"[W]ise old men who lead the Catholic Church know that Israel is so holy that our disappearance would endanger the existence of the Church."

"Jesus of Nazareth sacrifices himself for all of mankind so mankind may live and be free from sin and death"

"We have also learned that the Pope's opponents inside the Church are our opponents."


It is the Jew who converts the inner pagan inside each Christian


A random snippet or two loosely adapted from associate editor David P. Goldman's timely article "Jewish Survival in a Gentile World" in the combined June / July issue of that right - on truly radical publication, First Things magazine.

"Observant Jews whose suspicion of the Church has been honed by centuries of ill experience have trouble absorbing the odd circumstance that Providence has placed them in the same foxhole as Benedict XVI.

"But the crisis in Catholic - Jewish relations over the lifting of the Lefebvrist bishops' excommunication has led to a moment of clarity.

"After the pope's response ,there can be no doubt that we have in Benedict a theologian with a deep understanding of Jews' relation to God.

"We have also learned that the pope' s opponents inside the Church are our opponents.

"When Christians say that Jesus fulfills the Torah and that his life recapitulates the defining miracles in the history of Israel, they mean that each Christian's participation in Jesus' sacrifice is the reliving of the history of Israel.

"For that reason Abraham Joshua Heschel averted without a hint of exaggeration that the wise old men who lead the Catholic Church know that Israel is so holy that our disappearance would endanger the existence of the church.

"It is the Jew who converts the inner pagan inside each Christian, wrote Franz Rosenzweig, by which he means that, absent the living people of Israel, the Israel of the Spirit into which Christians hope to be adopted too easily becomes an abstraction.

"God's love removes from the altar; a ram substitutes for Isaac so that Abraham may live, and in Christian doctrine, Jesus of Nazareth sacrifices himself for all of mankind so that mankind may live and be free from sin and death.

"To be a Jew is to continue the life of Abraham; to be a Christian is to be reborn in the spirit into the life of Abraham."

A good read!! :)