Subversive converso. Byzantine Catholic. Husband. Father. MA theology. Cohost of @VoiceJacobCath. Views are my own.
Seattle, WA
Joined March 2020
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Hello. I am a Jew who realized that Jesus is the promised messiah of our Torah and prophets and the the Catholic Church is his messianic kingdom. Here is a list of threads that I recommend my kinsmen according to the flesh read. I am happy to discuss them with any of you.
Gideon Lazar - The Byzantine Scotist retweeted
Well, another Cardinal has come out with a, shall we say, puzzling take on evangelization.
A few years ago, Cardinal Américo Aguiar, at the time auxiliary bishop of Lisbon, said that he and the other organizers of World Youth Day in his hometown had no interest in converting anyone to Christ.
Now Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco of Algeria has opined that “the Church is not there to convert” and “Christians should approach other religions through fraternity rather than seeking conversions.”
Excuse me, but…what?
Last time I checked, the Founder said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Sure sounds like conversion to me.
When St. Paul came to Corinth or Athens or Thessalonica, his purpose was not to listen or to form a discussion group but rather to declare an unnerving message: the euangelion (glad tidings) that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
So impassioned is he for this work that he says, “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:22); and “If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16)!
Moreover, the entire thrust of the Second Vatican Council was toward bringing the Light of Christ to the peoples of the world (Lumen Gentium). And this missionary élan has given rise in the last few decades to the idea of a “new evangelization,” which is to say, a fresh declaration of the Lordship of Christ.
Quite obviously, no one thinks that this work of evangelization should be done in a brow-beating, overbearing, or disrespectful manner (proselytization), but for God’s sake, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If I really thought that the Church does not exist to bring people to Christ, then I would resign and get an honest job.
One of the best expressions of the Church's teaching on the reality of ethnic identity (gens in Latin, often translated as "race") is actually in Vatican 2 in Lumen gentium 13.
Ethnicity/nationality/race is a real feature of human nature. We are born into and live in such communities.
Galatians 3:28 does not negate this any more than it negates the distinctions of sex or social class.
Racism, the mistreatment of another on account of their race, is a grave evil. The true harmony of the nations is found in their common unity under Christ in the Catholic Church. God gives distinct gifts to each nation so that they can all offer these gifts to Christ the king and so they can lift up one another through the sharing of their gifts.
To adopt a leftist ideology that race is not real is to negate a central feature of the narrative of salvation history.
Likewise, to turn "Catholic" into an ethnic identity is to reduce the supernatural kingdom of God down to a purely natural category.
Lumen gentium 13 gives a beautiful description of the universality and diversity of the Catholic Church
It follows that though there are many nations there is but one people of God, which takes its citizens from every race, making them citizens of a kingdom which is of a heavenly rather than of an earthly nature. All the faithful, scattered though they be throughout the world, are in communion with each other in the Holy Spirit, and so, he who dwells in Rome knows that the people of India are his members". Since the kingdom of Christ is not of this world the Church or people of God in establishing that kingdom takes nothing away from the temporal welfare of any people. On the contrary it fosters and takes to itself, insofar as they are good, the ability, riches and customs in which the genius of each people expresses itself. Taking them to itself it purifies, strengthens, elevates and ennobles them. The Church in this is mindful that she must bring together the nations for that king to whom they were given as an inheritance, and to whose city they bring gifts and offerings. This characteristic of universality which adorns the people of God is a gift from the Lord Himself. By reason of it, the Catholic Church strives constantly and with due effect to bring all humanity and all its possessions back to its source In Christ, with Him as its head and united in His Spirit.
In virtue of this catholicity each individual part contributes through its special gifts to the good of the other parts and of the whole Church. Through the common sharing of gifts and through the common effort to attain fullness in unity, the whole and each of the parts receive increase. Not only, then, is the people of God made up of different peoples but in its inner structure also it is composed of various ranks. This diversity among its members arises either by reason of their duties, as is the case with those who exercise the sacred ministry for the good of their brethren, or by reason of their condition and state of life, as is the case with those many who enter the religious state and, tending toward holiness by a narrower path, stimulate their brethren by their example. Moreover, within the Church particular Churches hold a rightful place; these Churches retain their own traditions, without in any way opposing the primacy of the Chair of Peter, which presides over the whole assembly of charity and protects legitimate differences, while at the same time assuring that such differences do not hinder unity but rather contribute toward it. Between all the parts of the Church there remains a bond of close communion whereby they share spiritual riches, apostolic workers and temporal resources. For the members of the people of God are called to share these goods in common, and of each of the Churches the words of the Apostle hold good: "According to the gift that each has received, administer it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God".
