Judaism and Catholicism (Guest: Gideon Lazar)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. So today on the podcast, we're going to talk about the least controversial topic possible, and that's Judaism. Judaism and Catholicism, particularly the relationship between the two. We have a great guest today, Gideon Laser. Welcome to program, Gideon. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me on. [00:00:26] Speaker A: Yeah, you had an article that we published at Crisis about a month or so ago. I think it was called Jesus is the Faithful Jew. And it was a response to somebody who is saying, Jesus is not a faithful Jew. And, you know, people can go read those articles. I'll try to link to them in the show notes so they can understand that. But we're going to go more in depth. I really liked your article. I like the other article, too, but I liked your article a lot, and I really think it's a topic a lot of people are talking about. There's a lot of heat, you know, associated with it. Not a lot of light, but a lot of heat. And so I'm hoping in this podcast today that we can really kind of hone in on some of the. The. The beliefs of the relationship between Catholics and Jews and, you know, how Catholics have historically seen Judaism and how they do today and things like that. Before we go, before we get started, I just want you to tell people a little bit about your background, because I know you come from a Jewish family and. And kind of what you're doing, what are you involved in right now? [00:01:25] Speaker B: Yeah, so my background, I grew up in a Jewish family. It's called a movement called Conservative Judaism. So think of, like, Episcopalians, but Jewish. So it will be like a very traditional service and everything. And then the sermon will be something like how the Exodus never happened. That's actually a sermon I once heard. So I want to get that out there, because I know some Orthodox Jews sometimes get offended if you represent yourself as, like, a former Jew. And then you grew up with the sort of Judaism. In my head, I know I didn't grow up with, like, a very religious sort of Judaism, but I found the sort of religion I grew up with very empty. Sort of saw myself as an atheist for a while. Then I came across evidence for the resurrection of Jesus in high school that I found very compelling and sort of led me down a path that eventually ended up in the Catholic Church. And so that's where I've been now for a while. [00:02:12] Speaker A: Oh, that's great. [00:02:13] Speaker B: That's great. [00:02:13] Speaker A: Did you. Did you become something like another type, another denomination of Christian before you became Catholic, or was it straight from, you know, kind of a Judaism to Catholicism? [00:02:24] Speaker B: I actually ended up in Eastern Orthodoxy for a little while. I was a catechumen there for two years, then actually in the Orthodox Church for one year. I have a great love for them. But as I continued to study more theology, I became very convinced of the papacy and the filioque and the need for union with Rome. And so I felt compelled in my conscience to come over to Rome. But I have nothing but love for my Orthodox brothers and sisters. Great, great catechesis there and everything. [00:02:48] Speaker A: And I appreciate you being on here. I know you're very busy because I know you have a conference coming up. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that first before we really get into the topic of the day? [00:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So for my work, I'm the institute coordinator for something called the St. Basil Institute for the Study of the Theology of Creation. And essentially the purpose of the institute is that Cardinal Ratzinger eventually became pope. Benedict wrote about how there was sort of a lack of catechesis in the Church, even in Semin, about the theology of creation. This has been beginning to be rectified a little bit after Benedict spoke about this, but still the focus is entirely on the issue of sort of evolution and creation in the academy right now. And that's an interesting question, but we felt that it was often missing the larger context of a whole Catholic theology of creation. So this institute is dedicated to trying to revive the theology of creation within the academy. A lot of our conferences are private, but occasionally we do some public events. And we've decided to do one this year for the Feast of Christ the King on the new calendar. It's called Christ the King of Creation. And what we're looking at is the role that the theology of creation plays in Catholic social teaching. Because if you go to encyclical's social teaching, starting with Leo XIII and going all the way up through Pope Francis, even the theology of creation plays a very central role. So we have a conference coming up on November 22nd. It's a Saturday before the feast of Christ the King, and you can register using the code Crisis for half off as well. And then if you're a priest as well, please reach out to me. My email is GideonJacobjaZarmail.com you can find me there. And if you're a priest or religious or seminarian or something, I can let you register for free as well. And we have a lot of great speakers. We have Pater Edmund Waldstein, who used to be very well known on the Internet, did some great work with the Josiahs. He'll be speaking about Pope Leo XIII. Then we have Dr. Jennifer Bryson and Dr. Doyen Nguyen talking about the Pope Piuses, and then Pope St. John Paul II, sort of. We'll get a history of the role of the theology of creation, Catholic social teaching. In the morning, and then the afternoon, we're gonna be looking at specific topics. So Dr. Jared Goff is gonna be looking at the theology of marriage. We'll have Father Daniel Dozier as a Byzantine priest who will be speaking about the theology of work. And then I'll be speaking at the end on how I think in many ways, starting with Leo the 13th, the Papacy has sort of been this prophet of modernity that it's been calling out all the issues that we're now facing long before that. And it identified the issue actually was a lack of understanding of God as our creator. This is very clear in a number of Pope Leo XIII's encyclicals. And the Theology of Creation continues to. The current compendium speaks about how it's the foundation of Christian anthropology. And so then if we want to recapture a Catholic social order, we need to recapture the theology of creation and understand this whole creation as a participation in God's perfection and God as the creator of all things, both from many different angles. I think really the whole theology of creation plays this foundational role. So we're going to have a lot of great talks. It's all online. And anyone who registers as well will send out the talks about what. [00:06:14] Speaker A: What's the link again to. To go for the conference website. [00:06:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it'll be. You go to saintbasilinstitute.org that's stbasilinstitute.org and you can find a link there to register for the conference. And if you use the Code Crisis, you can get 50 off to register. Okay, so briefly note that I'm just here on this podcast. I'm representing myself. So what I say for the rest of this podcast doesn't necessarily reflect the views of the institute. [00:06:40] Speaker A: Yes, good. Good disclaimer there. Yeah. So I encourage people to sign up. I know a couple of those speakers and they're great. So, yeah, it sounds like it'd be a great day. So it's online November 22nd on the theology creation, St. Basil and theology of Creation. So, yeah, I encourage people to check that and you get a bonus. Like, this is great. You know, if you're watching our podcast, 50% off, just put in Code Crisis. That's great. Okay, so why don't we go ahead and get into it then I think that the common. And I think this is where you differ from the common belief among many Catholics. And I'm talking about more traditional Catholics and also more progressive Catholics. And that is that there was a, and even like conservative kind of middle of the road Catholics. Most people assume there was a break in how the Catholic Church viewed Judaism, how it considered Judaism at Vatican ii, before Vatican II kind of just put it in very general terms. It was very much of a, you know, it's no longer a valid religion and it's, you know, we should just evangelize them and convert Jews to Christianity, you know, pernicious Jews and all that stuff. And then after Vatican ii, oh, we're all one big happy family. Maybe even like, we shouldn't even try to evangelize Jews because their, their covenant has never ended. And so therefore the implication is they're saved, even without becoming Catholic or something like that. So that is, I, I can kind of feel like either you, you almost everybody accepts that narrative and they either reject it as being bad or they accept it as a good development, one of the two, depending where you're coming from. So give me your, like, I think you come at from a different angle. So I want to hear that. How you look at this, you know, the, the, the, the split. Or is it continuity or, or, or what are we talk. [00:08:29] Speaker B: Yeah. I noticed a few years ago that the Catholic Internet was becoming very obsessed with this question about Judaism. And everyone sort of had their proof texts either from the tradition or Vatican ii. And after Vatican ii and the general perception as you were mentioning. Right. Is that before Vatican II we thought Jews were bad, and then Vatican II