"For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery... that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved... Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." (Rom 11:25-29)
Articles on the relationship between Israel and the Church, and role of Israel in God's plan of salvation.
The purpose of my speech is to point out what the change in the relationship between Jews and Christians is about, and especially to show that in this change and in some prophetic events taking place in the world today between Christians and Jews, the heavenly Father is carrying out His plan in history looking more and more towards the day when Christ will return in glory to fulfill the Father's plan upon the world.
I would like to present three images, one taken from the Old, and the other two from the New Testament, images which express the unique divine plan which embraces Jews as well as Christians: the mountain upon which all the peoples of the world come as pilgrims; the wall which at one time divided humanity, definitely torn down by Jesus Christ; and the tree, nourished by a single root, which should shine in the abundance of its leaves.
In the Catholic Church, disagreements are commonplace over a whole range of issues, be they political, social, economic, religious or historical, but at the end of the day these differences of opinion can be resolved through amicable discussion, prayer and a sense of fellowship and family in Christ. There is one issue, however, that divides so deeply that it has the potential to create permanent separation, and this is the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
For most Jews, Saint Paul was a renegade Jew remembered with bitterness for the criticism he aimed at the Jewish religion after he became an ardent follower of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps it is time for this negative view of Paul to be balanced by the solid defence of the Jewish people that he wrote in the mid 50’s of the first century C.E., in a letter to the Roman church.
AHC President David Moss interviewed Archbishop Raymond L. Burke in La Crosse, Wisconsin on Aug 5, 2010, on the topic of the election and vocation of the Jewish people within the Catholic Church.
On September 2, 2009, Catholic apologist Robert Sungenis published a document entitled "The Erroneous Teachings of Catholics for Israel” in which he directly attacks the legitimacy of our apostolate. This document states that on the Catholics for Israel website “various and sundry claims about the Jews and Israel are being disseminated as Catholic Teaching” but these, according to Sungenis, are “not Catholic teachings.” The following is our response to Sungenis' attacks.
I often hear Catholics talking about going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and I must confess that something lightly irritates me about this terminology. It seems that whenever Catholics talk about visiting the land of the Bible, they almost invariably call it “the Holy Land” and rarely “Israel.”
Jesus Christ suffers in the passion of Israel. In striking Israel, the anti-Semites strike him, insult him and spit on him. To persecute the house of Israel is to persecute Christ, not in his mystical body as when the Church is persecuted, but in his fleshly lineage and in his forgetful people whom he ceaselessly loves and calls. In the passion of Israel, Christ suffers and acts as the shepherd of Zion and the Messiah of Israel, in order gradually to conform his people to him.
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We know that God gave Israel the land but there is no mention of his taking it back again forever. Can we Christians exclude that what is happening in our day, that is, the return of Israel to the land of its fathers, is not connected in some way, still a mystery to us, to this providential order which concerns the chosen people and which is carried out even through human error and excess as happens in the Church itself?"
Cardin
al Avery Dulles (1918-2008), of blessed memory, discusses the present status of God's covenant with Israel, a subject which has been extensively discussed in Jewish-Christian dialogues since the Shoah. Catholics look for an approach that fits in the framework of Catholic doctrine, much of which has been summarized by the Second Vatican Council...
Christoph Cardinal Schönborn says European Christians' support for Israel is not based on Holocaust guilt and Christians should affirm Zionism as biblical. Schoenborn said it was doctrinally important for Christians to recognize Jews' connection to the "Holy Land" and Christians should rejoice in Jews' return to Palestine as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.