The “Chosen People” No More: Pope Pius XI clarifies Catholic Teaching on the Jews

“No Rupture with the Past” Update…

The “Chosen People” No More:
Pope Pius XI clarifies Catholic Teaching on the Jews

At a time when the Vatican II Sect celebrates 50 years of its anti-Catholic document Nostra Aetate, the decree on non-Christian religions issued by the Second Vatican Council in late October 1965 and promulgated with the full (supposed) authority of the false pope Paul VI, Novus Ordo Watch is pleased to make available a complete translation of the decree Cum Supremae of the Holy Office, issued in 1928 (link and quotes further below). This document is significant inasmuch as it reinforces the traditional and true pre-Vatican II Catholic teaching on the Jews, teaching that is gravely at odds with the judeophilic hysteria we have seen since the second half of the twentieth century, especially among “Popes” and other clerics, as well as laity, in the Novus Ordo Church.

Case in point: Mr. Jorge Bergoglio, the apostate Argentinian layman who currently runs around the Vatican calling himself “Pope Francis”. In a book co-authored in 2010 with the Jewish Talmudic rabbi Abraham Skorka, one of his bosom buddies, the then-“Cardinal” Bergoglio claimed:

There is a phrase from the Second Vatican Council that is essential: it says that God showed Himself to all men and rescues, first of all, the Chosen People. Since God is faithful to His promises, He did not reject them. The Church officially recognizes that the People of Israel continue to be the Chosen People. Nowhere does it say: “You lost the game, now it is our turn.” It is a recognition of the People of Israel.

(Jorge M. Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka, On Heaven and Earth [New York: Image, 2013], p. 188)

But is that so? While this is no doubt the understanding of Vatican II, it is clearly the opposite of the Catholic teaching from before the disastrous council.

This can be demonstrated by means of many quotes from Church teaching and the Sacred Liturgy and also by means of examples from Church history before the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958 — such as the interesting anecdote of Pope St. Pius X’s meeting with the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, in 1904 —, and it is succinctly summarized in the papally-approved decree already referred to, issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office on March 25, 1928:

…the Catholic Church has always been accustomed to pray for the Jewish people, who were the depository of divine promises up until the arrival of Jesus Christ, notwithstanding their subsequent blindness, or rather, because of this very blindness. Moved by that charity, the Apostolic See has protected the same people from unjust ill-treatment, and just as it censures all hatred and enmity among people, so it altogether condemns in the highest degree possible hatred against the people once chosen by God, viz., the hatred that now is what is usually meant in common parlance by the term known generally as “anti-Semitism.”

(Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, Decree Cum Supremae; underlining added.)

In short, the adherents of today’s Judaism (as opposed to the Judaism of the Old Covenant, before the arrival of our Blessed Lord) are:

• blind
• no longer the depository of the divine promises
• the people once chosen by God, but no more

This stands in clear and direct contrast to the fantasy spouted by Jorge Bergoglio in the book quoted above, the same Bergoglio who, now as “Pope”, has repeated his heretical view of Judaism in his “Apostolic Exhortation” Evangelii Gaudium, nn. 247ff. Although a number of our readers may not be Catholic and perhaps disagree with the pre-conciliar teaching on Judaism and think that Francis and Vatican II have laudably “corrected” it, this isn’t even the point so much — the point we wish to make first and foremost is that there is a contradiction between the pre-conciliar Catholicism and the post-conciliar faux “Catholicism”.

In February of 1926, a Catholic priestly organization was established that called itself the Amici Israel — “Friends of Israel” (note, this was 22 years before the establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine). According to Wikipedia, the purpose of this association was “to pray for the conversion of the Jews and to promote a favorable attitude towards them within the Roman Catholic Church. In the first year of its existence, this association was composed of 19 cardinals, 300 archbishops and about 3,000 priests” (source).

This association, although clearly working for the conversion of the Jews to Catholicism (something quite clearly rejected by the Vatican II Church, which admits it operates “no mission to the Jews”), did not last very long. When it petitioned the Vatican for the removal of the Latin word perfidis (“faithless”, sometimes falsely translated as “perfidious”) from the Good Friday Prayer for the conversion of the Jews, Pope Pius XI had both the Sacred Congregation of Rites and the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office look into the matter. Whereas the former responded favorably to the request, the latter refused it. The matter was brought then before the Pope, who approved the decision of the Holy Office to deny the petition, which resulted in the decree quoted above.