All men are called to be part of this catholic unity of the people of God which in promoting universal peace presages it. And there belong to or are related to it in various ways, the Catholic faithful, all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation.
Gideon Lazar - The Byzantine Scotist retweeted
One of the all time great Pope Francis moments:
"If you do not love your country, I do not believe that you will be able to love Jesus and love God."
The people cheering give me chills.
"Love for one’s country is love for a mother, we call her “Mother Land”, because we are born here, and she teaches us, as every mother does, to walk, and she is entrusted to us so that she may survive for future generations. This is why I wanted to begin with this reference to the Mother, to our motherland. If you are not patriots – not isolationist patriots – real patriots, you are not going to achieve anything in life. May you love your land, young men and women."
Gideon Lazar - The Byzantine Scotist retweeted
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Roman Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, calls for "fraternity in Christ" after deadly attack on Greek Orthodox Church in Jordan. Remembers the "nine brothers killed just for being Christian". @EWTN @BishopBarron @RaymondArroyo @SiateSanti @ByzCat
Gideon Lazar - The Byzantine Scotist retweeted
On the contrary, the Angelic Doctor teaches that the title "King of the Jews" was a sign of praise to Christ. From his Commentary on John, c. 19, l. 4.
It does not mean in any way that Jews are superior as the Gentiles who are grafted into Christ attain to the dignity of the name, while Jews who reject Christ fail to attain to dignity of the name.
Can you point to a single Father or Doctor of the Church who teaches that the title King of the Jews "was a category of Pilates' mind, not a category of reality"?
In our discussion on this, you could not cite a single Father or Doctor of the Church to support your position on what the name Jew means. I hope you will either find saints to support your view or will recant of your error on this point.
Gideon Lazar - The Byzantine Scotist retweeted
🙏 SEXTO ROSARIO POR LA PAZ EN TIERRA SANTA
Este sábado 24 de octubre, con motivo de la fiesta de Nuestra Señora de Palestina, nos uniremos en oración desde distintos países para rezar el Santo Rosario por la paz en Tierra Santa.
Desde Gaza nos uniremos en directo a esta oración a las 18 hs, junto a los fieles de distintos países, encomendando especialmente a la Virgen María a los pueblos de Tierra Santa y a todos los que sufren a causa de la guerra. Que nuestra oración sea una súplica confiada por el don de la paz.
📅 Sábado 24 de octubre
🕙 10:00 h | Ciudad de México
🕕 18:00 h | Belén y Gaza
🕖 19:00 h | Jerusalén, Siria, Irak, Jordania y Líbano
📺 En vivo por el canal de YouTube de Press Crux.
👇 Entrá en el enlace y activá el recordatorio:
youtube.com/live/kTrwDcY4sjM…
📢 Agradecemos de corazón que compartan esta invitación para que muchas más personas puedan unirse a esta oración por la paz.
🙏 ¡Unámonos en oración por la paz en Tierra Santa!
Jesus fulfilled large numbers of prophecies (see thread below), rose from the dead, converted the most powerful pagan empire, made over half the world worship the God of Israel (since Islam is just a heretical Christian offshoot), and has basically steered all human discourse (including much Jewish discourse) for the last 2,000 years. Jesus is so successful that the entire world divides time to before and after his birth.
There were like 50 different Messiahs during the Second Temple period. I don’t feel “stressed” that any of them were actually Moshiach. Why should I for Jesus?
Comparing the Gospels to other Jewish groups at the time, they’re nothing remarkable. His moral teachings are from Hillel. His legal teachings are from Shammai. He repeats a lot of what the Essenes said.
Do Christians ever worry that Mohammed was a prophet? No. Then I’m not concerned.
Gideon Lazar - The Byzantine Scotist retweeted
Because He’s the only one that brought the world to the God of Israel.
No other “Messiah” did that, no other Jew did that, and Mohammed certainly didn’t do that.
Jesus is the most successful Jew in the history of the world.
That’s either insane luck, or He’s the Messiah.
There were like 50 different Messiahs during the Second Temple period. I don’t feel “stressed” that any of them were actually Moshiach. Why should I for Jesus?
