Attitude Towards The Jewish People

[Extra ecclesiam nulla salus]

im not really looking for a debate, but i was wondering about the Jews again. I have come back to the Church but this question still bugs me. Many Popes and Local councils have taught that Jews are cursed, but not guilty of Deicide. Is this what we believe? if not why? im not really trying to debate this, i just would like to disucss it.


Dominus Vobiscum,

Sam

[Era Might]

No, the Jews are not cursed.

[quote]Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.

--Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Declaration "Nostra Aetate"[/quote]
The question of what a Pope may or may not have said is too large to tackle in a few paragraphs. Fortunately, we have a Magisterium for a reason, to determine what is and is not Catholic doctrine. The Church has condemned any idea that the Jewish people are "cursed". That's all that really matters so far as our obedience is concerned.

Edited October 8, 2006 by Era Might

[Resurrexi]

The Doctor Saint Augustine wrote "The Jews who slew Him, and would not believe in Him, because it behoved Him to die and rise again, were yet more miserably wasted by the Romans, and utterly rooted out from their kingdom, where aliens had already ruled over them, and were dispersed through the lands (so that indeed there is no place where they are not), and are thus by their own Scriptures a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ."

The Doctor Saint Aquinas wrote "as the laws say, the Jews by reason of their fault are sentenced to perpetual servitude and thus the lords of the lands in which they dwell may take things from them as though they were their own — with, nonetheless, this restraint observed that the necessary subsidies of life in no way be taken from them."

[Fides_et_Ratio]

Augustine also held to a Calvinistic type of Predesitination and Aquinas was against Mary's Immaculate Conception.

Both are GREAT Saints, but their statements are not dogmatic.

The Church does, and has to, recognize that the Gospel was first preached to the Jews...

[Era Might]

I'm not going to argue with you about this, because we've done this before. The teaching of the Church is clear. What you choose to do with it is between you and God. If you don't understand how the Church's faith harmonizes with the past, that's fine. Everyone has difficulties of their own. Some people don't see how the teaching on the Eucharist today is the same as the early Church. Some people don't see how Marian doctrines square with Scripture. They accept the teaching of the Church because it is the teaching of the Church, and work out their difficulties in faith, knowing that the Church teaches us, we do not teach the Church.

That's all I have to say on the matter.

[Paladin]

Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas thought the idea of Mary's perpetual virginity was a crock. St. Maximillian Kolbe wrote that Mary was the completion of the Trinity. Saints can be wrong. What the Church teaches is not.

[Resurrexi]

[quote]Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas thought the idea of Mary's perpetual virginity was a crock.[/quote]

[quote]
The virginity of our Blessed Lady was defined under anathema in the third canon of the Lateran Council held in the time of Pope Martin I, A.D. 649.[/quote]
~Catholic Encyclopedia

I seriously doubt that St. Thomas would have anathamized himself.

[quote]Augustine also held to a Calvinistic type of Predesitination and Aquinas was against Mary's Immaculate Conception.[/quote]

Though I know that Aquinas was against The Immaculate Conception, are you sure that that St. Augustine belived in Calvinistic Predestination?

[quote] St. Maximillian Kolbe wrote that Mary was the completion of the Trinity. Saints can be wrong. What the Church teaches is not. [/quote]

Please show me where St. Maximillian said or wrote that.

[quote] Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ. [/quote]

[quote] The teaching of the Church is clear. [/quote]

I don't think it is... I interpret that part of Nos. At. as meaning the Jews as a race, which I do most certainly do not hold. It could also be interpreted that the Jews are cursed, but that this is not in Scripture.

Edited October 9, 2006 by StThomasMore

[Dave]

Correction -- St. Thomas Aquinas rejected Mary's Immaculate Conception, not her perpetual virginity. Just for the record, he believed she was born without original sin but wasn't conceived that way -- that at some point before her birth she was cleansed from original sin. Of course, now that the Church has defined it, we know what the deal really was.

[iKonstantin]

Matthew 27:25
"His blood be upon us and our children. "





bpat Konstantin

[goldenchild17]

Aquinas did reject Mary's immaculate conception. But I'm quite shocked that anyone would suggest that Augustine held a heretical view of justification...

