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Q&A Question: How did the American bishops get the authority to make their
pronouncement that Jewish people are saved without Baptism?
The most significant error in the
statement "Reflections on Covenant and Mission" is presented below.
The entire text, released August 12th, 2002 may be found on the Internet at http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2002/02-154.htm.
However, [the Catholic Church] now recognizes that Jews are also called by
God to prepare the world for God's kingdom. Their witness to the kingdom,
which did not originate with the Church's experience of Christ crucified and
raised, must not be curtailed by seeking the conversion of the Jewish people
to Christianity. The distinctive Jewish witness must be sustained if
Catholics and Jews are truly to be, as Pope John Paul II has envisioned, "a
blessing to one another." [John Paul II, "Address on the Fiftieth
Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising," April 6, 1993]. This is in
accord with the divine promise expressed in the New Testament that Jews are
called to "serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before God
all [their] days" (Luke 1:74-75). Several passages from the New Testament are cited in support of the heresy. The one given above is, of course, spoken by Zachary at the birth of his son, John the Baptist, who would "go before the Lord to prepare his ways" in teaching the Jewish people. Taken in context it is hardly a statement exempting Zachary's people from the order our Lord would soon proclaim: "Go into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be condemned."2 The New Order bishops would have us believe that this did not apply to the Jewish people. They had the temerity to quote our Lord, saying, "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,"3 and then claim that the "nations" were only the goyim, the gentiles, the non-Jews! That "whole world and every creature" applied only outside of Israel. They have no explanation, of course, for the fact that the Apostles all attempted to make converts of the Jews before moving on to other territories. In chapter ten of the Acts of the Apostles, before being persuaded to baptize the Centurion, Cornelius, Saint Peter tells us, "He sent His word to the children of Israel," "He charged us to preach to the people and to testify that it is He who has been appointed by God to judge the living and the dead." Up to this point Peter seems not to have considered baptizing anyone other than a Jew. "The faithful of the circumcision (the baptized Jews) were amazed because the grace of the Holy Ghost was poured out on the Gentiles."4 In the very next chapter God abolishes the Kosher food laws, there is further amazement about the baptism of gentiles, and it is clearly stated that up to that time the Apostles had preached exclusively to Jews.5 And even the great missionary to the Gentiles, Saint Paul, throughout his travels, always goes first to the local synagogue to see if he can make converts there. It has been conjectured that the bishops are attempting to validate the tale about Catholics not being allowed to read the Bible when they were in the seminaries before Vatican II, but this writer thinks it is just that they spent more time studying sexology than Scripture. Perhaps the more important question is
"What will Rome do about her errant bishops?" Will they be made to
recant this current heresy? Given the decades long failure to deal with the
sexual revolution in the priesthood, it is not reasonable to expect the Vatican
to intervene any time soon. The Pope was in Toronto, hosting a rock concert, and
not available for comment.
NOTES:
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