I believe that
the foundation cause of the differences between Jews and Catholic Christians lies in the
question of authority. That is my excuse for endeavoring to throw further light upon the
subject dealt with in my letter on democracy in religion. Also because in it lies the
justification for passing from the Synagogue to the Church.
God, the Creator of the Universe, man included, is Authority per se. He is
the Maker of the laws that manifest within His creation. He made not onlv the natural law,
but also the moral law which, governs man in relation to his fellowman, and to the Maker
of the law. God rules the universe. He rules the relationship of husband and wife through
the Church and the State; children through their parents; citizens through their
legitimately instituted civil authorities; and rules man, in things that concern his
spiritual welfare, through His priesthood. "He who resists" such
"authority," says St. Paul, "resists the ordinance of God; and they who
resist bring on themselves condemnation" (Rom. 13:2)
The Jewish Church was governed by the priestly authority God
designated. The main religious function of the priests was to conduct the worship that the
Jews were commanded by God to offer to Him through sacrifices, going so far as to set
forth the details of the sacred rites, which Moses recorded in the Torah. The authority of
the priests of Jewry lasted until the Veil in the Temple was rent, the Veil that hid from
view the inmost and exclusive sanctuary of the high priest. That took place at the moment
the body of the Messiah was rent upon the cross.
The Jewish priesthood was exclusive and temporary, being composed of the sons
of Levi, the high priest being the first sons of one family therein (Aaron), and limited
to the time preceding the coming into being of the promised new priestly order. That
priesthood of the Messianic dispensation, foretold to displace the priesthood of Aaron,
was to be a continuation of the Messiah in the world, who was "called by God a high
priest according to the order of Melchisedech" (Ps. 109; Heb. 5:10). Its
public work began after the Holy Spirit, sent by the Messiah, descended upon the Apostles.
The Jewish priesthood, sacrifices, etc., were, as the Evangelists and Apostles believed,
but a shadow and figure of the priesthood of the Universal Church the Messiah established.
The Jewish priests paid homage to God through bloody sacrifices; the priests
of the Messiah, through an unbloody sacrifice, the "clean oblation" foretold by
Malachi over four hundred years before it was instituted (I:2). One is as high above the
other as the Jesus is above Moses. St. Paul said,
"If the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkled ashes of a
heifer sanctify the unclean unto the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood
of Christ, who through the Holy Spirit offered Himself unblemished unto God, cleanse your
conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Heb. 9: 13-14).
The priestly occupants of the Chair of Moses commanded obedience by
God's mandates under the severest penalties-
"He that will be proud, and refuse to obey the commandment of
the priest,-and the decree of the judge, that man shall die" (Deut. 17:12).
The occupants of the Chair of Peter also commanded obedience, having
been given the power to bind and to loose (St. Matt. 16), though through moral
suasion, the penalty being excommunication in extreme cases. During the middle ages, when
heresy, for instance, was considered by the state to be a crime, the culprit was turned
over to the civil authorities, if he insisted upon being unrepentant. The civil sentences
meted out were at times of too extreme a nature.
The children of Israel were a "peculiar people," a people
especially favored by God, a people who were spiritually far above the peoples who
surrounded them. They were "a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation," as Moses
told them they would be when he came down from the Mount of Sinai (Exod. 19:5-6). This
was all conditioned upon their obeying the covenant God made with them. This they promised
to do, and "a priestly kingdom," in Hebrew a "kingdom of priests,"
they became. Thus were the Jews sanctified. That did not mean that all Jews were kings in
the sense that Saul, David and Solomon were kings; that did not mean that all Jewish men
were priests as were Aaron, Eleazar, and their successors. The kings had to be of the
house of David, and the high priests of the house of Aaron, and only a minority of the
Jews belonged to these two houses.
Of course, Jews were also priests in the sense of offering themselves to God
in spirit, in the conduct of religious services in the home, as well as ministering to the
halt, the lame, and the blind. All Catholic Christians are considered to be priests in the
same sense as all Jews were priests from the days of Moses, and more so, for they unite
with the priests at Mass in offering the Sacrifice to God the Father.
In order properly to understand the issue, I hope you will keep this fact in
mind, that God commanded worship through sacrifices, that is definitely designated
sacrifices which were to be offered to God by specially designated priests: that Jews,
like Catholics, considered sacrifices and priests to be correlative terms, as one implied
the other. Also that the priest who offered the sacrifice acted as mediator between God
and man, and man and God.
The days of Jewry as a "kingdom of priests and a holy nation" are
no more; no more has Jewry a divinely ordained priesthood, sacrifice, or mediator. Why?
Because Jesus took the place of Moses; because a new priesthood, with the Sacrifice of the
Mass, displaced the priests, sacrifices, and Temple of old; because the followers of
Jesus, the Messiah, became the chosen people of God, being, as St. Peter said, "A
chosen race, a royal priesthood, a purchased people" (I Peter 2:9). And, as
St. John said, "Jesus Christ, the prince of the kings of the earth, hath made us a
kingdom of priests to God the Father" (Apoc. I:6).
Surely it is an indisputable fact that the Jewish priesthood is of the
historic past. Surely the priesthood must have been of divine, spiritual import to Judaism
proper, otherwise Orthodox Jews the world over would not have prayed since Temple days,
and continue to pray daily, for the Aaronic priesthood and sacrifices to be reinstituted.
Surely the laicizing of Judaism, through the ending of its priesthood and sacrifice, ended
Judaism as the religion of God, judged by the requirements of the Old Testament. Surely
the cessation of divine leadership, oblation, and mediatorship, cannot reasonably be
called a temporary affliction, for it has lasted through a period of nineteen centuries.
Surely God, who guided man in his moral journey from earth to heaven through His priests,
in the days before His Only Begotten Son came upon earth, did not leave man without
priestly guidance for over nineteen Christian centuries. Such a concept borders on
blasphemy, for it charges God with having abandoned man, leaving him to drift spiritually
with every kind of glimmer that enters his unguided mind.
If a sacrificial and mediatorial priesthood has existed during the Christian
ages, and continues to exist, it must be in the Catholic Church. She is the only spiritual
society with a priesthood and sacrifice, that rightly claims to be the perfection of the
priesthood and sacrifice of old; and to have had a continued historic, active existence
from within two months after the Veil in the Temple was rent, over thirty-five years
before the Temple was destroyed.
If justification for passing from the Synagogue to the Church is desired, it
will be found in the ground covered in this letter. Sons of Israel who take part with
Catholic priests in offering sacrifice to God, in lieu of the priests and sacrifices of
the Old Testament which are no more, remain true to the Mosaic principle of paying homage
to God through sacrifice. They remain true to the Mosaic principle of submission to the
will of God as taught, interpreted, and served in the Church of God's making. |