we accepted Jews are good. And I sort of felt that this can't be right as a methodology. Right. It can't be that everyone gets their perfect texts of their side. And so I wanted to try to research of could there be a way in which we have a hermeneutic of continuity? And to try to look at can we create that hermeneutic of continuity? And I expected maybe the way in which people often construct this hermeneutic of continuity is what they'll say is that there's perhaps some good hints in the tradition of more positive things about Jews. We have to take those out, cut out all the bad things about Jews in the tradition and sort of accept that those bad things were never magisterial. That's sort of how people often have it. But that doesn't seem to be how like someone like St. John Henry Newman understands The development of doctrine I wanted to try to have could there be a more comprehensive hermeneutic of continuity. And I think there actually is when you go back to especially St. Augustine, but I think it's there in the wider tradition as well, is St. Augustine is looking at after the Roman Empire, converts paganism seems to be disappearing, but Judaism still seems to be around. And so Augustine's wondering sort of what role are the Jews playing? Why are they sort of the one religion from the ancient world that's sticking around once the world becomes Christian? And Augustine has this theology that the Jews play a role as the witness people. And this is both has positive aspects to it and negative aspects to it. So in a positive aspect, he'll talk about how the Jews actually play this important apologetical role. You can find many prophecies in the Old Testament, for example, about how God would always preserve the children of Israel. And so Augustine saying, see, we can actually prove to the pagans about this prophecy coming true that the Jews are still being preserved. And also as well that it could be that unbelievers would say that we made up all these prophecies about Christ because we made up. We could have made up the Old Testament. But the fact that the Jews accept the Old Testament as well is proof that we didn't make up these prophecies. And so therefore we can use these prophecies to the pagans as an argument for the truth of Christianity. But also there was this a more negative aspect a little bit, that the Jews are in exile because in the book of Deuteronomy, if you read it will say that if the Jews were being faithful, that God would keep them in the land, he would bless them, multiply them and so on. But if they were disobedient, they would be sent into exile among the nations. And so the fact then that the Jews, after the rejection of Christ, the temple was destroyed by the Romans and they were sent into exile again is a sign that God that Jesus is the true Messiah and that the Jews are under some sort of a divine punishment for not accepting that. Now, of course, in the tradition there is still an emphasis that both, and you can read this in St. Thomas is a good discussion of this, that both the Jews and Gentiles were involved in the death of Christ, but that the Jews had a unique responsibility, not in they had a greater malice or something, but that God had given them all these prophecies and the covenants and so on. So they had a greater responsibility there to have accepted Christ. And then as well. Another interesting aspect of this you can go into. St. Thomas discusses this quite a bit in the in the question on Unbelief in the Secunda Secunde he'll talk about how the Jews as unbelievers are a sort of unique category from other unbelievers. Because in people often who want to have a very negative view of the Jews in the tradition will point to things like various canons from church councils and stuff putting restrictions on Jews. But you have to realize that the context of those is that Jews were the only religious minority in Catholic Europe. And that's because the Jews were granted the special protection on the basis of St. Augustine's theology. So because of this Jews were able to to move into Catholic Europe. They were often invited in by Catholic kings. And St. Thomas talks about how the rights of other unbelievers, whether you tolerate them or not, it's sort of a question of prudence in his view that it could be, look, you don't want to. We can't forcibly convert anyone to the faith. So if you have a pre existing pagan group there, it will cause a lot of contention to start persecuting them. But there's no sort of intrinsic obligation in St. Thomas's view at least to tolerate them. Verse he says with the role the rights of the Jews, it's different for two reasons. First of all, these rights are actually given by God. And then secondly, these rights prefigure Christ. So even though the Jews don't realize that what the actions they're doing and stuff like celebrating the Passover is prefiguring Christ, when they do that, he says it as though Christ is portrayed before our eyes. So if you were to go and like watch a Passover seat, I'm not saying participate in one, but if you go watch one, you would start seeing how all these elements prefigure Christ. Like quite one quite interesting one is there's three pieces of matzah and then the second piece is taken away and broken in half. And one half of it is hidden and then returned at the end of the Seder. So you can start seeing all these different ways that various aspects of it prefigure Christ. And this is still within the rights of the Jews, at least in St. Thomas's view here. And so in the tradition then there was actually a view that Jews still have this unique place. And as well all of the church fathers, and this is absolutely unanimous say that one of the preconditions for the second coming is the conversion of the Jews. Because at Christ's first coming, he did not accept them. A lot of people will point to Romans 11 about this. But if you. Actually, more interesting, I think, is to read patristic commentaries on Matthew 23, because at this point, Christ is giving this whole sermon against the Scribes and the Pharisees here, calling them hypocrites and so on. But he also says that they do sit upon the seat of Moses. And so those under the Old covenant had to listen to whatever they said, even though they shouldn't follow their example. And at the end of the sermon, Christ says, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And if you look at patristic commentaries on this, they say, this is the Jews welcoming Christ upon the second coming. At the first coming, they didn't accept him, but at the second coming, they will accept him as their king. And so the Jews here have this unique role as well, that they were preserved within Catholic Europe because they were going to play this role at the second coming. And then you look at sort of the early modern period. This was often, even though I think it's still preserved in theologians, it's often lost in practice as we, Judaism, came to be treated more and more like another religion, rather than sort of this unique place in between a religion and a heresy. And so after, I think, the events of the Holocaust, there was a desire among Catholic theologians to revisit, I think, not necessarily the intrinsic. And some people wanted to revisit the entire tradition and get rid of it. But I think you could also read it more charitably as wanting to revisit certain popular beliefs, perhaps that had come in to Catholic beliefs before Vatican ii, but are not necessarily fully rooted in the tradition. And so I think this is what we're seeing. In many ways, you can interpret Nostra Aetate speak because Nostra Aetate talks about how the Jews did not recognize the time of their visitation, that there is still stuff in Nostra Aetate that calls the Jews to become Catholic, even if it's more implicit in it, where it talks about how we look forward to the day when all mankind will stand shoulder to shoulder and praise God with a single lip. So there is still that stuff there, but also recognizing that there are gifts and callings uniquely given to the Jewish people among all the nations of the world that are important to them. And in the theology then of St. John Paul II, he starts talking about the Jews as still having a covenant. And this is a very controversial phrasing that he gave. And even actually Pope Benedict, in his retirement, wrote an article in 2018 that was published in Communion, saying, not rejecting the language, but saying, hey, we have to be careful, because this language is being misunderstood. But if you look at it, the theology of the language of covenant is actually not something that's super common in the Catholic tradition. So it's there in some of the early Fathers, like Saint Irenaeus, but it sort of falls away. I actually had a conversation once with Scott Hahn about the need to sort of do a revival of the history covenant theology within the Catholic Church. But the language of covenant starts coming up again in the Middle Ages, connected really with sacramental theology of how is God present in the sacraments. But if you look at even someone who is formulating a more fully fledged covenant theology, like Ambrosius Caterinas, who's a Dominican at sort of late Renaissance, early Counter Reformation period, he understands all the covenants, from sort of Adam all the way through to Christ as sort of one great covenant with multiple stages. So still not talking about the language of covenant like we would in modern theology versus in modern theology, you can see this in, for example, some of the writings of Pope Benedict when he was