Chapter V 
The Dual Citizenship of the Jews in Modern Times
MODERN PROGRESS AS THE GROWTH OF NATURALISM
In the thirteenth century, the high water mark, so far, of man’s acceptance of the order established by God, Catholic Europe acknowledged the divinity of our Lord: it admitted the reality of the supernatural life of grace, and the divinely appointed right of the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, to say what was opposed to that life and what favoured it, in other words, to be the judge of what was moral and what was immoral, whether in the actions of states or individuals.
The so-called Reformation saw this claim of the Mystical Body of Christ denied by a large part of what was once Catholic Europe. This meant rejecting the order set up by our Lord Jesus Christ while attempting to retain belief in His divinity. From the Jewish point of view, it was a big step in advance, for it meant the abolition of the supremacy of the supranational Mystical Body of Christ over a number of states. The state, in each country which embraced Protestantism, took the place of the Mystical Body of Christ. Thus a purely natural entity arrogated to itself divine functions, by organising its particular form of religion, composed of a mixture of natural and supernatural elements, as a state department. It is true that this natural entity, the state, still acknowledged that, as a society, it had a duty to God and retained some elements of supernatural religion.
The French Revolution carried a step further the process of decay in the acceptance of the divine plan. Religion was considered to be a private matter only; for the state, as a society, denied that it had any duty to God, natural or supernatural. This was complete social apostasy on the part of nations which had once been Catholic and, as such, had acknowledged the rights of Christ and of His Mystical Body on earth. Every country in which a Masonically directed revolution proved successful, as in France in 1789, began by decreeing the separation of Church and state. Thus country after country completely rejected the Mystical Body of Christ. In this way the supernatural Messias was dethroned, while at the same time, the way was positively prepared for the advent of the natural messias by the granting of full citizenship to the members of the Jewish nation. The Jewish writer, Bernard Lazare, expresses this very forcibly. “The Jew,” he writes, “is the living testimony of the disappearance of the State founded upon theological principles and which the Christian anti-Semites dream of reconstructing. The day when a Jew became the holder of a public position, the Christian State was in danger. That is perfectly accurate, and the anti-Semites who affirm that the Jews have ruined the idea of State could say with greater justice that the entry of the Jews into society symbolised the destruction of the State, that is, of course, of the Christian State.”[1]
When the Jews become citizens of the non-Jewish states, they still retain their primary allegiance to their own nation, which, according to them, is the chosen vehicle of divine order for the other nations. They still continue to look forward to the natural messianic era, that is, to the era when their nation will dominate over the others. Their advance to positions of power and influence, aided by their control of finance, has been utilised everywhere in the once Catholic states to eliminate from public life the influence of the supernatural life and the remains of the Catholic organisation of society. For example, when the Jew, Naquet, got the French state to pass a divorce law, this meant that France, as a state, no longer acknowledged the indissolubility of the union of Christ and His Mystical Body. Thus French society was brought a stage nearer to the new messianic era. Such is the inner significance of that historical event whose consequences in the natural order have been disastrous for France.
