How Catholics See Jews

Jesus, His mother Mary, all twelve apostles, and three of the four evangelists were Jewish. They considered Christianity a completion of Judaism, holding responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion only the particular Jews who demanded it.

Jesus upheld many pharisaic doctrines and traditions. He upheld priority of the Shma. Mk 12:29 His Sermon on the Mount Mt 6:1-18 highlighted resurrection of the body, almsgiving, prayer to our Father in heaven, and fasting. Jesus ate with Pharisees. Lk 7:36, 14:1 He condemned particular Pharisees for corruption, and may have demanded more from them because their teachings were closer to the truth than, say, the Sadducees, Acts 23:8 and knew that the pharisaic teachings would survive as Rabbinic Judaism and later as Orthodox Judaism. Paul had openly proclaimed that he was a Pharisee. Acts 23:6, 26:5

God had destroyed the Temple to show the Jews that Jesus was the Final Sacrifice, the new Temple. Entering Jerusalem, He had lamented, Lk 13:34-35 “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken.” Later, He added, Lk 21:22 “For these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written.” Many early Christians, however, thought God had destroyed the Temple to punish the Jews for crucifying Jesus.

Many Jews have heard of the phrase “perfidious Jews” in the old Good Friday liturgy, but without understanding whole picture. Before the Holocaust, the Good Friday liturgy was always prayed in Latin, which distinguished between fideles, believers, perfideles, half-believers, and infideles, non-believers. Most Jews would agree that from a Catholic perspective they are half-believers, believers in the Mosaic Covenant but not the Christian Covenant. However, because the English word perfidious had taken on a connotation the Church never intended, Pope John XXIII in 1958 changed it in the missals to “unfaithful Jews,” meaning unfaithful to the Christian Covenant, the Catholic reference standard. Pope John XXIII later completely suppressed the term perfideles, avoiding characterization of the Jews and instead simply praying for their conversion. Pope Paul VI, following Nostra aetate’s mandate to present Judaism in a positive light, rewrote the prayer to pray simply that the Jewish people remain faithful to the Old Covenant. That does not change the Church’s divinely ordained mission to Mt 28:19 “make disciples of all nations,” but rather sets up a relationship in which that mission might be fulfilled in a manner respecting the dignity of all concerned.

Vatican II, a worldwide renewal of the Catholic faith that took place primarily in the 1960s, put great emphasis on the original idea of Jews as the people blessed by God with the Abrahamic mission of teaching monotheism to the world. God charged the Jews with carrying the torch of faith across the centuries of warring nomadic tribes that came and went. God concluded the original covenant with the Jews. God trusted the Jews with the Hebrew Scriptures.

Jews today are highly regarded by the Catholic Church, and Jews who have entered the Catholic faith are considered special, with deep roots in the Hebrew Scriptures from which came the foundations of the Catholic Church. Judaism – in monotheism, the commandments, the covenant with Israel, and the prophecies – is an integral part of the Catholic faith.