Cardinal Ratzinger is understood more in terms of a agreement between God and man. And so given that, I think we can simply say that when St. John Paul II is using this language of covenant, we can interpret in light of the fact that in the tradition, God does still continue to have a special relationship with the Jews. But it's this role of this witness people that in the Jews, we actually still continue to see Christ prefigured. We still continue to see God's promises as played out, not necessarily in the way the dispensationalists do. The dispensationalists, I think, sort of rip apart the Jews from the church. And in the tradition, we tend to use the phrase Israel analogically. So you can find stuff in the tradition that still continues to call the Jews Israelites. This is all the way through the tradition. And you can find it in the current catechism. Like, if you look up, I think it's paragraph 63 in the current catechism, it will. It uses the language of Israel and it's talking about who are the people of Israel. And if you look up the quotes, the quotes are all about Jews in the original context, because it quotes the prayer for the conversion of the Jews, and. And it quotes St. John Paul II, a statement from him about the Jews as their elder brothers. We can get into that later as well, which is quite interesting. So they're called Israel, but as well it also calls the catechism, also calls the church the new Israel. So I think Israel is being used analogically there between the Jews and the Church such that the Jews in some sense are prefiguring the Church and even after the coming of Christ still play this role of pre figurement and, and we look forward to the day ultimately then when the Jews will accept their true Messiah, who we believe is Jesus. [00:19:57] Speaker A: One of the things in my, one of the main thesis actually of my book Deadly Indifference, which is talking about religious indifference in the church, how it grew, particularly in the 1960s, is that one of my main thesis is that it's not that the teachings of the church change. We often get hung up on like oh well actually Vatican II still says this or whatever. It's that the practice even at the highest levels of Church changes so that we no longer speak in the same way we used to and we don't make the distinctions we do. And in fact people actually speak heretically based upon their understanding of like the language used by church officials, which can be sloppy, can be just not, not that clear. And I see this with, and I was talking in that book about all like non Catholics, so with the Orthodox Protestants, Jews, Muslims, whatever. But we see it in Judaism, I think in that the language used these days, if you listen to like the average Catholic bishop, especially American bishop, but even in Europe or whatever, they speak as if there are two covenants that are both saving, they're both salvific, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. And that the Jews have no need to become Christian. They may not explicitly say that, but they basically make it so, you know, the implication so obvious to the average person, that's what they think. And in fact I believe, I believe this is correct. The Vatican at some point a few years ago actually made a statement that we're not going to have any, you know, mission activities to the Jews. We should not have Catholics should not have mission activities Jews, which implies they don't need to be, they don't need to receive, you know, follow Christ and become his disciple. And so like what do we, what are we? And in fact, if you suggest, and I've had this happen to me, if you suggest that, well, Jews still need to become Catholic because everybody needs become Catholic, then they're immediately throughout, oh, you, you believe in a replacement theology which has been rejected by the Church, you know, and so like, you know, they use these words you know, dual covenant versus replacement and, you know, supersessionism, all that stuff where as Catholics, how should we look at these? You know, the. The salvific nature. If it's one big covenant and these are different stages, or is it two covenant, Is it just like. Like that, that, you know, what does a Jew have to do today in order to be saved and how the church speaks about it right now? [00:22:27] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think the point you raised about the difference between sort of what is official church doctrine and how bishops practically speak about it is very, very important. I think you're entirely correct on that. I think it's really interesting to read Ad Gentes, which is the document in Vatican II on missionary work, because it uses language. And this is from Vatican II that you could never imagine the bishop using today. This is from paragraph nine here. I want to read here. It says. And so whatever good is found to be sown in the hearts and minds of men or in the rights and cultures peculiar to various peoples is not. Is only not lost, but is healed, uplifted and perfected to the glory of God, the shame of demons and the bliss of men. So already in, at Vatican ii, right, we have this document nostritate, that talks about the genuinely good things in other religions. This is an idea that goes back to St. Justin Martyrs. So it's very deeply rooted in the tradition. But Augentes then clarifies there that those goods, we are rescuing them from demons when we are doing missionary work. And it even talks there about how we're moving towards eschatological fullness, because in order for Christ to return, the gospel has to be preached to all nations. And this is all stuff that's being put there at Vatican ii. And then what happens practically afterwards is we like abandon missionary work completely return missionary work, and they're just doing charity work. So I'm very much of the opinion that the issue is not with the documents themselves, but is this indifferentism that I think you're very right on, and vague language that has crept into documents since Vatican II. So you pointed out, for example, the 2015 document there, the Gifts and Callings of God, or Irrevocable, I think, is the name of it. There's a section in it where it says that the church does not support any institutional missionary work towards Jews. There's a great chapter on this. Gavin Da Costa is a very good scholar of some of this stuff, and he wrote a book called Catholic Doctrines on the Jews Since Vatican ii. And he has a chapter on this on missionary Work arguing that this section in the 2015 document does not eliminate the church's missionary work towards the Jews. But the issue is the people he's debating with in the section are the people who actually wrote the document. So you have the people who actually wrote the document saying that this means we're not doing missionary work towards Jews. And then you have a scholar coming in saying, know what you wrote here doesn't actually mean that. Now I think da Costa's interpretation is correct. I do. I think you have to have a little bit of death of the author on some of this stuff. But there's another section in that same document where it talks about how the church is composed as a mark of the church, part of its catholicity is that it is composed of both Jew and Gentile, even if the proportions might give you a different impression. So right there in the document it's saying that the church, Jews are supposed to be part of the church. And then another part is saying, but we're not going to do institutional missionary work. Now, I think you could perhaps charitably interpret it as that a lot of especially the early modern missionary work towards Jews was often counterproductive in the sense that I think Catholics who did it were very well intentioned. I love, for example, St. Lawrence of Brindisi. But you read about like what's happening at that time where they would like force all the Jews into a synagogue and make them listen to a sermon. You could see how that might in the mind of Jews then have leave a bitter taste in their mouth. And especially we look to the cross and we think of God's mercy for us. But a lot of Jews, unfortunately, they look at the image of the cross and they think of the worst events that have ever happened between Jews and Christians and forget any positive relationships we've had in the past and are thinking of the worst interpretations of the worst events. And so I could see the need for us to rethink how we are approaching missionary work towards Jews so that we are doing it in a culturally sensitive way. But I think that does not mean we should not be doing missionary work towards Jews. I actually think some of the very good examples of missionary work towards Jews being done is actually in the state of Israel right now. For example, there are doing masses in Hebrew where they'll introduce some aspects of Jewish tradition into these masses and to try to make them sort of more culturally sensitive towards Jews there. My patriarch, Pizza Bola is a big supporter of this. And so I think that's the way it ought to be done. We have to think about sometimes how we're speaking, how we're acting. So that way our witness is a good witness to Jews, but that does not mean we shouldn't be doing missionary work towards Jews. [00:27:13] Speaker A: Now when we talk, one of the things I often see an argument from more the trad side of things is that the Judaism of today is not the same religion as the Judaism of Christ's time. And I want to be fair to the argument, but as I understand it, it simply is because of