as I don't want to get into a discussion that is too detailed, but some things need to be said.

Many of the people in this particular group profess to be "traditional Catholics," and to be honest, when I see someone who identifies as a "traditional Catholic" yet spews anti-semitic vitriol, I immediately become skeptical of their professed Catholic faith.  As I am about to demonstrate, it is perfectly fine to do two things in regard to the issue of the Jews:

1.  It is acceptable to criticize some policies of the modern state of Israel without diminishing support for Israel.  Despite any special status Israel has in God's overall plan of salvation, the modern nation of Israel is still led by fallible human beings, and they are not perfect - none of us are honestly.  You can fully support anything but also disagree with an action in connection with that which you support, so that is not the issue.

2.  The salvation of the Jews in lieu of the evangelical mission of the Church is also a valid concern.  We should share Christ's love with everyone, and that includes Jewish people.  As you will see later, it is not only acceptable but also necessary to share the Gospel with Jesus's own people, the Jews.  To do so is an act of love, not hate.  And, therefore, the salvation of Jewish people is not the issue either.

The real issues in regard to this subject are as follows, and thus the anti-semitism

1.  "Jewish conspiracy" theories - when you start hearing comments about how "all bankers and Hollywood executives are Jews," it should send up a red flag immediately.  I have heard some of this talk on the social media pages I have mentioned, and it is an excuse for an anti-semite to use religion to justify hatred of the Jews, which is not the message of the Gospel. Although there are a lot of Jews who are in positions of leadership in politics, banking, etc., it doesn't mean that they as individuals are somehow the fault of the whole Jewish people as a group.  Many of the worst of these people are who they are oftentimes in spite of their Jewish heritage, and not because of it.  Many of these evil individuals over the centuries - George Soros, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, etc. - were actually atheistic and had rejected their Jewish roots and upbringing, and much of what they stand for would be in direct contradiction with the traditional Jewish worldview as embodied in both Talmudic tradition as well as their adherence to the Torah as moral law.  This same sort of argument is often used by those espousing anti-Catholic views as well - some Fundamentalists, for instance, try to point out that Hitler's Nazis were inspired by the Catholic Church when in reality they were directly opposed to it.  Catholics would be wise to be more careful about trying to use this argument to buttress anti-semitism then.

2.  The argument that "Talmudic Judaism is not compatible with Catholic faith" is a serious fallacy, and often the person spouting it is ignorant of what the Talmud actually is.  The Talmud is not a monolithic authority in the same way Scripture is but is defined as a "comprehensive term for Jewish tradition transmitted orally from generation to generation until finally committed to writing." (Rabbi Ben Isaacson and Deborah Wigoder, The International Jewish Encyclopedia. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice-Hall, 1973. p. 290).  It must be understood that the Talmud is not a single book either, as the complete collection of it would fill a small library, and like the law books you see in many attorney's offices, it documents discussions on how Jewish moral and ceremonial law is to be implemented - and, within its content are debates and even differing opinions about how those things are implemented, so it is not necessarily authoritative on its own for Jews, but rather provides guidance as to what is to be done in a specific situation.  As Wigoder and Isaacson note, the vastness of the work even includes much irrelevant and even at times offensive content, but it also is, in essence, the symbolism of the continuance of the Jews as a people, and thus its importance cannot be underestimated either.  Anti-semitic groups and individuals at times have tried to target the Talmud as something "evil," and its importance to the literary survival of the Jewish people has always been seen as a threat by their enemies, and hence the problem.  It is also similar to how anti-Catholic Protestant Fundamentalists like to accuse Catholics of "worshipping" the Church Fathers for the same reason, although in reality, the Talmud is more similar to the Catholic Code of Canon Law than it is to the Patristic writings.  So, rather than being a "threat" or "evil," the Talmud is basically just a written record of the centuries-long discourse of rabbis and other authorities debating how certain issues are to be addressed in lieu of Jewish tradition and what the Torah says.   There are also different collections of the Talmud as well, at least three if I am not mistaken, and each of them even differs from the others to some degree.  So, attacking the Talmud is an insufficient reason to be anti-semitic.