FREEMASONRY HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE ADVANCE OF NATURALISM
There is unorganised opposition to the supernatural life of grace in each one of us, owing to the fall. This unorganised opposition of individuals leads to the formation of little anti-supernatural groups here and there, even without the concerted action of vast organised forces. The existence of united anti-supernatural action on the part of organised bodies is so far removed from the mind of the average Catholic that it needs to be stressed particularly and its aims made clear. The Christian framework of society is destined not only to aid us in attaining union with Christ but to serve as a bulwark against the assaults of the forces organised against our supernatural life. These forces are three in number, one being invisible, the other two visible. The invisible host is that of Satan and the other fallen angels, while the visible forces are those of the Jewish nation and Freemasonry. The Jewish nation is not only a visible organisation, but its naturalistic or anti-supernatural character is openly proclaimed by its refusal to accept the supernatural Messias and by its looking forward to a naturalistic messianic era. The Masonic society or group of societies is a visible organisation, but its naturalistic or anti-supernatural character is secret or camouflaged. The naturalism or anti-supernaturalism of its aims, as well as of its ritual and symbolism, is clearly grasped by only relatively few of the initiated. The pantheistic deification of man, which is the consequence of this naturalism, is the supreme secret of Freemasonry. Both of these visible societies, however, make use of subterfuge and secrecy in their modes of action against the supernatural life of the nations of the world. Accordingly, the most vitally real struggle in the world is that waged by those naturalistic or anti-supernatural armies, under the leadership of Satan, against those who accept the supernatural life of grace, participation of the life of the Blessed Trinity, under the leadership of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the work of elimination of the supernatural life from society, the Jewish nation has been powerfully aided by Freemasonry. Freemasonry is a naturalistic society, that is to say, a society which claims to make men good and true independently of the supernatural life which comes to us through membership of our Lord. Masonry thus, in fact and in deed, puts itself above the Mystical Body of Christ, and its action has powerfully contributed to the elimination of the Catholic tradition, based on the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the advent of the anti-supernatural or naturalistic mentality and outlook.
Masonic propaganda has so blinded the nations, even those that did not revolt against the Mystical Body in the sixteenth century, to the significance of naturalism, that it is difficult to rouse them to the full perception of the real issues at stake. The warnings of the sovereign pontiffs and the Judaeo-Masonic attack on the supernatural life in Spain have succeeded, it is true, in getting them to stir uneasily in their slumbers, but they cannot be said to be as yet awake. The Masonic Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789 has contributed also to bewilder people with regard to the significance of the Communistic attack on private property.[2] The real meaning of the equality of the French Revolution, the one behind which is all the driving force of Masonry, is that all men are equally God. Accordingly, in a properly constituted state, an absolute social equality should counterbalance natural inequalities. The right of private property as the greatest cause of social inequality must be abolished. We need not be surprised then at the lukewarm opposition to Communism wherever the virus of the French Revolution has penetrated. In this way the poorer members of society, who have had such sad experiences in the so-called Christian countries since the sixteenth century, are easily drawn to listen to Marx’s cajoling words. The proletariat, according to the Jewish siren, is a messianic class destined by its rule to bring about a new era in the world. People are slow to grasp that both the proletariat in general and the Russian proletariat in particular are only means for the messianic dreams of Marx’s own nation.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
As a result of their dual citizenship in modem times, the Jews, while retaining their primary allegiance to their own nation and their devotion to the ideal of the domination of the natural messias, have been able to use their positions of power for the furtherance of their national programme which, as I have so often insisted, is necessarily and inevitably opposed to the rule of the supernatural Messias, Christ the King. And now, unfortunately, the Balfour Declaration of November 2nd, 1917, would seem to result in the perpetuation of this anti-supernatural, anti-Christian anomaly. The text of the letter addressed by Arthur James (later Lord) Balfour, then British Secretary of State for, Foreign Affairs, to Lord Rothschild, is as follows:
Foreign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.
Dear Lord Rothschild,I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty’s Government the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR.[3]
For citizens of other states, citizenship is restricted to one state. Why should Jews be permitted to be citizens of two states? The anomaly is already glaring when they form a state within a state: it is doubly so when they have a Jewish state in Palestine. And it must always be remembered that it means keeping the enemies of Christ’s Kingship in a specially favoured position.
