A Catholic Priest Misrepresents Christian Zionism

This article was originally published by CAMERA on March 6, 2026. Reprinted by permission.

Introduction

In his article, “The flaws of Christian Zionism,” published in America Magazine: The Jesuit Review, the Israeli Catholic priest and Patriarchal Vicar Emeritus of Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel David Mark Neuhaus, S.J., who was raised Jewish and whose approach to criticizing Israel has itself been criticized by the Hebrew University Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Shalom Hartman Institute Kogod Research Center Research Fellow, former Pontifical Gregorian University Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies Visiting Lecturer, and expert on Jewish-Christian relations Karma Ben-Johanan, identifies “flaws” he regards as characteristic of Christian Zionism.

The immediate impetus for Neuhaus’ article appears to have been a post on X by the Christian Zionist U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee responding to a statement published by the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in the Holy Land critical of individuals who “advance damaging ideologies, such as Christian Zionism, mislead the public, sow confusion, and harm the unity of our flock.” Ambassador Huckabee’s post responding to this statement indicated “Christians are followers of Christ and a Zionist simply accepts that the Jewish people have a right to live in their ancient, indigenous, and Biblical homeland.” In chronicling supposed “flaws” of Christian Zionism, Neuhaus:

• Misrepresents:
  • Statements by the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in the Holy Land.
  • Aramean Christian and Jewish identity.
  • Christian Zionism by:
    • Inaccurately suggesting Christian Zionists believe in an exclusively-Jewish Holy Land.
    • Overstating the eschatological orientation of Christian Zionists.
    • Conflating Christian Zionist beliefs with a Messianic Jewish organization’s beliefs.
    • Omitting Catholic eschatological belief in Jewish recognition of Jesus:
      • The Catechism of the Catholic Church
      • The Association of Hebrew Catholics in Israel
      • Father Elias Friedman
      • Catholic nun from monastery outside Jerusalem
      • Roman Catholic and Messianic Jewish Dialogue Group
      • Kenrick-Glennon Seminary Associate Professor of Theology Lawrence Feingold
      • University of Helsinki Department of Theology Adjunct Professor and University of Eastern Finland Strategic Professor Father Antoine Lévy
  • Faulting Christian Zionist application of Old Testament texts to modern Israel:
    • John the Baptist and Ezekiel 36
    • Jesus and Ezekiel 36
    • Paul adopts Ezekiel’s reasoning regarding eschatological Israel
• Omits:
  • Magisterial documents feature New Testament texts about the land of Israel.
  • Catholics affirm or suggest:
    • Jewish return to the land and State of Israel fulfill biblical prophecy:
      • Former Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn
      • Pope John Paul II
      • Pope Benedict XVI
    • Jewish return to the land and State of Israel express God’s fidelity:
      • Catholic theologian and philosopher Jacques Maritain
      • Catholic theologian and scholar Monsignor John M. Oesterreicher
      • Duquesne University Professor of Catholic Studies and Theology William M. Wright IV
      • Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI
    • The theological significance of the land of Israel with respect to Jews:
      • Preacher of the Papal Household Raniero Cantalamessa
      • The Apostolic Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa
      • Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Lecturer Gavin D’Costa
      • Jews who joined the Catholic Church:
        • The Ratisbonne Brothers
        • Archbishop of Paris Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger
        • Brother Daniel (Oswald Rufeisen)
  • Implications of Catholic documents’ recognizing Jewish religious attachment to the land of Israel:
    • The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible
    • Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church
• Incorrectly intimates that Zionism is bound up with conquest and Jewish exclusivity.
• Inaccurately suggests the land of Israel loses its centrality after Jesus’ resurrection.
• Misrepresents Palestinian Christians by omitting:
  • Animosity toward Jews.
  • Supersessionist beliefs contradicting the Second Vatican Council.
  • Marcionite interpretations of Scripture conflicting with Orthodox Christian belief.
  • Efforts to promote Christian self-interest in Arab society.
  • Palestinian Christians opposed to peace with Israel.

Misrepresenting Statements by the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in the Holy Land

While Neuhaus highlights Ambassador Huckabee’s riposte, Neuhaus neglects to mention how the Catholic theologian and Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Lecturer Gavin D’Costa has critiqued the recent Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in the Holy Land statement’s “imprecise terminology” and “unexplained omissions.” Whereas Neuhaus suggests the recent statement effectively echoes the body’s 2006 “strong condemnation of Christian Zionism,” D’Costa identifies significant differences between the 2006 and the 2026 statements. As D’Costa observes, the 2006 statement “was signed, more carefully framed, and explicitly directed against extreme forms of Christian Zionism—those that undermine the possibility of a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.” In contrast to the 2006 statement, D’Costa notes that the 2026 statement was not signed and “use[s] [the term ‘Christian Zionism’] far too broadly,” effectively “present[ing] a flattened and misleading picture of a diverse phenomenon.”

Importantly, the Catholic theologian and Sacred Heart Major Seminary Associate Professor of Old Testament & Biblical Languages André Villeneuve notes that statements issued by the Latin Patriarchate, which is included in the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in the Holy Land, “reflect political prudence and pastoral positioning—not infallible doctrine,” so Catholics are free to disagree with its statements. Both D’Costa, who has authored and co–edited three books focusing on Catholic views on Israel, and Villeneuve, who has contributed to and produced videos for the Catholics for Israel organization that he directs, promote Catholic support for Zionism.

Misrepresenting Aramean Christian and Jewish Identity

Neuhaus contends that the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in the Holy Land published its 2026 statement condemning Christian Zionism in response to a meeting between Ambassador Huckabee and Israeli army colonel Ihab Shlayan, whom Neuhaus describes as “a Christian Palestinian Arab citizen of Israel.” It should be noted that Shlayan identifies as an “Aramean Christian,” not a “Palestinian Arab,” but Neuhaus calls him a “Palestinian Arab” anyway, claiming that Shlayan “continues the work of others within the Israeli establishment who argue that it would be in the best interests of Christians in Israel to discard their Palestinian Arab identity, taking on an Israeli ‘Aramean’ identity.” This description by Neuhaus of Shlayan leaves readers with the misimpression that the promotion of an Aramean Christian nationality separate from Palestinian Arabs has been an entirely top-down development.

In fact, Aramean Christians, not members of an “Israeli establishment,” initiated the process that led to Israeli recognition of a distinct Aramean Christian nationality. As Brandeis University Schusterman Center for Israel Studies Founding Director Ilan Troen notes, Israeli government officials recognized a “Christian Aramaic Nationality” in 2014 after “a formal request” was made and following “considerable lobbying” (Israel/Palestine in World Religions: Whose Promised Land?, p. 150). Neuhaus omits “the rise of radical Islamic movements that target both dissident Muslims and Christians” that Troen suggests has contributed to Aramean Christians requesting that the Israeli government recognize their nationality as distinct from Palestinian Arabs (Ibid., p. 151). Prior to his 2016 appointment as Apostolic Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and his subsequent 2020 appointment as the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem by Pope Francis, His Beatitude Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, O.F.M. acknowledged in 2006 that a “problem exists” when it comes to extremist Islamist abuse of Palestinian Christians.

Neuhaus seems to disparage Aramean Christian identity by putting “Aramean” in scare quotes, intimating this identity is of recent vintage and artificial. However, Troen describes this group as comprised of “descendants of early Christians who lived in the Middle East prior to the Muslim conquest and who have maintained Aramaic, the lingua franca of much of the region at the time of Jesus” (Ibid., pp. 150-151). In contrast, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences Cary Nelson has observed that Palestinian Arab national identity seems not to have “cohere[d] until the 1960s,” having been precipitated by Israel’s acquisition of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank during the Six-Day War (Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, & the Faculty Campaign Against the Jewish State, p. 188).

Neuhaus has similarly called Jews from Arab lands “Arab Jews” and “Jewish Arabs” despite the fact that Jews from Arab lands have overwhelmingly rejected these labels as self-designations. However, he calls the 20% of Israel’s population that is Arab “Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel,” deferring to their preference not to be called “Arab-Israelis.” The Pepperdine University Middle East historian Scott Abramson has commented on the ahistorical and oxymoronic usage of the term “Arab Jews” and the discrepant application of designations evidenced in ignoring Jews’ preference not to be called “Arab Jews” while deferring to the presumed preference of Israel’s Arab population not to be called “Arab-Israelis”:

But whereas ‘Arab Muslim’ or ‘Arab Christian’ is a perfectly sound ethnic-religious descriptor, ‘Arab Jew’ is an oxymoron. Being Jews, Jews in Arab lands never understood themselves as Arabs at any point in their long history. Nor did Arabs ever look upon their Jewish neighbours, as will be seen, as kin. Nevertheless, this term, which first appeared in the 1970s, is commonly used in the Arab world and on the far left in Israel and the West, never mind that it is ahistorical and rejected overwhelmingly by those to whom it is intended to apply. (It ought not to pass unmentioned that, while the far left defies the preference of Jews from Arab lands not to be called ‘Arab Jews,’ it defers to the preference of Israel’s Arab citizens not to be called ‘Arab-Israelis,’ obligingly calling them ‘Palestinians’ instead. The takeaway here seems to be that a group’s self-identification is to be respected only if its politics are to be respected.)

Neuhaus has elsewhere acknowledged “the deep, millennial, spiritual, historical, national, and cultural links that Jews have with the Land of Israel” (Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel, p. 190). However, he puts “homeland” in scare quotes when speaking of the biblical connection of Jews to their ancestral homeland in this article and elsewhere while not doing so when describing the homeland in connection with Palestinians even though the Jewish connection to the land precedes any Palestinian Arab connection to the territory by many centuries.

He has also suggested that the idea of a Jewish people is a relatively modern concept:

[T]he development of nineteenth-century nationalism facilitated acceptance of the idea that the Jews not only were a religious community[,] but also defined themselves as a people, an increasingly common Jewish self-understanding in the modern era. Jewish Zionism, which appeared in the course of the nineteenth century, promoted the idea that Jews must take their place alongside other peoples, affirming their national identity at the time that Italians, French, Greeks, and Poles were doing the same (From Sinai to Rome: Jewish Identity in the Catholic Church, p. 203).

While Neuhaus suggests that Jews increasingly understood themselves as a people in the modern era, the Princeton University Jewish historian Leora Batnitzky has observed that the belief that Jews are a people was widely held by Jews long before the emergence of the modern Zionist movement:

Prior to modernity, Judaism was not a religion, and Jewishness was not a matter of culture or nationality. Rather, Judaism and Jewishness were all these at once […] Despite local differences, premodern Jews imagined themselves as one united people (as klal yisrael, “the collective people of Israel”) (How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought, p. 2).