3.  The third argument is a bit of a gem, and it is so because there is actually some truth to it.  One individual on the discussion board of the particular social media group actually made the argument that someone who doesn't like Jews cannot be anti-semitic because Arabs are Semites too.  My question to that individual was "yes, so what is your point?"   Jews are indeed a Semitic people, and as such, they belong to a family of Semitic peoples that includes Arabs, Assyro-Chaldaeans, Syriacs, Lebanese Syro-Maronites, Amharic (and related peoples) of Ethiopia, and the natives of the island of Malta.  However, when this argument is used to justify hatred of Jews by saying the term "anti-semitism" is a bad term to use, it is important to remind that individual that the accepted term for anti-Jewish hatred is anti-semitism - the whole world as a consensus accepts that definition.  For a person to use that argument to justify their own bigotry is weak at best and just asserts that they will resort to a semantic argument to attempt to justify their own hatred.

4.  A fourth argument is one I am not hearing as much but it is still bandied about, and that is this - "well, today's Jews are not the same people as the ancient Israelites."  I have heard this one ad nauseum from even college professors, and in general, it entails a fallacy that most of today's Jews are actually Turks by race, as they are supposedly the descendants of a tribe called the Khazars.  The fallacy here is simple - DNA testing in modern times has pretty much established that Jews are a Semitic people, not Turks, and it also flies in the face of history as well.  The Khazars were a historical people, and at a certain point in their history they did adopt Judaism as their state religion, but there is no logical proof that every Jew in the world is somehow merely a Khazar.  As a matter of fact, evidence exists to the contrary - when the Khazar state fell in the 10th century, its rulers wanted to secure help from the neighboring Khwarezm kingdom which was Islamic - the Khwarez sultan refused to help them because they were "infidels," and thus the Khazars became Muslims in order to preserve their kingdom through a political alliance, a claim noted by a contemporary Islamic writer of the time by the name of Ibn al-Athir ("Khazars," at Wikipedia.com, updated 11 May 2019 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars - accessed 5/17/2019).  If that is the case, due to the geographic location of where the ancient Khazar kingdom was, it was highly possible that the majority of Khazars were assimilated into Turkish Muslim populations, and the more likely descendants of the Khazars may be some enclaves of Azeri Turks today rather than Jews.  Many scholars also reject the "Khazar theory" as well, based on recent advances in DNA research and other evidence, plus the association of the "Khazar theory" with anti-semitic groups of various persuasions.  Also, if we were even to entertain the notion that in some alternate reality the Khazars would not have been assimilated into another related Islamic Turkish group, but instead lived on as an independent entity with their Judaism intact, it is still not plausible that Jews would somehow all be Khazars today because the Jewish Diaspora predated the Khazars' adaptation of Judaism by centuries, and there were already viable Jewish communities all over Europe and in the Middle East prior to the Khazars.  That is another reason that argument falls flat.

5.  The final argument I wanted to debunk is one that some in the Church have been spewing for centuries, and it is fallacious on many levels.  This one is that because the Jews are somehow a "cursed people" for their rejection of Christ, it is therefore acceptable for Christians to hate and persecute them.  Often, those who espouse this crazy idea (which also flies in the face of clear teaching from the Gospels, I might add) often try to justify it by referencing the Church Fathers, who at times did speak harshly of Jews.  There are two things that totally blow this argument out of the water.  First, often those references are taken totally out of context - no Patristic writer or any other Church authority has ever said it was "acceptable" to hate and persecute Jews, not one.  On the contrary, often the harsh words of the Church Fathers are more chastizing of the Jews for rejecting Christ, which for many Church Fathers and other writers was actually beyond comprehension - their reasoning was that it was foolish for the Jews to reject a Messiah who was sent specifically to them first, and then kill Him, although they also acknowledge that the Atonement was necessary for all of humanity's salvation.  That Jews continued to reject Christ was to them baffling, and they didn't mince words saying so!  However, what many critics and people who use these quotes to justify their own anti-semitism on religious grounds, miss, is the rest of the story in context - if you read further in their writings, many Church Fathers actually prayed for Jews to be converted, and although harsh otherwise, they actually believed that Jews should be the logical ones to convert as their own traditions taught them that a Messiah from among them would be sent to them first, and that rejection of that truth was the ultimate foolish act.  As the Jewish convert to Catholicism, Roy Schoeman, writes in his book Salvation is From the Jews (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 2003) on page 355, when a Jewish person does convert to the truth of the Christian faith, they often testify that they are far more Jewish after their conversion than before and that on a very fundamental level their thirst for God and His Truth is met in a way it would not have been outside Christianity.   Schoeman also notes on page 354 that Satan has often used "Christian" persecution of Jews as a way to make Jews who are targeted hostile to the Christian message, and that leads to the rise of people like Karl Marx - as noted in #1 above, the worst and most evil representations of people of Jewish heritage who are often used as an excuse to justify anti-semitism are often the result of people persecuting Jews earlier in the name of Christ, and thus a Jew on the receiving end of that gets a flawed witness of religious faith that often makes them hostile to religion.  So, the "Christian" anti-semite is actually more responsible for the people that Karl Marx was and George Soros is than the Jews themselves, so where is the real "conspiracy" then?  It is supposed and professed "Christians" creating monsters through their own hate, and Satan wins as a result in that battle.  We as a Christian people have much to account for in that regard, as much of the moral decay is not the result of some "Zionist conspiracy," but rather it is the result of the failure of the Church to do her mission.  When we stop scapegoating others and take responsibility for our own actions in that regard, it will lead to the freedom of the Holy Spirit to convict us and supernatural grace to do its work in us. 