We read in Der Tag (Yiddish daily), New York, 10th July, 1937: “Hail the Jewish State in Palestine!—for close on two thousand years it has lived only in the memory of an uprooted, wandering people. Conquered and levelled to the earth by the Roman hosts of Titus, aided by the hordes swarming across Europe from the primeval forests of old Germania, it is now about to rear its head once more, looking with new hope across the Mediterranean. It is our historic privilege, denied our forefathers for twenty centuries, to see the Jewish State revived again in the old historic site. The landless people, so long deprived of nationhood, is landless and Stateless no longer. Once more are we a member of the family of nations, recognised and welcomed as such. Our ambassadors and ministers will be found in every capital, and a seat will be reserved for us at the council table of the League of Nations. Even in Germany, whence two thousand years ago came those who destroyed us, just as today they plot our ruin, we shall have our envoy speaking for us proudly, courageously, as one Government representative to another. Washington, the centre of Jewish hope in the western world, will count the Jewish ambassador among the youngest members of its diplomatic family . . . Hail the new Jewish State!” [4]
An ambassador represents a foreign nation in the capital of the country to which he is accredited. The Jews are, therefore, on their own admission members of a foreign nation in the various countries in which, for the time being, they dwell. The members of a nation which is represented by a foreign ambassador to the government of a country, cannot logically at the same time occupy posts in the government and seats in the parliament of the country in question. That would be an intolerable anomaly, for example in the case of Frenchmen in Germany and Italians in England. The same must hold good for the Jews, in fact, it must hold a fortiori in their case, because of their naturalistic messianic aims. The setting up of the Jewish state must logically lead to the elimination of Jews from the public life of England, Ireland and other countries.
THE PRIMARY ALLEGIANCE OF THE JEWS
Read in the light of what has been written, the following observations will help to understand the difference between the situation of a Jew who becomes a citizen of the United States or France or Italy and, say, an Irishman who becomes a citizen of one of these states.
The members of the Jewish nation, while retaining their allegiance to their own nation, are also citizens of other nations. Given the messianic aspirations of their own nation they are bound to strive for the domination of their nation over the others, as they are firmly convinced that in this way alone justice and peace will reign upon the earth. The positions attained by them in the councils and legislative assemblies of other nations must logically be for them, at least primarily, means for advancing the domination of their own people. That Christ should reign over nations, in order that the influence of His supernatural life should be felt in all public life, elevating and purifying it, is utterly abhorrent to their naturalism. They entertain considerable contempt for the national patriotism of non-Jews, though in public pronouncements they may pander to it for the sake of their own interests. If the Jews, for example, assisted at a peace conference merely as representatives of a Palestinian state, their rôle thereat would be proportioned to the importance of that state, but when they assist as secretaries of Lloyd George and Clemenceau and adviser of President Wilson, then we know that English, French and American citizenship will be utilised for the furtherance of the interests of a nation that believes firmly that English, French and Americans are destined by God to be subject to it.
The primary allegiance of an Irishman, who has become a citizen of the United States, is to the United States. He may retain his sympathies with Irish national aspirations, but—to put it midly—he is not imbued from birth with the idea that the Irish nation is destined to rule over the Americans and all other nations. Besides, if the Irishman in question is still a Catholic and believes firmly in the supernatural Messias already come, he will be convinced that any subordination of the legitimate interests of the nation of which he is citizen to those of any other nation will be sinful. If, in any public capacity, he found his sympathies with Irish national aspirations (which, as has been said, do not include a programme of bringing other nations into subjection) coming into conflict with the mission entrusted to him of safeguarding primarily the interests of the U.S.A., he would in conscience be obliged to resign. Otherwise, he would fail in his duty to the supernatural Messias, our Lord Jesus Christ. The Jew, to be consistent, would fail in his duty to the messias to come, if he did not subordinate the interests of every other nation to those of his own. There is, accordingly, a vital difference of attitude, which has its ultimate ground in the doctrines respectively held with regard to the messias.