Neuhaus effectively seems to rewrite history in suggesting that the idea of a Jewish people is a modern development, but the historical evidence indicates otherwise. Father Robert F. Drinan, S.J., the first Catholic priest elected to the United States Congress, lamented “[t]he Christian tradition of looking upon Judaism exclusively as a religion” (Honor the Promise: America’s Commitment to Israel, p. 233). Similarly, Father Edward H. Flannery, recognizing the anti-Zionist fallacy of defining Jewishness only as a religion and the refusal to acknowledge Jewish self-understanding, observed:

At the core of the anti-Zionist rationale is a fallacy and a refusal. The fallacy consists in defining Jewishness as only a religion, not a peoplehood or a nation, where it is essentially all of these; the refusal, in not allowing Jews to define themselves. Throughout their long history[,] Jews have identified themselves as a people wedded to a Law, a homeland (Israel), and a nationhood (The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism, p. 268).

Jews as an ethnoreligious group are a distinct people whose attachment to the land of Israel is well established.

Misrepresenting Christian Zionism

Inaccurately Suggesting that Christian Zionists Believe in an Exclusively-Jewish Holy Land

Neuhaus’ description of Christian Zionist beliefs suggests that all Christian Zionists are opposed to territorial compromise:

Christian Zionists believe that the land of Palestine/Israel belongs exclusively to the Jewish people, referring to biblical texts in which God promises and gives the land to the biblical people of Israel. They define the Palestinian people who live in Palestine/Israel as “non-Jews” who must submit to Jewish rule and privilege, accepting discrimination and occupation.

However, this description fails to convey the fact that not all Christian Zionists have historically been opposed in principle to territorial compromise with and sovereignty for Palestinians in the Holy Land. As Stony Brook University Professor Stephen Spector has noted:

The claim that all Christian Zionists adamantly demand that Israel keep every inch of its biblical territory is vastly overstated […] Many born-again Christians have only a very vague notion of Israel’s role in the final days, and even among evangelical elites, there is remarkable diversity and nuance in their beliefs. That, in turn, allows flexibility about the principle of land-for-peace. Indeed, though it flies in the face of the common stereotype, 52% of evangelical leaders are in favor of a Palestinian state on land that God promised to Abraham, as long as it doesn’t threaten Israel! That may surprise people who fear born-again Christians’ obduracy on the question of covenant land. But the explanation, says the University of Akron’s John Green, is simple: They want to see peace in the Middle East (Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, pp. 161-162).

In other words, many Christian Zionists have expressed a willingness to accept Palestinian sovereignty over a portion of the Holy Land were the security of the Jewish State to not be threatened.

Overstating the Eschatological Orientation of Christian Zionists

Neuhaus mischaracterizes Christian Zionist self-understanding in stating: “Many of them [Christian Zionists] believe that the struggle for Jewish domination in Palestine/Israel is part of an end-times scenario that will bring about the return of a triumphant Christ.” Christian Zionists support the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland, not the domination of others. In addition, eschatological beliefs are less central to Christian Zionists than Neuhaus suggests. The scholar of Christian Zionism Faydra L. Shapiro has noted that most of the Christian Zionists with whom she has interacted base their Christian Zionist commitments in categories broader than dispensationalism:

[I]nformants overwhelmingly supported their Christian Zionism on rather broader pillars than dispensationalism. The first and most important of these is biblical authority. Taking the Bible seriously as an infallible and authoritative expression of God’s Word, and reading with a particular hermeneutical lens, means that passages are not simply historical but rather are felt to offer an eternal, timeless message and framework. Thus—for example—God’s promises to the people of Israel, and the role of Gentiles in their fulfillment, are true and ongoing. The second pillar used to buttress evangelical Christian Zionism is a belief in God’s faithfulness, that he does not change his mind or his word. Thus[,] promises made to the people of Israel are eternal and will be honored. Finally, my informants also made regular reference to the notion of Judeo-Christian values, also framed as the Jewish roots of Christianity, to support the idea that there is an inextricable link, and even a debt owed, by Christianity to the Jews (Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border, pp. 12-13).

The historian of religion and scholar of Christian Zionism Daniel G. Hummel has also noted that eschatological beliefs are less central to Christian Zionist activists:

In its most activist circles today, Christian Zionism is less about apocalyptic theology or evangelism than it is a range of political, historical, and theological arguments in favor of the State of Israel based on mutual and covenantal solidarity. In recent years, a type of nation-based prosperity theology, promising material blessings to those who bless Israel, has played a prominent role. In earlier decades, atonement for Christian anti-Judaism and Israel’s strategic importance in the Cold War proved decisive (Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations, p. 3).

The scholars of Christian Zionism Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin have also observed a “relative decline of premillennialism” among young evangelicals supportive of Israel (Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Public Opinion on Israel, p. 163). Inbari and Bumin observed that 20% of young evangelicals expressing support for the Jewish State “gave political, historical, or foreign policy justifications” (Ibid., p. 152) for such support, not eschatological reasons. Moreover, among the 59% of young evangelicals supporting Israel who provided “religious arguments” for their support for the Jewish State, the top three arguments provided did not explicitly reference specific eschatological scenarios:

The most commonly used response among supporters of Israel was that “Israel is God’s people” […] The second most frequently referenced religious argument is related to biblical promises given to Israel and the Jewish people by God […] The third most common argument in the religious explanations was that support for Israel is justified because the land belongs to God, or it is a holy land, and even that it is “Jesus’ land” (Ibid., pp. 152-153).

To suggest, as Neuhaus does, that an end-times scenario is central to Christian Zionism when anthropological, historical, and survey research indicate otherwise is misleading and unwarranted.

Conflating Christian Zionist Beliefs with a Messianic Jewish Organization’s Beliefs

Neuhaus also mentions that Christian Zionist eschatological convictions include the “belie[f] that the Jews, reconstituted in their biblical ‘homeland,’ will come to faith in Jesus.” To support this claim, though, he hyperlinks to a website page of the Messianic Jewish organization Chosen People Ministries, which is not a Christian Zionist organization. It is important to distinguish between this particular Messianic Jewish organization and other prominent Christian Zionist organizations, though, since Chosen People Ministries has historically focused on helping to bring Jews to faith in Jesus, whereas many prominent Christian Zionists and Christian Zionist organizations have come to downplay the conversion of the Jews. Discussing this downplaying of the conversion of Jews among many Christian Zionists, the historian of Christian Zionism Donald L. Lewis notes:

From the early 1950s, […] evangelical missionaries in Israel shifted away from an evangelical theology that emphasized the proclamation of the gospel to the Jews in the hope of individual conversions […] [S]ome missionaries began to speak of a theology of “witness” that emphasized Christian brotherhood with Jews and abandoned any talk of conversion (A Short History of Christian Zionism: From the Reformation to the Twenty-First Century, pp. 263-264).

Shapiro has highlighted a divergence between a number of Christian Zionists and Messianic Jews on the subject of active proselytizing:

Messianic Judaism and Christian Zionism have a great deal of overlap and commonality in theology, worship aesthetic, and emphasis. One critical difference concerning their approach to Jews lies in the issue of evangelism, and whether an active evangelistic strategy encouraging Jews to accept Jesus Christ is one that ought to be pursued at the current time (Christian Zionism, p. 146).

Neuhaus’ conflation of Christian Zionism with the perspective of this Messianic organization obscures their divergent approaches and emphases.

Omitting Catholic Eschatological Belief in Eventual Jewish Recognition of Jesus

The Catechism of the Catholic Church

While Neuhaus highlights an eschatological belief that Jews will come to faith in Jesus when discussing Christian Zionists, he neglects to mention here that official Catholic teaching as articulated in a section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that Neuhaus references elsewhere includes a similar eschatological expectation that Jews will come to recognize Jesus (From Sinai to Rome, p. 201). Under the heading “The glorious advent of Christ, the hope of Israel,” the Catechism states:

673 Since the Ascension Christ’s coming in glory has been imminent, even though “it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority.” This eschatological coming could be accomplished at any moment, even if both it and the final trial that will precede it are “delayed”.

 

 

674 The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by “all Israel”, for “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” in their “unbelief” toward Jesus. St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost: “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.”St. Paul echoes him: “For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?” The “full inclusion” of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of “the full number of the Gentiles”, will enable the People of God to achieve “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”, in which “God may be all in all”.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, thus, articulates an expectation that Jews will come to recognize Jesus and associates this expectation with the eschatological future.

The Association of Hebrew Catholics in Israel

The Association of Hebrew Catholics (AHC) in Israel has articulated a similar eschatological expectation regarding Jewish recognition of Jesus on its website:

By bringing together Jews who have chosen to come under the wing of the church, our hope is that we can ignite in one another our unique calling and help one another live it out—to bear witness to Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, and His church. We also want to help the church prepare for the day when God will gather all nations and hasten the day when all Israel will call out, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

The above AHC in Israel description echoes the expectation expressed in the Catechism that Jews (“all Israel”) will recognize Jesus in the eschatological future while expressing this belief in national terms.

Father Elias Friedman

Father Elias Friedman, a Zionist Jew who moved to Israel and promoted “Hebrew Catholicism,” thought Jews in the eschatological future would come to believe in Jesus. In describing “a Hebrew community, juridically approved by the Holy See,” Friedman states: “The community, when it comes into being one day, will be seen for what it is: an eschatological sign of the times, raised up before a Church in crisis and for the encouragement of a jaded world” (Jewish Identity, p. 173). Father Friedman maintained that “the restoration of a Jewish homeland and the reunification of the city of Jerusalem under Jewish authority” were “signs that the ‘times of the Gentiles’ referred to by Yeshua in Luke 21:24 were coming to an end” (Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People, p. 294). The Merrimack College Assistant Professor of Religious and Theological Studies Emma O’Donnell Polyakov describes Father Friedman’s perspective as “a Catholic version of evangelical Christian Zionist eschatology” (The Nun in the Synagogue: Judeocentric Catholicism in Israel, p. 112) in maintaining that “the drama of the Jews offered the key to a Catholic interpretation of the events of our time until the end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ” (“Branch, Re-ingrafted,” p. 25).

Catholic Nun from Monastery Outside Jerusalem

A Catholic nun of Jewish heritage at a monastery outside of Jerusalem articulated a similar hope for Jewish recognition of Jesus in her conversation with Polyakov, who relates:

When she [the nun] specified what she and her monastic community believe God’s will for the Jewish people consists of, however, it became clear that she prayed for Jewish conversion to Christian faith: “Ultimately,” she [the nun] confessed, “we have the prayer that the day will come when they will recognize the messiah in Yeshua [Jesus]. That is our prayer, but we don’t force anything on anyone […] The prayers in the liturgy are for God’s blessing to be fulfilled for his people and ultimately seeing their messiah in Yeshua” (The Nun in the Synagogue, p. 191).

This nun and her monastic community, thus, also anticipate that Jews will ultimately come to recognize Jesus.

Roman Catholic and Messianic Jewish Dialogue Group

The Messianic Jewish theologian and Near Eastern Studies scholar Mark S. Kinzer, an advocate of “ecclesial Zionism” whom D’Costa describes as “seek[ing] fuller union with the Catholic Church” (Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II, p. 47), has related how the Catholic leaders involved in dialogue with Kinzer and other Messianic Jews acknowledged that the emergence of the Messianic Jewish movement constitutes “a work of the Holy Spirit.” The theologian of the household of Pope John Paul II, Rev. Georges Cottier, O.P. (later Cardinal), formed this Roman Catholic and Messianic Jewish Dialogue Group in 2000 with the blessing and encouragement of Pope John Paul II, who along with Cottier and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) met with Messianic Jews. Cardinal Ratzinger in his role as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seems to have affirmed a similar eschatological belief about Jews coming to recognize Jesus in the eschatological future as suggested by remarks he reportedly made upon privately encountering a group of Messianic Jews in 1997: “If you are whom you say you are, this is an eschatological sign” (Stones the Builders Rejected: The Jewish Jesus, His Jewish Disciples, and the Culmination of History, p. 187).

