By Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor<\/p>\n
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When I saw the headline\u2014Catholics Cannot be Anti-Semites\u2014I immediately wrote to Bishop Barron and asked him to inform the ADL that E. Michael Jones cannot be an anti-Semite because he is a Catholic. I have been maintaining that position for years, and it was heartening to have a famous bishop take my side in this argument.<\/strong><\/p>\n When I read his article, however, I found that his headline had an entirely different meaning. According to his excellency, \u201cChristianity collapses in on itself without constant reference to its Jewish antecedents.\u201d Were the people of the Old Testament Jews? The term arrives relatively late in Scripture, and when it appears in the Gospel of St. John, it is pejorative.<\/p>\n If we are talking about Hebrews, on the other hand, there is no continuity between the people who followed Moses out of Egypt and the Jews who are now engaged in genocide in Gaza. Jesus Christ made that clear when he told the Jews of his day that they were not the children of Moses because they refused to accept Him as their Messiah. He then went on to say that their father was Satan. Does this mean that Jesus Christ was an anti-Semite? Bishop Barron denounced anyone who used the term \u201cSynagogue of Satan\u201d as anti-Semitic, even though the terms is taken from the Book of Revelations.<\/p>\n Instead of mentioning any of these relevant passages, Barron, citing St. Paul, tells us that Jesus Christ is: \u201cthe yes to all the promises made to Israel,\u201d which is certainly true, but only if the Jews accept baptism, something Bishop Barron failed to bring up in his dialogue with Ben Shapiro. Barron then tells us that \u201cPope Pius XI declared, \u201cWe are all spiritually Semites,\u201d and then as if finishing his syllogism, Barron concludes, \u201cHence, if you don\u2019t get the Jews, you won\u2019t get Jesus. It\u2019s as simple and important as that.\u201d<\/p>\n Barron then brings up the red herring of Marcionism, which is not an issue unless you\u2019re talking to Marek Glogoczowski or Adam Green.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the very earliest doctrinal disputes within Christianity was the battle against Marcion and his disciples in the second century.\u201d<\/p>\n In the speech to the disciples who did not recognize him on the way to Emmaus, Barron tells us that Jesus: \u201cpresents himself as the fulfillment of salvation history, the culminating point of the story of the Jews, the full expression of Torah, temple, and prophecy. And it was in the course of that speech that the hearts of the disciples commenced to burn within them.\u201d<\/p>\n And we agree with what he said there, but then he has to impose his tendentious interpretation of his exercise in proof texting on the unsuspecting read by claiming \u201cIt was that deeply Jewish speech that led them to conversion.\u201d<\/p>\n What does Barron mean by \u201cdeeply Jewish\u201d? Why is that speech \u201cdeeply Jewish\u201d? Why is it any more or less Jewish than any other speech in Scripture? Has he read the Gospel of St. John, who uses the term Jew 71 times and in every instance but one as a pejorative term?<\/p>\n Barron muddies the water further by citing the eminent theologian William F. Buckley. Buckley was the commissar who policed the perimeter of the concentration camp known as \u201cconservatism.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen William F. Buckley was endeavoring to launch his journal National Review in the 1950s, he was eager to recruit the best and brightest among the conservative thinkers in the Anglosphere. But he was scrupulous in eliminating from consideration any who exhibited anti-Semitic attitudes, for he knew that they would undermine his project, both morally and intellectually.\u201d<\/p>\n The early Buckley brought up Jewish participation in the Bolshevik Revolution with prominent Jews like David Suskind on Firing Line, but by 1990 he had learned his lesson from Jewish \u201cconservative\u201d handlers like Norman Podhoretz and obligingly stabbed Pat Buchanan and Joe Sobran in a monumental piece of incoherent bombast entitled \u201cIn Search of Anti-Semitism.\u201d<\/p>\n With Buckley as his mentor, Bishop Barron now assumes the role of commissar for the Catholic Church, whose job is to expel \u201canti-Semites\u201d from the Church \u201cbecause they are, by definition, enemies of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n The phrase \u201cenemies of Christ\u201d brought another scriptural passage to mind, which Barron\u2019s exercise in proof texting conveniently omitted. In I Thess 2, St. Paul refers to the Jews as \u201cthe people who put the Lord Jesus to death, and the prophets too. And now they have been persecuting us, and acting a way that cannot please God and makes them the enemies of the whole human race\u201d (I Thess 2: 14-16).<\/p>\n Is Bishop Barron saying that St. Paul is an enemy of Christ because he said that the Jews were \u201cenemies of the whole human race\u201d? Is he saying that St. John is an anti-Semite because in his Gospel Jesus tells the Jews \u201cYour father is Satan\u201d?<\/p>\n Is that clear? If so, let\u2019s proceed to something that Barron said that is equally clear in his attempt to clear up the ambiguity surrounding the word \u201cblessing\u201d in Fiducia Supplicans in which he claims that \u201cblessing as approval is excluded from consideration\u201d in that document. Homosexuals requesting this blessing \u201cdo not claim a legitimization of their own status\u201d by \u201crecognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help.\u201d Barron goes on to cite another passage from the same document which proclaims that \u201cthere is no intention to legitimize anything\u201d because \u201cthe Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex.\u201d<\/p>\n If you think this is confusing, I agree. If you think I can make this simpler so that you can take a position that will scratch your itching ears, I disagree. My goal in life is to make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.<\/p>\n This, however, is not the message that the \u201citching ears\u201d crowd wants to hear.<\/p>\n Rev. Brian Harrison, to his credit, backed down from his initial reaction:<\/p>\n \u201cAfter an initial, shell-shocked reaction to \u2018FC\u2019 [sic FS] that was totally negative (and which some of you read in my email of several days ago headed, \u2018He\u2019s done the unthinkable\u2019), I subsequently gave some calmer and more careful attention to the document, and now think that it does teach with adequate (though not crystal) clarity what the Prefect says it teaches. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s heretical. Nor, pace Cardinal Mueller, do I find it self-contradictory. (I think the over-meticulous logical niceties His Eminence depends on to arrive at that conclusion tend to lose sight of the wood for the trees \u2013 the \u2018wood\u2019 being that a text should be taken as meaning what its author clearly intends it to mean, even if he may have overlooked a bit of imprecision in his wording.) But how pastorally prudent the issuance of this Declaration is under present historical and cultural circumstances is another question altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n Both James Martin, SJ and Life Site News are determined to turn FS into a first step in the direction of gay marriage, if not gay marriage itself, in a clear contradiction of the equally clear statements to the contrary in the text of the document.<\/p>\n At this point, the itching ears crowd explodes into rage and vituperation in the com box. The itching ears crowd wants to side with either James Martin or Michael Voris without the slightest indication that in framing the issue in those terms, every Catholic is confronted with Hobson\u2019s Choice.<\/p>\n