Still Running Off at the Keyboard

THE DUAL COVENANT THEORY

I've brought it up before--the idea that the Jewish covenant is still in force and that the Jews will be saved apart from Jesus Christ. In the current issue of "Culture Wars" that came today, E. Michael Jones' article, "The Conversion of the Revolutionary Jew", offers a possible explanation of the source of this dual covenant theory. He writes:

The Catholic Church, which throughout its history has urged the conversion of the Jews, has thus far been incapable of lending [contemporary] assistance in this regard because it has been lamed by an interpretation of Nostra Aetate which contradicts the Gospels. One of the rituals of post-Nostra Aetate ecumenism which has developed over the past 40 years entails having some church dignitary stand up at the ecumenical gathering--after the Jews have denounced the Church as the font of all anti-Semitism and the immediate cause of Hitler's genocide--and announce that the Jews do not need Christ as their savior. In May 2001, at a meeting of the international Catholic-Jewish Liaison committee in New York, Walter Cardinal Kasper, the Vatican official in chaarge of the Church's relations with the Jews, tried to quell the Jewish discomfort caused by the issuance of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Dominus Iesus on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church by claiming that "God's grace, which is the grace of Jesus Christ according to our faith, is available to all. Therefore the Church believes that Judaism, i.e., the faithful response of the Jewish people to God's irrevocable covenant is salvific for them, because God is faithful to his promises" (emphasis added by me [Jones]).

In placating the Jews, Kasper not only contradicted the Gospels and 2000 years of Church teaching, he also contradicted the recently issued Dominus Iesus, which claimed that

There is only one salvific economy of the one and triune God realized in the mystery of the incarnation, death and resurrection of the Son of God, actualized with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit and extended in its salvific value to all humanity and to the entire universe. "No one, therefore, can enter into communion with God except through Christ by the working of the Holy Spirit."

Kasper also contradicted Pope John Paul II's 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio, which claimed that

Christ is the one savior of all, the only one able to reveal God and lead to God. In reply to the Jewish religious authorities who questioned the apostles about healing the lame man, Peter says: "By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well...And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." ...salvation can only come from Jesus Christ.

In attempting to extricate himself from hot water, Kasper only made matters worse by muddying the already muddy waters even more. In November 2002, Cardinal Kasper gave a speech at Boston College in which he claimed that Jews could be saved if they "follow their own conscience and believe in God's promises as they understand them in their religious tradition, they are in line with God's plan, which for us comes to historical completion in Jesus Christ" (my emphasis.)

In using the phrase "for us," Kasper implied that there were two ways to salvation, a clear contradiction of the Gospels and recent Vatican pronouncement like Dominus Iesus. Kasper, however, was not alone in making these heretical claims. In August 2002, the US Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and interreligious [sic] Affairs, under the direction of William Cardinal Keeler, along with the US National Council of Synagogues issued a paper entitled, "Reflections on Covenant and Mission," which claimed that: "A deepening Catholic appreciation of the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people, together with a recognition of a divinely given mission to the Jews to witness to God's faithful love, lead to the conclusion that campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church. ...

Nostra Aetate had led to a deep crisis in the Catholic Church. In order to participate in ecumenical dialogue with Jews, Catholic "experts" had to be willing to make heretical statements which contradicted the teaching of the Catholic Church. They had to be willing to deny fundamental tenets of Catholic theology. The Church was suddenly in a position where she could not articulate a coherent position because denial of the Gospel had become the condition sine qua non of dialogue with the Jews.

In many ways this problem went all the way to the top. Viewing the history of Pope John Paul II's relations with the Jews, one of the most ultramontane of American Catholic commentators was forced to conclude that "Even Pope John Paul II...could occasionally create the impression that the Church was perhaps now prepared to cut a few corners in the interests of better relations" with the Jews. ..."John Paul II," according to the same commentator, "actually made the remark that the old covenant with the Jews had in fact 'never been revoked by God.'" The statement was theologically defensible because God never revoked the covenants with Noah or Abraham, but it gave the impression that the "new and everlasting covenant" which Christ Himself established did not apply to the Jews.

Pope John Paul II's gestures were even worse in this regard. His prayer at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem was theatrical but ambiguous. Jews who pray at the Wailing Wall pray for the restoration of the Temple. No pope could ever contemplate doing what would be a completely wicked act, but Jewish artists lost no time memorializing that act and all of the ambiguity it embodied as a way of justifying their call for a ban on all forms of "proselytism."

If those of us in the pews are confused as to what the Church teaches regarding covenant theology, we are in that state of confusion through the help of our shepherds who seek the approval of men and are willing to deny Christ to get it. Ecumenical and interreligious dialogue always brings with it this threat of denying the truths of the faith.

A little birdie told me that Mike Jones is writing a book on Judaism. I think it's going to be an interesting read when he publishes it.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for Benedict!