One of the post-conciliar religion’s most dramatic contradictions with the Catholic faith is its heterodox and blasphemous treatment of the Church’s relationship with the Jews.
Blasphemous, because it implies that Christ is not the unique and only way to salvation and that the Jews can be saved through their old (fulfilled and therefore redundant) covenant with God.
No wonder that George Weigel’s recent attack on the Society of St. Pius X quickly zoned in on their fidelity to what the Catholic faith has always taught on the subject.
Distorting the magisterium
With stunning audacity, Weigel dared to begin his hit piece by asserting that SSPX leadership has declared, “wittingly or not, that it does not share the faith of the Catholic Church.”
Without missing a beat, Weigel immediately focuses on the SSPX statement that “Our Lord Jesus Christ rendered the Old Covenant definitively null and void.” Absurdly, he claims this would have “shocked St. Paul.”
The SSPX’s comment is, of course, not something they dreamt up. Rather, it is centuries old dogma. As the Council of Florence taught, the legal observances of the Old Testament, “after the promulgation of the Gospel, cannot be observed without loss of eternal salvation.”
The traditional theological position has always been that the Mosaic covenant, as a salvific economy, was fulfilled and superseded by Christ. One would have expected that when dealing with a so-called Catholic, this would be a no-brainer, but Weigel is a modernist court jester for the post-conciliar kosher religion.
The Epistle to the Hebrews also unambiguously teaches that Christ is the mediator of a new covenant and that “in speaking of a new covenant, he treats the first as obsolete.” Our Lord Himself established the New Covenant in His Blood and the Fathers and Doctors taught overwhelmingly that the ceremonial law passed away with the coming of Christ.
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that the Old Law as to its ceremonial precepts was “dead” after the Passion of Christ. Thus, the SSPX’s claim is not a rejection of Scripture but a doubling down on a long-established Catholic interpretation of Scripture.
Misreading Scripture
Weigel then appeals to Romans 9:4 and Romans 11:28-29 to argue that because “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” the Old Covenant remains in force. One wonders if Weigel just “assumes” that everyone in his audience is theologically illiterate?
St. Paul teaches both that God’s promises are irrevocable and that their fulfilment is found in Christ. The same Apostle who wrote Romans 11 also wrote that “there is neither Jew nor Greek … for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
St. Paul does not say that the Mosaic Covenant remains a salvific path independent of Christ. Nor does he say that Jews may be saved through continued adherence to the Old Law. On the contrary, Romans 9-11 is dominated by Paul’s anguish that many of his fellow Jews have not accepted their Messiah. “I wished myself to be anathema from Christ for my brethren” (Rom. 9:3). Such sorrow would be incomprehensible if the Mosaic Covenant remained sufficient for salvation after the coming of Christ.
The Apostle’s point is not that the Old Covenant remains in force as a parallel means of salvation. Rather, his point is that God remained faithful to the promises He made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by fulfilling them in Christ. The irrevocable “gifts and call” refer to God’s fidelity to His saving plan (Jesus Christ, the one and only Messiah) and His intention ultimately to bring Israel to the recognition of her Messiah (again, Jesus Christ).
St. Augustine understood Romans 11 as foretelling a future conversion of the Jewish people before the end of time, while St. John Chrysostom interpreted the passage as a prophecy of Israel’s eventual return to faith in Christ. Neither suggested that the Mosaic Covenant remained salvific apart from the New Covenant.
The great Jesuit commentator Fr. Cornelius a Lapide (1567—1637) interpreted the passage in the same way. The Jews remain beloved because of the patriarchs, but God’s purpose is their eventual conversion to Christ. Far from supporting contemporary theories of a continuing salvific covenant apart from Christ, Romans 11 was traditionally understood as one of Scripture’s strongest testimonies to the future conversion of Israel.
But Weigel must pander to the real architects of the Novus Ordo religion.
