Pax Orbis

Angelo Roncalli has been accused of many things: of conversing with aliens, consorting with Freemasons, being installed by Freemasons, being a Freemason and of course, introducing Synarchy into the heart of the Church. However, there is no doubt that his concessions to the Jews played a major role in the religious indifferentism we see in the Church today.

Although those accusations rely on a degree of speculation, he exhibited enough obvious flaws (as evidenced by the disastrous Second Vatican Council) to conclude that his papacy struck a heavy blow to the Church.

Part of that blow came in the form of the ecumenical movement, which was a Modernist counterweight to the longstanding belief of extra ecclesiam nulla salus – there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. The document, Nostra Aetate, which was a pet project of John’s, formed the basis for the reject of extra ecclesiam. Hidden within its ambiguous text was the suggestion that non-Catholics can be saved without conversion to Catholicism. The document errs mostly by omission in that it fails to advise Catholics to evangelise their non-Catholic neighbours, thus implying that there is, in fact, salvation outside of Catholicism.

One problematic section from Nostra Aetate is given below. For more samples of its errors and a commentary, please read here.)

True, authorities of the Jews and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ (cf. Jn. 19:6); still, what happened in His passion cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views followed from the holy Scriptures…

While it’s true that prior to being elected Pope, Angelo Roncalli assisted in the protection of thousands of Jewish people as they fled from persecution by the Nazis, he didn’t stop with merely defending their safety. As Pope, John went further and re-wrote the Church’s relationship with the Jews.

In large part, the Church’s relaxation of its policy towards the Jewish religion was the result of lobbying by a French Jewish historian named Jules Isaac.

Jules Isaac

In 1948, Isaac authored a book which, rather brashly, gave suggestions to Christians about how they should teach their children about the Jewish people. Called Jesus and Israel: A Call for Necessary Corrections on Christian Teaching on the Jews, the book included 18 points he believed should be enacted by the Catholic Church. (Read them here.)

Isaac secured a meeting with Pope John XXIII on June 13, 1960, two years prior to the Council, and recorded his thoughts immediately after they met. Isaac’s notes are treasured by Jewish historians.

For the meeting, Isaac was equipped with volumes of material which he believed was evidence that the Church’s teaching was anti-semitic and needed to be changed. Note that Isaac audaciously believed the had a right to change Catholic teaching. He wrote:

The problem of Catholic teaching which I attacked is infinitely more complex than that of the liturgy¹. Seen from the special angle concerning Israel, it touches, if not the main ideas of faith and dogma, at least a thousand-year-old tradition, product of the Church fathers, from St. John Chrysostom to St. Augustine. 

Isaac’s particular concern was the so-called “teaching of contempt” of Catholic towards Judaism, which he believed to be anti-Christian and which he believed fuelled anti-Semitism. He put forward his arguments and suggested that the Pope create a sub-committee to study his concerns. The Pope agreed to seek advice on the matter and they parted cordially.

Judaic Influence

A few months later, a group of American Jewish men from a society known as B’nai B’rith met with the Pope. B’nai B’rith (see more here) has close ties to Freemasonry, and founded the Anti Defamation League.

At that meeting, John told them that: “You are of the Old Testament and I of the New Testament, but I hope and pray that we will come closer to the brotherhood of humanity… It gives me great pain and sorrow to see these recent events (a rash of swastika graffiti) which not only violate a natural right of human beings but destroy the understanding between brothers under God…”

That same year, he also met with a group called United Jewish Appeal, when he said: “We are all sons of the same Heavenly Father. Among us there must ever be the brightness of love and its practice. I am Joseph, your brother.”

Later in 1960, John called for those clerics preparing for the Council to add a declaration on the attitude of the Church towards the Jews. He approved the first draft, entitled Decretum de Judaeis (“Declaration on the Jews”) in November 1961, but didn’t live to see the document in its final form. That was left to Paul VI, who promulgated it as Nostrae Aetate in 1965.

Perfidious Pontiff

Yet, the Jewish question had been in John’s mind before these meetings, as back in March of 1959, during the Good Friday Liturgy, John demanded that the word, ‘perfidious’ should not be read during the prayer for the Jews.

As even such Modernists as Cardinal Bea and Henri de Lubac point out, the adjective ‘perfidious’ was included in Medieval times when its meaning was less offensive than it is today. ‘Perfidious’ originally meant ‘unbelieving’ or ‘unfaithful’ and was thus perfectly appropriate for describing the Jewish people.

[It is worth noting that when Benedict XVI allowed for wider use of the traditional Latin Mass, he only authorised the use of the 1962 Missal from which the word “perfidious” had been removed. Fr. Mawdsley has a lot more to say on this.]

Next, John attacked the Rite of Baptism, removing the necessity to “Abhor Jewish unbelief (in Jesus Christ) and reject the Hebrew error (which is that the Messiah has not yet come).”

John also ‘cancelled’ Pius XI’s prayer from 1925, the Act of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The words, ‘Look with Thine eyes of mercy upon the children of that stock, so long Thy Chosen People; May the blood called upon them of old, now descend on them as the waters of redemption and life,’ were now deemed to be politically incorrect. 

Making Catholics pay

John went even further in his efforts to appease the Jews. With the assistance of the heterodox Cardinal Frings, John required that a prayer be said by German Catholics on the Feast of the Sacred Heart. It went:

“Lord, God of our Fathers! God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! God of merry and God of solace! We confess before you: Countless men were murdered in our midst, because they belonged to the people from whom the Messiah rose up in the flesh. We pray Thee: Lead all among us who became guilty through deed, omission, or silence, that we may see the wrong and turn from it. In the spirit of heartfelt atonement, we beg for forgiveness for the sins which were committed by our fellow citizens. We beseech that the spirit of peace and reconciliation return to all homes and we pray for the peace of Israel among the nations; on the borders of its state and in our midst…”

While there was most likely a need for some German Catholics to repent of their collaboration with the Nazis, the hypocrisy of John demand is obvious. The Jews detested being held to account as a group for the crime of their forebears – putting Christ to death – yet John expected German Catholics to be held responsible, as a group, for the crime of the Nazis.

And where was the acknowledgement of the non-Jews who were persecuted under Hitler? Including thousands of priests, nuns and lay Catholics? The prayer does not mention those poor people.

Don’t convert!

John’s commitment to non-evangelisation was well known. Secretary to John XXIII, Loris Capovilla told this story to Time Magazine:

“A young Jewish lad made the acquaintance of Giuseppe Roncalli when he was the Cardinal-Archbishop of Venice. The young man wanted to become a Catholic, but Roncalli kept putting him off. ‘Look,” he said, ‘you’re a Jew. Be a good Jew. Becoming a Catholic will kill your parents.’ The young man persisted and Roncalli finally said he could be baptized — in secret.

“Several years later (in 1961) after his parents had died, he presented himself at the Vatican to see his old mentor, now the Pope. He wanted the Pope to give him the Sacrament of Confirmation. ‘All right, all right,’ said Pope John XXIII, ‘but you have got to continue to be a good Jew, in your own community, go to the synagogue, support the Jewish schul, because, by being a Catholic, you do not become any less a Jew.”

It is worth noting that John XXII was canonised (along with another ecumaniac, John Paul II) on the eve of Yom Hashoah, the international day of Holocaust remembrance observed in Israel and by Jews around the world.