The determination by Catholic leaders that the emergence of Messianic Jews constitutes a work of the Holy Spirit and possibly an eschatological sign is especially noteworthy given how central the land and State of Israel have figured in Messianic Jewish self-understanding. As Temple University Assistant Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Rabbi Carol Harris-Shapiro has observed about Messianic Jews in her study of a Messianic Jewish congregation:

Israel plays center stage in Messianic life both in history and in prophecy […] Israel also reminds Messianic Jews of God’s faithfulness and power […] The unique outlook of Messianic believers intertwines their very existence more closely with Israel’s destiny than even the average evangelical or normative Jew (Messianic Judaism: A Rabbi’s Journey through Religious Change in America, pp. 127-129).

The Helsinki Studium Catholicum Director, University of Helsinki Department of Theology Adjunct Professor, University of Eastern Finland Strategic Professor, Helsinki Consultation on Jewish Continuity in the Body of Messiah founding member, and former Hebrew University Rosenzweig Center Research Fellow Father Antoine Lévy, O.P. has similarly observed: “Support for the State of Israel is one of the defining features of the Messianic movement in its current form” (Jewish Church: A Catholic Approach to Messianic Judaism, p. 321). That Catholic leaders have attached theological significance to the emergence of a movement that has placed great importance on the return of Jewish people to the land of Israel and the establishment of the State of Israel there is a development on which it is worth reflecting.

Kenrick-Glennon Seminary Associate Professor of Theology Lawrence Feingold

It is also worth mentioning that the above portion of the Catechism features Jesus’ response to his disciples’ question about whether Jesus would “at this time restore the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6): “[I]t is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). This response by Jesus in the New Testament to his disciples’ query notably does not deny the possibility that sovereignty will return to the Jewish people in the eschatological future. As the AHC Theology Director and Kenrick-Glennon Seminary Associate Professor of Theology Lawrence Feingold, who holds an S.T.B., S.T.L., and S.T.D. from Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome and studied Hebrew as well as Greek at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem, notes:

Jesus answered not by rebuking the foolishness of the question. Instead, as on other occasions when asked about eschatological signs, he emphasized that knowledge of the day and hour of eschatological events is hidden from us […] [T]he restoration of a kingdom to Israel, unlike the witness that will build up the Church, will not be the work of the disciples empowered by the Spirit. But Jesus’ response does not rule out a connection between the fulfillment of the mandate to be “witnesses…to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8) and the restoration of a kingdom to Israel (Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel, p. 13).

In other words, a New Testament statement by Jesus cited by the Catechism in discussing the future of the Jewish people does not rule out the possibility of the return of sovereignty to the Jewish people in the eschatological future. In fact, Feingold maintains that the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and of Jewish sovereignty over the holy city of Jerusalem should be regarded by Catholics as an eschatological sign:

The fact that the Land of Israel is somehow “married” again, to use Isaiah’s language [“your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you” (Is. 62:4-5)], to the Jewish people cannot be regarded as theologically insignificant from the Christian perspective, as from the Jewish. If Jerusalem is always an eschatological sign, how much more a Jerusalem in which the Land is “wedded” again in some sense to the People of the Promise. It makes sense, therefore, that the return of the Land and of Jerusalem to Jewish sovereignty after so many centuries of exile should be considered a sign of the times that should be read through the illumination of the Holy Spirit (Ibid., p. 11).

Feingold here suggests that the return of the Jewish people to their land with Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem should be regarded as an eschatological sign. He also argues that “the emergence of large numbers of Jewish believers in Jesus” in Israel could be recognized as an eschatological sign (Ibid., p. 18). In explaining how the return of the Jewish people offers “renewed possibility for a corporate encounter of the Jewish people with Jesus in a way different than in the diaspora,” Feingold states:

In Israel, Jesus is more easily seen for what he is, a Jew of the Land, a sabra born and nourished in Second Temple Judaism. This encounter can serve first of all to improve Jewish perceptions of Christianity as something more normal, since so many Christian sites are located in their land, and Israeli tour guides very often explain Christian sites to Christian pilgrims and tourists. Secondly, the Land of Israel makes it possible (admittedly on a very small scale) for Israelis to encounter Christian liturgy in Hebrew, so that they can see it as something not totally alien to their culture, but very deeply rooted in it, with regard to both sacrifice and the indwelling divine presence (Shekinah) (Ibid.).

Feingold, thus, views the growth of Jewish believers in Jesus as an eschatological sign, with the land of Israel facilitating an encounter of Jews with Jesus.

Father Antoine Lévy

Father Lévy has similarly affirmed the indispensability of the land and State of Israel to enabling Jewish recognition of Jesus in the eschatological future:

[T]he recognition of Yeshua the Jew by his own as one of their own, alive in the Church, is the eschatological endpoint of Israel’s long journey of exile. It can only take place in a Land where Jews are entirely free to make such a move. Jewish political sovereignty is the guarantee that this recognition is sincere[,] as it can no longer have been caused by external social pressure (Jewish Church, p. 342).

Eugenio Maria Zolli, a former Chief Rabbi of Rome who joined the Catholic Church and imbued his description of the State of Israel with a Jewish Zionist perspective, also hoped that Jews in Israel would come to faith in Jesus in the future, stating: “[L]et not Israel’s pilgrimage end now. Let not the State of Israel become the last and only objective of a suffering people, but may it go on to a more glorious destination.”

Faulting Christian Zionist Application of Old Testament Texts to Modern Israel

Neuhaus also takes issue with the Christian Zionist application of biblical texts that speak about the return of the people of Israel to the land of Israel to contemporary developments regarding the State of Israel. According to Neuhaus, the Old Testament makes “[p]ossession of the land by the biblical people of Israel depend[ent] on their faithfulness to their covenant with God.” While Neuhaus allows that, “[i]n the Old Testament, God, faithful to the promise of life, brings the exiles back to the land,” he regards as questionable the Christian Zionist application of biblical texts that speak about a return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel to contemporary developments involving the modern State of Israel, as he alleges that Christian Zionists ignore that such biblical texts speak of a historical, not a future, return of the biblical people of Israel to the land of Israel. While Neuhaus finds questionable the Christian Zionist application of biblical texts to the Jewish people outside of their supposed Old Testament historical fulfillment, Neuhaus’ conclusion is itself questionable given that New Testament texts, Catholic teaching, Papal statements, and prominent Catholics have suggested that God has been at work and fulfilling Old Testament texts in restoring the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

John the Baptist and Ezekiel 36

While Neuhaus suggests that a historical fulfillment of Old Testament biblical texts about a return of the people of Israel to the land of Israel precludes the application of these texts to a return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel at a later time, New Testament applications of these Old Testament texts suggest that the figures of John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul held these texts to have eschatological, not merely historical, significance.

Neuhaus claims that “the [Old Testament] texts that speak of a return to the land refer historically to events in the sixth century B.C.[E.], when King Cyrus of the Persians permitted the Babylonian exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild it.” However, Kinzer has observed that many Jews at the time of Jesus, including John the Baptist, did not think the Babylonian exile had ended. Therefore, such Jews were still awaiting a future fulfillment of biblical texts about a restoration of the people of Israel in the land of Israel:

As recent commentators have noted, many first-century Jews believed that the Babylonian exile had never really ended, and that the prophecies of restoration still awaited fulfillment. This was true even for many Jews living in the land of Israel. According to Matthew’s narrative, John holds such a view of Israel’s exile and restoration, and he anticipates that the baptismal mission of his greater successor—prepared for by his own baptismal mission—will achieve the full reality about which Ezekiel prophesied (Searching Her Own Mystery: Nostra Aetate, the Jewish People, and the Identity of the Church, p. 94).

Kinzer notes that New Testament statements by John the Baptist that reference “purifying water” and “empowering spirit” allude to the following passage from the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel that anticipates God’s restoration of the people of Israel to their land:

I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then[,] you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God (Ezek[.] 36:24-28).

The two verses preceding this passage make clear that God is not acting to bring the people into their land because the people are righteous, but rather for the sake of his own name:

Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them; and the nations shall know that I am the LORD, says the Lord GOD, when through you I display my holiness before their eyes (Ezek[.] 36:22-23).

The fact that John the Baptist as depicted in the New Testament seems to allude to this biblical passage from Ezekiel suggests he also believed this Old Testament text held not only historical value, but also eschatological significance.

Jesus and Ezekiel 36

Jesus as depicted in the New Testament seems to have also subscribed to this understanding of the eschatological glorification of God’s name with its attendant association with the restoration of the people of Israel in the land of Israel as suggested by the language Jesus used in the Lord’s Prayer. As the Emory University Candler School of Theology Professor of Systematic Theology R. Kendall Soulen explains:

Jesus’s name reticence is not an incidental feature of the first petition but a clue to its meaning. It helps us understand Jesus’s use of the passive voice: “Hallowed be your name!” […] The first petition is an appeal to God’s own zeal on behalf of God’s name. This zeal is attested throughout the Old Testament and is especially apparent in passages such as this from Ezekiel […] The first petition of the Lord’s Prayer is a human counterpart to Ezekiel 36, spoken with eschatological urgency […] Jesus’s “reticence before the name of God,” while consistent with the practice of Second Temple Judaism, has a distinctive theological significance of its own. Jesus’s hyperscrupulous practice of name avoidance is the outer token of his messianic zeal for the end-time glorification of God’s name (Irrevocable: The Name of God and the Unity of the Christian Bible, pp. 104-105).

Jesus and John the Baptist are, thus, depicted in the New Testament as sharing an understanding of God acting to redeem his people for the sake of his own name.

Paul Adopts Ezekiel’s Reasoning Regarding Eschatological Israel

Paul appears to have adopted the same reasoning found in Ezekiel whereby God operates to restore his people for the sake of his name despite the people’s unrighteousness. As Soulen explains:

It is this same line of reasoning that informs Paul’s reflections in Romans 9-11 on the covenantal status of the great majority of his kinsmen who have not accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul begins the section by affirming that his fellow Jews who have not recognized Jesus as Messiah “are Israelites” (present tense) and that to them belong “the adoption, the glory, the covenant, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises” (Rom[.] 9:4). Paul then subjects his kinsmen to withering criticism for much of the next three chapters for failing to submit to “God’s righteousness” in Christ (Rom[.] 10:3-4). Nevertheless, Paul ends the section by concluding that “as regards election[,] they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom[.] 11:28-29) (Irrevocable, pp. 89-90).

Paul, thus, shares an eschatological view of God working to redeem his people despite their unrighteousness.