Jews must accept Jesus Christ
The Dispatch
Even the broader context of Romans excludes Weigel’s interpretation. Earlier in the epistle, St. Paul insists that “there is no distinction” between Jew and Gentile because the same Lord is Lord of all (Rom. 10:12). He explicitly teaches that salvation comes through faith in Christ: “If thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9). He then asks, “How shall they believe him of whom they have not heard?” (Rom. 10:14). The entire chapter presupposes the necessity of preaching Christ to the Jews.
Catholicism has always maintained two truths simultaneously. First, God remains faithful to His promises to Israel and has not abandoned the Jewish people. Second, those promises find their fulfilment only in Jesus Christ and His Church. If Romans 11 taught what Weigel suggests, centuries of Catholic prayer and missionary effort directed toward the conversion of Israel would have rested upon a profound misunderstanding of St. Paul.
The irony is that the interpretation advanced by the SSPX is much closer to the consensus of preconciliar Catholic theology than the interpretation advanced by Weigel.
Moreover, the traditional liturgy that was changed by spineless cowards under Judeo-Masonic pressure, prayed for the conversion of the Jews.
No salvation outside the Church
Weigel then attacks the SSPX affirmation that salvation requires incorporation into the Catholic Church. He caricatures this teaching by suggesting that “SSPX hell is thus quite well populated.” The bad news for Weigel is that hell will be populated by those he is misleading with this dishonest drivel he is pushing. Is it Weigel who hates Jews? After all, it is the very definition of uncharitableness to lie to someone about the requirements for salvation.
The SSPX declaration merely restates what the Church has always taught. The Fourth Lateran Council declared that there is “one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which absolutely no one is saved.” Pope Boniface VIII affirmed in Unam Sanctam that “it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” The Council of Florence stated that pagans, Jews, heretics, and schismatics cannot attain eternal life unless they are joined to the Church before death. For Weigel, who has clearly been fully brainwashed by the post-conciliar soteriology, this is unthinkable.
Blessed Pius IX did not teach religious indifferentism, although Weigel essentially implies he did. In Quanto Conficiamur Moerore, he simultaneously affirmed that those invincibly ignorant of the true religion may receive grace while insisting that it is a “most well-known Catholic dogma that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church.”
Weigel’s whole argument assumes that Vatican II’s formulations must be interpreted as the definitive measure of Catholic orthodoxy. This is akin to calling “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” or the “Standard Works of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” as the yardstick for Catholic orthodoxy.
Using the same old playbook
Weigel’s textbook attempt to associate the SSPX with antisemitism is infuriating and highly insulting. He writes that “Archbishop Lefebvre was a supporter of Marshal Henri Petain and the collaborationist Vichy regime in France during World War II: a regime that rejected modernity root and branch. Elements of Vichy eventually careened into a lethal antisemitism that grew in part from the rejection of Romans 9-11 that the SSPX Declaration also rejects.”
This is a liberal and Jewish inspired rhetorical maneuver which, instead of demonstrating error from Scripture, Tradition, or the Magisterium, invokes twentieth-century political guilt by association. (The author of this article is not necessarily denouncing the Vichy regime, merely pointing out that Weigel wants to find the SSPX guilty by their association to what Weigel hates: “a regime that rejected modernity root and branch”).
Catholic teaching concerning Judaism was never based on race, but on religious truth claims. St. Peter preached to the Jews that salvation is found in Christ and St. Paul sought their conversion. None of this constituted racial animus.
The irony is that Weigel accuses the SSPX of denying Catholic doctrine while they are only citing the unchanging and unchangeable Catholic theology from before the advent of the false postconciliar religion.
When Weigel says that Lefebvre and the SSPX (and by implication its faithful) rejects “the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the Church, salvation, religious freedom, Church-state relations, and the Church’s relationship to other religions,” he is finally, and to use his word, unwittingly, correct!
Why? Because the Second Vatican Council was the birth of a new religion with new doctrines that are contra the Catholic Church and Catholicism.
Weigel concludes with the statement that “The people who find spiritual nourishment in SSPX Mass centers deserve better than that.”
No, George Weigel, Catholics deserve better than the heretical, heterodox, rebellious, and God-offending post-conciliar religion you are trying to pass off as Catholicism.