It may be well to quote here some prominent Catholic writers who have advocated that the full citizenship of states, accorded to the Jews for the first time by the French Revolution, should be withdrawn from them. In Les Pourquoi de la Guerre Mondiale, Mgr. Henri Delassus, Doctor in Theology, writes as follows: “The first thing to do is to change French legislation. French law, for the last 120 years is legalising a falsehood. It considers as French those who are not French, since they are Jews. French legislation should be in harmony with truth. It ought to restore to the Jews their Jewish nationality, in conformity with reason, history, justice and humanity. The legislation introduced by the Revolution represents the Jew as French. He is not French . . . .The Jews must cease to be officers, magistrates, professors, civil servants, barristers, attorneys, doctors in the public service . . . We must repeal the law by which Jews have been allowed to usurp the title of French citizens and declare them deprived of French citizenship . . . Without any foolish acceptation of persons, without a trace of inhuman violence, by an abstract legal provision, which cannot wound anybody’s self-love and of which, consequently, nobody can complain, Jewish functionaries must be obliged to resign from Government positions . . . It is especially to financial centralisation that the Jews owe the greater part of their strength. But that would have been overcome or could not have been maintained without the aid of political centralisation . . . Without a change in the legislation introduced by the Revolution, the restoration of the French State is impossible.” [5]
Perhaps the most forcible testimony to the necessity of this measure is that to be found in the series of articles contributed to the Civilità Cattolica in October, November and December, 1890. These articles form a complete treatise on The Jewish Question in Europe, its causes, its effects and the remedies advocated. [6] After having spoken of various unsatisfactory remedies, the writer continues: “In order that the Christian nations may be delivered from the yoke of Judaism and Freemasonry, which is daily growing more oppressive, the only way open to them is to go back along the road they have traversed, to the point where they took the wrong turning. If the Jews are not rendered harmless by means of special laws depriving them of that civil equality to which they have no right, nothing useful or lasting will be accomplished. In view of their presence in different countries and their unchangeable character of foreigners in every nation, of enemies of the people in every country that supports them, and of a society segregated from the societies amongst which they live; in view of the Talmudic moral code which they follow and the fundamental dogma of their religion which spurs them on to get hold of the possessions of all peoples by any means in their power, as, according to it, they are entitled to rule the world; in view of the fact that the experience of many centuries and our present experience have proved conclusively that the equality of civil rights with Christians, granted them in Christian states, has had for effect the oppression of Christians by them, it follows as a necessary consequence that the only way to safeguard the rights of Christians, where the Jews are permitted to dwell, is to regulate their sojourn by laws such that it will be impossible for them to injure Christians.
“This is what has been done in the past. This is what the Jews have been seeking to undo for the last hundred years. This is what will have to be done over again, sooner or later, whether one likes it or not. The position of power to which the laws inspired by the Revolution have raised them in our day is digging under their feet an abyss just as deep as the height to which they have ascended. When the storm, which they by their display of power are provoking, bursts, they will be hurled down headlong in a catastrophe as unparalleled in their annals as the effrontery with which they are today undermining the life of the nations that have exalted them . . .
“It is certain that one of the signs of the end of the world foretold in holy Scripture is the entrance of Israel into the one true fold. But we are not convinced that there are indications of that conversion visible at present. This people scattered over the face of the earth . . . is today what it became after the destruction of Jerusalem, without a king, without a priesthood, without a temple, without a native land, and, at the same time, a most bitter enemy of the name and of the Church of Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, crucified by their ancestors. We see no proofs, evident or otherwise, that it is likely to change for the better and welcome as its Saviour that Jesus whom it put to death . . . It is certain that at present the Jewish Nation as a whole shows an incomparably greater tendency towards the hatred and destruction of Christianity than towards a benevolent attitude to it and a desire to see it prosper.”
Of course, there need not be any difficulty about allowing Jewish non-citizens, who may be temporarily in a country not their own, freedom of worship in their synagogues. That is a totally different question. The point at issue here is the undoing of the naturalistic disorder introduced by the French Revolution. The expression,“separation of Church and State,” is the one used in revolutionary constitutions to cloak the naturalism by which the state rejects the divine plan for order and places itself above the Mystical Body of Christ. Having entered the camp of the natural Messias, the state as a necessary corollary, admits the Jews to full citizenship, thus allowing them in practice to work for the supremacy of their own nation over the native one and to prepare for the messianic era.