the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. and essentially how Judaism evolved after that, because by necessity it had to because there were no ability to have the animal sacrifices and the temple worship anything like that. And then with the, and with the, you know, the writing of the Talmud and everything like that, that essentially what is practiced, what is called Judaism today is not the same thing as the Judaism of Christ time. And so even the idea that somehow. So when we talk about, you know, the Judaism, the Jews of today as being somehow the, the inheritors of the Old covenant, some people would say, no, that's actually not true because it's, it's, it's basically a different religion. And so how would you respond? What would you say to that? To that argument? [00:28:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I think they are hitting on a partial truth that's very important. I think, to stress is that there are significant developments in Judaism, many of which we cannot accept after the destruction of the temple. So with something like the Talmud, they came up with an idea that this is a sort of oral law that was handed down from Moses, passed through the generations, and is sort of the necessary interpretive framework for Judaism. And I don't think we could agree with that. I don't have. There are passages in the Talmud that are very problematic from a Christian perspective, such as stuff it says about Jesus. But there's many other. If you actually go through it, the vast majority of it is sort of legal disputes that I don't think a Catholic necessarily has to have one opinion on or the other way on. Right. How you're going to interpret some law in the Old Testament on a practical level, because they're, because Jews practice this on a daily basis. They have to think about how you practically implement. But I don't think the discontinuity is so great such that it ceases to be Judaism. And I think that's where it's very important. So that way, like someone like St. Thomas can still speak about how in the rites of the Jews, Christ is still prefigured I remember I posted that once on Twitter and people were taking issue with it, saying, no, they've added all these other rights and stuff and saying, but this isn't a very important saint for us, the greatest doctor of the church. And so I think it's very easy to go to an extreme there. There's also some. We don't entirely know what the synagogue service in Christ's day looked like. There's been some interesting recent scholarship actually showing a possibility of a much greater continuity of the synagogue service than we're aware of. But this is very disputed even among scholars I've seen and how much this evolved. So I do want to say, yes, there is discontinuity. We should not be accepting as religiously authoritative later Jewish sources, but we can reject some of it as highly problematic. Other times we might say, actually this is an interesting insight on this biblical text that might actually be useful when speaking to Jews. There's an interesting figure in the Jewish tradition called of a Messiah, the son of Joseph, who is going to suffer and die to bring about the coming of the Messiah, the son of David. And when you look at both these figures, you actually see Christ is sort of in both Messiahs and they're looking to two different messiahs that are actually going to be one messianic figure. And so pointing out stuff like that to them in their own tradition I think can be very helpful in dialogue with Jews. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah, so like in talking with Jews, I wanted to talk about that for a moment. Like, you know, obviously something like social media isn't the greatest way to evangelize people. I mean, it does, you know, people are helped by it. But like, practically speaking, we're not getting any help from the bishops on direction on how to evangelize Jews. What would you say, practically speaking? Let's say you have a co worker who's Jewish and you have a friendly relationship with them, but you want to evangelize them to Christ in the Catholic Church. What do you think are the effective means of sharing Christ with them? Sharing the truth of Catholicism that could be potentially effective to bring them to Christ. [00:31:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's very interesting to look at the story of Joseph as an example, to think about this. Right. Because Joseph in many ways prefigures our Lord because he's brothers cast him down to a pit, he's brought to Egypt in slavery, but then he's exalted to the right hand of the King of the Gentiles. He rules over the Gentiles and then his brothers come and visit him. And to his brothers he looks like this Gentile, right? They don't recognize him, they don't realize he's a fellow son of Israel. And then it's he reveals that he's actually a fellow son of Israel. And that's when the reunion happens. And I think it's to a Jew, Catholicism looks like this very pagan religion. And I think unavailing sort of hidden judic Jewishness of our faith is actually very effective as a way of evangelism. After that, then I think it's who you're going to encounter probably most likely in America you're likely to encounter someone who sort of grew up Jewish, is not that religious, but holds very tightly to their Jewish identity because it's very, very closely bound up. And so presenting the Catholic Church is actually the most Jewish thing is actually very effective. But to a religious Jew who's very knowledgeable and stuff, it's going to be, I think a lot more difficult because they're going to want to get into like close readings of particular passages and they're going to be looking to figures like Tovia Singer, who's a big sort of counter apologist online, these organizations that essentially their goal is to get Jews who become Christians to return to Judaism. Because in a Jew's mind, most Jews sort of think that Christianity is a perfectly acceptable religion for a gentile. So you just need to sort of be a monotheist as a gentile, but it's not acceptable for a Jew that as a Jew you need to be faithful to Judaism. So they're putting up this counter missionary information. And here you have to get much more close to the text. There are people I think who are helpful in this. Sarah from Hamilton is an Eastern Orthodox YouTuber who's put out some very good videos on passages like Isaiah 7 and Isaiah 53. On my channel I had a debate with a Jewish man about Daniel chapter nine. Actually Daniel chapter nine is very powerful because it actually predicts the coming of our Lord to within a seven year range of when the crucifixion has to happen. And you can actually point out how this lines up perfectly and how because it doesn't line up perfectly, the Jews change it into a prophecy about the destruction of the temple. But then the dates don't line up at all. So they have to actually remove about 166 years of recorded history to make this work. And in the debate we get into quite a while because the historical timeline doesn't work at all for them. So I think Once you understand that one, it's very powerful. And I think as well to just sort of show how on every page of Scripture, Christ is prefigured there and how he really is present there. And also to remember as well that like St. Paul does speak of a veil being over the eyes of the Jews. And I think that is the case. And I think we have to think about ways that the veil over the eyes of the Jews can come off and suddenly they see everything and how it all fits together. And that's sort of the feeling I very much have. But I grew up with all these stories. Like, I remember being in Hebrew school as a kid. I'd have a Sunday Hebrew school. And I remember putting on a play about the sacrifice of Isaac, and I was Isaac, and I had a kid named Abraham in my class, and he was sacrificing me and then bringing out the stuffed goat instead. And now looking back on all of that and seeing Christ prefigured in all these stories that I just sort of learned as like. Because to a Jew, these stories are like the history of the Jewish people. This is sort of just like an American, right? You learn about like George Washington and stuff, and thinking George Washington is sort of this great ancestor of America. The Jews see figures like Abraham and Moses and King David as these figures in their own tradition. [00:35:11] Speaker A: So the idea is you're not trying to get a Jew to reject those things, his upbringing. You're basically, you're saying all those things you were brought up with point to their fulfillment in Christ. In fact, that's one thing I always say when people try to say, you know, oh, Eric, you're accepting replacement theology. And I'm like, I don't know what you call it. I would call it fulfillment theology. That basically that Christ, the Catholicism fulfills it. So, like, the whole story about Abraham and Isaac, don't reject that. That's all true. That's all good. And now. But note that look what happened. It pointed to the father sacrificing his beloved son on Mount Moriah and all that. And so is that kind of the. The idea here is that you're not trying to. It's on. It's unlike any other religion, any other non Catholic, non Christian religion. Because you're like, with Islam, you're basically telling reject about everything, you know, and same with Hinduism. I mean, there's. There's truths in it. I. I'm not claiming they don't have certain truths, but like, essentially you're saying, though the whole, the whole thing is A house of. Of lies. And so whereas Judaism. No, all