Francis the Judaizer…
HERESY!
Jorge Bergoglio in 2010:
“Jews Still God’s Chosen People”
The attacks on Catholicism perpetrated by Jorge Mario Bergoglio, former “Archbishop” of Buenos Aires and now “Pope” Francis in the Vatican II Sect, apparently know no bounds. In 2010, then-“Cardinal” Bergoglio co-authored a book with Jewish rabbi Abraham Skorka (as we reported here), entitled On Heaven and Earth. It has since been translated from the original Spanish and published in the United States and many other parts of the world.
In Chapter 24 of this book, we find Mr. Bergoglio uttering the following incredibly bold heresy, which he bases, of course, on the Second Vatican Council (1962-65):
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. That, I think, is the most courageous thing from Vatican II on the subject.
(Jorge M. Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka, On Heaven and Earth [New York: Image, 2013], p. 188)
Wow!
Obviously, Francis cannot produce a shred of evidence from the Catholic Church to support his heretical thesis that today’s Jews are God’s Chosen People, which is why he must refer to the Novus Ordo Church’s bogus Second Vatican Council to substantiate it. Bergoglio is quite aware that his idea contradicts the prior, true Catholic Magisterium, as is evidenced by him calling the council’s doctrine “courageous.” Obviously there would be nothing courageous about simply repeating the constant teaching of the Church. On the other hand, some kind of courage is required for uttering something novel, something revolutionary, something for which one could perhaps be censured or otherwise punished.
So, let us pose the question: Are today’s Jews God’s Chosen People?
No, of course not. Yet this is an error very prevalent in the Novus Ordo Sect, which considers the Jews of our day to be Catholics’ “elder brothers in the Faith,” as Antipope John Paul II first infamously put it in 1987. To call Jewish people our “elder brothers in the Faith” is as non-sensical as it is heretical, for the Jews do not possess the Faith but reject it, so they could hardly be our supernatural brothers. To say that theirs is the Faith of Abraham is likewise false, as Our Blessed Lord made clear when this very argument was raised against Him: “If you be the children of Abraham, do the works of Abraham” (Jn 8:39); and “Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it, and was glad” (Jn 8:56).
Holy Scripture is permeated with evidence that the Jews who reject Jesus Christ the Messiah are not God’s Chosen People, and even those who do accept Him are not the Chosen People either if they adhere to the Judaizing heresy (or any other heresy), which began during the time of the Apostles and sought to bind Christians to the law of Moses (see Acts 15).
Let us take a moment and look at a select few passages from Holy Writ to demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubtthat today’s descendants of Abraham are no longer God’s Chosen People. This helps also to illustrate that it does not take any complicated theological argument to understand this fundamental tenet of Christianity; but a mere basic reading of the Bible suffices to come to understand the concept that there is now a New Covenant which includes anyone and does away with the idea of a Chosen People predicated on a line of fleshly descendants:
- Daniel 9:26
And after sixty-two weeks Christ shall be slain: and the people that shall deny him shall not be his. - Mt 3:9-10
And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham for our father. For I tell you that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. For now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that doth not yield good fruit, shall be cut down, and cast into the fire. - Mt 21:42-45
Jesus saith to them: Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner? By the Lord this has been done; and it is wonderful in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone, shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it shall grind him to powder. And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they knew that he spoke of them. - Lk 16:16
The law and the prophets were until John; from that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every one useth violence towards it. - Jn 8:42-45
Jesus therefore said to them: If God were your Father, you would indeed love me. For from God I proceeded, and came; for I came not of myself, but he sent me: Why do you not know my speech? Because you cannot hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof. But if I say the truth, you believe me not.
- Rom 11:19-23
Thou wilt say then: The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Well: because of unbelief they were broken off. But thou standest by faith: be not highminded, but fear. For if God hath not spared the natural branches, fear lest perhaps he also spare not thee. See then the goodness and the severity of God: towards them indeed that are fallen, the severity; but towards thee, the goodness of God, if thou abide in goodness, otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again.” - 1 Cor 7:19
Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing: but the observance of the commandments of God.
