A new Inquisition: Examining the Church’s teachings on Jewish converts to Catholicism

Editor’s note: Visit ChristTheKing.info to learn more about the Jewish Question from the author of this article.

This essay is the fruit of a recent online exchange with Gideon Lazar, a well-known Jewish convert to Catholicism. The central point of our discussion can be summarized in a single question: can one be both a Jew and a Catholic?

We must first define what it means to be a Jew, since this is an equivocal word. Under what sense of Jew are we talking about, after all?

A Jew could be someone who practices Rabbinic Judaism. A Jew could also be someone who simply has Jewish religious parents, but doesn’t practice Judaism. The parents could be biological descendants of Abraham, also known as ethnic Jews, or they could be biological descendants of converts to Judaism. The term could refer to the Judeans who lived in historical Judea in the Holy Land or those of the diaspora who call themselves “Jews.”

If someone is born a Jew and converts to Catholicism, then, is he a Jew or a Catholic? The answer is simple: he is Catholic, having been baptized into the Catholic Church. It has always been Catholic teaching that there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ Jesus, and when one converts the old man dies and the new is born. ¹ This is precisely why the sacrament of baptism is referred to as being “born again.”

That being said, this is not a denial that the convert was born Jewish and has Jewish ancestry. No, rather he has Jewish ancestry. But since he is born again in Christ, he is no longer Jewish religiously, and no longer shares the same religious goal as unbelieving Jews. Indeed, ask an unbelieving Jew if his goal is to come to Jesus Christ and he will answer “no.”

With respect to the Jewish Question, and given that ancestry is immutable, the Church has always fixated on the religious dimension, not the racial one. When the Church criticizes “the Jews,” the definition the Church is using is in regards to their spiritual disposition, their perfidy — faithlessnes — when it comes to their rightful Messiah, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The Church is concerned with this definition, not the ancestral one.

From the point of view of the supernatural order, does the Church care about a convert’s ancestry? No. She only cares what they believe and practice in pursuit of eternal happiness guided by the authority of the Church. And this brings us to an important distinction. What is the difference between a simple, unbelieving Jew and a heretical “converso”?

St. Thomas on the difference between unbelievers and heretics

St. Thomas said that some unbelievers “have never received the faith, such as the heathens and the Jews,” and these “are by no means to be compelled to the faith.” Others, however, “have accepted the faith, and professed it, such as heretics and all apostates,” and these may be held to what they promised. ² In other words, a Jew is not a heretic because they never had the Faith in the first place.

Moreover, because unbelieving Jews are not heretics, by definition, they cannot be forced to believe what they choose not to. The Church has always taught, per Sicut Judaeis, that Jews are not to be forced to the font of baptism. ³

However, should a Jew be baptized, he is enrolled in the Church — whether he came to the font freely or, as sometimes happened historically, was pressured into it. The Fourth Council of Toledo in 633 AD addressed this directly: it forbade forcing any more Jews to baptism going forward, while still holding those already baptized to the faith they had received. The coercion was condemned; the sacrament, once validly received, was not treated as reversed. ⁴ And then, and only then, if a baptized convert showed obstinate error, he could be censured by the Church for his sins.

Recalling the mixed garment

It is the perennial Church teaching that one must “take off the clothes of Judaism,” so to speak, before putting on the clothes of Christianity? One cannot have mixed garments. He must purge out the old leaven, as St. Paul says, that he may be a new, unleavened lump in Christ. ⁵ He cannot serve two masters. A house divided against itself cannot stand. You are either with Christ, or you are against Him. The teaching of both regional and general councils proves this principle.

To begin, the Second Council of Nicæa, Canon 8, in 787 AD, warns that Hebrews ought not to be received unless they have been converted in sincerity of heart:

Since certain, erring in the superstitions of the Hebrews, have thought to mock at Christ our God, and feigning to be converted to the religion of Christ do deny him, and in private and secretly keep the Sabbath and observe other Jewish customs, we decree that such persons be not received to communion, nor to prayers, nor into the Church; but let them be openly Hebrews according to their religion, and let them not bring their children to baptism, nor purchase or possess a slave. But if any of them, out of a sincere heart and in faith, is converted and makes profession with his whole heart, setting at naught their customs and observances, and so that others may be convinced and converted, such an one is to be received and baptized, and his children likewise; and let them be taught to take care to hold aloof from the ordinances of the Hebrews. But if they will not do this, let them in no way be received. ⁶

Likewise, the Fourth Lateran Council, Canon 70, in 1215 AD, explicitly forbids that Jewish converts may retain their old rites:

Certain people who have come voluntarily to the waters of sacred baptism, as we learnt, do not wholly cast off the old person in order to put on the new more perfectly. For, in keeping remnants of their former rite, they upset the decorum of the christian religion by such a mixing. Since it is written, cursed is he who enters the land by two paths, and a garment that is woven from linen and wool together should not be put on, we therefore decree that such people shall be wholly prevented by the prelates of churches from observing their old rite, so that those who freely offered themselves to the christian religion may be kept to its observance by a salutary and necessary coercion. For it is a lesser evil not to know the Lord’s way than to go back on it after having known it. ⁷

This is the first part of the argument that needs to be made, namely that if Jews come into the Faith, then they cannot continue their former religious practices. Such things have long been forbidden. It was even required for Jews to denounce their former religious allegiance as evidenced from Visigothic Spain. Referencing Proverbs 26:11, where Jews had to promise to never return “to the vomit of Judaism” after converting, the profession reads as follows:

In the name of this Creed, which I truly believe and hold with all my heart, I promise that I will never return to the vomit of Jewish superstition. Never again will I fulfill any of the offices of Jewish ceremonies to which I was addicted, nor ever more hold them dear. I altogether deny and reject the errors of the Jewish religion, casting forth whatever conflicts with the Christian Faith, and affirming that my belief in the Holy Trinity is strong enough to make me live the truly Christian life, shun all intercourse with other Jews and have the circle of my friends only among honest Christians. With them or apart from them I must always eat Christian food, and as a genuinely devout Christian go often and reverently to Church. I promise also to maintain and embrace with due love and reverence the observance of all the Lord’s days or feasts for martyrs as declared by the piety of the Church, and upon those days to consort always with sincere Christians, as it behoves a pious and sincere Christian to do. ⁸

Moreover, in the same Visigothic Spain, the Fourth Council of Toledo, in 633 AD, addressed converts returning to Jewish rites in Canon 59:

Many Jews took on the Christian faith for a certain time and now give themselves, by slandering Christ, not only up to the Jewish rites, but even go so far as to carry out the repellent act of circumcision. In reference to these Jews and upon proposal of the highly devout and highly religious Lord, our King Sisenand, this Holy Council decrees that the said converts, after they have been purified through the Papal authority, are again conducted into the care of the Christian dogma; but those, who do not better themselves from their own decision, should be restrained by clerical punishment. And relating to the circumcised, it is ordered that, if it is a matter of their own sons, then they shall be separated from their parents; but if it is a matter of slaves, then they shall be granted freedom on account of the injury done to their body. ⁹

Therefore, it is clear that a Jewish convert must remove the old clothes of Rabbinic Judaism to put on the new clothes of Catholicism because what the Church demands prevents him from imbibing once more the errors of post-Christian Judaism. This “relapse,” predictably, often comes from converted Jews putting themselves in the company of perfidious (i.e. unbelieving) Jews. The old saying goes: you are the company you keep. Scripture itself condemns such lack of prudence.

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The Fourth Council of Toledo declares the following on this topic:

Canon 60: It is ordered that the sons and daughters of Jews, so that in the future they may not fall into the error of their fathers, be separated from their parents and entrusted to a monastery or to Christian men and women, who fear God, so that in their education they learn the cult of the faith and, better instructed, make progress in customs and beliefs.

Canon 62: Concerning the baptised Jews, who have dealings with the false believing Jews. If association with the bad often in fact destroys the good, with how much more probability will the former be destroyed by the latter, who incline to blasphemy. Therefore, from now on, the Jews converted to Christianity must carry on no association with those who still adhere to the old Rite, so that they do not become perverted by them. Whoever in consequence does not avoid this association, will be punished as follows: if he is a baptised Jew, he shall be handed over to the Christians, and if he is not baptised, he shall be publicly whipped. ¹⁰

In other words, if a Jew is truly sincere in his conversion, he may not backslide into his old Jewish ways either through habit, custom, or allowing himself to be influenced by unbelieving associates of his nation. And thus, this is why the Church has advised converted Jews to separate themselves from unbelieving Jews.

Visigothic Spain

Let us dive into the history of Spain specifically, since this will give us context on why the Catholic discipline took the shape it did.