Omissions

Omitting that Magisterial Documents Feature New Testament Texts about the Land of Israel

The Catechism as well as the Second Vatican Council documents the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 16 (Lumen Gentium) and Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, 4 (Nostra Aetate) allude to the Romans 9 and 11 passages cited by Soulen above. The fact that all these texts occupy the highest level of Magisterial authority and constitute official teaching of the Catholic Church is significant, as biblical scholars have noted that Paul’s language in Romans 9 and 11 suggests he regards the land of Israel as continuing to be of central importance for Jews and as playing a role in Israel’s salvation in the eschatological future. For example, Boston University Aurelio Professor of Scripture Emerita, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Comparative Religion Professor, and New Testament scholar Paula Fredriksen has observed that Paul’s description in Romans 9:4 of “glory” (doxa) and “worship” (latreia) as belonging to his fellow Jews suggests he has the land of Israel in view:

Behind Paul’s Greek word for “glory” stands the Hebrew kavod, which refers specifically to God’s glorious presence, thus to the location of that presence, namely his temple in Jerusalem. And latreia (“worship” or “offerings”) points to the Hebrew avodah: Paul here names the sacrificial cult, revealed in scripture and enacted around Jerusalem’s altar, as a defining privilege of Israel (Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle, p. 35).

In Romans 9:25-26, Paul quotes a passage from the Old Testament Book of Hosea, but adds terminology emphasizing geography that does not appear in any known version of the Septuagint: “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are my people,’ there they shall be called children of the living God” (Hos. 1:10) (additional terminology in italics). In discussing the significance of Paul’s terminological addition to the biblical text, The King’s University Director of Messianic Jewish Studies and Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies David Rudolph observes:

Since the Greek word ἐκεῖ (translated “there” in Rom[.] 9:26) does not appear in any known Septuagint version of Hosea, it would seem to suggest that Paul is placing an emphasis on this geographic location. What do the words “in the very place” and “there” point to? In the context of Hosea 1, these terms refer to the land of Israel. Moreover, the Hosea 1:10 text that Paul quotes is in the middle of the prophet’s description of how the land and seed promises to the patriarchs are fulfilled in the eschaton. In Hosea, a messianic king is appointed and then possession of the land is restored” (The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel & the Land, p. 192).

In Romans 11:25-26, Paul states:

I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery,…that insensibility has come upon a part of Israel, until the fullness of the nations comes in, and then all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “A Redeemer will come from Zion, he will banish impiety from Jacob.” “And this will be my covenant with them, when I take away their sins” (Isa. 59:20-21; 27:9).

In commenting on this passage in Romans, Hartford International University for Religion & Peace Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Amy-Jill Levine, who was the first Jewish professor to teach New Testament Studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute (PBI) and co-organized as well as co-led a major international conference on the subject of the Pharisees hosted by PBI in cooperation with the Pontifical Gregorian University Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies,  explains how Paul may very well have had the land of Israel in mind in the above passage:

Paul’s reference to “all Israel” (Romans 11:26a) may well mean exactly that—the Jewish nation, Abraham’s descendants according to the flesh. In Paul’s view, their salvation will occur together with the salvation of the non-Jews, as in Romans 15:10: “and again he says, ‘Rejoice, O gentiles/pagans with his people’” […] Jews are not subsumed into a broader assembly, and they do not lose their ethnic identity. Since they do not lose their ethnic identity, they do not lose their connection to the land. Rather, that connection, like circumcision and kashrut and Shabbat-observance, is presupposed. The focus on the land is then reinforced in Romans 11:26b, when Paul presumes the ongoing role of Zion, whence the Deliverer will come (Peace and Faith: Christian Churches and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, p. 144).

Fredriksen also contends that this Romans passage articulates Paul’s expectation about the eschatological restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel in the land:

When Paul speaks of End-time redemption, he too recalls this ancient lineage going back to Noah: the gentiles’ plērōma means “all seventy nations.” So too Paul’s evocation of the plērōma of Israel, pas Israēl: his phrasing recalls the patriarchal narratives, the lineage of Abraham passing through Isaac to Jacob and thence to Jacob’s twelve sons, the “fathers” of Israel’s tribes. “All Israel” conjures the full restoration of these twelve tribes, another traditionally eschatological event. As in Deuteronomy 32.43, which Paul will quote at the end of this letter, so also here in Romans 11: the ingathering of Israel is linked immediately to the inclusion of the nations” (Paul, p. 161).

Paul’s allusions in Romans 11:26-27 to Isaiah 27:9 and 59:20 also suggest that Paul viewed Israel’s salvation as including a territorial dimension. As the St. Bonaventure University Professor Emeritus of Theology and Franciscan Studies Christopher Stanley adduced by the University of Kansas New Testament scholar Mark D. Nanos explains:

Though the story is not identical, the obvious parallels between this passage [Isa. 27:9] and Isa. 59.20-63.7 make it easy to see why an ancient reader (who worked from the premise of a unified Scripture) might have felt compelled to interpret the one passage in the light of the other […] Both passages reach their climax in the return of the dispersed children of Israel to their land, in the one case by the supernatural activity of Y[-]H[-]W[-]H himself, in the other by the hand of the defeated nations. The final scene shows the fulfillment of all the dreams and aspirations cherished by Y[-]H[-]W[-]H’s people over the years: eternal peace and security in their own land (The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter, p. 280).

Paul’s reference in Romans 11:27 to Jeremiah 31, where Israel’s restoration to the land is discussed, also suggests Paul thought Israel’s salvation would involve the restoration of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. As Moody Theological Seminary Professor of New Testament J. Brian Tucker explains:

Within a future eschatological miracle understanding of “all Israel will be saved” is an often overlooked idea that this also means that Israel will need to be restored to the land […] In Rom[.] 11:27, Paul writes, “And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.” This citation from Jeremiah 31 highlights the prophetic hope for the restoration of the houses of Judah and Israel (Jer[.] 31:31, 33-34). The context of Jeremiah predicts a return from exile to the land for God’s people […] It is more likely that Paul has been moving towards the conclusion that begins at 9:13: “his concern for Israel includes her exile … his hope for Israel’s salvation includes the restoration of Israel and Judah.” The reference to Jer[.] 31:33 in Rom[.] 11:27 suggests that since restoration in the land was part of the prediction in Jeremiah, part of the “mystery” that Paul is revealing includes Israel’s restoration. This is particularly probable given the subjugation of Israel at the hands of the Romans in Paul’s day (Reading Romans After Supersessionism: The Continuation of Jewish Covenantal Identity, pp. 192-194).

Some might conclude that since most of these scholars are not Catholic, these scholars’ interpretations of New Testament texts should have no bearing on how Catholics interpret Scripture. However, D’Costa thinks that new findings of modern biblical scholarship, even if made by non-Catholics, can influence how Catholics interpret biblical texts as evidenced by the fact that Protestant biblical scholarship has already influenced how Catholics interpret Romans 9-11:

Historically, the rereading of Romans 9-11 that was central to Catholic changes of attitude to the Jewish people derived from Protestant biblical scholarship. It is possible that these shifts in scholarship will begin to affect future Pontifical Biblical Commissions […] [S]ince Catholic scholarship is taking slow steps and sometimes follows certain Protestant prompts, such developments may well take place in the future in this area (Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II, pp. 92-93).

In other words, the Catholic Church could come to explicitly teach what many contemporary scholars have already recognized: namely, the continuing positive theological significance and eschatological importance that New Testament texts attach to the land of Israel for Jews.

Omitting that Catholics Affirm or Suggest Jewish Return to the Land and the State of Israel Fulfill Biblical Prophecy

Catholic authorities have also either explicitly affirmed or made statements suggesting that the modern State of Israel represents an eschatological fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Former Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn

The former Archbishop of Vienna and key editor of the Catechism Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has stated:

“Hardly anybody will dispute that the foundation of this state [of Israel] had something to do with the biblical prophecy even if that something is hard to define.”

Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II in a 1991 address to a Jewish audience in Brasilia applied to contemporary Jewish people a passage from Ezekiel about the ingathering of the Jewish people to the land of Israel:

May our Jewish brother[s] and sisters, who have been led “out from among the peoples and gathered from the foreign lands” and brought back “to their own country” [Ezek. 34.13], to the land of their ancestors, be able to live there in peace and security on the “mountains of Israel,” guarded by the protection of God, their true shepherd (The Saint for Shalom: How Pope John Paul II Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations, p. 225).

D’Costa notes that the Pope’s decision to reference a biblical text about the future ingathering of the Jewish people to the land of Israel in speaking of modern Jews in the land need not be understood as making an eschatological claim (Jesus: The Messiah of Israel?: Messianic Judaism and Christian Theology in Conversation, p. 347). However, the Pope’s choice to use this prophetic text in referencing Jews who have returned to the land of Israel following the establishment of the State of Israel is nevertheless suggestive.

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI similarly suggested that an Israel at peace with its neighbors could play a role in the fulfillment of biblical prophecy by invoking a passage from Isaiah in his 2009 Discourse at Ben Gurion Airport:

Let it be universally recognized that the State of Israel has the right to exist, and to enjoy peace and security within internationally agreed borders. Let it be likewise acknowledged that the Palestinian people have a right to a sovereign independent homeland, to live with dignity and to travel freely. Let the two-state solution become a reality, not remain a dream. And let peace spread outwards from these lands, let them serve as a “light to the nations” (Is[.] 42:6), bringing hope to many other regions that are affected by conflict.

The reference to a passage from Isaiah by Pope Benedict XVI in his Discourse at Ben Gurion Airport suggests the State of Israel could fulfill a prophetic role.

Omitting that Catholics Affirm or Suggest Jewish Return to the Land and the State of Israel Express God’s Fidelity

Catholic Theologian and Philosopher Jacques Maritain

The Catholic theologian and philosopher Jacques Maritain, whose teachings played a decisive role in reforming Catholic perspectives on the Jewish people and who assisted in the development of the Vatican II response to the Holocaust while contributing to the Vatican’s rethinking of its views of the State of Israel, maintained that the return of Jewish people to the land of Israel and the establishment of the State of Israel demonstrate God’s faithfulness to the Jewish people:

[T]he return of part of the Jewish people to the Holy Land, and its reestablishment there (of which the existence of the state is a sign and guarantee), is the refulfillment of the divine promise which is not withdrawn. One remembers that which was said to Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and that which Ezekiel proclaimed….[I]t is not impossible [that the establishment of the state of Israel is a kind of prelude to the realization of the prophecy]. But surely[,] we should keep in mind our respect for the ways of God? And I have no doubt that this event, mysterious as it is for Jews and Christians alike, bears the sign of God’s faithful love for the people which is ever His (Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, & the Idea of the Promised Land, p. 198).

As indicated in the above passage, Maritain, while not ruling out the possibility that the establishment of the State of Israel could constitute a prelude to the realization of biblical prophecy, holds that the return of a portion of global Jewry to the Holy Land and the reestablishment of a state for the Jewish people there constitute the refulfillment of the divine promise.

