Why, anything else would be ‘anti-semitic’!
‘Cardinal’ Dolan of New York: Christ’s New Covenant Exists Side-By-Side with Jewish Old Covenant!
The ‘Archbishop’ of New York, Timothy Dolan, thinks the Jews have their own valid covenant with God
‘Cardinal’ Timothy Dolan (b. 1950) is a funny character. Not only has he been playing Roman Catholic archbishop of New York since 2009, he has also gone on record claiming that there are two covenants in existence between God and mankind: one between God and the Jews, and one between God and Christians.
In an article published two weeks ago in The Free Press, ‘Cardinal’ Dolan stated in all seriousness:
The Church’s stance on antisemitism is unequivocal. Our Savior was a faithful Jew killed by the Roman occupiers of Judea. He died for the sins of all mankind. According to our faith, Jesus brought about a New Covenant that exists side-by-side with the Old Covenant between God and the Jewish people. As Pope Saint John Paul II often observed, “God’s covenant with the Jews is unbreakable.”
(Timothy Dolan, “The Evils of Antisemitism”, The Free Press, Mar. 12, 2025; italics given.)
Now this is such a trainwreck theologically that it must have really taken Dolan some guts — the Jews would say chutzpah — to publish it under his real name.
There are a number of assertions made in this quoted paragraph, and it behooves us to spell them out separately to minimize confusion:
- The Catholic Church opposes antisemitism
- Christ was executed by the Romans
- Christ died for all, not just for some
- Christ established a New Covenant to exist side-by-side with the Old Covenant, which is the unbreakable covenant of the Jews
This is a hodgepodge of half-truths, irrelevancies, and outright lies. We will respond to them one by one.
Before we do so, however, let’s keep in mind that in Novus Ordo Land, Dolan isn’t considered a progressive when it comes to doctrine, yet even the conservative Novus Ordo publication Catholic Culture saw the need to reprove the Archlayman of New York for his theological piffle:
- When attacking antisemitism, don’t fudge Church teaching (Thomas V. Mirus)
Furthermore, fellow-sedevacantist Louie Verrecchio has also responded to Dolan’s scandalous article, though he tackles it from other angles than we will in this post:
- Dolan Reaffirms the Conciliar Judeo-Apostasy (AKA Catholic)
- The High Cost of Conciliar Membership (AKA Catholic)
Let’s go ahead now and take a critical look at Dolan’s assertions.
Dolan: The Catholic Church Opposes Antisemitism
The word “antisemitism” (and its various derivatives) occurs as much as nine times in Dolan’s short piece; and he seems to define it as “hatred against Jews”. Fair enough.
Indeed, hatred of Jews is wrong. It is a great evil because hatred of our neighbor in general is a great evil, regardless of whether a given individual be Jewish, Protestant, Moslem, agnostic, or Zoroastrian:
And Jesus answered him: The first commandment of all is, Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy God is one God. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like to it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is no other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:29-31)
You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust. (Matthew 5:43-45)
And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ: and love one another, as he hath given commandment unto us. (1 John 3:23)
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another. For he that loveth his neighbour, hath fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8)
Obviously, hatred is directly opposed to charity and therefore hatred of anyone is wrong. Therefore, the real question isn’t whether hatred of Jews is wrong but what constitutes such hatred — and what doesn’t.
It is true that the Catholic Church condemns Antisemitism, as long as the term is properly understood. In 1928, Pope Pius XI issued a decree suppressing the Amici Israel association, in which he stated:
…the Catholic Church has always been accustomed to pray for the Jewish people, who were the depository of the 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”.
(Pope Pius XI, Holy Office Decree Cum Supremae, Mar. 25, 1928; underlining added.)
Not only does the Sovereign Pontiff here condemn Antisemitism, however, he also condemns Dolan’s dual-covenant idea by making clear that the Jews are no longer God’s Chosen People in the New Dispensation. This is so because whereas in the Old Covenant the seed of Abraham was understood in a carnal-biological sense only, in the New Covenant this fleshly sense gave way to its true, fulfilled sense, namely, that all those are children of Abraham who have the Faith of Abraham (in the Messiah), regardless of whether they are his biological descendants or not. That is why St. Paul could write to the Gentile Romans that “Abraham … is the father of us all” (Rom 4:16).