[Fides_et_Ratio]

[quote name='goldenchild17' post='1087283' date='Oct 9 2006, 02:37 AM']
Aquinas did reject Mary's immaculate conception. But I'm quite shocked that anyone would suggest that Augustine held a heretical view of justification...
[/quote]
Augustine is very different from the Augustinian tradition that followed him.

Read his "On Rebuke and Grace" and "On the Grace of Christ"...
[url="http://www.ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/AUGUSTIN.htm"]http://www.ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/AUGUSTIN.htm[/url] (<-- is a commentary on Augustine and predestination that's decent)

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Extra ecclesiam nulla salus' post='1086748' date='Oct 8 2006, 03:40 PM']
im not really looking for a debate, but i was wondering about the Jews again. I have come back to the Church but this question still bugs me. Many Popes and Local councils have taught that Jews are cursed, but not guilty of Deicide. Is this what we believe? if not why? im not really trying to debate this, i just would like to disucss it.
Dominus Vobiscum,

Sam
[/quote]
Did you look it up in the Catechism?#218, 219, 220, 221 and 839-40.

[kdewolf2]

Here's my own personal clarification:

The Jews, as a category, have a very special place in the history of salvation, since the sacred books of the Old Testament were entrusted to them, and the Law and the Prophets came from amongst them, and our Saviour himself was born of Jewish parentage. The Jews, as individual people, are still born with the stain of Adam's sin, separated from God's grace, with an innate tendency towards evil, just like everybody else on the face of the planet, and are liable to the just wrath of God, but, like everybody else, can be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the only Savior of mankind, Himself known to be an observant Jew during his life on earth.

First century Jews, who largely rejected Jesus Christ, were duly punished by the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews from their home land in A.D. 70, in fulfilment of Christ's own prophecy.

Jews today do not deserve any special rights or privileges as "God's chosen people," for we are all children of God, nor do they deserve any special blame or censure for Christ's death, since it was a voluntary sacrifice made on behalf of all mankind, and no Jew today was personally involved in the execution of it, unlike the Pharisees and Sadducees of first century Jerusalem.

If a Jew today believes in Christ, he is no longer "accursed," but saved. However, if a Jew today rejects Christ, he is only as "accursed" as his fellow Gentile who rejects Christ and thereby incurs eternal damnation. There are Jews and Gentiles in Heaven, and there are Jews and Gentiles in Hell. The Jew in Heaven is obviously not "accursed" and the Gentile in Hell is obviously no less "accursed" than his Jewish counterpart.

[Extra ecclesiam nulla salus]

[quote name='kdewolf2' post='1087816' date='Oct 9 2006, 09:08 PM']
Here's my own personal clarification:

The Jews, as a category, have a very special place in the history of salvation, since the sacred books of the Old Testament were entrusted to them, and the Law and the Prophets came from amongst them, and our Saviour himself was born of Jewish parentage. The Jews, as individual people, are still born with the stain of Adam's sin, separated from God's grace, with an innate tendency towards evil, just like everybody else on the face of the planet, and are liable to the just wrath of God, but, like everybody else, can be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the only Savior of mankind, Himself known to be an observant Jew during his life on earth.

First century Jews, who largely rejected Jesus Christ, were duly punished by the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews from their home land in A.D. 70, in fulfilment of Christ's own prophecy.

Jews today do not deserve any special rights or privileges as "God's chosen people," for we are all children of God, nor do they deserve any special blame or censure for Christ's death, since it was a voluntary sacrifice made on behalf of all mankind, and no Jew today was personally involved in the execution of it, unlike the Pharisees and Sadducees of first century Jerusalem.

If a Jew today believes in Christ, he is no longer "accursed," but saved. However, if a Jew today rejects Christ, he is only as "accursed" as his fellow Gentile who rejects Christ and thereby incurs eternal damnation. There are Jews and Gentiles in Heaven, and there are Jews and Gentiles in Hell. The Jew in Heaven is obviously not "accursed" and the Gentile in Hell is obviously no less "accursed" than his Jewish counterpart.
[/quote]


We are not all children of God. Only those Baptized into the Body of Christ are children of God.

[Aloysius]

Augustine's view of predestination is perfectly within the bounds of Catholic Teaching. It is Calvinist misinterpretation of both him and St. Paul which is heretical.

One may agree with everything St. Augustine said about predestination and not be a heretic.

Of course, this is a tangent..