Catholic Theologian and Scholar Monsignor John M. Oesterreicher

The Catholic theologian and scholar Monsignor John M. Oesterreicher, who had a Jewish background, joined the Catholic Church, and played an integral role crafting the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate articulating a reformed Catholic understanding of the Jewish people, affirmed that the success of the State of Israel constitutes an expression of God’s favor. As the University of California, Berkeley Professor of History John Connelly states:

In his last decades, Oesterreicher acted as a Christian Zionist, insisting that the success of Israel was a sign of divine favor, due not simply “to the cunning of her statesmen, the superior strategy of her generals, the bravery of her soldiers, and the steadfastness of her citizens,” but to the “‘outstretched arm’ (Exodus 6:6) of the Lord which once more rescued His people…Today’s Israel is new proof that God stands by His covenant; that the last word lies, not with the inventor of the “final solution[,]” but with Him (From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965, p. 279).

Connelly proceeds to note that Monsignor Oesterreicher also “appeared at the American Zionist Federation in New York,” where he “expressed his ‘love’ for Zion, comparing the mystery of Zionism to the mystery of Christianity” (Ibid.).

Duquesne University Professor of Catholic Studies and Theology William M. Wright IV

Duquesne University Professor of Catholic Studies and Theology William M. Wright IV has affirmed a divine role in the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel:

Catholics can acknowledge the return of the Jewish people to live in their ancestral homeland as an instance of God’s loving-kindness and faithfulness to his covenant people. Catholics can do so in a manner akin to honoring the abiding value and religious significance of the plain-sense dimensions of the Old Testament and the realities which it presents (Catholic-Jewish Engagements on Israel: Holy Land, Political Territory, or Theological Promise?, p. 100).

Wright IV, thus, holds that Catholics can recognize the return of Jews to the land of Israel as an example of divine loving-kindness and faithfulness to the Jewish people with whom he stands in a covenantal relationship.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Neuhaus suggests that a Catholic theological affirmation of Zionism would somehow conflict with a statement by Pope Benedict XVI discussing “the gradual universalization of the land on the basis of a theology of hope” and his commentary that “[t]he land of the king of peace is not a nation state—it stretches from ‘sea to sea.’” However, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has observed that the establishment of the State of Israel is a demonstration of God’s fidelity to the Jewish people: “The Vatican…has recognized the State of Israel as a modern constitutional state, and sees it as a legitimate home of the Jewish people […] [I]t expresses God’s faithfulness to the people of Israel” (“Grace and Vocation,” p. 178). In the same vein, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has also remarked: “It is not difficult, I believe, to see that in the creation of the State of Israel, the fidelity of God to Israel is revealed in a mysterious way.”

Neither Pope John Paul II nor Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI regarded affirming God’s role in the establishment of the State of Israel as incompatible with Catholic beliefs. Furthermore, as Villeneuve has observed: “The Church has always recognized that Scripture often operates on multiple levels: literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical (CCC 116-118).” Therefore, one can affirm with Pope Benedict XVI that the land is not theologically equivalent to a nation state while also recognizing that God’s faithfulness is revealed in the establishment of the State of Israel.

Kinzer also does not regard his Zionist commitments as incompatible with the belief that states as we now know them will not figure in the ultimate realization of the kingdom of God in the eschatological future: “The coming of the Messiah will heal the nations (Rev[.] 21:24, 26; 22:2), but will end states as we now know them by establishing a kingdom in Israel (Acts 1:6)” (Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen: The Resurrected Messiah, the Jewish People, and the Land of Promise, p. 256).

Omitting that Catholics Affirm or Suggest the Theological Significance of the Land of Israel with Respect to Jews

Catholic individuals have understood the land of Israel as a gift from God and as playing a role in God’s fulfillment of his promises to the Jewish people.

Preacher of the Papal Household Raniero Cantalamessa

The preacher of the papal household of Pope John Paul II, Raniero Cantalamessa, cites specific Old Testament texts while invoking a relevant New Testament statement by Paul in noting: “We share with the Jews the biblical certainty that God gave them the country of Canaan forever (Genesis 17:8, Isaiah 43:5, Jeremiah 32:22, Ezekiel 36:24, Amos 9:14). We know that the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (The Mystery of Christmas: A Comment on the Magnificat, Gloria, Nunc Dimittis, p. 38).

The Apostolic Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa

While he was still the Apostolic Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa suggested that the land of Israel might be theologically significant for Catholics, who he suggests have lost sight of the theological significance of the land’s physical dimensions. As Polyakov recounts from her conversation with Pizzaballa:

[T]he notion that the Jewish presence in the land of Israel might be significant for Christians as well can also be found among more public and authoritative voices within the Church hierarchy […] Addressing what he sees as an overspiritualization or abstraction of the land within most Christian notions of the Holy Land, he [Archbishop Pizzaballa] commented, “Our understanding of the land now as holy is purely spiritual. For the Jews, it is spiritual[,] of course, but not only. In Judaism, there is a very strong connection between faith, people, and land; it’s really concrete. And we Christians spiritualize it.” He laughed and added regretfully, “Maybe, too spiritualized!” He continued, “This is also my question, I am wondering. God is saying something. I don’t think that the people of Israel who live in Israel are just a causality, are just an accident.” Pizzaballa refrains from making any definitive statements about the spiritual meaning of the land to Christians or about the Jewish presence in Israel, but he suggests that both might be theologically significant to Christianity (The Nun in the Synagogue, pp. 94-95).

Thus, while Archbishop Pizzaballa does not make a definitive statement on the spiritual significance of the land of Israel for Christians or the presence of Jews there, he does, as Polyakov indicates, suggest that the subject of the land and the phenomenon of Jewish people living there could be theologically significant for Christians.

Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Lecturer Gavin D’Costa

D’Costa not only affirms a “minimalist Catholic Zionism,” but also conjectures that the emergence of a Hebrew Catholic community with its own particular liturgy in the land of Israel could play a part in a broader picture indicating the arrival of biblical promises about the land: “To be able to have a community of such Hebrew Catholics liturgically present in the land might become part of the picture that indicates the arrival of the biblical promises regarding the land” (Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II, p. 185).

Jews who Joined the Catholic Church

A number of Jews who have joined the Catholic Church have also affirmed the theological significance of the land of Israel.

The Ratisbonne Brothers

The Jewish brothers, Theodor and Alphonse Ratisbonne, who became Catholic “shared the conviction that God’s promises to the Jewish people were soon to be accomplished,” prompting them to relocate to Jerusalem and establish the Sisterhood of Our Lady of Zion and the Congregation of the Fathers of Zion (Postmissionary Messianic Judaism, pp. 293-294).

Archbishop of Paris and Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger

Upon arriving in Israel as part of a trip he organized to the Holy Land, Lustiger recorded:

I had an extraordinary shock, both emotional and spiritual, on seeing the land of Israel, the promised land of Abraham, the Holy Land. When you are studying the Bible at your desk, you can ponder indefinitely about what is said, or not said, by avoiding too many questions about the reality of a particular event and the way it touches you. But there in the Holy Land, I could not put anything having to do with the truth of such events between parentheses. The question presented itself in an historical way and history, with a brutal and indisputable objectivity[,] presented itself geographically. The soil itself, the Holy Land, and its inhabitants became so eloquent that a decision became urgent. I could no longer dodge the question of whether I would decide to adhere unreservedly to the reality of God’s gift (Choosing God, Chosen by God, p. 149).

The above passage attests to the fact that Lustiger’s encounter with the land of Israel prompted him to reflect on God’s gift and his belief that the specific land of Israel was included in the biblical promise to Abraham.

Brother Daniel (Oswald Rufeisen)

Recalling his first months in a Mir convent, Brother Daniel (Oswald Rufeisen) states:

I felt very much like a Jew, I identified with the plight of my people. I also felt like a Zionist. I longed for Palestine, for my own country. In this frame of mind[,] I became exposed to the New Testament, a book that describes events that were taking place in my fatherland, the land I was longing for. This, in itself, must have created a psychological bridge between me and the New Testament (In the Lion’s Den, p. 166).

In associating Rufeisen’s and Lustiger’s reflections, the Middlebury College Pardon Tillinghast Professor Emeritus of Religion Shalom Goldman explains:

There is a paradox here: it was the New Testament that encouraged Rufeisen’s Zionist yearnings. Generally, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament inspired in modern Jewish readers a sense of attachment to the land in which the biblical narratives took place. This also tended to be true for Christian readers. For Rufeisen, as for Lustiger […], reading the Old Testament and the New Testament as a single unit led to the realization that there was a bridge between the two scriptures. The New Testament awakened sympathy for Zionism by instilling a yearning for the landscape of Israel, where Jesus had lived and taught (Jewish-Christian Difference and Modern Jewish Identity: Seven Twentieth-Century Converts, p. 135).

The study of Scripture, thus, prompted reflections on God’s gift and the biblical promise of land when Lustiger encountered the physical land of Israel while effectively rooting Rufeisen’s Zionist commitments in Catholic belief.

Omitting Implications of Catholic Documents Recognizing Jewish Religious Attachment to the Land of Israel

The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible

Neuhaus states: “From a Christian perspective, wherever men and women gather to create community in fidelity to Christ is the land of promise, the land of holiness.” He neglects to mention, though, that the Pontifical Biblical Commission document The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible recognizes God’s promise of a specific land to the people of Israel. In speaking of the role of land in the Old Testament, the document states:

Israel was freed from slavery in Egypt and received from God the promise of land. Its realization required time and gave rise to many problems throughout the course of its history. For the people of the Bible, even after the return from the Babylonian Exile, the land remained an object of hope: “Those blessed by the [L]ord” will possess the land (Ps[.] 37:22).

The document notes the following in describing the land as depicted in the New Testament: “It should not be forgotten […] that a specific land was promised by God to Israel and received as a heritage.”

Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church

Neuhaus references Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church in acknowledging: “The Catholic Church teaches that Christians can respect the sense of attachment to the land of the Jewish people ‘without however making their own any particular religious interpretation of this relationship.’” However, he neglects to mention that this document notably does not preclude the possibility that Catholics in the future may give a religious interpretation of the relationship between the Jewish people and the land of Israel. An indication that Catholics could assign a religious interpretation to the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is suggested by the Catholic Theological Union (CTU) Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics, former Director of the CTU Catholic-Jewish Studies Program, and active participant in the Christian-Jewish Dialogue Father John T. Pawlikowski, O.S.M., who has noted that the Vatican II theologian Karl Rahner, S.J., when asked by Rabbi Eugene Borowitz, “Are there any remaining theological objections to Jews having a homeland of their own after Vatican II,” responded in the negative, indicating that “such classical theological objections no longer hold after the Council.”

Another indication that Catholics could assign a religious interpretation to the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is suggested by Troen, who argues that “the reluctance of the Roman Catholic Church to acknowledge the legitimacy of the State of Israel as a Jewish state” and its efforts to adopt a “balanced posture” toward the “Arab-Jewish conflict” reflect a pragmatic attempt “to protect the diminishing Christian minority, not only in Israel, but throughout the Muslim Middle East” (Israel/Palestine in World Religions, p. 137), from Islamist persecution. However, Troen points out that if pragmatic, not theological, considerations underly these positions of the Roman Catholic Church, “evolving historical circumstances” could conceivably result in the Roman Catholic Church reforming its theological position on the State of Israel (Ibid.).