The following passages make clear that this is a revealed truth of the Gospel, taught by Our Lord Jesus Christ as well as St. Paul:
That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit. (John 3:6)
It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life. (John 6:64)
They answered, and said to him: Abraham is our father. Jesus saith to them: If you be the children of Abraham, do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill me, a man who have spoken the truth to you, which I have heard of God. This Abraham did not. Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it, and was glad. The Jews therefore said to him: Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am. (John 8:39-40,56-58)
As it is written: Abraham believed God, and it was reputed to him unto justice. Know ye therefore, that they who are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. 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. (Galatians 3:6-7,26-29)
We saw that Abraham’s faith was reckoned virtue in him. And in what state of things was that reckoning made? Was he circumcised or uncircumcised at the time? Uncircumcised, not circumcised yet. Circumcision was only given to him as a token; as the seal of that justification which came to him through his faith while he was still uncircumcised. And thus he is the father of all those who, still uncircumcised, have the faith that will be reckoned virtue in them too. Meanwhile, he is the father of those who are circumcised, as long as they do not merely take their stand on circumcision, but follow in the steps of that faith which he, our father Abraham, had before circumcision began. It was not through obedience to the law, but through faith justifying them, that Abraham and his posterity were promised the inheritance of the world. If it is only those who obey the law that receive the inheritance, then his faith was ill founded, and the promise has been annulled. (The effect of the law is only to bring God’s displeasure upon us; it is only where there is a law that transgression becomes possible.) The inheritance, then, must come through faith (and so by free gift); thus the promise is made good to all Abraham’s posterity, not only that posterity of his which keeps the law, but that which imitates his faith. We are all Abraham’s children; and so it was written of him, I have made thee the father of many nations. We are his children in the sight of God, in whom he put his faith, who can raise the dead to life, and send his call to that which has no being, as if it already were. (Romans 4:9-17; Mgr. Ronald Knox translation)
This isn’t terribly difficult to understand, although some may deny it out of malice, ignorance, or even human respect — perhaps “for fear of the Jews” (Jn 7:13).
Thus it is clear that the true Chosen People are not those of a particular fleshly link, as was the case in the Old Covenant, but those who believe in the Messiah and are members of His religion. This is not exclusive, it is inclusive, because all are called to follow this Messiah, all are exhorted to join the true Chosen People of the New Covenant, the Catholic Church; and thus anyone can now be part of God’s Chosen People if they are willing (see Mt 22:1-14).
Yes, the Jews of the Old Covenant were the depositaries of God’s Promises, and in that sense they were His Chosen People: “for salvation is of the Jews” (Jn 4:22). But now that these Promises have been fulfilled, it is those who believe in and cling to the fulfillment that are His Chosen People, and certainly not those who repudiate and deny it.
Dolan: The Lord Jesus was killed by the Romans
In terms of the historical fact of who executed Jesus of Nazareth, yes, it was the Roman soldiers who directly carried out the Crucifixion of Christ. However, as Thomas Mirus points out so astutely in his reply to Dolan: “Summing the event up as ‘a faithful Jew killed by the Roman occupiers of Judea’ makes it sound like Jesus was killed because the Romans were antisemites!”
The Romans had no interest of their own in seeing Christ condemned to death: “Pilate answered: Am I a Jew? Thy own nation, and the chief priests, have delivered thee up to me: what hast thou done?” (Jn 18:35). Our Lord was crucified by the Roman soldiers only at the behest of the Jews. That does not absolve the Romans of all guilt, of course, but neither does it absolve the Jews. On the contrary, as our Blessed Redeemer told Pontius Pilate: “…he that hath delivered me to thee, hath the greater sin” (Jn 19:11).
Saints Peter and Paul were both clear in their preaching that the Jews were responsible for the death of Christ. Pope St. Peter told the Jews in Jerusalem: “Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth … you by the hands of wicked men have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:22-23); and again: “But the author of life you killed, whom God hath raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses” (Acts 3:15). Likewise, St. Paul spoke to the Thessalonians of “the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are adversaries to all men” (1 Thess 2:14-15).
The charge of Deicide (the killing of God) is eminently applicable to the Jews, then — not to the Jews considered as a race or ethnicity but as a religion, which thereby became apostate. In fact, it is precisely the official rejection of Christ that turned the Judaism of the Old Covenant into the apostate Judaism that perdures to this day: “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (Jn 1:11). It follows, therefore, that all those who align themselves spiritually with this apostate (and now Talmudic) Judaism, are indeed rightly said to be guilty of Deicide.
Obviously, spiritually speaking, all sinners have nailed Christ to the Cross, and, tragically, we often do so again (cf. Heb 6:6). At the same time Our Lord also emphasized: “Therefore doth the Father love me: because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from me: but I lay it down of myself, and I have power to lay it down: and I have power to take it up again. This commandment have I received of my Father” (Jn 10:17-18). The fact that both Jews and Gentiles contributed historically to the Passion and Death of Christ underscores that indeed, “all have sinned” (Rom 5:12) and all are in need of Redemption, Jews as much as Gentiles.