this stuff is true that in your. In your. Not some of the Talmud stuff, I'm talking about that from the Old Testament. But now, let's see, it's the film. Is that kind of the angle that. That Catholics should be thinking when they're talking to Jewish people? [00:36:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I definitely think that's the angle to take as well. I'd also highly recommend everyone pick up Rodney Stark's book Bearing False Witness because one of the things they're going to mention as well as the history of Catholic pers. Jews. And he goes through and actually debunks a lot of the myths because there were Catholics who did bad stuff to Jews. But then you also have popes at those same time is very frequently writing letters to kings telling them to stop doing these things. Now, medieval Europe was not some sort of liberal democracy or Jews and Catholics had equal rights and stuff. I mean, Jews at the time, if you read their writings, they wanted a Jewish theocracy. So it's not as though anyone at that time was thinking in sort of these modern secular, liberal terms, but it's not as though there was sort of this whole history of persecution of Jews by the Catholic Church that is often exaggerated at the very least. Yeah. [00:37:22] Speaker A: Kind of like the stories of the Inquisition, stuff like that are always exaggerated and. And beyond the reality. [00:37:28] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. As well, I think sometimes, right. If there is times where perhaps there was Catholics were too harsh to apologize for that on behalf of the church. Not in the sense that we are conceding ground, but in the sense that we're apologizing for where our actions might have given bad witness. Right. That I think that's sometimes important to do. Not in a way that we're trying in any way to disown the church or be sort of sad about the church or anything like that. But I think there can be a real place for recognizing that sometimes everyone recognizes this in the post Vatican 2 church. Right. No. 1 at least very few people are trying to go around defending like the sex abuse scandals and stuff. Now you might contextualize it and point out, hey, there were very similar rates of abuse and like every other religious organization, match even higher rates of abuse in public schools and so on, while at the same time to those people who were genuinely victimized by priests and so on, which was a large number of people to be very apologetic for that on behalf of the church towards those people, just recognizing the harm that did to those people and the witness of the church was sort of destroyed in their lives because of that. [00:38:33] Speaker A: Right. What do you think about, like, it was in the news recently about. At Heritage Foundation, Etany, Shabbat. Is it pronounced Shabbat Service, different pronunciations. [00:38:44] Speaker B: Jews were scattered all across the world, so sort of in different Jewish traditions, so traditionally would be Shabbat, but in the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition, the Eastern European one, the T in the end got sort of softened to an S, so it became Shabbos. [00:38:57] Speaker A: Okay. So I've heard Shabbat, and I wasn't sure, but I've heard other things too. But there's some controversy about having, like, interns and new employees attend who were not Jewish attend these Shabbat dinners. And, you know, one Catholic, kind of famously there was like, I don't. I. I don't want to attend that. And there's like a huge backlash, people calling them anti Semitics of that. What do you think about the idea of Catholics attending those type of services or even like having like, Seder serve Seder meals and things like that? [00:39:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think on the attending of a Jewish thing, I think we have to be very careful. I think sometimes some people can sometimes be maybe a bit too scrupulous because the church does give permission to attend events, but we want to be careful to not end up with sort of a religious indifferentism that comes about as a result. And you could perhaps say maybe at times we got sometimes too much of a rigorism, but it's clear we've gone far too far the other way. Right. And that sort of loosening up the practical things on it has loosened it up far too much, I think now. And so I think people should examine in their own conscience these sorts of questions, perhaps ask a spiritual director about what to do. Because, like, when I was living with my family, for example, right. There was a lot of Jewish events they wanted me involved in. So I went and asked my spiritual director, what should I be involved in? Because I don't want to cause contention with my family and so on. But, I mean, I felt that whole event was very hypocritical. But a large number of Orthodox Jews won't set foot in a church because they think to a Jew it's idolatry. And so you would. No one would be outraged if a Jew was invited to some event at a church. And they said, well, I don't want to attend for religious reasons. I think it's very unfortunate sort of how that whole thing blew up there in terms of sort of this whole question of Catholic Seder meals. I do think it's an interesting question to discuss because there was genuine bans on stuff like this in church history that some people do not take seriously enough. But I don't think, after having researched those bands, I do think that they were more disciplinary necessarily, than dogmatic. You can look, for example, Lawrence Feingold wrote a textbook on the sacraments, and he has a chapter where he goes into some of these canons and so on, and argues that because there is a papal encyclical on this from Pope Benedict XIV in the 1700s, where essentially certain Latin Catholic practices looked like Judaizing to Eastern Christians, and likewise certain Eastern Christian practices looked like Judaizing to Latin. And essentially what Pope Benedict XIV said is when it's done in light of Christ, in light of the Church, it's actually part of the rights of the New Covenant. And so at that point, it's not Judaism, but so much of our Mass, right, comes from the Old Testament. And so because the restrictions were then lifted, there are some people who think that you have the question of just doing it at, like, a random Catholic parish. And I think at a random Catholic parish, these things are often coming about because of sort of the liturgical crisis that's going on. And so many of these same principles would have been taught through the liturgy and so on that are now not being taught through the liturgy because of the larger liturgical crisis. And we've lost confidence, I think, in many ways, in our Western liturgical tradition. Then in a practical level, there's also been the question of using stuff like this in the evangelism of Jews. So when Cardinal Burke was The Archbishop of St. Louis, he allowed in a group called the association of Hebrew Catholics that was focused on essentially helping to bring Jews into the church. And they'll do stuff like this as a way to help to sort of bring in Jews to the Church. I was listening recently to an interview with Angela Costly, who's a theologian who works with them, and she made the point that to us Jews, they're looking Gentiles, are looking at the Passover and how it prefigures Christ versus to Jews. It's also part of our own history. And so we're giving thanks as well to God, not only in the ways he prefigured Christ, but also for rescuing our people from slavery in Egypt. And that's something we believe happens. And so I think the boundaries on this have not necessarily been set by the Church, but there's been approval from certain local bishops on various things. Given the Archbishop of when Cardinal Burke was the archbishop of St. Louis. And likewise, Cardinal Pizzabola has approved stuff within the Diocese of Jerusalem. And Cardinal Burke and Cardinal Pizzabala are well known to be very, very orthodox cardinals. These are on the very traditional end. You can go look at how either of them celebrate Mass to see this in their actions. And so I do think perhaps I would like more clear guidelines to come out from the church. I know of people who are in discussions with people at the Vatican about stuff like this, and I hope more clear guidelines come out from the Vatican. Just so that way there's sort of like a liturgical chaos. Like, there's generally liturgical chaos about everything in the church right now. We went from perhaps being a bit too restrictive to now anything under the sun is allowed. But in my own spiritual life, for example, I found integrating some old tradition, Jewish traditions into my own life have been very effective. So, for example, there's the traditional prayer shawl the Jews will wear. And so I've brought that into my own prayer life and founding. When I put it on, then it reminds me I'm in the presence of God right now and I need to focus on prayer and not be distracted by other things. Or, for example, I'll celebrate, for example, Hanukkah not as trying to fulfill the old law, but in the sense that the Maccabean saints are our own Catholic. And so it's a memorial to them. And if someone else feels uncomfortable with that, I'm not going to, like, make some big deal that they didn't do that. But I only ask that you don't accuse other people of committing sins in these things, given that there are local approvals on these things. When I did that, for example, I'm using prayer books from an organization approved by Cardinal Burke. So I think