D’Costa argues that the fact that Notes recognizes the importance for Catholics to comprehend Jewish self-understanding “becomes theologically significant[,] [f]or in this process, Catholics might see the face of God, the Father of Jesus Christ, and witness to His presence in ways they have not been cultivated to discern until recently” (Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II, p. 56). Similarly, Father Friedman maintained that there are important ideas held by Jews that Catholics should learn as suggested by the fact that he thinks that Catholics who do not recognize the importance of Jewish continuity and survival, which the State of Israel has helped to enable, have problematically blinded themselves in contrast to Jews who were blinded by God as part of a divine plan:

Where the Jews are concerned, God, in fact, had drawn a veil over their eyes, until the time should arrive for them to accede, collectively, to the faith […] Never has the Christian mission to the Jews succeeded in overcoming what was a divine decree. The Christian missionary willfully blinded himself to the fact that he was menacing the survival of the Jewish people and exciting the enmity of an intelligent, vocal and outraged world community” (Jewish Identity, p. 167).

The importance that Father Friedman attaches to Jewish survival explains why he considers the reasoning employed by the Israeli Supreme Court Judge President Moshe Silberg in denying the right of Father Daniel Rufeisen to be considered a Jew under Israel’s law of return to be indisputable:

“The Jewish converts, as experience teaches us, have cut themselves off completely from their people, for the simple reason that their sons and daughters marry into other peoples.” In consequence, guided by a healthy instinct for survival, the Jewish people was convinced that conversion was destructive of Jewish identity and closed its doors on the convert […] It was a weighty argument, based on irrefutable observations (Ibid., p. 19).

Kinzer argues that Christians, including Catholics, should be open to understanding the positive theological significance of the land of Israel in connection with Jews in light of contemporary developments like Peter, traditionally considered by Catholics to be the first Pope, adjusted his understanding of gentile inclusion in light of his own experiences:

Just as Peter the Jew was compelled to reconsider what Jesus and Scripture taught about gentiles in light of what he experienced in Jaffa and Caesarea, so gentile Christians today are summoned to rethink what Jesus and Scripture teach about Jews in light of the new realities they are encountering. The regathering of Jewish people to their ancestral land and the rebirth of Jewish ecclesial communities are historical phenomena that demand a theological response. Israel outside the borders of the ekklēsia challenges Christians to rethink their view of Israel’s enduring covenant and the role of the Jewish people in history. Israel within the ekklēsia challenges Christians to rethink Christian identity itself. Both realities call Christians to a humble recognition that they are a part and not the whole (Stones the Builders Rejected, p. 70).

Neuhaus omits that Notes not only encourages Catholics to respect the Jewish religious attachment to the land of Israel, but also acknowledges that the attachment of the Jewish people to the land is based on the Old Testament texts that have authority for Catholics. As D’Costa notes:

If paragraph one deals with Jewish self-understanding that is respected and acknowledged, the next paragraph establishes […] the Jewish attachment to the land “finds its roots in Biblical tradition.” Jewish self-understanding is biblically justified. This refers to the Old Testament teachings that have authority as revelation for Catholics (Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II, p. 130).

Father Lévy points out that the document’s acknowledgement of the biblical justification of a Jewish attachment to the land of Israel reflects the fact that “this religious argumentation is [not] foreign to Catholic theology” and can even be regarded as “valid” even if the document holds that this view “cannot be the one and exclusive criterion of justice regarding the conflict” (Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel, p. 201). Neuhaus in his article observes that the document explicitly identifies international law as a basis for understanding the State of Israel: “The existence of the state of Israel and its political options should be envisaged not in a perspective which is in itself religious, but in their reference to the common principles of international law.” He has elsewhere acknowledged that a perspective on the State of Israel based on international law cannot be divorced from a theological perspective, suggesting that revelation relating to morality and politics is involved:

The Church, in speaking about the land and the state of Israel, is committed to the language of international law. This language is not completely divorced from the language of revelation, for revelation too relies on categories of human rationality, universality, and humanism, even if it transcends these categories when it comes to the relationship between God and the human person (Ibid., p. 186).

However, Father Lévy argues that a theological perspective on the State of Israel can involve revelation beyond morality and politics: “I claim that the revelation is not confined to providing moral and political laws with their ultimate source of intelligibility. Revelation is also about the destiny of a concrete and very unique nation from the time of Abraham to that of Jesus” (Ibid., p. 203). He holds that even international agreements and decisions to which the document and Neuhaus allude necessarily require a religious interpretation to be comprehensible:

[T]he 1948 international agreement, just as other similar decisions, is incomprehensible without the specific religious interpretation of the Bible associated with Zionism. Religion lurks behind about every aspect of the conflict. How could considerations regarding justice not take the religious perspective into account (Ibid., p. 207)?

Father Lévy argues that the Holy See provides a precedent for adopting both theological and political views toward a state:

[W]hat is the Holy See […] if not a legal entity, encompassing an internationally recognized state called the Vatican, that draws its most fundamental and enduring justification from some ancient faith tradition? That the permanence of the Vatican as a state is no longer the source of a military conflict does not change the fact that this state sees the reason for its existence, and ultimately for its resistance to annihilation, in a religious belief going back to two-thousand-year-old events (Ibid., p. 205).

Notes also affirms: “The permanence of Israel (while so many ancient peoples have disappeared without trace) is a historic fact and a sign to be interpreted within God’s design.” D’Costa argues that this document’s recognition of Israel’s permanence as a divine sign also hints at the role the land of Israel plays in ensuring Israel’s survival:

To affirm that God is behind the Jewish people’s survival and protection already gestures towards the embodied conditions that make this possible: the land of Israel […] The subtle equation of the argument in Notes might read: God’s primary concern is his People. His people are also constituted by the promise of the land. If the people are a sign of God’s design, then so is their hoped-for land (Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II, p. 132).

Thus, the land of Israel could be regarded as playing a role in the divine preservation of the Jewish people.

Notes acknowledges that Jewish liturgical observances have influenced Catholic liturgical practices:

The eucharistic prayers also draw inspiration from models in the Jewish tradition. As John Paul II said (Allocution of March 6th, 1982): “the faith and religious life of the Jewish people as they are professed and practised still today, can greatly help us to understand better certain aspects of the life of the Church. Such is the case of liturgy.”

Pope John Paul II also observed: “The Jewish religion is not ‘extrinsic’ to us, but in a certain way is ‘intrinsic’ to our own religion.” Therefore, Catholic reflection on the Jewish religious attachment to the land of Israel evidenced in Jewish liturgical practices could help Catholics understand Catholicism better. In fact, Catholics have recognized not only that the Jewish religion is intrinsic to the Church, but also that the presence of Jewish people within the Church is essential to the Church’s character. Thus, Cardinal Lustiger argued that the Church can only be considered Catholic to the extent that Jews are represented within her midst:

The Church appears as “catholic”…meaning “according to the whole.” She is “according to the whole” because she is composed of both Jews and pagans. In order to remain “Catholic” in the original sense—that is, “according to the whole”—recognizes, in a single gift of God’s grace, both the Ecclesia ex circumcisione (the Church born from circumcision) and the Ecclesia ex gentibus (the Church born from the pagan nations) (The Promise, p. 125).

While Jesus and his Jewish followers observed Jewish practices, could the Catholic Church recognize that Jewish believers in Jesus are permitted to observe Jewish liturgical traditions today? This question is important to consider, as many Jewish liturgical practices include a focus on the continuing importance and eschatological significance of the land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem for Jews. The Catholic document Cantate Domino could help address this question.

Cantate Domino

Cantate Domino, which D’Costa points out has the “authority[…] of a solemnly binding doctrinal teaching document” for Catholics, formally prohibits “the practice of the ceremonial Mosaic law, both within and outside the Catholic Church” (Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II, p. 33). However, D’Costa argues that there are grounds for holding that this prohibition was contingent on circumstances that no longer apply. For example, D’Costa observes that the document suggests that “[t]he ritual ceremonies of Judaism were instituted by God and were efficacious” (Ibid., p. 43) but were prohibited when such practice was deemed to be an expression of freely rejecting Jesus. However, D’Costa suggests that “if they [Jews] had not freely rejected Christ, but were acting in invincible ignorance, then the continuations of those ritual practices may still be considered divinely instituted and efficacious” (Ibid.). Similarly, the idea that Jewish practices lost their value “due to the disappearance of the People of the First Covenant within the Church” (Ibid.) would seem to suggest that such Jewish practices could be permitted when a Jewish presence within the Church is restored as D’Costa believes is happening with the emergence of Hebrew Catholics:

Does the converse hold: when there are “carnal Jews” within the Church, then it may be appropriate that the “rites and ceremonies of the old Law” are permitted again to those who descend in flesh from Israel? This is important because Hebrew Catholics today testify to the reality that “carnal Jews” of the flesh have reappeared within the body of Christ (Ibid., p. 45).

D’Costa concludes: “[T]here is good reason for competent authorities to restore both Acts 15:29 and its concomitant: that Jewish practices within the ecclesia are perfectly legitimate as they were in the early liturgical life of the church” (Ibid., p. 52). He even conjectures that the presence of some Mosaic ceremonial practices in the East and West of the Church historically could have been “foreshadowing the return of the time when the Jewish witness would one day return to the Church” (Ibid., p. 53). The Preacher of the Papal Household of John Paul II, Raniero Cantalamessa, envisions the Catholic Church undergoing a conversion when it is joined to the people of Israel such that various elements will be rearranged:

We are not saying this in a spirit of proselytism but in a spirit of conversion and obedience to the Word of God because it is certain that the rejoining of Israel with the Church will involve a rearrangement in the Church; it will mean a conversion on both sides. It will also be a rejoining of the Church with Israel (The Mystery of Christmas, p. 101).

Father Peter Hocken has argued that the integration “of liturgy and eschatology that has always existed in the Jewish tradition is necessary for the reconciliation of the ancient liturgical churches and the newer revival traditions” (Azusa, Rome, and Zion: Pentecostal Faith, Catholic Reform, and Jewish Roots, p. 65). The fact that Cantalamessa maintains that the Catholic Church will undergo modifications when joined with the people of Israel and Father Hocken holds that Jewish tradition’s integration of liturgy and eschatology is necessary for the Church suggests that rendering the Catholic Church more inclusive of Jewish liturgical features is not only feasible, but also necessary. D’Costa cites an example of a Jew whose observance of “traditional Jewish practices serve[s] and strengthen[s] her Catholicism” (Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II, p. 45). In her ethnographic study of nuns and monks in Israel, Polyakov observes that a number of such individuals have incorporated into their prayer lives Jewish liturgical elements, including the Amidah, which shows “explicit concern for the Jewish future and the land of promise” and displays a “literal orientation toward Jerusalem and the Temple Mount” (Searching Her Own Mystery, p. 141). One such Catholic individual is Sister Carmen, who Polyakov notes “prays using Jewish liturgical texts, such as the Amidah, which is recited three times a day in Jewish liturgical practice. Sr. Carmen says that she prays the benediction of the Amidah referred to as the binah, specifically for the leadership of Israel” (The Nun in the Synagogue, p. 89).

