The Church and Judaism

A Theological People

The Church studies the Jewish problem in the light of faith, which teaches us that God created Israel for Himself, so that it might prepare the way for the Messiah and make Him known to the entire world.

The greatness of the Jewish people is founded on the promise God made to Abraham to make him the forefather of a “race” (Gen. 12) from which the Messiah would be born. Abraham believed, and his descendants, to be blessed by God, must believe in the Messianic promise (fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ).

It is not enough, therefore, to be descendants of Abraham merely according to the flesh; it is necessary to have his faith in Jesus Christ (whether as the one to come or as the one who has come). The “true Israelites” – according to the Church – are those who imitate the faith of the Patriarch, believing in Christ, while those who are merely fleshly descendants of Abraham without sharing his faith are not “true Israelites.”

“But just as then,” writes St. Thomas, “he [Ishmael] who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the spirit [Isaac]; so also now [the false Israel or Talmudic Synagogue persecutes the true Israel or Church of Christ]. From the beginning of the early Church, the Jews persecuted Christians, as is evident from the Acts of the Apostles, and they would do so even now, if they could”.¹

The vocation of the true spiritual Israel is irrevocable (Rom. 11:9) because it is spiritually united to Jesus, the Saviour of the world. However, the false carnal Israel, which today still obstinately refuses Jesus, “has been cut off from the fruitful olive tree because of its unbelief” (Rom. 11:20). Thus, God’s calling remains; but on the part of man, it can be rejected and therefore lost, as St. Augustine teaches: “God does not abandon first, unless He is abandoned” (De natura et gratia, XXVI, 29).

The root of Jewish blindness lies in mistaking the race for the Saviour: in other words, the race takes precedence over Christ. Judaism, with this racist conception of history, is the enemy of all peoples (1 Thess. 2:15); an enemy of the pagans, whom it seeks to dominate as “talking beasts,” but even more an enemy of Christians, whom it desires to exterminate as the continuation of Jesus in history.

“When Romanity became Christianity,” writes Monsignor Umberto Benigni, “the Synagogue’s hatred against it doubled for religious reasons, since the Talmudic spirit hates Christianity more than it does paganism. The latter represents, for the Synagogue, a flock to tame and plunder; the former is the assembly of Jesus Christ’s followers, who inherit the special hatred of the Sanhedrin against the Crucified”.²

St. Augustine, in his commentary on Psalm 58, writes that the Talmudic Jews “exist everywhere and are Jews everywhere; they have not ceased to be what they were.” The Jews will always be a nation within the nation that hosts them. When a state grants full rights to a foreigner, it does so in exchange for the renunciation of ties with their former homeland; the Jews, however, refuse to renounce such ties and demand full common rights within the society that hosts them. Therefore, a confessional state grants to the Israelites only exceptional or particular rights, as the Jews, by wanting to remain such, exclude themselves from the common rights of the host state (like the gypsies). Consequently, the state is compelled to adopt special, restrictive, or exceptional legislation to govern them.

The Church and nations that were once Christian have regulated the civil and individual lives of Jews with special laws that are theological in nature, aimed at protecting Christians from the contagion of Talmudic anti-Christianity, and not at all racial in the biological or materialistic sense.

The Ecclesiastical Magisterium

The Church has never hidden the opposition between the Synagogue and Jesus.

1. Innocent IV (1244), Impia judeorum perfidia:

   The Jews, ungrateful towards Jesus, despising the Mosaic Law and the Prophets, follow certain traditions or cabals of their ancestors called the Talmud, which diverges greatly from the Bible and is filled with blasphemies against God, Christ, and the Virgin Mary.

2. John XXII (1320), Dudum felicis: expresses the same concept.

3. Paul IV (1555), Cum nimis absurdum:

   The Jews, as long as they persist in their errors, must recognize that they are servants because of them, while Christians have been made free by Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

4. Pius IV (1566), Dudum felicis: expresses the same concept.

5. Pius V (1569), Hæbreorum:

   “The Jewish people, once chosen by God, later abandoned [by Him] because of their unbelief, deserved to be rejected, for they impiously rejected their Redeemer and put Him to a shameful death. Their impiety has reached such a level that, for our salvation, it is necessary to repel the power of such malice, which through sorcery, incantations, magic, and spells leads many unsuspecting and simple people into the deceits of Satan.

