Rites of the Old CovenantThrough a series of unfortunate events mostly having to do with Bob Sungenis' loony vendetta against a faithful brother in Christ named Roy Schoeman, I've been made aware of yet another cadre of self-appointed lay bishops out there who have somehow come under the spell of believing that they have the power to define who is and is not a heretic and excommunicate the fallen forthwith.
The itch to define dogma on behalf of the Church is a strong one, and there seems to be something about Jews, Judaism and even Jewish converts that constitutes a sort of trigger mechanism for not a few Rad Trads. Lately, particularly since the abortive publication of the quickly-retracted "Reflections on Covenant and Mission" document, not a few on the Right feel a terrible sense of fear about all things Jewish, because they lack confidence in the Church's Magisterium and so feel a strange compulsion to "defend the Faith" from alleged "Judaizing tendencies". The Reflections document did not *create* this odd paranoia about Jews among the Trad wing. It's an unfortunately common feature of Tradism (though, as guys like David Palm, Michael Forrest, Ben Douglass, and Jacob Michael show, it is no *necessary* part of Tradism).
The Reflections document (which carries abolutely no doctrinal weight) sparked such a panic among the Jew-obsessed on the Right because it tiptoed right up to saying, essentially, the Christians are saved by Jesus and Jews are saved by Judaism and not Jesus. It didn't *quite* say that, but it came so close that many Trads panicked. The worst of the panickers was Sungenis himself, who became convinced that God had raised him up for this very hour and then set about rooting out the Jewish Menace by means of plagiarism from Nazi sources, fraudulent quotes, and unbelievably specious arguments. Unfortunately, he managed to select for his special and focused hostility one Roy Schoeman and, in the course of blasting, slandering, calumnying and generally raging at him, has almost never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. For the gigantic irony is that Schoeman, a Jewish convert to the faith, is every bit as critical of the Reflections document as Sungenis. The difference is, Schoeman is capable of rational thought and has done rather a lot of it with respect to the relationship of Jews and Christians and the evangelization of the Jewish people.
Among the many screwy indictments that Sungenis brings against Schoeman is the claim that he wants to reinstitute Levitical sacrifices and rites in the public liturgical life of the Church. This is, in fact, just the opposite of what Schoeman thinks. Apparently, Schoeman has, privately, participated in instructional Seders in which the point is to show how the rites fo the old covenant anticipate the fulfilment in the New. Sungenis (and not a few other Rad Trads swiftly damn him for this, citing their favorite text from the Council of Florence:
[The Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes and teaches that the legal prescriptions of the Old Testament or the Mosaic law, which are divided into ceremonies, holy sacrifices and sacraments, because they were instituted to signify something in the future, although they were adequate for the divine cult of that age, once our Lord Jesus Christ who was signified by them had come, came to an end and the sacraments of the new Testament had their beginning. Whoever, after the Passion, places his hope in the legal prescriptions and submits himself to them as necessary for salvation and as if faith in Christ without them could not save, sins mortally. It does not deny that from Christ's passion until the promulgation of the Gospel they could have been retained, provided they were in no way believed to be necessary for salvation. But it asserts that after the promulgation of the gospel they cannot be observed without loss of eternal salvation. Therefore it denounces all who after that time observe circumcision, the [Jewish] sabbath and other legal prescriptions as strangers to the faith of Christ and unable to share in eternal salvation, unless they recoil at some time from these errors. Therefore it strictly orders all who glory in the name of Christian, not to practise circumcision either before or after baptism, since whether or not they place their hope in it, it cannot possibly be observed without loss of eternal salvation.
The problem with this is that this is not all the Church has to say on the subject. But for those who primarily view the Gospel as a reducing valve designed to keep as many people from salvation as possible, that a tough sell. They don't want the whole story.
Nonetheless, there is more to the story. A careful reading of Paul reveals that he did not teach that Jewish converts had to abandon their Jewish culture. Rather, he insisted a) that the rites of the law of Moses were not salvific and b) Jewish converts had no right to insist that Gentile converts must observe their rites in order to obtain salvation. He specifically refused to demand that Jews reject their rites completely, just as he refused to demand that Gentiles adopt them. In
Romans 14 (please do read it), he makes the basic principle clear: whatever you do, do it unto the Lord. And indeed, in deference to tender Jewish conscience, he even had one of his Gentile diciples circumcised so as not to give unnecessary offense to Jews. He is the original practitioner of the principle, "In doubtful things, liberty. In essential things, unity. In all things, charity." This is why, in the first century Church, there is a "church of the circumcision" in Jerusalem as well as a church of the uncircumcised. Jewish converts are free to practice their customs, just so long as they do not imagine such customs are salvific and just so long as they do not try to impose them on Gentile converts with the threat that "unless you are circumcised, you cannot be saved."