Incorrectly Intimating Zionism is Bound Up with Conquest and Jewish Exclusivity

In his article, Neuhaus describes how Jesus teaches in the Gospel “that the promise of land does not depend on conquest: ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth [land]’ (Mt[.] 5:5).” After referencing this biblical verse, Neuhaus cites the book, Jesus of Nazareth, in which Pope Benedict XVI comments on this beatitude: “Conquerors come and go, but the ones who remain are the simple, the humble, who cultivate the land and continue sowing and harvesting in the midst of sorrows and joys. The humble, the simple, outlast the violent, even from a purely historical point of view.” Neuhaus seems to imply here that Zionism necessarily entailed conquest of the land of Israel. However, Neuhaus neglects to mention how leading Zionists made clear their peaceful intentions and Zionist leadership pursued a peaceful path that was even endorsed on multiple occasions by prominent Catholic authorities.

In Matthew 5:9, Jesus declares: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” In his Opening Address at the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Herzl declared, “Zionism is simply the peacemaker” (Herzl’s Zionist Writings: Volume II: The Zionist Movement: 1897-1900, p. 181). David Ben-Gurion, a leader of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and Israel’s first prime minister, delivered a speech in 1915 in which he explicitly rejected the imperialist practice of “[seizing] land by force of arms.” The late Hebrew University Professor of European and Jewish History and antisemitism scholar Robert S. Wistrich has observed how Zionists used funds from “millions of petty Jewish artisans, shopkeepers, workers, and professional people” given to the Jewish National Fund to purchase, not steal, land (From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews, and Israel, p. 523). The historian Yaacov Lozowick, who was the director of the archives at Israel’s Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, and was Israel’s State Archivist between 2011 and 2018, has similarly observed:

[T]he Zionist intention was to legally acquire as many dunams as possible […] The acquisition itself had to be done legally, there being no other option; in some cases, the legal acquisition didn’t even promote Zionist goals, because the Arab tenants refused to move and there was no way to evict them (Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars, p. 72).

The historian of Christian Zionism Donald M. Lewis notes that Zionist supporters included prominent Catholics in their ranks even before Vatican II:

Some well-known Roman Catholics supported Zionism prior to Vatican II, notably the British diplomat Sir Mark Sykes and a few Catholic theologians and writers: Jacques Maritain, the French philosopher who helped draft the International Declaration of Human Rights; and the English writer G. K. Chesterton (A Short History of Christian Zionism, p. 5).

Notwithstanding critical statements released later, the Hebrew University Davis Institute Senior Researcher and former Assistant Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sergio I. Minerbi notes that Vatican City Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Gasparri expressed approval of Jewish settlement in the land of Israel while alluding to the reestablishment of ancient Israel’s biblical kingdom in the territory when speaking to World Zionist Organization leader Nahum Sokolow in 1917: “Naturally[,] we are sympathetic to it [the Zionist cause]. It is absolutely just. You must do this[,] and we will be extremely glad if you succeed in establishing the Kingdom of Israel” (The Vatican and Zionism: Conflict in the Holy Land: 1895-1925, p. 110). When Sokolow indicated that Zionists aspire not to reestablish a kingdom, but rather “an autonomous home,” Gaspari stated: “I assure you that from [the] Church[,] you will have no opposition. On the contrary, you may count on our sympathy” (Ibid.).

According to author Gary L. Krupp, Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli, who would go on to become Pope Pius XII, “not only pleaded in favor of the Jewish settlements but even encouraged prominent German Catholics to join the initiative supporting them” (Pope Pius XII and World War II: The Documented Truth, p. 68). In addition, “Pacelli’s closest friend, the Reichstag member and Catholic prelate, Dr. Ludwig Kaas, became a board member of this [German Committee Pro Palestine to Support the Jewish Settlement in Palestine]” (Ibid.). The historian David I. Kertzer notes that the Papal Delegate in Istanbul Angelo Roncalli, who would go on to become Pope John XXIII, repeatedly pled for the Vatican to allow Slovakian Jewish children to avoid deportation to Poland by allowing for their resettlement in Palestine during the Holocaust, explaining that they “run the risk of deportation to Poland at the end of the month. They beg the Holy Father to intervene with that government…so that one thousand Jewish children can emigrate to Palestine, with English authorization…and be permitted to transit through Turkey” (The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler, p. 274). Kertzer explains that Roncalli renewed this plea, “asking to help fifteen hundred Jewish children from Slovakia obtain transit permission from the Hungarian government to escape to Palestine” (Ibid., p. 276).

When Chaim Weizmann, who would go on to become Israel’s first president, informed Gasparri in 1922 what Zionists “were actually doing and preparing to do in Palestine—agricultural settlement, drainage, afforestation, medical work, education—he [Gasparri] indicated that the colonization work and so on caused him no anxiety” (The Vatican and Zionism, p. 169). Similarly, Minerbi notes that when Weizmann told Gasparri that “all peoples would have the place they deserved, with no special privileges for anyone,” the latter “expressed his full satisfaction with these declarations” (Ibid., p. 170).

The Catholic writer, Michel Riquet, understood papal reference to “the rights of the Jewish element” (Ibid., p. 148) in an allocution to the cardinals on June 13, 1921 as “the pope’s recognition of the Balfour Declaration” in which the aim of establishing “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine was recognized, although Minerbi assesses that “this interpretation seems warranted by neither the wording of the speech nor the atmosphere then prevailing in the Vatican” (Ibid., p. 150). Troen concludes that the support of Christians, including Catholics, for UN Resolution 181 calling for the partition of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state was crucial for the resolution’s passage:

Without Christian [Catholic, Evangelical, Liberal Protestant, and a host of churches] unanimity for [UN Resolution] 181, support for a Jewish state would not have achieved the two-thirds majority required for implementation: every Arab and all states with a large Muslim population voted unanimously against, and were one vote short of blocking the resolution (Israel/Palestine in World Religions, p. 144).

Contrary to the false impression of Zionism suggested by Neuhaus’ language of “conquest,” Zionists adopted an exceptionally peaceful approach, as the Middle East historian Daniel Pipes notes:

[T]he building of Israel represents the most peaceable in-migration and state creation in history […] Against th[e] tableau of unceasing conquest, violence, and overthrow, Zionist efforts to build a presence in the Holy Land until 1948 stand out as astonishingly mild, as mercantile rather than military.

Arthur Koestler similarly observed the uniquely peaceful and legal foundations upon which the Jewish State was established:

Virtually all sovereign states have come into being through some form of violent and, at the time, lawless upheaval which after a while became accepted as a fait accompli. Nowhere in history, whether in the time of the [post-Roman Empire] migrations, the Norman Conquest, the Dutch War of Independence, or the forcible colonization of America do we find an example of a state being peacefully born by international agreement. In this respect, Israel is a freak. It is a kind of Frankenstein creation, conceived on paper, blueprinted in the mandate, hatched out in the diplomatic laboratory.

Elaborating on Koestler’s observation, the Middle East historian Martin Kramer states:

[L]ike no other state in history, it [the State of Israel] received its license to exist by a two-thirds majority vote of the world’s other independent states. In declaring independence, moreover, Israel could claim to be on the side of international agreement, while the Arabs were in rebellion against it. So the declaration doesn’t include a call to arms; instead, it includes a call to Israel’s Arab neighbors for peace.

While D’Costa has similarly remarked that “the realization of the promise [of the land] cannot involve non-defensive violence” (Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II, p. 91), Israel in 1948 was engaged in its national defense against Arab countries that sought to destroy the Jewish State after the State of Israel issued its declaration.

Inaccurately Suggesting the Land of Israel Loses its Centrality After the Resurrection of Jesus

Neuhaus suggests that with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, “a new order is established in which borders that separate people from each other no longer divide them,” noting: “The Good News of the resurrection spreads from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, bringing down dividing walls.” However, this account of the spread of the Good News omits Jerusalem’s continued centrality in Acts. As Kinzer observes:

This narrative outline […] leaves out a particular detail that has profound implications for our interpretation of the geographic structure of Acts: while radiating steadily outwards, the story continually reverts back to Jerusalem. Paul encounters Jesus on the road to Damascus, and then returns to Jerusalem (Acts 9:26-29). Peter proclaims Jesus to Cornelius in Caesarea, and then returns to Jerusalem (Acts 11:2). A congregation arises in Antioch, and then sends aid to Jerusalem in a time of famine (Acts 11:27-30). Paul and Barnabas journey from Antioch to Asia Minor, and then return afterward to Jerusalem for the central event in the book of Acts—the Jerusalem council (Acts 15:2). From Jerusalem[,] Paul travels with Silas to Greece, and then returns again to Jerusalem (Acts 18:22). Paul takes his final journey as a free man, and then returns to Jerusalem, where he is arrested (Acts 21:17-23:11) (Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen, pp. 46-47).

Kinzer argues that the language used to describe Rome in Acts 1:8 also suggests Jerusalem was of central importance to Luke and Acts:

If indeed Acts 1:8 is a geographical outline of the book, then its language supports this conclusion, for it characterizes Rome as being located at “the ends of the earth.” Rome may be the capital of a gentile empire, holding political control over much of the earth, but for Luke and Acts[,] it was neither the center nor the true capital of the world. That honor belonged to Jerusalem alone (Ibid., p. 47).

The geographic outline also suggests that a return to Jerusalem in the eschatological future is also envisioned. As Kinzer observes:

In both the greater story of the advance of the apostolic message and the more circumscribed story of Paul, the heart beats in an alternating diastolic and systolic rhythm, with Jerusalem as the perpetual center to which all must eventually return […] Luke wants his readers to grasp the rhythmic geographical flow of his narrative, which streams out from Jerusalem always to return again, like waves that beat on the rocks and then return to their ocean home. He leaves his narrative in mid-flow, in anticipation of its future consummation that will occur at some point after the judgment of Jerusalem. Rome may be at the “ends of the earth” [(Acts 1:8)], but it is not the end of the story. The story must end where it began—in Jerusalem (Ibid., pp. 48, 50).

Neuhaus cites a passage from Ephesians about how Jesus has broken down the dividing wall of hostility to support his claim about a new order where borders no longer divide people from one another:

For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall of the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace (Eph 2:14-15).

The translation of this New Testament passage that Neuhaus provides is problematic in that it incorrectly suggests that Jesus abolished the Torah. As The King’s University Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies Andrew Remington Rillera has observed, if Jesus really abolished the Torah, “then[,] we would have to say that he also did away with the promises contained within the Mosaic covenant that are attached to the commandments (cf. 6:2)” (“Tertium Genus or Dyadic Unity? Investigating Sociopolitical Salvation in Ephesians,” p. 47)! Based on a close grammatical and syntactical analysis of the text, Rillera explains what he thinks the Ephesians passage means:

This does not imply that he rendered torah observance itself obsolete. Rather, Jesus “exhausted” (καταργέω, 2:15) the Mosaic covenant’s curse of hostility (torah observance is not the hostility). The Mosaic covenant prescribed that Israel breaking the commandments results in the curse of hostility: “death” (a sociopolitical state of affairs that implicates both Israel and the nations). And Jesus abolished that hostility by exhausting it in his flesh and brought what the covenants of promise names “life”—peace between Israel and the nations. Thus, the end of 2:14 through the beginning of 2:15 can be understood as follows: “he exhausted in his flesh the hostility prescribed within/occasioned by/determined by the Mosaic covenant of commandments by its decrees” (Ibid., p. 49).