We are all guilty of the death of Christ, and we are all redeemed by it. Not all, however, will be saved, but only those who believe in Christ and join His Church and persevere in Faith, hope, and charity until the end so that they die in the state of sanctifying grace (see Mt 24:13; Mk 16:16; Lk 13:23-30; Jn 3:3-5,14-18; Rom 8:24; Rom 11:22; 1 Tim 3:15; Heb 11:6; 2 Jn 1:9).
Dolan: Christ Died for All
It is a dogma of the Catholic Faith that Jesus Christ died to redeem all people without exception, not just the elect, not just those who would join His Church, not only Jews or only Gentiles: “For the charity of Christ presseth us: judging this, that if one died for all, then all were dead. And Christ died for all; that they also who live, may not now live to themselves, but unto him who died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor 5:14-15).
However, this truth that Christ died for all actually refutes Dolan’s absurd doctrine of the still-existing Old Covenant, for if the Old Covenant could save the Jews apart from the New Covenant, then Christ would not have needed to die for all, since the Jews already had their own covenant with its sin-atoning sacrifices and rituals. But of course the fact of the matter is that the sacrifices of the Jews were only a prefigurement of the True Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross: “For it is impossible that with the blood of oxen and goats sin should be taken away” (Heb 10:4).
In fact, we should point out that although of course the Gospel is for all people without exception, Our Lord’s public preaching was confined mostly to Jews: “And he answering, said: I was not sent but to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel” (Mt 15:24). Only very few instances are recorded in the Gospels in which Our Lord interacted with non-Jews. That is because the Jews, not the Gentiles, had chiefly been prepared by God to receive the Savior, and the instruction of the Gentiles would be left to the Apostles and their successors, especially St. Paul: “Wherein I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and teacher of the Gentiles” (2 Tim 1:11).
Dolan: Christ established a New Covenant alongside the unbreakable Old Covenant of the Jews
‘Cardinal’ Dolan fails to define what he means by “Old Covenant”, and that is unfortunate because the term can have multiple meanings, as there is more than just one covenant found in the history of the Old Testament. Aside from the covenant God made with Abraham, there is also the covenant made with Moses and the people of Israel on Mt. Sinai, as well as the covenant God made with King David, for example.
The covenant God made with Abraham is fulfilled in the Catholic Church; the covenant God made with David is fulfilled in the perpetual and universal reign of Jesus Christ the King; and the covenant God made with Moses and Israel is superseded and fulfilled by the New Covenant of Jesus Christ, for which it was but a preparation and a prefigurement.
No matter which Old Testament covenant one considers, it always points to the New and Eternal Covenant of Jesus Christ, the holy Gospel, and the Roman Catholic Church, as its ultimate fulfillment and reality.
A few months back we refuted ‘Abp.’ Anthony Fisher, O.P., on this same topic in great detail, and there is no need to repeat it all here:
What sources does Dolan cite in support of his dual-covenant doctrine? Only one: ‘Pope’ John Paul II (r. 1978-2005). And that figures, since it is obviously not found in any pre-Vatican II magisterial source, nor in Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition. In other words: It is a made-up novelty, a heresy, a false belief that undermines the true Gospel of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who told the Jews: “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” (Mt 21:43-44).
Ever before Christ’s public ministry, we find this truth prophesied in the words of holy Simeon at the Presentation of the Christ Child in the temple of Jerusalem: “And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother: Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted” (Lk 2:34).