In 589, King Reccared converted the Visigoths from Arianism to Catholicism. This was not to the liking of the Jews, who had a decent relationship with the Arians before the conversion. The problems were that Jews had Christians as slaves, among other things, which the Catholic Church would not tolerate. King Sisebut, in the early seventh century, going against Church teaching, forcibly tried to convert Jews to Catholicism. Several Councils of Toledo were convened by saints, such as St. Leander of Seville and his brother, St. Isidore of Seville, which aimed to both condemn forced baptism and violence against Jews, while simultaneously condemning Jewish slave holding and influence. Unfortunately, this wasn’t very effective, and in 711 the Muslim Moors invaded Visigothic Spain and conquered it, with many Catholics believing that it was the Jews (who had a very strained relationship with the Catholics) opening the gates of Toledo and letting the Muslim invaders in. ¹¹

Spanish converso crisis of the 15th century

Moving onto the 15th century, there were many conversos in Spain at this time, produced both by the violence of 1391 and by the evangelization efforts of St. Vincent Ferrer and other like-minded preachers. ¹² Many of these conversos were, in fact, sincere. At the same time, the great Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabell finally conquered the Muslim Moors and reunited Spain into one Catholic monarchy, but they were faced with a problem: What to do with the Muslims and Jews that were there? Their solution? Conversion. They essentially gave the Jews (and Muslims) a chance to convert in order to stay in Spain. They did not want a repeat of the 8th century again given that they were Catholic Spaniards they still remembered that they had been betrayed by the Jews to the Muslims. Unfortunately, here is where there was a problem: you cannot force people to convert, and if the conversos stayed in around their Jewish brethren and neighbors, then they would most likely lapse into Judaism. There were many conversos, both those who were sincere and those who converted for sociopolitical gain. Unfortunately, some would not rid themselves of their Jewish identity (or of bad Jewish influence) and thus committed grievous errors, up to and including falling into heresy. To combat this problem, an inquisition was needed.

Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition

Pope Sixtus IV authorized the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. ¹³ Torquemada did not head it from the start; he was commissioned as one of several inquisitors in 1482, and was raised to Grand Inquisitor in 1483. ¹⁴ However, when considering the Spanish Inquisition, most people do not realize they were not going after unbelieving Jews (or Muslims) who did not convert. The Inquisition only had authority over baptized, professed Catholics. It did not matter what your ancestry was. If you were a professed Catholic, and you committed grievous errors against the Faith, you could be subject to an Inquisitorial hearing.

A common objection is that many people died due to the Inquisiton. Far from an astronomically high figure, it was more likely that thousands of persons over the tribunal’s entire three-and-a-half-century history were put to death. Moreover, most persons who faced the Inquisition did not die at all. Many were acquitted or only given light penalties in hopes of their repentance. It was only those who were judged obstinate or relapsed who were turned over to the Spanish crown, which put them to death. The Inquisition never had the power to execute anyone. ¹⁵

Why we needed an Inquisition and need another today

Why the need for an Inquisition? It goes back to the beginning of this essay. Jewish converts, particularly Jewish conversos, have historically had a problem with not being willing to part with their old Jewish identity. This is not a matter of race or nationality, it is one of allegiance. Are you all in with Jesus Christ? Or do you continue to have allegiance to a group and practices that deny Jesus Christ?

Religious Jewish practices, by definition, really and truly deny Christ, who is the fulfillment of all the religious signs and ceremonies of the Old Testament. All Jewish practices (not things like bagels and matzo ball soup, of course) are built on the foundation that Christ did not come. St. Thomas Aquinas says that Jewish practices are both “dead” and “deadly” after the promulgation of the Gospel. ¹⁶ Moreover, here is what the Council of Florence’s Cantate Domino definitively says:

It 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 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 practice 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. ¹⁷

Continuing, the same Council teaches:

It firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the catholic church, not only pagans but also JEWS or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the catholic church before the end of their lives. ¹⁸

This brings us to the final point, namely we need an Inquisition now. To be clear, this is not a matter of judging Jewish blood, or turning 2026 into 1484. Rather, that Bishops will look at public error, differentiate ignorance from obstinacy, demand a retraction, protect the flock of Christ, and use real canonical penalties when a baptized Catholic will not stop teaching or acting against the Faith.

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Why do we need an Inquisition now? Because philosemitic influencers and groups, as well as Jewish converts who are refusing to abandon an errant understanding of Jewish identity, are upholding, in varying degrees, the following grave errors:

1. Rejecting that unbelieving Jews killed Christ (Matthew 27:22-23, Mark 15:12-13, Luke 23:20-21, John 19:6, Acts 2:23, Acts 7:52, 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16)
2. Rejecting unbelieving Jews are cursed (Matthew 27:25, Galatians 3:10, Innocent III, Ut esset Cain) ¹⁹
3. Rejecting that unbelieving Jews are enemies of Catholics (Romans 11:28, 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16)
4. Rejecting that the sack of Jerusalem and Diaspora in 70 AD was a fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy (Matthew 24:15-25, Mark 13:14-23, Luke 21:20-24)
5. Believing that the “Wailing Wall” is a wall of the Second Temple, instead of a retaining wall, in spite of Christ saying “not one stone will be left upon another” (contrary to Matthew 24:1-2, Mark 13:1-2, Luke 21:5-9)
6. Believing that Christian-Zionism is coherent, and that the Jews have a right to the Holy Land (contrary to Deuteronomy 28:63-64, St. Augustine’s Doctrine of the Witness People) ²⁰
7. Believing that one can be both a Jew (that practices their old rites, customs, feasts, etc., contrary to Sts. Augustine, Jerome and Aquinas, and the Council of Florence) and a Christian at the same time (i.e. Judeo-Christian syncretism, contrary to the Councils of Second Nicaea and Fourth Lateran)
8. Denying that the Church has superseded the Old Covenant (contrary to the Council of Florence and Pope Pius XII) and replaced the Jewish people as the true Israel (Romans 11). ²¹ The Neo-Judaizer then claims that any one holding this position is a descendant of the gnostic heretic Marcion of Sinope
9. Assenting to the heresy of Dual Covenant Theology and believing that Jews can be saved outside of the Church (contrary to Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus)

It matters not whether they are intentionally committing these errors from malice, simple (inculpable) ignorance, if they are committing errors based on their attachment to their old Jewish identity that they cannot let go of, or committing errors out of an excessive love for their Jewish family and friends, which are unfortunately influencing them in a bad way.

Our Church needs to be purified of Judaizing errors, and the only way this can be done is if we have a strong hierarchy in the Church that comes down on those that spread this poison.

1. Gal. 3:27-28 (Douay-Rheims). ↩︎
2. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 10, a. 8. ↩︎
3. Gregory X, Sicut Judaeis (1272), reissue of the papal constitution of protection; another English text. ↩︎
4. Fourth Council of Toledo (633), canon 57. Latin text in Gonzalo Martínez Díez and Félix Rodríguez, eds., La Colección Canónica Hispana, vol. 5 (Madrid: CSIC, 1992). On the canon, see Capucine Nemo-Pekelman, “Divine Justice and Freedom: On Canon 57 of the Fourth Council of Toledo (633),” Visigothic Symposia 1 (2016-17): 150-68. English translation of the Jewish canons also in Amnon Linder, The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages (Detroit: Wayne State University Press / Israel Academy, 1997). ↩︎
5. 1 Cor. 5:7 (Douay-Rheims). ↩︎
6. Second Council of Nicaea (787), canon 8, trans. Henry R. Percival, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 14. ↩︎
7. Fourth Lateran Council (1215), canon 70, in Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. ↩︎
8. Lex Visigothorum 12.3.14 (Visigothic profession under Erwig). English translations of the professions. See also Prov. 26:11; cf. 2 Pet. 2:22. ↩︎
9. Fourth Council of Toledo (633), canon 59. Latin text in Martínez Díez and Rodríguez, Colección Canónica Hispana, vol. 5. English translation in Linder, Jews in the Legal Sources. ↩︎
10. Fourth Council of Toledo (633), canons 60 and 62. Editions as in n. 9. ↩︎
11. The accusation that Jews opened the gates in 711 is a later Christian tradition (e.g., Lucas of Tuy), not a contemporary source. See Larry J. Simon, “Jews, Visigoths, and the Muslim Conquest of Spain,” UCLA Historical Journal 4 (1983). ↩︎
12. On 1391: Henry Charles Lea, “Ferrand Martinez and the Massacres of 1391,” American Historical Review 1, no. 2 (1896). On Ferrer: Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “St. Vincent Ferrer.” ↩︎
13. Sixtus IV, Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus, 1 November 1478 (Spanish text). ↩︎
14. Michael Ott, “Tomás de Torquemada,” in Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14 (1912). ↩︎
15. Jaime Contreras and Gustav Henningsen, “Forty-Four Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540-1700),” in The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe, ed. Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 100-129 (826 executions in person in that later sample). Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 60 (probably no more than about two thousand executions through about 1530). On Sixtus IV’s 1482 rebuke of Aragonese abuses, see Gregis Dominici, 18 April 1482. ↩︎
16. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 103, a. 4. ↩︎
17. Council of Florence, Cantate Domino, 4 February 1442, in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. ↩︎
18. Ibid. ↩︎
19. Innocent III, letter to the Count of Nevers, 1208, beginning Ut esset Cain vagus et profugus super terram (short title Ut esset Cain); distinct from Etsi Iudaeos (1205). English text at Christ the King; another translation. ↩︎
20. Augustine, City of God 18.46 (the Jews as a witnessing people in dispersion). ↩︎
21. Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, 29 June 1943, on the Old Law fulfilled in the Church. ↩︎