In retrospect, when we look at the writings of both Catholic and Orthodox Fathers, visionaries, and theologians over the centuries, a common theme can be seen in regard to the Jews and eschatology - prior to the return of Christ, there is to be a conversion of the Jewish people to the truths of the Gospel.  Let's set up that scenario.

Desmond Birch, a phenomenal Catholic scholar, wrote a book some years back called Trial, Tribulation, and Triumph (Santa Barbara, CA:  Queenship, 1996).  This book is a pretty detailed encyclopedic work documenting references from Church Fathers and others in Catholic tradition over the centuries in regard to the end times, and many of them have detailed writings about the conversion of the Jews.  There is a time noted, for instance, that a "fullness of the Gentiles" will take place when Gentiles will no longer come into the Church, and many will actually apostatize from it - we have seen that since the Enlightenment, although in the past century it has accelerated somewhat.  The Scriptural premise for this is based on Romans 11:25-27, which has to do with the re-introduction of national Israel (the Jews) into spiritual Israel (the Church).  We see this also in Ephesians 3:6 as well, as it is called there "the In-Grafting."  There is to be an "Age of Peace" just prior to the Tribulation in which an overwhelming majority of national Israel (meaning the Jews) would be converted, and during this mass conversion of the Jews would be the "Great Apostasy" of the Gentiles, which we also see in Scripture in 2 Thessalonians 1-2 as well as in Matthew 24:10 and in I Timothy 4:1.  This Apostasy would be so great that it would be unprecedented in history up to that time, and if one looks at what is happening in Western civilization today, we see it - no need to go into the details, but just look at what dominates our news, social media, etc.  When this happens, according to St. Jerome and others, the time when Israel would be converted would come.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church also affirms this in CCC 674, and it specifically states there that the Second Coming of Christ will not happen until the conversion of "all Israel." (Birch, pp. 417-419).  Fr. Elias Friedman, in his 1987 book Jewish Identity (Ypsilanti, MI:  The Miriam Press, 1987), notes that the Apostle St. Paul revealed in the noted passage in Romans that the final destiny of post-Christic Jewry would be accession to the Christian faith (Friedman, p. 128), and he also notes on page 130 of his text St. John Chrysostom's Homily on the Epistle to the Romans, where the great saint actually says that as God notes the abuse of the grace He gave the Gentiles, He will recall the Jews a second time.  Fr. Friedman, later in his book, also concurs with the Orthodox ascetic Lev Gillet in the latter's book Communion in the Messiah, with the fact that Israel as a modern state is divinely ordered by Christ Himself as a major part of the plan of a future Jewish conversion - Gillet saw that happening in 1942 when he authored the book, six years before the modern nation of Israel was established, and Fr. Friedman saw in the experience of Israel a sharing in the nature of Christ Himself - the Holocaust, for instance, was a participation in the Passion, while the establishment of Israel was a sort of picture of the Resurrection (Friedman, p. 124), and the later conversion of Israel to the truth of Christ was in essence like a Second Coming.  Birch and Friedman, as well as Schoeman, also cite numerous references that God has not given up on the Jews yet - on the contrary, He wills to save the Jews and bring them into the fulness of His kingdom.  And, those references come from a pretty broad cross-section of Church Fathers, saints, Popes, and even contemporary theologians of the past 500 years or so.  There are likewise Orthodox Fathers and saints who have stated the same - a small book published by Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY, entitled  Apostasy and Antichrist includes a number of references from Orthodox Fathers and theologians pretty much stating the same idea as the Catholic references one finds in Birch's and Friedman's books.  I, unfortunately, don't have that small 47-page booklet handy at this point, as it is packed away in a box in my office, but it is worth reading for sure. 