The meaning of this prophecy is unpacked beautifully by Fr. Cornelius à Lapide (1567-1637) in his Great Commentary, as follows:
Christ was laid and placed in the new Church, the Christian one, as a foundation and a corner-stone, that upon Him He might build all those that believed in Him, and of them build up the spiritual edifice of the Church, as He had promised of old to Adam, Abraham, Moses, and the other patriarchs and prophets. God did this directly with the intention of drawing all the Israelites, i.e., the Jews, to the Faith of Christ, so that He might bring them into His Church and save them; but He foresaw that a great part of them would, by reason of their wickedness, speak against Christ when He came, and would strike against Him as on a stone of offense and a stumbling block, and that so they would be broken, and fall into ruin both temporal and eternal. Yet He did not want to change, on their account, His resolve of sending and placing Christ [as a foundation stone], but permitted this rebellion and speaking against Him on the part of the Jews in order that it might be the occasion for S. Paul and the Apostles to transfer the preaching of the gospel from them who resisted it to the gentiles; and that so, instead of a few Jews, numberless nations might believe in Christ, be built into Him in the Church, and be saved, as Paul teaches at length in Rom[ans] 11. Such was the design of God, by which He set Christ as the corner-stone of the Church, to be indirectly for the fall, but directly for the resurrection of many in Israel. By fall is meant the destruction of the Jews who rebelled against Christ; by resurrection, the salvation of those who believe in Him: for they that rebelled against Christ fell from faith into faithlessness, from obedience into rebellion, from the knowledge of God and of Sacred Scripture into blindness and stubbornness, from the hope of salvation into despair and reprobation, from heaven into hell; but those who believe in Christ have risen by His grace from the sins in which they lay prostrate to a new life of virtue and grace, looking for the hope of glory. This is the interpretation of S. Augustine, Bede, Theophylact, Euthymius, Toletus, and others, passim; indeed, so Christ Himself, Peter, and Paul interpret it in the passages quoted above.
(The Great Commentary of Cornelius à Lapide: The Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke [Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2008], p. 279; italics given. Alternate edition available here.)
This, then, is the true Catholic understanding of this matter, not the inanities spouted by Timothy Dolan, which go back no further than the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).
‘Cardinal’ Dolan speaks at the Jewish Temple Emanu-El in New York on Oct. 4, 2023
(image: © Lev Radin/ZUMA Press Wire; cropped)
Before we can finish this post, we must look at two more quotes from Dolan’s article, in which he is only making things worse:
I hope this message is clear enough: Antisemitism is a grave sin, the work of Satan himself. The devil hopes to divide God’s people, to make them fear and eventually hate each other. In rejecting Satan’s lies and empty promises, as Christians are called to do this Lent, in the weeks before Easter—and as our Jewish neighbors prepare for Passover—we renounce his plans to divide the children of Abraham from one another.
There are two glaring errors contained in these words: (a) that the followers of apostate Judaism are God’s people, and (b) that they are the children of Abraham. Although some — by no means all (cf. Apoc 2:9) — of today’s Jews are surely the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, this does not make them children of Abraham in the true sense, since only “they who are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham” (Gal 3:7). Thus, “There is neither Jew nor Greek” (Gal 3:28) any longer.
Dolan ends with these thoughts:
And for those on social media who call themselves Christians but spread hate against Jews, we say that they have become blinded to core tenets of the faith they proclaim; that we are all equal in the eyes of God, that Christianity is a stem that grows off the good olive tree that is the Jewish faith, and that in the words of Pope Francis, “a Christian cannot be an antisemite.”
Here again we find repeated the error that today’s Jews are the faithful Jews of the Old Dispensation. It is just not true, no matter how many more times it gets repeated. They are the apostate Jews, whose spiritual father isn’t Abraham but Caiphas (cf. Mt 26:63-66; cf. Apoc 3:9).
It is precisely because there is now no more distinction between Gentile and Jew that that the Jews cannot still have their own separate covenant with God. Dolan speaks of the “good olive tree that is the Jewish faith”, using a metaphor found in Romans 11. However, St. Paul says nothing about “Jewish faith”, and even if he did, it could not be understood in the way Dolan means it, since the Jews had faith only before the advent of the Messias. In rejecting Christ, they abandoned that faith and instead replaced it with stubbornly clinging to a false interpretation of the prophecies and promises of the Old Dispensation, with utterly dreadful consequences: “I am come in the name of my Father, and you receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive” (Jn 5:43).
Thus, not only does Romans 11 not support Dolan’s position, it actually rules it out, for it contrasts the Faith of the Christians with the unbelief of the Jews, on account of which the Christians are now part of the olive tree but the Jews no longer:
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.
(Romans 11:20-22)
Make up your mind, then, ‘Cardinal’ Dolan: Either Jesus Christ established the New Covenant as the true fulfillment of all Old Testament covenants, and then there can be no other; or the Jews still have their own valid covenant with God, and the Messiah is yet to come. Tertium non datur. [There is no third option.]
Choose wisely, ‘Your Eminence’; for the true Messiah put us all on notice: “He that is not with me, is against me; and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth” (Lk 11:23).
Image sources: composite with elements from Alamy (Van Tine Dennis/ABACA; cropped) and Shutterstock (Volodymyr Zakharov/Irina Shats/gashgeron/ungvar) / Alamy (Lev Radin/ZUMA Press Wire)
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