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The
teaching of Sacred Scripture on this question is quite explicit. St.
John explains that if Pilate sentenced Jesus Christ to death, it was
only on account of the insistence of the Jews:
When
the chief priests, therefore, and the servants, had seen him, they
cried out, saying: Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith to them: Take
him you, and crucify him: for I find no cause in him. The Jews answered
him: We have a law; and according to the law he ought to die, because
he made himself the Son of God. (Jn. 19:6, 7)
The
Synoptic Evangelists state the same thing, e.g., Lk.
23:22-24:
Why,
what evil hath this man done? I find no cause of death in him. I will
chastise him therefore, and let him go. But they were instant with loud
voices, requiring that he might be crucified; and their voices
prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required.
The
Jews were consequently directly responsible for the crucifixion.
Deicide is the name given to the crime of killing the person who is
God, namely the Son of God in His human nature. It is those persons who
brought about the crucifixion who are guilty of deicide, namely the
Jews.
St.
Matthew’s Gospel states very clearly, not only that Pilate considered
Jesus innocent of the accusations made against him, but also that the
whole people of the Jews took the responsibility of his murder upon
their own heads. Indeed, to Pilate’s statement: "I am innocent of
the blood of this just man; look you to it," the response is
immediate: "And the whole people answering, said: His blood be upon
us and upon our children." (Mt. 27:24, 25) The Gospel
teaches us, therefore, that the Jewish race brought upon themselves the
curse that followed the crime of deicide.
However,
in what does that curse consist. Surely it cannot be that there is a
collective guilt of the Jewish race for the sin of deicide. For only
those individuals are responsible for the sin who knowingly and
willingly brought it about. Jews of today are manifestly not
responsible for that sin. The curse is of a different nature, and
corresponds to the greatness of the vocation of the Jewish people as a
preparation for the Messias, to the superiority of their election,
which makes them first in the order of grace. Just as the true
Israelites, who accept the Messias, are the first to receive "glory,
honor and peace to every one that worketh good, to the Jew first, and
also to the Greek" (Rm. 2:10), so also are the first to
receive the punishment of their refusal of the Messias: "Tribulation
and anguish upon every soul of man that worketh evil, of the Jew first,
and also of the Greek" (Rm. 2:9). The curse is then the
punishment for the hardhearted rebelliousness of a people that has
refused the time of its visitation, that has refused to convert and to
live a moral, spiritual life, directed towards heaven. This curse is
the punishment of blindness to the things of God and eternity, of
deafness to the call of conscience and to the love of good and hatred
of evil which is the basis of all moral life, of spiritual paralysis,
of total preoccupation with an earthly kingdom. It is this that sets
them as a people in entire opposition with the Catholic Church and its
supernatural plan for the salvation of souls. Fr. Denis Fahey in The
Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism explains this radical
opposition. He describes "the Naturalism of the Jewish Nation"
and the "age-long struggle of the Jewish Nation against the
supernatural life of the Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ"
(p. 42) He goes on to explain that "we must distinguish accurately
between opposition to the domination of Jewish Naturalism in society
and hostility to the Jews as a race" which latter form of opposition
"is what is designated by the term, ‘Antisemitism,’ and has been more
than once condemned by the Church. The former opposition is incumbent
on every Catholic and on every true lover of his native land." (ibid.
p. 43) [READ
FR. FAHEY'S COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE]
Fr.
Fahey develops his explanation of the nature of this naturalism of the
Jewish nation, detailing the two essential truths of the supernatural
order that they refused in the time of Christ Our Lord, and continue to
refuse to this day:
They
refused, firstly, to accept that the Supernatural life of His Messianic
Kingdom was "higher than their national life and, secondly, they
utterly rejected the idea of the Gentile Nations being admitted to
enter the Messianic Kingdom on the same level as themselves. Thus they
put their national life above the supernatural life of Grace and set
racial descent from Abraham according to the flesh on a higher plane
than spiritual descent from Abraham by faith. Having put their race and
nation in the place of God, having in fact deified them, they rejected
the supernatural Messias and elaborated a program of preparation for
the natural Messias to come." (ibid. pp. 43, 44)
It is
indeed very sad that the post-Conciliar Church has forgotten the
elementary distinction described by Father Fahey, namely between
opposition to Jewish Naturalism and hostility to the race. The door was
opened to this, and to the subsequent acceptation of Judaism as a
legitimate religion in the Vatican II Declaration on the Relation
of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate. After
correctly pointing out that the Jewish authorities pressed for the
death of Christ, and that neither all Jews at that time, nor today
"can be charged with the crimes committed during his Passion," it
then continues with the outrageous statement, so contrary to Sacred
Scripture, that "the Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or
accursed as if this followed from holy Scripture." (§4) It is
consequently considered that since the Church reproves every form of
persecution, then we must respect their false national religion,
regardless of the fact that its very existence is the sign of the curse
of the national naturalism that has fallen upon them.
The
January 2002 statement of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, entitled The
Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible,
likewise refuses to make the same elementary distinction. It
apologizes, for example, that certain New Testament passages that
criticize the Pharisees had been used to justify anti-Semitism. This
has never been the case in the Catholic Church, but that certainly do
inspire us to stand against the hypocritical naturalism of those who
refuse to convert. Our Lord is very explicit about the curse that the
Scribes and Pharisees have brought upon themselves, repeating the curse
"Woe to you scribes and Pharisees" no less
than eight times in 17 verses in St. Matthew’s Gospel (23:13-29): "Woe
to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you shut the kingdom
of heaven against men, for you yourselves do not enter in; and those
that are going in, you suffer not to enter…" The Jewish refusal of
the supernatural order, as of the Messias, has made their religion,
true until the time of Our Lord, now a false one. Hence the
malediction, and our opposition to their refusal of the supernatural
order, which is not anti-Semitism.
From
this follows the essential thesis of the above-mentioned document,
namely that the Jewish concept of a future Messias does not conflict
with the Christian belief in Jesus, for, it states, "The Jewish
Messianic expectation is not vain." How could such an expectation
be not vain, given that they refuse Christ, the only Messias, who has
already come? This means, if taken to its logical conclusion, that the
refusal of the mystery of the Incarnation, of the birth of our Divine
Savior in the flesh, is no longer a sin of infidelity, that is a grave
sin against the Faith. If this were the case, how could it still be
true for Our Lord to say: "I am the way, and the truth and the
life. No man cometh to the Father but by me" (Jn. 14:6)?
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