- 2 Cor 3:11-15
For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is in glory. Having therefore such hope, we use much confidence: And not as Moses put a veil upon his face, that the children of Israel might not steadfastly look on the face of that which is made void. But their senses were made dull. For, until this present day, the selfsame veil, in the reading of the old testament, remaineth not taken away (because in Christ it is made void). But even until this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. - Gal 3:7
Know ye therefore, that they who are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. - Gal 3:26-29
For you are all the children of God by faith, in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ’ s, then are you the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise. - Heb 8:6-13
But now he hath obtained a better ministry, by how much also he is a mediator of a better testament, which is established on better promises. For if that former had been faultless, there should not indeed a place have been sought for a second. For finding fault with them, he saith: Behold, the days shall come, saith the Lord: and I will perfect unto the house of Israel, and unto the house of Juda, a new testament: Not according to the testament which I made to their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt: because they continued not in my testament: and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the testament which I will make to the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will give my laws into their mind, and in their heart will I write them: and I will be their God, and they shall be my people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me from the least to the greatest of them: Because I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins I will remember no more. Now in saying a new, he hath made the former old. And that which decayeth and groweth old, is near its end. - Heb 10:9
Then said I: Behold, I come to do thy will, O God: he taketh away the first, that he may establish that which followeth.
There is absolutely no excuse. Few things are taught more clearly in Holy Scripture than the fact that the Old Covenant has been replaced by the New Covenant in Christ, and that in this New Covenant the Chosen People are not the fleshly descendants of Abraham but all those who are baptized in Christ and profess the True Faith.
The Council of Florence under Pope Eugene IV taught on this matter just as clearly:
[This council] firmly believes, professes, and teaches that the matter pertaining to the law of the Old Testament, of the Mosiac law, which are divided into ceremonies, sacred rites, sacrifices, and sacraments, because they were established to signify something in the future, although they were suited to the divine worship at that time, after our Lord’s coming had been signified by them, ceased, and the sacraments of the New Testament began; and that whoever, even after the passion, placed hope in these matters of the law and submitted himself to them as necessary for salvation, as if faith in Christ could not save without them, sinned mortally. Yet it does not deny that after the passion of Christ up to the promulgation of the Gospel they could have been observed until they were believed to be in no way necessary for salvation; but after the promulgation of the Gospel it asserts that they cannot be observed without the loss of eternal salvation. All, therefore, who after that time observe circumcision and the Sabbath and the other requirements of the law, it declares alien to the Christian faith and not in the least fit to participate in eternal salvation, unless someday they recover from these errors.
(Council of Florence, Decree Cantate Domino; Denz. 712; underlining added.)
Likewise, Pope Pius XII laid out quite beautifully the Catholic teaching on the relationship between the Old and the New Covenants in his encyclical on the Church, and it is worth quoting at length:
That [Christ] completed His work on the gibbet of the Cross is the unanimous teaching of the holy Fathers who assert that the Church was born from the side of our Savior on the Cross like a new Eve, mother of all the living. “And it is now,” says the great St. Ambrose, speaking of the pierced side of Christ, “that it is built, it is now that it is formed, it is now that is …. molded, it is now that it is created . . . Now it is that arises a spiritual house, a holy priesthood.” One who reverently examines this venerable teaching will easily discover the reasons on which it is based.
And first of all, by the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ. For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area — He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel [see Mt 15:24] — the Law and the Gospel were together in force; but on the gibbet of his death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees, fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race. “To such an extent, then,” says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, “was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom.”
On the Cross then the Old Law died, soon to be buried and to be a bearer of death, in order to give way to the New Testament of which Christ had chosen the Apostles as qualified ministers; and although He had been constituted the Head of the whole human family in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, it is by the power of the Cross that our Savior exercises fully the office itself of Head in His Church. “For it was through His triumph on the Cross,” according to the teaching of the Angelic and Common Doctor, “that He won power and dominion over the gentiles”; by that same victory He increased the immense treasure of graces, which, as He reigns in glory in heaven, He lavishes continually on His mortal members it was by His blood shed on the Cross that God’s anger was averted and that all the heavenly gifts, especially the spiritual graces of the New and Eternal Testament, could then flow from the fountains of our Savior for the salvation of men, of the faithful above all; it was on the tree of the Cross, finally, that He entered into possession of His Church, that is, of all the members of His Mystical Body; for they would not have been united to this Mystical Body through the waters of Baptism except by the salutary virtue of the Cross, by which they had been already brought under the complete sway of Christ.
