God

GAZA “EXPLAINED”

GAZA “EXPLAINED” on October 26, 2024

“Vengeance is Mine,”says God, “I will repay.

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

BECOMING a CATHOLIC

BECOMING a CATHOLIC on May 25, 2024

If any soul eternity understands, 

Then let a Rosary ever be in its hands.

A reader of these “Comments” who is obviously not Catholic asks how to become one. It may be a question that interests more than just this reader. May Almighty God bless all such readers, because it is surely a grace of His that is prompting them to take a serious interest in joining the one true Church that is His – the true Roman Catholic Church. Today one has to add the adjective “true” because of course the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) fabricated a whole false Church designed to lead souls to eternal Hell instead of eternal Heaven. This can only complicate today the question of how to join the true Church, but if a soul is honestly searching for it, God has countless ways of reaching that soul with all help needed, despite any roadblocks thrown in His way by misguided or delinquent men. Let such a soul trust that God wants to bring him or her to Heaven, and He needs only the on-going cooperation of that soul to succeed. 

Being a Catholic is about getting to Heaven, which is the uninterrupted supernatural bliss, intrinsically far above and beyond all our natural powers of mind and will as human beings. The bliss consists in the supernatural vision of God as He is in Himself and not just as we can glimpse Him from His natural creatures which surround us in our brief life on this earth. The gateway to this bliss is God’s supernatural gift of Faith, which reaches far above our natural reason. Whether or not I receive from God this gift of His, basic to eternal salvation, depends entirely on Him and not on me, but on the other hand there is an old saying to the effect that to whoever does all that it lies within his nature to do, God does not deny His (supernatural) grace. This is a kind of common sense, but beware, Faith remains, essentially, God’s free gift. What I can do, once I realise how indispensable for salvation is the gift of Faith, is bend all my powers to ask Him in prayer to give it to me. (It can be highly recommended to pray the Rosary even if someone does not yet believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary is and was the Mother of God. She will step in . . . ) 

What I can also do is to apply all my reasoning faculties to examining three great propositions which I can accept by mere (but upright!) human reasoning. If I do so, they can definitely help God to give me the gift of Faith, but they cannot, just by themselves, pull down God’s gift, which remains His free gift. As the half-believing sinner said in the Gospel, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.” He may have been no theologian, but he was talking Catholic sense (Mark IX, 24). These three propositions are, 1) God exists, (2 Jesus Christ was and is God, and 3) The (true) Roman Catholic Church was instituted by Jesus Christ. 

1) God exists – the most obvious argument from His creatures (as from effect to necessary cause) is the argument from intelligent design. The intelligence is visible everywhere in His creation, but it cannot come from the creatures which are themselves unintelligent, like animal, vegetable, mineral. Just one example – no spider ever steps on the sticky parts of its own web! Only the spider’s victims do that. 

2) Jesus Christ is and was God – during His life on earth, He worked numberless miracles which God alone can work, because the Author of Nature alone can interrupt at will the normal course of nature. The raising of Lazarus (see Jn. XI) was a stupendous miracle wrought directly in front of a largely hostile crowd. Relics of Our Lord revealing to modern science traces of His DNA show evidence of His human mother but none of any human father. Indeed He was born of Mary, but conceived by the Holy Ghost. 

3) Jesus Christ instituted the (true) Roman Catholic Church and no other. Mankind’s history shows all other “Christian” denominations to have started centuries after He lived on earth (1–33 AD). As for all non-Christian religions, they all deny that He was God, Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. All such religions cannot be true, and if like Vatican II they pretend that they can still be a way to Heaven, they lie again, because there can be no place for lies in the true God’s true Heaven. 

If after working over these three preliminary truths, a soul still wishes to become Catholic, then it goes to see a Catholic priest to ask to be baptised, which is the normal way of entering the Church. 

Kyrie eleison