these questions are nuanced. I probably fall somewhere in the middle. But some people want to say, hey, because it was in the Old Covenant, therefore it's okay for Catholics to do, but that's not necessarily true. Animal sacrifices, for example, we couldn't bring back. This is very clear in Benedict's letter. It's one of the things he lists. You could not bring back. But at the same time, there are many things that are there. So I think we ought to think of it as the fact that the liturgy in different cultures becomes enculturated into that culture. Right. And this is traditionally why the liturgy looks different in the Latin Church, among the Greeks, among Syriac Christians, Ethiopians and so on, is that the liturgy becomes enculturated in These different places. And so I think all we're asking for is that because there was originally a Jewish church up until around the time of the Bar Khokba revolt, and then it gets dispersed. You can read about this in Eusebius, that we're asking that because we're looking forward one day for the conversion of the Jews, that perhaps those Jewish converts who are in the church right now might be the first fruits of this. And that we could perhaps start a place for an enculturation of. Of Jewish culture within the church, but still placing the primary emphasis upon the New Covenant, because that's ultimately what we need to be focused on right. [00:45:56] Speaker A: Right now. To me, I feel like the most interesting questions when it comes to Judaism and Catholicism is are there religious questions? The nature of the covenants, the evangelization of the Jews, the liturgical practice, all the stuff we've talked about. But let's be honest, that's not what often causes the most controversy online and in the world today. It's really much more the political issues. And we're talking about Zionism. We're talking about also what's. What's sometimes called the Jewish question. And so I wanted to talk about that a little bit. Just, first of all, just Zionism itself, like, for my understanding of it, very high level here is simply that there is. Within, of course, there's Zionism, Jewish Zionism, of the establishment of a political entity, a state for Israel that started in the. The basically second half of the 19th century, wasn't really a religious movement at first. But then I'm more interested in, like, in the Christian Zionism, where Protestants, particularly Evangelical Protestants, often believe that we need to establish a Jewish state basically, and then eventually reinstate the Temple so that. And that will bring about the coming of Christ. And so I've seen a lot of Catholics who have really embraced a Zionism. And so what. How would. What are your thoughts on, like, theologically the, the, you know, the. The political movement of Zionism? [00:47:27] Speaker B: Yeah. I highly recommend everyone look at a Pope Benedict's 2018 article on this, where he talks about various issues of Catholics and Jews. And one of the questions he brings up is this issue of Zionism. But as he talks about how there was somewhat of a delay in the church's recognition of the state of Israel. And on a practical level, there was a recognition of the state of Israel. So Pope Paul VI would visited it while we didn't recognize it. You can find sermons by Saint John Paul II where he's talking about the state of Israel, like decades before, there was actually an official diplomatic recognition. But the concern was that in certain strands of, of Christianity as well as of religious Judaism, even the State of Israel is understood in these very theological terms. And so Pope Benedict essentially says, he sort of talks about city of a Jewish faith state. We're not saying it's secular in the sense that it should be irreligious. He says it's great that there's sort of this religious revival going on in Israel, but we could not recognize Israel as sort of the special faith state. And I think you. This is best understood in terms of how certain Christian Zionists and certain Jewish Zionists understand it. Right. So in dispensationalism as well as in what's called religious Zionism in Judaism, which was a movement, it was initially very fringe in the Zionist movement. It was started by a figure named Ralph Cook. K O O okay. If people want to look him up. And his idea essentially was that the state of Israel is sort of the beginning of the Messianic era, that yes, we have the secular Jewish state now, but sort of the institutions of the state of Israel are going to be inherited by the Messiah and then the Messiah is going to rule sort of from the state of Israel. And so already this initial stuff is being set up. And this is. Many dispensationalists have this as well. Right. So they will think that there's a specific desire to bless not even merely the Jewish people. Right. The people of Israel, but specifically the state of Israel. And I think this is very problematic from a Catholic perspective because for us, the beginning of the Messianic kingdom is the Catholic Church, that Christ, he established his kingdom, and we have the sort of first fruits of it here in the church, looking forward to the full fulfillment of it when he returns. And so it's the Church, not the state of Israel. That's. I think that's very important to keep in mind. But on the other hand, the church has recognized the State of Israel as a secular state as well as the state of Palestine as well. And so essentially what Pope Benedict says is we have to resolve this through questions of natural justice, that we can't sort of use the Bible as a way to legislate this. And I think this is actually important because I think it should actually take the heat off of many of the Catholic discussions of this because there might be very strong political feelings at stake. And I have. I have friends politically on both sides of the conflict. I know people who have very personal stakes in it. I Interviewed someone on my YouTube channel who grew up in Gaza, who lost his father and his sister in this war. I know someone else who's his brother's close friend was taken hostage by Hamas. So these I know people who are very personally invested in this conflict here. So I don't mean to try to downplay any suffering that has been involved on both sides or various political concerns people might have. But I think these questions ought to be happening at the more political level. And I also want to say this is not that we can't have theological reflection on this, though. So natural law is something very important in the Catholic tradition, is not something opposed to divine law or sort of a separate secular morality. St. Thomas talks about how the natural law is our participation in the eternal law through reason. So God has the sort of grand plan of providence. This is the eternal law, sort of the principles behind Providence. And we participate in that eternal law through our reason. And that's the natural law as well as through revelation. And that's the divine law. And I don't think because the conquest of Joshua, very specific nations are listed specifically says, you can't go conquer the Edomites, you can't go conquer the Moabites. Well, the Palestinians are not like the nations listed there in the Old Testament. So I don't think there's any sort of special divine right to like go conquer and steal land from people. And that's very awful when that happens. But at the same time, I don't think necessarily there's some forbidding either for the Jews to set up a state, because people sometimes who are against the state of Israel will point to. And I think this is very important, what I mentioned earlier, which are the covenantal curses of exile. But if you read those, that's very clear. There's something not imposed by us, but by God. And actually when God is talking about how Babylon is going to exile Israel, he says, but they're also going to go too far and they're going to be punished. In Deuteronomy 30, which sort of ends the discussion of the exile, start in Deuteronomy 28, it says, after I return you, then I will take all the curses in this book and I will place them upon those who persecuted you. I'm not necessarily saying that is going to apply in this case, but I think it's something showing that whether one thinks these discussions of exile and return and so on can apply here, I think this is something that's ultimately being worked out by God and Providence. I've Tried to look at is there anything on this in the Catholic tradition? I haven't found a huge amount, but I found a little bit. So you can find in St. Bede's commentary on the Gospel of Luke, he talks about. He's commenting here on. I think it's Luke 21:24 where it talks about how Jerusalem will be trampled on by Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled. And Bede speculates here that perhaps after the defeat of the Antichrist and the conversion of the Jews, the kingdom would be restored to them. This is included by St. Thomas, then in the Catena Aurea, Luke. And then St. Thomas makes a similar comment in his commentary Jon Jeremiah, chapter 31. And then St. Augustine as well. It's in City of God, book 16 talks a little bit about how perhaps this in his. Something to remember is that Jews have lived in the land of Israel throughout the entire time of exile. There's even been times where they've been nearly the majority there, but they didn't have political sovereignty. And St. Augustine says there's still large Jewish populations in his day there was saying that them still living there. It's in still some perhaps he says he sort of couches