However, the decree did much more than simply deny the request to remove one word from the Good Friday prayer. In fact, it altogether suppressed and abolished the association known as the “Friends of Israel”, as it had “embarked on a plan of acting and communicating at variance with the sense of the Church, the mind of the holy Fathers of the Church, and the sacred liturgy.” The Amici Israel had become a threat to the integrity of Catholic doctrine on Judaism and the Church’s relationship with the people known today as Jews. Against this threat, Pope Pius XI moved swiftly and decisively.

The full text of the decree is available at the following link, translated into English:

• Pope Pius XI’s Decree Cum Supremae against the “Amici Israel” (1928)

Unlike in the Vatican II Sect, the head of the Holy Office in the Catholic Church is the Pope himself, which is only reasonable, considering that he has the charge from Jesus Christ, ex officio, to watch over the purity and integrity of the holy Catholic Faith. The secretary of the Holy Office when the above decree was published, was the saintly Cardinal Raphael Merry del Val, at whose initiative the abolition of the Amici Israel came to be. Merry del Val had been the Secretary of State under Pope Saint Pius X, and was one of the latter’s closest friends and most esteemed advisors and collaborators.

It is entirely clear that if the Church moved against the Amici Israel in such a forceful and resolute manner on doctrinal grounds, it could never have approved the dangerous and subversive, nay heretical bunk published by the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar Magisterium. As Bp. Donald Sanborn has explained, the “Catholicism” of and since Vatican II is substantially different from the Catholicism before. Still don’t believe it? Just go to your local Novus Ordo parish and see if they let you distribute the 1928 decree of Pius XI to the people — you wouldn’t get permission even in the Vatican to do such a thing!

So, a mere two years after their founding, the Amici Israel were abolished by Pope Pius XI. This is the same Pope, by the way, who nine years later wrote the important encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, in which he condemned the Nazi ideology on the eve of World War II. The Pope composed the encyclical in German, so that it would not first have to be translated; in fact, His Holiness commanded it to be distributed throughout Germany immediately and read from every pulpit at Sunday Mass on March 21, 1937.

Hatred against people of the Jewish race — the true meaning of “Antisemitism” — is indeed never permissible and a grave sin against charity. However, this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the Jews have rejected our Lord Jesus Christ and therefore forsaken their claim to being the Chosen People of God. They, too, like everyone else who is not a Catholic, must convert to the true Faith and the Ark of Salvation, which is the Catholic Church, if they wish to attain Eternal Bliss and escape the flames of hell.

As Fr. Richard F. Clarke, S.J., succinctly put it: “We ought to remember that Catholics are, far more than the Jews were, the chosen people of God…” (Clarke, “The Ministry of Jesus: Short Meditations on the Public Life of Our Lord”, in Beautiful Pearls of Catholic Truth [Cincinnati, OH: Henry Sphar & Co., 1897], p. 542). Yes, “far more than the Jews were,” because while the Jews were the Chosen People of the Promise, Catholics are the Chosen People of the Fulfillment, as the New Covenant has replaced the Old, as the reality has replaced the foreshadowing. The Supreme Pontiff Pius XI himself confirmed this when he referred to himself as “the leader of the chosen people” (Encyclical Ubi Arcano, n. 51). Since the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, the members of His Church are the true Chosen People, and hence the Church seeks the conversion of all who are not yet in her fold.

Does the Vatican II Sect believe and preach this? Does Francis? Fat chance! In fact, Francis does all he can to tell the Jews, in words and in actions, how their religion is pleasing to God and they need not convert to Catholicism:

• Francis, the Muslims, and the Jews
• Francis hides Cross before Jewish Rabbis
• Meet Kosher Frank
• Francis jokes about the Crucifixion of Christ

Catholics pray for the conversion of all who are not yet in her fold, and this includes also the Jews — not only in the Good Friday liturgy, but also in the beautiful Act of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus: “Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of the race, once Thy chosen people: of old they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Savior; may it now descend upon them a laver of redemption and of life” (source).

Preaching Jesus Christ and His Holy Catholic Church to the Jews is the greatest act of charity one can render them. Woe to those who have, for five decades now, denied it to them.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons
License: public domain