Comparing the Gospels to other Jewish groups at the time, they’re nothing remarkable. His moral teachings are from Hillel. His legal teachings are from Shammai. He repeats a lot of what the Essenes said.
Do Christians ever worry that Mohammed was a prophet? No. Then I’m not concerned.
While it is true that some Anglo-Saxon clergy moved to the Byzantine East after 1066, when they arrived, they refused to use the Byzantine Rite and requested Latin clergy from Hungry to come celebrate Mass for them. This proves they considered themselves to still be in communion with the Pope. Here is the account from our primary source on this (the Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis).
Citation taken from Krijnie N. Ciggaar, "L'émigration anglaise à Byzance après 1066. Un nouveau texte en latin sur les Varangues à Constantinople," Revue des études byzantines 32 (1974): 311. persee.fr/doc/rebyz_0766-559….
Gideon Lazar - The Byzantine Scotist retweeted
Continuing his catechetical series on Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes, Pope Leo XIV reflects on the challenges facing marriage and family in the world today:
“Today, we consider the dignity of marriage and the family in the context of contemporary challenges.
The council fathers recognised the well being of all in society is closely linked to the health of marriage and the family. And sought to present a renewed vision of conjugal love as an intimate partnership. Which reflects the life of the Trinity, and is rooted in and enriched by the redemptive power of Christ.
Let us, therefore, pray for God's blessing and protection upon all families.”
Since I see a lot of Jews on here claiming the Catholic Church is antisemitic, I want to highly recommend the chapter on antisemitism in Rodney Stark’s book Bearing False Witness.
Most of what you have been taught is false history. The papacy has historically been one of the greatest defenders of the rights of the Jews in human history. While Catholics have at times been violent towards Jews, this was against Church teaching.
Since Jewish rituals, unlike those of pagans, come from God (even if they have since been fulfilled), Jews were granted religious freedom in Catholic Europe which pagans and heretics were not.
In my latest substack post, I respond to @jacobfalach1's question on a recent @michaeljknowles show episode about whether Ezekiel's temple refute Christianity
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that governments still have a duty to the true faith, and that part of the purpose of evangelism is to transform the political order
The duty of offering God genuine worship concerns man both individually and socially. This is "the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ." By constantly evangelizing men, the Church works toward enabling them "to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality and mores, laws and structures of the communities in which [they] live." The social duty of Christians is to respect and awaken in each man the love of the true and the good. It requires them to make known the worship of the one true religion which subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church. Christians are called to be the light of the world. Thus, the Church shows forth the kingship of Christ over all creation and in particular over human societies.
- CCC 2105
Gideon Lazar - The Byzantine Scotist retweeted
Gueranger on how the raising of Jairus's daughter is a type of the conversion of the Jews
By this time, however, the word of salvation has made itself heard throughout all the nations, healing and saving all who desired the blessing. Jesus, who has been delayed on the road, comes at last to the house towards which He first purposed to direct His sacred steps ; He reaches, at last, the house of Juda, where the daughter of Sion is in a deep sleep. His almighty compassion drives away from the poor abandoned one the crowd of false teachers and lying prophets, who had sent her into that mortal sleep, by all the noise of their vain babbling : He casts forth for ever from her house those insulters of Himself, who are quite resolved to keep the dead one dead. Taking the poor daughter by the hand, He restores her to life, and to all the charm of her first youth ; proving thus, that her apparent death had been but a sleep, and that the long delay of dreary ages could never belie the word of God, which He had given to Abraham, His servant.
- ibid, 480
Dom Prosper Gueranger has some really beautiful explanations of the Church's traditional theology of the Jews in his Liturgical Year.
It strikes me both how Gueranger is critical of the Jews in their errors, but also sees them as still having an important status and looks forward to the eventual union of the Jews and the Church.
Here is are some excerpts for example from his commentary on the Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost.
The gifts and vocations of God are, as the apostle expresses it, without repentance or regret on His part. Those Jews, who are now His enemies because they reject the Gospel, are still called charissimi; they are still the beloved and dearly beloved, because of their fathers. For the same reason, a time will come — and the whole world is waiting for it — when the denial of Juda being revoked and his iniquities blotted out, the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, will be literally fulfilled. Then the divine unity of the two Testaments will be made evident; and the two peoples themselves will be made one, under their one Head, Christ Jesus. The covenant of God with man being then fully realized, such as He had designed it in His eternal wisdom — the earth having yielded its fruit, the world having done its work, the sepulchres will give back their dead, and history will cease here on earth, leaving glorified human nature to bloom in unreserved fullness of life, under God's complacent eye.