6. Gregory XIII (1581), Antiqua judeorum:

   The Jews, having become worse than their fathers, not at all softened, renouncing nothing of their past deicide, even now rage against Our Lord Jesus Christ in their synagogues and, extremely hostile to Christians, commit horrific crimes against the religion of Christ.

7. Clement VIII (1593), Coeca et obturata: expresses the same concepts.

8. Benedict XIV (1751), A quo primum:

   All trade in useful goods is managed by the Jews; they own inns, estates, villages, and goods, through which, having become masters, they not only make Christians work tirelessly, exercising cruel and inhuman domination over them. Moreover, after amassing a great sum of money, through usury they drain the wealth and patrimony of Christians.

9. Pius IX (1874-1878), Discourses of the Supreme Pontiff Pius IX Delivered in the Vatican:
   He refers to the Jews as “dogs,” having become such from the “children” they once were, “because of their hardness and unbelief.” The Pontiff continues by calling them “oxen,” who “do not know God,” and adds, “a hard and disloyal people, as can be seen even in their descendants,” who “made constant promises to God and never kept them.” Furthermore, the pope establishes a parallel between the Church of his time and that of its origins, asserting: “The storms that assail it are the same suffered in its beginnings; then they were stirred by pagans, Gnostics, and Jews, and the Jews are still present today.” He then uses the expression “Synagogue of Satan” to identify them more clearly.

10. Pius XI (1937), Mit brennender Sorge:
    “The Word had to take flesh from a people who would then nail Him to the cross.” The same Pius XI, in the famous “hidden encyclical” (Humani Generis Unitas), which was not promulgated due to the Pope’s death on February 10, 1939, wrote:

    The true nature of the social separation of the Jews from the rest of humanity has a religious and not racial character. The Jewish question is not a matter of race, nor of nation, but of religion, and after the coming of Christ, it is a question of Christianity… The Jewish people put their Saviour to death […]. We observe in this people a constant hostility towards Christianity. This results in an unceasing tension between Jews and Christians that has never abated. The desire to see the conversion of this people does not blind the Church to the dangers to which contact with the Jews might expose souls. As long as the unbelief of the Jewish people persists, the Church must guard against the dangers that this unbelief could create for the faith and morals of the faithful.

The Special Legislation of the Church and Christendom

This magisterial teaching became law to protect Christians from such “perfidy” (in the theological sense: per fidem, a false, deviated faith). The Church legislated on various matters; here is a summary of the main ones:

Even though they were compelled to live in ghettos to prevent them from harming Christendom, the Jews still enjoyed a right of residence (albeit limited). It is important to clarify that the ghetto was a work of the Church’s mercy. The Church, not wanting the Christian population, oppressed by the Jews, to resort to violence and pogroms against the Israelites, established the ghetto for the benefit of both groups. To move outside the ghetto, the Jew had to wear a yellow badge to be recognizable—not to be despised or harassed but to ensure they could not harm Christians.

Furthermore, the Church prohibited them from engaging in commerce while leaving the path of agriculture open. They were barred from the teaching profession (to prevent the transmission of false science to students and the potential harm to their faith). Similarly, Jewish doctors were forbidden from treating Christian patients due to the danger of poisoning, as well as from working as pharmacists for Christians for the same reason, including the preparation of magical potions. Likewise, Jews were excluded from serving as magistrates because, according to the Talmud, a Jewish magistrate is obligated to favour a fellow Jew (even if guilty) over a Christian (even if innocent). They were also barred from pursuing a military career, which is based on patriotism, as the stateless Jew did not consider himself French, Italian, or German but always a Jew.

Christians cannot hate the Jews, and the Church has condemned anti-Semitism as racial hatred (Pius XI, March 25, 1928), while acknowledging theological anti-Judaism as legitimate defence. St. Thomas teaches: “No hostility, but defensive measures, supervised freedom for the Jews, and protection for Christians”.³

True charity toward the Jews, wrote Monsignor Pier Carlo Landucci, consists in honestly enlightening them about their current state of separation from God. Moreover, against their active anti-Christianity, legitimate defence may be permissible, devoid of any malevolent hatred.⁴

Leo XIII, Pius XI, and La Civiltà Cattolica

From 1878 to 1903, La Civiltà Cattolica, under the directive of Leo XIII, studied the origins and causes of the evils that had led to the “breach of Porta Pia.” The Jesuit publication, drawing on the traditional teaching of Catholic theology regarding the individual and social dangers of Judaism and the need for special legislation to contain it, noted that after the abolition of discriminatory laws—initiated with the French Revolution—Judaism’s dangers had become active and had turned into a living threat for all of Europe. The equalization of rights had led to Jewish preponderance, which in turn had provoked anti-Semitic reactions.