in this perhaps language could be a continuation of this promise to them. But he then does make clear in book 17 that the extent of the kingdom of Solomon did fulfill all the promises. So in the tradition when it comes up, it's couched in very cautious language as well. There's quite a number of church fathers who talk about how the Antichrist might try to rebuild the temple and try to claim to be the Jewish Messiah, but ultimately he would then betray the Jews and this would actually lead to their conversion. And these church fathers who talk about this. So I think we can couch it in this very cautious language if we want to say there's something theologically going on, but it should be at this very secondary level. And so I think the way that this is talked about by say dispensationalists is very problematic, especially because it often then is in such a way that it's denying questions of natural justice to the Palestinians. [00:54:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's. I think it's crazy because like I totally understand if a Catholic has political arguments for why the United States, for example, should support the state of Israel. It's a beacon of democracy. It's a defense against radical Islam, whatever where it may be. I've just noticed they've stopped making those arguments and they just say you're an anti Semite or like, you know, God, you know, bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse it. And they just. And like that's the whole argument. And it's like that. That's, you know, that's not, that's not argument of what we're talking about the political aspects of whether or not the United States should be, you know, funding is real and we should be supporting their actions in Gaza and things like that. And I just wish there could be a separation here. I understand there's never going to be because there's religious aspects to it, but that's always been frustrating to me. And I wanted though kind of talk about the other question that you often hear and more in traditional Catholicism. But it's. It seems to be kind of spreading out beyond that. And that is the influence of Jews on our culture, on society. Some people call it like the Jewish question. It goes into a little bit more than that, but just the idea that, you know, all these things, so many things that we look at that have been bad for culture over the past, you know, 100 years or more. Often there are Jewish people who are behind it, like for, or at least, you know, involved in it. Like, for example, you know, some of the major porn sites are run by rabbis. And like, you know, if you look at the history of Hollywood and a lot of stuff gets done, it's a lot of times they're Jewish people doing it. I'll be, I'll just put my cards on the table. I've always thought that's been overdone argument myself. I just, I don't think it's. I, I think they're, they're making too many connections that aren't really there. But at the same time it is true. You see a lot of these cultural, negative cultural things. There are Jewish people, you know, quite involved in it. And then you see them, you know, involved in the back, behind the scenes in, in political aspects. You know, the whole Epstein situation. People talk about that, you know, Israel's influence and you know, Jewish influence there. How do you, like, how do you look at those, you know, accusations? Do you think they're just crazy? Do you think there's something to it or do you embrace it? Like, what's your views on that stuff? [00:57:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's first important to perhaps distinguish this a bit from the faith itself because I think some people will try to act like discussing this at all violates Nostra Aetate or that. And there's nothing in Nostra aetate that talks about this. Likewise, on the other side, there are some people who were saying, oh, well, because we use language of perfidious Jews. And somewhere, therefore, the church teaches necessarily that Jews are going to be involved in everything evil. And I don't think either of those are necessarily taught by the church in terms of. I think there are some people over very much overdrawing connections at times, right. So people often point out that there is sort of a former rabbi who is very high up at pornhub, but even higher up in there is a Catholic guy who runs it. And so we should sometimes be a bit cautious on overdrawing some of these connections. But I do think there is something. There's an interesting talk on this from Dennis Prager where he was talking about how God sort of placed this restlessness in the Jewish heart of being a very religious people. And he says, so when Jews turn away from Judaism, they embrace every other ism under the sun. And pretty much every movement you can find on the left or the right, there's a lot of Jews very much involved in it. This is also, I think in part, Jewish culture has stressed being very educated for a long time. And so you have Jews then who are being very successful. And so we're going to end up everywhere in things. I think that's okay to have those discussions as long as they're being had in a way that is not hit for. And I think this is sometimes my concern of how it has is going, oh, those Jews again, this is, I think the same thing where people will talk about anti Semitism connected with Zionism is people will say there's one thing to draw conclusions that are politically incorrect because you had, you looked at the evidence and you were convinced those politically incorrect conclusions. And it's another thing to start off with the Jews must be behind stuff. Therefore I'm going to draw those politically incorrect conclusions. And so I think it's very important to be cautious about this when we're having these discussions. And as well, I think that if you're a Jew who's online nowadays and you're on like Twitter or something, what do you probably connect the Vatican flag with right now? It's lots of people being extremely rude to you in comments. And I have, even if there are sometimes Jewish people who are being obnoxious towards Catholics online, all right, you can push back on that and stuff. But I do think it's an issue with our witness to the Jews when if in their mind, because I think there would been a very good process of Healing between Jews and Christians. This is perhaps one of the few positive things in our relationship since Vatican II is that there a lot of Jews had come to see maybe we don't accept Jesus, but we're not going to be hostile towards him. We see you as sort of this great Jewish rabbi. Even if we're not going to accept him, we recognize Christians are sort of standing up with us against secular culture because many Orthodox Jews are very worried about stuff like pornography and so on. And I think there was sort of a healing of that relationship a little bit that it could be a concern, right, if once again they come to connect the Vatican and Christianity and so on with being hateful towards Jews. And so I do have a bit of concern of that. Remember, essentially that we're going to be held accountable to Christ for every word we've said. And I recognize that for myself too, I've probably said things I shouldn't have said. And so I think we ought to be careful in the witness that we're giving online that especially if you put Catholic or put a Vatican flag or something in your bio on something, something like Twitter, that you are now placing yourself as a representative of the Catholic Church to all non Catholics. And that's something we ought to keep in mind. And I know I have spoken with many inquirers into the church who are being scared away from the Catholic Church because of this. I know one inquirer, for example, who I think he probably would be a Catholic right now except for the stuff he encountered on Twitter, which is sort of making him still, he's a catechumen now, but still very cautious about it, I think in large part because of the online stuff. And so I think we have to be very careful. [01:01:05] Speaker A: How would you distinguish. I think that's, I really think that's an important point. And I'm so glad you brought that up and I did. Like, I like how you said how you approach it. If you're looking at the situation and then you find from it, yes, there's Jewish people behind this and they've done some bad things. And you say this is some bad stuff these people did. That's one thing. Thing. If you go into it saying, okay, the Jews are behind all the problems, okay, now let me find those Jews and, and call them out. There's, there's a whole different thing there. But practically speaking, like, I'm pretty harsh on Israel on, on X, you know, on Twitter, you know, because I, I really think the state of Israel, the government of Israel has done Some awful things. And, and I think they should be called out for it. And also the influence of, of pro Israel people here in our country on, on our, our, on our elections. But I always try to not be like, it's the Jews and I don't really think that. And like the Jewish people in Israel, for example, because I, as somebody who's not very happy with my government, often I'm not going to blame the people who live in Israel for what their government does either. But how would you say, how would you draw that line in how we, you know, criticize people who are Jewish, the state of Israel, even Judaism? Because like, in it, it's not a fullness of truth compared to what you would say are ways that turn people away that are, that are not really Christian and charitable in how they do