...
But the Jew is far from being ready to understand these great mysteries. And yet the Law had been given to him that it might serve him as a hand leading him to Christ, and without exposing him to err. It was a signal favour granted him, not from any merits of his own, but because of his fathers. The favour was all the more precious, inasmuch as it was bestowed at a time when the tradition regarding a future Redeemer was almost entirely lost by the bulk of mankind. Gratitude should have been uppermost in the heart of Juda; but pride took its place. He was so taken up with the honour that had been put on him, that it made him lose all desire for the Messiah. He could not endure the thought that a time would come, when the Sun of justice having risen for the whole earth, the limited advantage which was given to a few during the hours of night was to be eclipsed by the bright noon of a light which all might enjoy. He, therefore, proclaimed that the old Law was definitive, though the Law declared itself to be but transitory ; he, therefore, insisted on the perpetuity of the reign of types and shadows. He laid it down as a dogma that no divine intervention can ever equal that made on Sinai; that every future prophet, everyone sent by God, must be inferior to Moses; that all possible salvation is in the Law, and that from it alone flows every grace.
...
How many ages of apparent abandonment, of humiliation and suffering, must pass over Juda too, before he will recognize and adore His God, and confess to Him his sins, and give Him his devoted love, and, like this stranger, hear Jesus pronounce his pardon, and say : Arise! Go thy way! thy faith hath made thee whole and saved thee !
Let us, by our fervent prayers, hasten the time which will be so glorious for the two peoples, when, united in the same faith by the consciousness of the same hopes then realized, they will cry out to our Redeemer
...
Oh ! when will the children of Juda come and experience for themselves the superiority of the Bread of the new Testament over the manna of the old? Let us Gentiles, the last-comers, but who have preceded our elder brethren at the banquet of love, sing all the more fervently in our Communion-anthem the divine sweetness of this true Bread of heaven.
- The Liturgical Year, vol. 11, 320-25
Gueranger even thought the Jews would return to the Holy Land it seems, but after they repent of having killed Jesus:
'Behold ! the days come, saith the Lord, and I will raise up to David a just branch : and a King shall reign, and shall be wise: and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In those days, shall Juda be saved, and Israel shall dwell confidently : and this is the name that they shall call Him : The Lord our Just One. Therefore, behold the days come, saith the Lord, and they shall say no more : The Lord liveth, who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt ! But : The Lord liveth, who hath brought out, and brought hither, the seed of the house of Israel, from the land of the north, and out of all the lands, to which I had cast them forth! And they shall dwell in their own land.' [Jer 23:5-8]
As is evident, this passage is equally applicable to the conversion of the Jews and the restoration of Israel, which are to take place at the end of the world.
...
Verily, His thoughts are those of peace, for He promises to admit to the banquet of His grace the Jews, who are His brethren according to the flesh ; thus realizing what had been prefigured in the history of the patriarch Joseph. The brethren of Joseph, having sold him, came to him when they were tormented by hunger; for then he ruled over the whole land of Egypt. He recognized them; he received them; and made, together with them, a great feast. So, too, our Lord, who is now reigning over the whole earth, and is giving the bread of life, in abundance, to the Egyptians (that is, to the Gentiles), will see coming to Him the remnants of the children of Israel. He, whom they had denied and put to death, will admit them to His favour, will give them a place at His table, and the true Joseph will feast delightedly with His brethren.
- Ibid, 469-70
Gueranger on how the raising of Jairus's daughter is a type of the conversion of the Jews
By this time, however, the word of salvation has made itself heard throughout all the nations, healing and saving all who desired the blessing. Jesus, who has been delayed on the road, comes at last to the house towards which He first purposed to direct His sacred steps ; He reaches, at last, the house of Juda, where the daughter of Sion is in a deep sleep. His almighty compassion drives away from the poor abandoned one the crowd of false teachers and lying prophets, who had sent her into that mortal sleep, by all the noise of their vain babbling : He casts forth for ever from her house those insulters of Himself, who are quite resolved to keep the dead one dead. Taking the poor daughter by the hand, He restores her to life, and to all the charm of her first youth ; proving thus, that her apparent death had been but a sleep, and that the long delay of dreary ages could never belie the word of God, which He had given to Abraham, His servant.
- ibid, 480