But if our Savior, by His death, became, in the full and complete sense of the word, the Head of the Church, it was likewise through His blood that the Church was enriched with the fullest communication of the Holy Spirit, through which, from the time when the Son of man was lifted up and glorified on the Cross by His sufferings, she is divinely illumined. For then, as Augustine notes, with the rending of the veil of the temple it happened that the dew of the Paraclete’s gifts, which heretofore had descended only on the fleece, that is on the people of Israel, fell copiously and abundantly (while the fleece remained dry and deserted) on the whole earth, that is on the Catholic Church, which is confined by no boundaries of race or territory. Just as at the first moment of the Incarnation the Son of the Eternal Father adorned with the fullness of the Holy Spirit the human nature which was substantially united to Him, that it might be a fitting instrument of the Divinity in the sanguinary work of the Redemption, so at the hour of His precious death He willed that His Church should be enriched with the abundant gifts of the Paraclete in order that in dispensing the divine fruits of the Redemption she might be, for the Incarnate Word, a powerful instrument that would never fail. For both the juridical mission of the Church, and the power to teach, govern and administer the Sacraments, derive their supernatural efficacy and force of the building up of the body of Christ from the fact that Jesus Christ, hanging on the Cross, opened up to His Church the fountain of those divine gifts, which prevent her from ever teaching false doctrine and enable her to rule them for the salvation of their souls through divinely enlightened pastors and to bestow on them an abundance of heavenly graces.
If we consider closely all these mysteries of the Cross, those words of the Apostle are no longer obscure, in which he teaches the Ephesians that Christ by His blood made the Jews and Gentiles one “breaking down the middle wall of partition . . . in his flesh” by which the two peoples were divided; and that He made the Old Law void “that he might make the two in himself into one new man,” that is, the Church, and might reconcile both to God in one Body by the Cross.
(Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Mystici Corporis, nn. 28-32; underlining added.)
This is the Catholic Faith; not the hippie talk you hear from Francis, which he has now “officially” promulgated in his wordy “Apostolic Exhortation” Evangelii Gaudium, and on account of which “Fr.” Paul Kramer has now publicly admitted Francis cannot be the Pope.
But the evidence continues.
In addition to the foregoing magisterial evidence, we can also find the true Catholic position enunciated by ordinary Catholic authors and missionaries. 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.
This is echoed by Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, O.S.B., who in his popular St. Andrew Daily Missal writes the following note explaining the reference to Agar in the Epistle for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Galatians 4:22-31):
St. Paul provides us with an interpretation of a famous passage of Genesis (16; 21. 1-21) showing that in the economy of salvation all is based on the gift of God, the “promise.” Christians, successors to the Jews, are the authentic heirs to this promise.
(St. Andrew Daily Missal, Vol. 2 [St. Paul, MN: E.M. Lohmann, 1958], p. 158)
Fr. William Gahan, O.S.A., elaborates on this, emphasizing the heinousness of the apostate Jews’ rejection of Christ, which had as its immediate effect God’s rejection of them:
They despised the oracles of Heaven, and rejected the Messiah who had been especially promised to their fore-fathers; they were unwilling he should reign over them, and blindly preferred the tyrannical dominion of Herod to the sweet yoke of his Gospel. It is no wonder, then, that they ceased to be the chosen people of God; no wonder that, after thus frustrating the designs of his mercy, they felt the severe effects of his justice, and in their turn were rejected and cast off like abortives, in punishment of their obstinacy and perverseness, and on account of their infidelity in not corresponding with the graces which were offered to them.
(Gahan, Sermons and Moral Discourses: for all the Sundays and Principal Festivals of the Year, Vol. 2, 3rd ed. [Dublin: Richard Coyne, 1846], p. 55; underlining added.)
