| Letter#1 Fear and
Love of God
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| My dear Mr. Isaacs: |
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| I am in receipt
of your letter, or rather, I should say your challenge, "to show cause for a Jew to
become a Catholic." It will be a pleasure to meet you in a pen-duel, but only insofar
as matters of a religious nature are concerned. I question not your right to expect a man to be what he pretends to be, especially when he writes and delivers public addresses of a religious and moral nature. But that does not obligate me to discuss my sincerity. Questioning the integrity of converts from the Synagogue to the Church, is as common in Jewry as answers thereto are useless. I will leave that part of the issue you raise to the judgment of God and those who are intimately aquainted with me. Therefore, I kindly ask you to hold your hostility towards me personally in check. Thus may you be enabled to look objectively at the claims of the Catholic Church, as presented by a Christian of Jewish parentage, who prayerfully desires to bring some of his former fellow-religionists to see the Church of the Messiah as she is, the realization of all that is good and great in the teachings and history of Israel. Though the tone of your letter is uncharitable, there runs through the confused concepts you have placed into my hand a spirit which, rightly tempered, would bless you with an understanding of "how a circumcised Jew can consistently become a Catholic"; a spirit of another Saul who might, God willing, become a Paul, at least insofar as realizing the error of his religious concepts is concerned. With that hope in my heart, I take up the task of answering your challenge. Considering that you believe in God, our start is easy. I am assuming, of course, that you believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whom I as a Catholic worship. Yet, even here, it were well to realize that when a Jew becomes a Catholic he gets a deeper and broader concept of God. That is because Catholics conceive God to be something more than the Creator of the world; a jealous God of an exclusive people, the children of Israel, with emphasis upon fear rather than love. God is looked upon by Catholics primarily as a loving Father of mankind. The emphasis of Catholics is upon the love of God, confidence in Him, and gratitude towards Him for all things, believing that the cross He permits them to bear is an opportunity to gain a crown. Catholic love of God leads the faithful to a realization of obligation to their fellowman irrespective of his racial, national and religious affiliation, to a degree unknown to Judaism. In a word, Catholic fear of God is secondary to love of God. While fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, it is not the end thereof which is love. Yet filial fear of God, like love, is a grace wrought in the soul by God. This to me is very important, as it was the beginning of my realization that Judaism, as a whole, is a negative whereas Christianity is a positive approach to God. One of the striking characteristics of the Christian religion, that follows from its concept of God, is its universality, whereas Judaism is primarily for the descendants of Jacob. That is one of the reasons why the Church of the Messiah is called Catholic. My daily task, as a campaigner for Christ, will necessitate proceeding slowly in replying to the many points you thrust at me in your letter. Yet I promise to cover every one of them in between my engagements to address audiences in the streets, squares and parks of our country. My objective will be to make plain that affiliation of Jews with the Catholic Church is not a denial of the faith of their fathers of old in Israel. On the contrary, it is an affirmation of their belief in the religion of Judaism of old; the realization of the great spiritual inheritance which the holy writings of Moses and the prophets foretold would come to those children of Israel who follow the faith of their fathers to its fulfillment in the coming of the Son of David. This is the belief that led the Apostles, Jews, all of them, to follow Jesus as their Messiah at the cost of martyrdom. This is the belief that brought three thousand circumcised Jews, through baptism, into the Catholic Church on her birthday, the First Pentecost Day. This is the belief that converted Saul into St. Paul, for which he willingly bore forty stripes less one, was imprisoned, stoned, suffered shipwreck, and joyfully permitted himself to be beheaded. This is the belief that, ever since the coming of the Messiah, caused the conversion of lovers of the faith of their fathers into an understanding that the Old Dispensation of Israel is fulfilled in the New Dispensation of Jesus. Pray God that Mr. Isaacs will be the next to be listed. |
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