The conciliar rapprochement with the Synagogue continues. Two weeks ago, Mark Edward Brennan, the semi-retired Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, attended a shabbat service at Temple Shalom in Wheeling.
Towards the end of the ceremony on Friday, June 5, Rabbi Joshua Lief welcomed Brennan into the sanctuary and proceeded to bless him in a Jewish rite.
The diocesan newspaper proudly displayed the moment on their official Facebook page, noting “Bishop Mark received a special blessing during Shabbat Shalom service.” It also said that he has a “beautiful friendship built on respect and love of God’s creation” with Lief.
Mario Derksen first reported on the event and highlighted the heterodoxy on display.
Undeterred by the reality that post-Christian Judaism and its rites are a blasphemous rejection of Jesus Christ, Brennan has now joined Bishop Fulton Sheen, Benedict XVI, and then-Cardinal Jorge Bergolio in committing objective, public sin to please the Synagogue — to say nothing of the scandal and furtherance of indifferentism he has caused.
The historical attitude of the Catholic Church surrounding this kind of event is contained in apostolic canon 64: “If any clergyman or layman shall enter into a synagogue of Jews or heretics to pray, let the former be deposed and let the latter be excommunicated.”
While it is true this canon no longer has force, modern Catholic theologians upheld the same opposition to active participation in Jewish rites. In his 1908 work of moral theology, Father Thomas Slater wrote:
The Dispatch
“The ceremonies and practices of the Jewish religion signified that the Messiah was to come, and so now, after the coming of Our Lord, they could not be employed without superstition. Inasmuch as falsehood in religion is a grave injury to God, this species of superstition is mortally sinful.” (emphasis added) 1
Dominican theologians, Fathers McHugh and Callan, said as much in their own 1958 treatise:
“It is unlawful for Catholics in any way to assist actively at or take part in the worship of non-Catholics (Canon 1258). Such assistance is intrinsically and gravely evil; for (a) if the worship is non-Catholic in its form (e.g., Mohammedan ablutions, the Jewish paschal meal, revivalistic “hitting the trail,” the right hand of fellowship, etc.), it expresses a belief in the false creed symbolized.” (emphasis added) 2
The very fact that this story does not cause outrage within the hierarchy of the conciliar church is a scandal in itself. The Jewish rites, as Saint Thomas and the Council of Florence maintained, are not merely dead, but deadly to observe. 3
Leo himself met with representatives of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation at the Vatican Monday, telling them that their “philanthropy” reflects a “clear recognition of human dignity and fraternity, resonating with the Church’s own commitment to integral human development.”
Ultimately, Brennan reception of Lief’s “blessing” is the latest sign of the growing rapprochement between the Synagogue and the conciliar authorities.