Now, it may be asked how this is compatible with political Zionism?  Honestly, I have serious problems with my own with so-called "Christian Zionism," in that it may be more anti-semitic than it is in support of the Jewish people.  It also does a serious disservice to indigenous Christians of the region as well, and that cannot be tolerated.  Hearing blow-hards on "religious television" such as John Hagee basically saying the Jews are somehow "exempt" from salvation is a heresy, as Jesus died for all humanity, Jew and Gentile included.  Also, in their pursuit of "Christian Zionism," often Evangelicals who embrace that idea throw evangelization of the Jewish people out the window in deference to some political ideology.  It is one reason why I do believe Israel has a right to exist as a nation, and I even believe it is divinely-mandated as a way to disseminate the Gospel to the Jewish people to bring about their conversion, but at the same time I do not support the "Christian Zionist" agenda which often makes Israel look "perfect" when at times its government does make mistakes - not everything Israel does is perfect, as they are still fallible human beings like us all and are capable of bad judgments, and where they do so, it should be addressed truthfully.  Since my own conversion to the Catholic Church and my deliverance from the ideology of "Christian Zionism," my own views on the whole Israel/Palestinian issue have gotten more complicated and it has taken some time to sort them out.  That is one reason why in recent years I think one of the best movies that accurately illustrates what we should be striving for is the Adam Sandler film You Don't Mess With the Zohan. The movie, which entails a super-powerful Israeli spy named Zohan and his nemesis, an equally-powerful Palestinian terrorist called the Phantom, has as its premise how pointless and futile war is, and in the end Zohan ends up actually mending fences with Phantom and marrying his sister, whom he'd briefly worked for as a hairdresser in New York.  Now, the movie is somewhat off-color, as there are some rather raunchy scenes in it, but like most of Sandler's films over the years, once you get past the off-base humor there is actually a good moral underneath it.  And, the moral is this - in the end, we are all still humans despite our differences, which increasingly become more superficial.  And, as humans from a Catholic perspective, we are all deeply in need of salvation and God's grace, both of which he has provided in his Son, Jesus Christ.  And, that leads to my last point.

Anti-semitism, or any other nationalist, ethic, or racially-based hatred and prejudice, is not a Christian virtue.  Therefore, I have a warning for you "Christian" anti-semites out there today, especially if you profess to be Catholic.  Many of those to whom this is directed pride themselves in being "traditionalists:"  they prefer the Latin Mass, rail against anything that smacks of "modernism," and they yearn for the Catholic faith to be restored.  Nothing wrong with any of that in the proper context, but here's the thing - many of these people who decry modernism and other ills they perceive in society have themselves a deficiency of supernatural grace in their own lives.  They are often more concerned with how their fellow communicants receive the Eucharist at Mass (the debate is whether it should be received in the hand or on the tongue, or if it should be received standing or kneeling) than they are with the transformation of their own hearts.   They do all the right things outside but lack inner conversion.  It is often these individuals who are anti-semitic and racist in their attitudes, and many of us who are Traditionalists call them "MadTrads" because they are often obnoxious, self-righteous, prideful, and just unpleasant people.  Those individuals, instead of railing against the Novus Ordo Mass or how the person in the pew in front of them receives Communion, should be paying a visit to the confessional or spending more time studying Scripture and praying, as they have an attitude problem that may imperil their salvation.  They are as much an instrument of Satan, honestly, as the Modernist who tries to advance the LGBT agenda and other junk.  Apostasy comes in a variety of forms, and we should be careful to not be seduced by the siren song of one of those forms.  "MadTrads" without a conversion of heart who spout anti-semitic conspiracy theories are just as evil as James Martin, the "Rainbow Jesuit" who is pushing for "gay marriage" in the Church - both of them represent the worst in concupiscent nature, and both need to have a conversion of heart.  That is what prompted this article today, and more could be said but I have to stop somewhere.  Hopefully, those to whom this is directed will allow the Holy Spirit to use it to work in them to bring repentance, and then we all should pray for the conversion also of our Jewish neighbors, with all the charity Christ commands us to have.  Thanks again for allowing me to share, and will see you next time.