it. [01:02:28] Speaker B: Yeah. I think a good thing to draw a comparison on is with how we often approach Islam and we'll be very critical of Islam, of radical Islamism that we can do that everyone recognizes without being hateful towards Muslims. Right. As people. But then there also are a lot of people out there who are very, very hateful towards Muslims and Arabs as people. And I know converts from Islam who have encountered this that are saying, because there have been times where like, unfortunately, there was a case in the Lebanese civil war where Maronite Catholics massacred a whole bunch of Muslim Palestinian civilians in a refugee camp. And there are like Catholics online, you can kind of who will celebrate this event as, okay, we finally fought back against the Muslims in Lebanon because there was a real issue of radical Islamism that basically took over. Lebanon was set up to be a Catholic, a Christian state really, and it was taken over by radical Muslims who now control the country. And so there is a real issue there. But also calling out that because I have a friend who's a convert from Shia Islam who like when these fights between Shiite Muslims and Maronites break out occasionally there he has family who died in these conflicts and people will be, fellow Catholics will be very hateful towards these Shia Muslims who are his family members. And so recognizing there that one can get to the point of criticizing Islam where they start connecting it with all Muslims and start being hateful towards Muslims as people, while also recognizing that criticizing Islam is not necessarily saying that a criticizing a Muslim government. I do think these get bound up a little bit more in the Judaism discussion simply because there's only one Jewish government in the world. So it's very hard to distinguish that. And this is where like half the world's Jews live. And even those Jews who don't live there often feel a very close connection with it. [01:04:14] Speaker A: It. [01:04:16] Speaker B: And as well as the fact that Judaism sort of plays this dual role as a religion and an ethnicity. And that's very common in non Western cultures. This is. People say this is unique to Judaism. It's not. You go to the Middle east, the Druze, the Yazidis, the Mandians, all have this. So it's very common in non Western cultures. But because we have a faith that's universal in nature, that was sort of given to all mankind, that we in the Western world have come to be much more more careful about separating religion and ethnicity in a way that's much more difficult in many other parts of the world. And so because of that, I think the two often get tied together very closely. That we have to be a lot more careful about how we speak. And then as well with criticizing even Judaism or Israel, I think a lot of people there will be criticisms that are made or legitimate and other criticisms that are made or perhaps less legitimate. And so people often feel that when the less legitimate criticisms are being made, they're being made only because people are trying to come up with an excuse to be anti Semitic. So for example of an illegitimate criticism is many people will claim that the Talmud allows the molestation of young children. And this is actually not true. There's a number of passages that talk about if a girl under the age of three or a boy under the age of nine is molested, that it is as though nothing has happened to them. But you look at the context of the poor, that there are able to have sex at the age of three, they're able to have sex at the age of nine. If you actually look at the context of the passages, it is talking about the physical ability of their bodies to engage in intercourse, such that there's questions of ritual purity in Judaism about that and also questions of marriage. So it is though nothing has happened. The question is, are they considered a virgin for the purposes of marriage if they were molested before this age? And the answer is no, because it is though nothing has happened. That's is what it. It means. So people will misrepresent stuff like that. But then there's other stuff in this whole book that we might take more genuine issue with. And I think that because so many unfair criticisms are leveled, that there's often an assumption that therefore all criticisms are unfair. And likewise as well, I have many friends who are there in Israel on the ground, and I asked friends who are there on the ground, and they will give me very different answers about what's going on. And so I often feel I have a very hard time just even getting accurate information about so much of the conflict. That makes it very difficult to know what is a legitimate criticism and what is illegitimate. Here is what I've often found is the most helpful way in speaking about the conflict is to just try. There's. There are many Catholics who live in Israel and many who live in Palestine. People make it out sometimes like they only live in Palestine. There's about 1.8% of the people population of Israel or so is Christian, which is about the same as the Palestinian population, unfortunately. I'm sure being a Catholic in Gaza has been really awful or being any civilian in Gaza has been really awful for the past two years. They also make up 0.13% of the population there. So it's not as though this is a war between Israel and Catholics as it's sometimes, I think, portrayed in some Catholic media. And so I think trying to be just very careful about how we speak about these things in drawing the careful distinctions there. And then also I think we should assume good intent in other Catholics. So I think if a Catholic, fellow Catholic criticizes Israel and they have not given you good reason to think it's because they hate the Jews, you shouldn't just start assuming that. Likewise, though, if someone's supporting Israel, you shouldn't just think it's because, oh, they hate Arabs or they're like a Zionist or something like that in sort of the worst sense of the word, Zionist. Right. That I think we ought to be more charitable towards one another and how we have these sorts of discussions. And I, and I think especially prioritize voices that are actually there on the ground. I've tried to encourage my Catholic friends who live there to speak up more and try to, if people are interested. I mentioned the interviewed someone who grew up in Gaza. I also interviewed three converts from Judaism who live in Israel on my channel. And I think trying to hear the voices of people who actually live there can be very helpful. But like, for example, another thing that's mentioned will be discussions of Jews spitting at Christians in Israel. And this is a real issue in certain parts of the old city of Jerusalem, but that's the only place it's an issue. So throughout the rest of Israel, my Catholic friends have all said they've encountered no discrimination at all from fellow Jews for becoming Catholic. Many of them are very well integrated into parts of the society. But there are places in the old city of Jerusalem where unfortunately certain extremist sects there will spit out, especially clergy. And so that's a real issue to bring up and somewhat is not anti Semitic for talking about that as a real issue. But I think it's sometimes overplayed in Western media, you know. [01:09:00] Speaker A: Right, right. I think that's good. Just general advice about be charitable in, in the intention of. Of, of other people and don't, don't assume the worst thing that they're anti Semites or that they're, you know, really crypto Jews or whatever the case may be. So that, that's great advice and I think we'll kind of, you know, let's wrap it up there. How can people find out out about like your, your. You've Talked about your YouTube channel. I know you have a sub stack. I'll put links to it. But tell us a little bit about. About the stuff you're working on with all. With all that. [01:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So yeah, I came into YouTube videos. I don't have as much time to record anymore. I focused much more on my sub stack. And especially I've been exploring a lot of these questions about trying to. Especially if this hermeneutic of continuity between the tradition and contemporary Catholic teaching. And I know some people might methodologically disagree with me on this. So you might have liberals saying we can just ignore the tradition or especially set of a contest to recognize and resist who are going to disregard the tradition. At that point. I consider this a methodological disagreement that I'm. I've chosen this methodology, the hermeneutic of continuity. And that's how I'm approaching it on my substack. And then if really I'm active on Twitter and then I mentioned as well the conference coming up with the St. Basil and Institute, stbasilinstitute.org and you can find our conference and register with the code crisis for 50 off. [01:10:23] Speaker A: Okay, great. I will put links to all of this in the show notes and I encourage people to check out everything Gideon's doing. It's. It's a lot of great stuff. Particularly though, check out that conference coming out November 22nd, online conference on theology Creation. Like I said, I know a number of the speakers there as well, and they're great people, so. Well, thank you very much. This has been great. Gideon, I really appreciate you coming on the program and talking about this. [01:10:47] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me on. [01:10:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, everybody, until next time, God love you.