As time goes on, however, the Church becomes overwhelmingly Gentile, and increasingly the assumption becomes, therefore, that a choice to observe the Mosaic rites *is* a choice to attempt salvation by the rites of the Old Covenant, much as the assumption was, for a long time, that if wanted to be cremated, you were making a statement denying the Resurrection. It is this assumption that Florence and Cantate Domino reflect.
But that's not all.** Here is that damned modernist Pope Benedict XIV (that *fourteen* not *sixteen*) explicitly teaching (Ex Quo, 74) that it is lawful to observe certain Old Testament ceremonial rites, so long as they are observed not as obligations of the old Law, but solely as a matter of custom or personal decision:
But others remarked wisely that some, surely, of the ceremonial rites of the old Law could be observed under the new Law if only they were not done as obligations of the old Law, which was abrogated, but as a custom, or lawful tradition, or as a new precept issued by one enjoying the recognized and competent authority to make laws and to enforce them, as Vasquez observes (vol. 3, in the 3rd part of the Summa, disp. 210, quest. 80, art. 7).
Pope Benedict XIV even repudiates, quite precisely, Sungenis' charge that Schoeman is judaizing with his celebration of "teaching Seders". He favorably quotes Leo Allatius as follows (Ibid., 67):
If a man should perform acts for a different end and purpose (even with the intention of worship and as religious ceremonies), not in the spirit of that Law nor on the basis of it, but either from personal decision, from human custom, or on the instruction of the Church, he would not sin, nor could he be said to judaize. So when a man does something in the Church which resembles the ceremonies of the old Law, he must not always be said to judaize.
There are, of course, pastoral issues to take into account. A few years back, my parish did one of these teaching Seders. It was a valuable way to experience the connection of the Old Testament and the New. However, the local synagogue got wind of it and pointed out that we would probably not much appreciate it if they celebrated a faux Mass in order to try to educate Jews on what Catholics believe. Our pastors saw their point and so the teaching Seder came to an end. But it came to an end, not because we were bringing down the curses of Cantate Domino on our heads, but because, like Paul, we thought it better to avoid giving offense unnecessarily.
All this matters because
not a few Catholics are wont to speak with a sort of contempt about the rites of the old covenant. Sungenis's vicious and intemperate attacks on Schoeman for, among other things, using Jewish rites to teach the gospel's connection with the Old Testament are only the most extreme form of a misguided attitude found among many Catholics. Statements like "Wild horses couldn't drag me to the reenactment of a dead rite that Christ himself ended" or "The Judaizing heresy strikes again" reveal a false understanding of the issue. The Church teaches that Christians (whether Jewish or Christian) are not bound by the ceremonial rites of the law of Moses. It teaches that such rites are not salvific. It teaches that Jewish Christians have no right to demand that Gentile Christians observe them. But it does not teach that Jewish Christians have no right to privately observe them as mere non-salvific customs. It does not teach that a Gentile cannot particupate in such rites as a means of understanding their Christian faith more deeply. On the contrary, Pope Benedict XIV says that's just fine.
The pastoral effect of contemptuous words directed at the rites of the old law is quite simple, quite unjust and quite un-Catholic. Many Jews believe that Jesus did indeed come to abolish the law, not fulfil it, despite his words to the exact contrary. Speaking of Jewish customs with contempt and talking as though any fondness in the Jewish soul for their ancestral rites is contemptible is an excellent way for Catholics to confirm this misperception.
The Church has an absolute genius for hospitality to every culture in the world. The Catholic communion can play host to a huge array of indigenous expressions of faith in Christ. There is no more direct set of Christocentric images native to a culture than the images of Jewish ritual. If Jewish Christians want to use the first fruits of their culture in worship of Jesus, there is not a thing in the world to stop them. The Church of the circumcision did it in the first century and Paul had not trouble with it. Gentile Christians should welcome it again.
PS: This is not a call for the establishment of "Jewish rite" in the Church. Like Schoeman, I think this is a bad idea. I'm simply addressing the question of whether Jewish converts have the right, privately, to follow their own particular customs in honor of Christ.
**I owe this fascinating bit of research to Ben Douglass.