The language of “one new humanity in place of the two” in the translation provided by Neuhaus is also problematic, especially in light of Neuhaus’ acknowledgment elsewhere of how a “‘theology of supersessionism’ […] has tended to ignore the striking continuity between the old and the new” (From Sinai to Rome, p. 71). As Rillera explains:

[T]he overtly supersessionist gloss “in place of” occurs nowhere in the text. I think the sense of the preposition εἰς is best rendered purposively: “for.” So the sense is: “in order that he would create the duo [τοὺς δύο–circumcision and foreskin] for [εἰς] one new [dyadic] humanity in himself.” That is, the δύο in 2:15 that used to be isolated and estranged have now been created into a new humanity that does not dissolve their twoness. What is “new” about this new humanity is precisely that it is a dyadic community (“Tertium Genus or Dyadic Unity? Investigating Sociopolitical Salvation in Ephesians,” p. 49).

Neuhaus’ reference to this biblical passage in critiquing Christian Zionism suggests that he thinks this text indicates that Jewish attachment to the land becomes attenuated following the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. However, the New Testament passage adduced by Neuhaus suggests that the text opposes the abandonment of Jewishness. As Rillera states:

The text centers not on dismantling Jewishness, but on reimagining the sociopolitical relationship between Israel and the nations, particularly by asserting that Jesus’ death has brought about a change in citizenship for gentiles qua gentile vis-à-vis Israel (Eph. 2:13, 19). The text says that those who were far (the nations) were brought near (2:13), not that those who were near (Jews) abandoned their necessarily hostility-ridden torah observance […] For baptized gentiles to colonize the circumcision by pressuring baptized Jews into abandoning Jewishness would be to paradoxically erect a new border of hostility by choosing to remain estranged and hostile to Jewish practices (Ibid., p. 42).

Given that Ephesians suggests that the Torah with its promises to the Jewish people, including the land, remains intact while indicating that Jewishness is not to be dismantled and given Vatican recognition of the State of Israel, it is unclear how the biblical passage Neuhaus adduces here undermines Christian Zionism.

Misrepresenting Palestinian Christians

Neuhaus suggests that “most Christians in the Holy Land see Christian Zionist ideology as incompatible with Christian faith” because of supposed Jewish exclusivity and domination of Palestinians in the land. However, he omits other factors that could contribute to such opposition, like the adoption of hard supersessionist beliefs that conflict with official Catholic teaching from the Second Vatican Council, Marcionite interpretations of Scripture that incorporate heretical elements into a theological framework effectively contradicting Orthodox Christian beliefs, and efforts to promote Christian self-interest in Arab society. He also inaccurately suggests all Palestinian Christians pursue peace, justice, and equality, neglecting to mention exceptions to this.

Animosity Toward Jews

Neuhaus has elsewhere described an animosity toward Jews he has observed among Arab Christians, many of whom have not viewed Jews as having been a marginalized minority that has experienced persecution:

A degree of animosity toward Jews is common among Arab Christians in Israel….Jews are not generally perceived as the victims of centuries of marginalization and even persecution but rather as the face of a problematic political reality, the State of Israel, with the added complexity of the continuing occupation of Palestinian lands (“Jewish-Christian Dialogue in Israel,” p. 77).

This animosity toward Jews and lack of understanding of Jewish historical marginalization and persecution that Neuhaus identifies could contribute to opposition among Arab Christians to Christian Zionists supportive of Jewish national self-determination in the Jewish ancestral homeland.

Supersessionist Beliefs Contradicting the Second Vatican Council

Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn, the former Academic Director of The Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Israel, has noted how Palestinian Christian religious officials have adopted supersessionist beliefs that conflict with the Second Vatican Council:

[T]hroughout my interactions with Palestinian Christian religious officials and my reading of their theologies, […] [t]he Palestinian Christian theologies that I encounter are invariably pre-Second Vatican Council forms. That is, they are hard supersessionisms that deny the validity of Judaism today, reject any connection between the covenanted Jews of the Bible and today’s Jews, and deny any de jure Jewish rights to The Land […] This is true for Palestinian liberation theology as well as non-liberation theologies (Catholic-Jewish Engagements on Israel, pp. 171-172).

Theologies of Palestinian Christian religious officials, thus, incorporate hard supersessionist beliefs that deny the legitimacy of contemporary Judaism, a connection between biblical Israel and modern Jews, and the de jure rights of Jews to the land of Israel.

Marcionite Interpretations of Scripture Conflicting with Orthodox Christian Belief

The prominent Catholic Princeton University legal scholar and political philosopher Robert P. George has observed that the Marcionite heresy has reemerged in our time as Christian allies of the Jewish people attempt to counter growing antisemitism.

The historian of religion Paul Charles Merkley has noted that Palestinian Christian theologians have adopted a Marcionite interpretation of Scripture that effectively unhitches the Old Testament from the New Testament:

Palestinian contextual theology displays its repudiation of the doctrine of God’s election of the Jews—the keystone of Christian theory of history since the mid-second century, when the Church formally denounced as heresy the doctrines of Marcion, which proposed the rejection of all Jewish Scripture (Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, pp. 76-77).

The Palestinian Lutheran clergyman Munther Banayout Isaac, who is not a fan of Israel, has offered a similar assessment of the penetration of Marcionite ideas among Arab Christians generally and Palestinian Christians specifically:

I believe Palestinian Christians have become Marcionites both in practice and belief. Whether it is a Palestinian liberation theology or a spiritualization of the OT, the church has fallen prey to misreading or rejecting parts of the OT. This phenomenon is not limited to Palestinian Christians but is also apparent within other Arab Christian communities. Dutch theologian Bernard Reitsma quotes Arab theologians who speak about a “practical type of Marcionitism in the churches in the Middle East,” and “a great Marcionite revival in [the] East today” (The Land Cries Out: Theology of the Land in the Israeli-Palestinian Context, pp. 218-219).

Among the Palestinian theologians Merkley identifies as having effectively adopted a Marcionite reading of Scripture is Dar al-Kalima University President Dr. Mitri Raheb, whose ahistorical observations, inaccurate statements, and anti-Israel bias have been documented by CAMERA.

Efforts to Promote Christian Self-Interest in Arab Society

Another reason Palestinian Christians might resist Christian Zionism could echo a reason from an earlier period described by Justice Gad Frumkin in his memoirs: namely, to secure Christian preeminence in Arab society:

They [Palestinian Christians] were well aware of their numerical inferiority and knew that if a Muslim-Jewish alliance were created, they would become an insignificant minority in the country. On the other hand, they also understood that despite their small numbers, they[,] in fact[,] were the most highly educated Arabs and were confident that in a Muslim-Christian alliance, they would have the upper hand. Their aspiration was clear: to forestall Muslim-Jewish concord, to establish a Christian-Muslim alliance, to head it, and[,] thus[,] to become spokesmen for the Arabs of Palestine to the British authorities, with whom they shared the kinship of Christianity (The Behavior of a Judge in Jerusalem, pp. 218-221).

As indicated earlier, Archbishop Pizzaballa has acknowledged the abuse faced by Christians from radical Islamists, which contributes to how Christians situate themselves in society more broadly. Thus, Palestinian Christians might resist Christian Zionism for reasons other than those identified by Neuhaus. Neuhaus claims: “Attempts to align local Christians with Christian Zionism uproot Christians from the Palestinian society of which they are an integral part.” However, the Christian population decline in Palestinian-controlled areas and the extremist abuse of Christians by Palestinian Islamists despite the fact that many Arab Christians oppose Christian Zionism suggest that factors other than Christian Zionism account for the uprooting of many Christians from Palestinian society.

Inaccurately Suggesting All Christian Palestinians Pursue Peace

Neuhaus inaccurately suggests that all Christian Palestinians seek peace: “Christian Palestinians […] are a leaven, preaching equality, justice and peace in the midst of conflict.” However, the Palestinian Christian Greek Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna has praised suicide bombers as “Arab heroes” and demonized the State of Israel while opposing Palestinian concessions to make peace with the Jewish State:

Israel is the Great Satan, and therefore[,] one is not allowed to negotiate with Israel or even consider a cease-fire. Any kind of peace with Israel means making concessions, and that defeats the Arab strategy to resist and oppose the Jewish state (Anti-Zionism in the “Electronic Church” of Palestinian Christianity, p. 29).

Moreover, Archbishop Hanna has expressed support for Palestinians imprisoned by the State of Israel for committing terrorist acts against Israelis:

There are more than 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in the prisons of the Occupation. They are the pick of Palestinian youth, of honorable strugglers, who served the Palestinian cause. They were sentenced to the prisons of the racist Occupation because they defended the cause of their people, because they resisted, because they struggled, because they waged Jihad, because they were not those who were silent, who kept apart, who stood with their arms crossed, in the face of what was committed against their Palestinian people. They are prisoners of freedom.

Merkley also describes Geries Khoury, a Palestinian Catholic, as “contemptuous of Christians who speak of the possibility of a peaceful reconciliation with the Jews” (Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, p. 80).

Conclusion

The above analysis has shown that in describing “flaws” he considers characteristic of Christian Zionism, Neuhaus misrepresents statements by the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in the Holy Land, Aramean Christian and Jewish identity, Christian Zionism, and Palestinian Christians. In addition, he omits that Magisterial documents feature New Testament texts about the land of Israel, Catholic affirmations and suggestions that a Jewish return to the land of Israel and the establishment of the State of Israel fulfill biblical prophecy and express God’s fidelity while excluding Catholic affirmations and suggestions that the land of Israel with respect to Jews is theologically significant for Catholics. Neuhaus also insufficiently attends to possible implications of Catholic documents’ recognition of Jewish religious attachment to the land of Israel and incorrectly intimates that Zionism is bound up with conquest and Jewish exclusivity. Father Neuhaus is entitled to his opinions, but in sharing his opinions, he should not distort history, engage in misrepresentations, and omit significant facts. In doing so, he has failed to provide readers with an accurate understanding of history and current Middle Eastern realities while effectively depriving readers of important information to consider in developing an informed Catholic perspective on Zionism.

Dr. David Orenstein is a Senior Research Analyst with CAMERA’s Partnership of Christians and Jews. He obtained a Ph.D. and M.A. in History of Judaism from Duke University; a joint graduate certificate in Middle East Studies from Duke University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and M.A.s in Jewish Professional Leadership as well as Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. He also majored in Jewish Studies and Psychology while minoring in Hebrew and Religious Studies at Indiana University Hutton Honors College, where he received The Leonore and Louis Piser Prize in Jewish Studies.

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