Does Mr. Bergoglio believe this? No, of course not. He doesn’t because he is not a Catholic; he is a heretic. He rejects the perennial teaching of the Church and instead prefers the “courageous” novelties of the Second Vatican Council. Such are the facts. Clearly, the true doctrine is that the Jews, by rejecting Christ, have forfeited their status as the Chosen People. Catholics are right; Francis is wrong. It’s really that simple.
But Holy Mother Church does not merely teach this truth in her Scriptures, magisterial documents, and approved catechisms; she also teaches it through her Sacred Liturgy (which is exactly why the Vatican II Modernists had to come up with a New Liturgy). Let us take a quick look at two prayers that are extremely clear and insightful on this point:
- Act of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
“Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of that 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.”
Notice the Church in this indulgenced prayer calls the Jews “once [God’s] chosen people” — “once,” as in, “now no longer.” There is no room for interpretation here.
And further:
- Good Friday Liturgy, Sacred Congregation of Rites, Nov. 16, 1955
“Let us pray also for the unbelieving Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. … Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness.”
Here, too, it would seem rather difficult to square the notion of “Still-the-Chosen-People” with their “unbelief”, their “faithlessness”, and their “darkness”, from all of which this beautiful prayer begs they be delivered. It is no wonder the Novus Ordo liturgy discarded this Good Friday prayer and replaced it with a blasphemous petition to God that the apostate Jews would “continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness [!!] to his covenant” (more here). It is patently obvious that the Novus Ordo Church has changed the Catholic teaching.
Exit the “hermeneutic of continuity.”
This brief exposition of the true doctrine suffices to refute Bergoglio’s laughably absurd claim that today’s Jews “continue to be the Chosen People”, that God “did not reject them”, and that “nowhere does it say: ‘You lost the game, now it is our turn.'” As we have seen, the Church says precisely that.
One can see the utter absurdity of the Bergoglian heresy also in some simple but sober considerations: If the Jews are God’s Chosen People, what in the world are we doing being Catholics? Why not become Jewish then? Alternatively, if it be said that Christ is only for non-Jews, i.e. Gentiles, why did He preach exclusively to the Jews, adding that “if you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sin” (Jn 8:24)? Furthermore, why did the Messiah allow Himself to be crucified “King of the Jews”?
No one who has even the most rudimentary knowledge of the New Testament could innocently claim that today’s Jews are the Chosen People and do not need Christ, that they somehow still have a valid Covenant with God, on the specious pretext that “God is faithful.”
Now, for the sake of being clear, let us emphasize that it is crucial to distinguish the Jewish people of today from the Jews of the Old Testament. There may be a physical connection between the two, inasmuch as the former descend carnally from the latter, but spiritually there is no association whatsoever because today’s Jews are the spiritual descendants of Annas and Caiphas, who rejected Christ and therefore the true religion. “It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing,” we must remember (Jn 6:63).
So, what does this mean for today’s Jews, then? Quite simply, it means that they, too, like anyone else, must convert to the Holy Catholic Church, the Ark of Salvation, which God has established for the salvation of all, if they wish to be saved from hell: “Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all, and in all” (Col 3:11). They must receive baptism and believe the True Faith and die in the state of sanctifying grace, so that their souls will be presented spotless before the Eternal Throne of God through the merits of Christ, so they will hear these blessed words: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34).
This is what we mean when we say that God is faithful to His promises. The Catholic Church is the means of salvation of the New Covenant, established by Christ for this very reason. The New Covenant in the Blood of Christ is the fulfillment and flower, as it were, of the Old Covenant (see Mt 5:17). The Synagogue has become the Church. God is faithful indeed, by fulfilling what He has promised: to bring salvation in the New Covenant through the Blood of Christ by means of His Catholic Church, foreshadowed in many different ways in the Old Covenant. Christ is the fulfillment of the law.
By denying all this, Jorge Bergoglio is denying the Jews the greatest charity of all: the True Faith, which alone can save their souls, because without it, “it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11:6).
“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema” (Gal 1:8).
Anathema to Bergoglio the Apostate!
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