The publication, therefore, proposed the restoration of special legislation to prevent Jews from actively harming Christians, to save them from Talmudic totalitarianism, and at the same time to protect Jews from materialistic and biologically racist anti-Semitic pogroms.

The solution to the Jewish problem, according to Leo XIII and La Civiltà Cattolica, lay either in the conversion of the false post-biblical Israel to Christianity or in the “friendly and non-hostile segregation of Jews” in ghettos. For the Pope, exceptional laws did not signify persecution but rather legitimate defence of Christians while simultaneously protecting Jews from exaggerated and violent anti-Semitism.⁵

Catholicism and “Race”

Around 1880, terminology was still imprecise, and Catholic sources used terms such as people (multitude), lineage (root, trunk, family), nation (from “to be born”), stock (imprint, character, temper), and race (root, origin, principle, kind, or nature) interchangeably.

The Fathers Oreglia, Rondina, and Ballerini of La Civiltà Cattolica employed these terms in reference to Judaism to describe the mixture of Talmud and Kabbalah that produces an anti-Christian Jewish national culture. That is, the family, together with Jewish culture, creates a Jewish national bond that asserts the Israelite race to be superior and destined to dominate the world. Judaism, according to Catholicism, is not described as a racial or biological phenomenon but as a philosophy that generates a hyper-racist national culture; therefore, Judaism is primarily racism.

By 1938, during the pontificate of Pius XI, in response to the National Socialist racial laws, La Civiltà Cattolica, under Fathers Messineo and Barbera, clarified the terminology: Judaism is a racist religion, but it is preferable to speak of the Jewish nation rather than race, to distinguish it from the biological and materialistic racism of National Socialism. For Father Messineo, one belongs to the Jewish nation if they have a Jewish family, are connected to the Israelite national community, and are tied to its racist-Talmudic culture.

The Jewish nation is a concept that includes Talmudic culture and civilization. Nations of Christian culture and civilization may legitimately defend themselves against Talmudic-Jewish racism, which harms their cultural, civil, and religious unity, both externally and internally. This racism, embodied in a Jewish-Talmudic nation within a Christian nation, not only refuses to integrate but seeks to impose its dominance on all others, corrupting their civilization, culture, and faith. For this reason, Judaism should be subjected to discrimination through special laws that isolate it—without resorting to violence—to prevent it from corroding and corrupting Christian nations, while also protecting it from violent reactions by non-Jews.

Pius XI himself addressed this issue on July 21, 1938, during an audience with 150 ecclesiastical assistants of Catholic Action, stating:

Catholic means universal, not racist, hyper-nationalist, or separatist. There is something particularly detestable in this spirit of separatism and exaggerated nationalism, which, precisely because it is not Christian or religious, ends up being not even human.⁶

On July 28, the Pope addressed the issue again during a speech to the students of the Propaganda Fide College:

With universality lies the essence of the Catholic Church; but along with this universality, properly understood and in their rightful place, the ideas of race, lineage, nation, and nationality fit well together […]. There is no need to be overly exacting: as we say genus, we may say race, and we must affirm that humanity is, above all, one single and great genus, one great family […]. In this way, the human race is one single, universal, Catholic race. Yet it cannot be denied that within this universal race, there is room for special races […]. This is what true, proper, and sound racism means for the Church. All alike: all the object of the same maternal affection, all called […] to be, in their own country, within the particular nationalities and races of each, the propagators of this idea that is so great and magnificently maternal, human even before it is Christian. ⁷

In summary, the Church condemns materialistic racism while acknowledging the Jewish danger, which requires civil inequality, restrictions, and precautions to safeguard national and religious culture as well as the Christian social order.

It should be noted that Pius XI reinterpreted the concept of race by spiritualizing it. It is not merely material—“blood and soil,” biology—but rather genus (kind), gens (people), stirpis (lineage), or nation, as Father Messineo of La Civiltà Cattolica had already suggested.

However, the concept of “a single race” was eventually abandoned in favour of that of a nation. Whenever the term race was used, it had to be specified that it was not intended in a materialistic or biological sense but rather spiritually, as a combination of civilization, culture, and religion that together form a nation.