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For special foes I need My friends to pray.”

In 1936 an Argentinian Catholic theologian and thinker of international repute, Fr. Julio Meinvielle (1905–1973), wrote a short book entitled The Mystery of the Jews in History, centring on their essentially religious, and not just political, origin and nature and destiny. They are, as Meinvielle proves, a theological people, incomprehensible without their theological dimension, from which their politics for good or evil merely follow. No other race has ever been formed by God to be the cradle of the Messiah, the one and only Redeemer of all mankind, nor will He in the future ever again need such a cradle for another birth. Here is what makes the Jews unique in all human history, whether they like it or not. The height and depth of their divine calling, when they refuse it, is what can make them psychopathic, with consequences such as we have been observing in Gaza.

In April of 1997 two good priests published a long summary of Meinvielle’s book in the Angelus magazine, accessible at salvationisfromthejews.com/m1.html What follows is the merest overview of that summary –

Catholic theology teaches that the Jewish people are the object of a very special vocation from God. Only in the light of theology can one explain the Jew. The Jewish people have a theological lineage, chosen, consecrated, and sanctified in order to serve God as the human cradle for His divine Incarnation. However, the Jewish people, instead of acknowledging that their glory was to be the cradle of the Christ, pretended that it was the glory of the Christ to have taken his human descent from the flesh of Abraham. And the Pharisees, veritable incarnation of this idolatry, declared proudly as a reason for not accepting Christ: ” We have Abraham for our father.” As for the awaited human Messiah, they wanted and expected of him to be not the Saviour of mankind but merely a military ruler, who would assure and perpetuate the greatness of Israel over all mankind.

And so in the year 33 AD, the Jewish people, assembled before the praetorium of Pilate and urged on by their priests, demanded the death of the Promised One. Then these Jews, in the name of their Law, and to serve the material interests of their nation and race, crucified the One who had been promised them as their blessing, but was replacing their Synagogue with His Church. The Jewish people, once a mystery of goodness, now changed into a mystery of iniquity, while to others were granted the blessings of the Promise. These others now make up the Church of Jesus Christ – converted Jews at first, and later the Gentile converts.

Thus there is a theological opposition – that is to say, one allowed for by God – which exists throughout Christian history between the Synagogue and the Church. The Jewish people, whose destiny was to bring Christ to us, found Christ a stumbling block. A part of them believed in Him and built on Him to form the roots and the trunk of that Olive Tree which is the Catholic Church. The other part fell, denying Him and invoking their carnal pride of race and nation. That part of Israel was rejected by God and called upon itself the blood of Christ as a curse. It is this part that forms what we know today as “Judaism,” which is the heir and the continuation of the rabbis who rejected Christ.

Therefore ever since Christ was lifted up on Mount Calvary, the world has been torn between Jewish leadership and Christian salvation. Not to follow Christ is, in effect, to follow Judaism. Hence if the Gentiles do not want to be part of the Olive Tree of the Catholic Church, as freely offered to them, they will necessarily belong to the sterile vine of Judaism. There is no third road ahead. It is either Christ, or Judaism.

How long must this terrible enmity between Jews and Christians last? Until God in His mercy brings about the conversion and reconciliation of the Jewish people. St. Paul teaches us that the day will come when Israel will recognize Him whom it has denied: “And so all Israel should be saved, as it is written: There shall come out of Sion, he that shall deliver, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob” (Rom. XI, 25–26).

Kyrie eleison