By the fact of the Jews becoming citizens of a Jewish state and ceasing to be citizens of other states another evil can be remedied. The small minority of sincere Jewish converts to Catholicism have always, up to the present, for all practical purposes been excluded from their own nation. The Jews insisted upon the “rights of minorities,” that is, their “rights,” being safeguarded in the treaties at the end of the Great War. We must insist upon the rights of the minority of Catholic Jews and see that those who accept the supernatural Messias must have special guarantees against ostracism and social injustice on the part of their own people. The Jewish state cannot treat its minority differently from the way the Jews claimed that they should be treated in the states of Western Europe. They cannot always expect to have it both ways.
THE JEWISH STATE
Have the Jews a right to Palestine as the portion of the earth’s surface in which they may set up a separate state? It is clear from all that has been said about their rejection of the true supernatural Messias that they can no longer lay claim to it by divine right. They were assigned that part of the earth as their inheritance on condition of their being obedient to God. They disobeyed God’s command to hear His Son, by their rejection of Our divine Lord before Pilate and on Calvary, and they persist in their disobedience. Accordingly, there can be no question of a right based on a divine promise. In addition, the Arabs have a natural right to the country they have occupied for the last thirteen hundred years. Canon Arendzen wrote as follows on this aspect of the question, in the Catholic Gazette of August, 1936: “The Arab population which has occupied the country for the last 1,300 years has definite and inalienable rights which must be respected. The Jews are foreigners in Palestine and the intrusion of vast numbers of foreigners so as to swamp the native population seems an act of unprovoked injustice. It would obviously be unfair, if some great power by force made England a national home for the Danes, on the strength of that people once having been masters of this country a thousand years ago. The Jews have practically evacuated Palestine since 138 A.D., and their intrusion into it after having left it for eighteen hundred years seems unjustifiable, on any known principles of equity. The Mandatory power, which at present is the government de facto, is clearly acting against elementary laws of fairness in promising to a race, alien in religion, speech and blood, a country already occupied by another nation.” [7]
The Jewish claim to Palestine is implicitly a denial that they have disobeyed God and missed their vocation by the rejection of the supernatural Messias. It is the assertion in action that the promised Messias has not yet come and that the day of their national domination over the world will yet dawn. The final result will inevitably be another disastrous blow to their hopes, for all their naturalistic attempts to impose their will on God, instead of accepting His, are doomed to failure, and every failure involves the Jewish nation in dire catastrophies.
The writer of the article on the Jewish question in the Civilità Cattolica of 20th December, 1890, already referred to, holds that the once Christian states must go back and take the road they missed at the French Revolution. They must “take away equal citizenship from the Jews, for these latter have no right to it.” At the time that article was written the return of the Jews to Palestine had not yet appeared on the horizon. As the attempt to set up a Jewish state in Palestine is an effort to defy God, it has been suggested that some other country should be set aside for the Jewish nation, by international agreement. In that hypothesis all Jews should be citizens of that state only.[8] Very strict regulations should be made concerning the Jews sojourning in states other than the Jewish state.
JEWISH NATURALISM AND THE DUTY OF CATHOLICS
On the one hand, we have to stand valiantly for the divine personality of Our Lord and for the transcendent claims of His Mystical Body, the Catholic Church, in which He continues to live and into which all must enter in order to be one with Him. The personality of our Lord, true God as well as true man, is not merely the subsistence of a created soul; it is the personality of the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. The Jews as a nation have always rejected that divine personality and their efforts are directed to combating the influence of the supernatural life which He seeks to diffuse through the Catholic Church. We have to stand, therefore, unequivocally for the rights of Christ the King. Jewish efforts to eliminate the supernatural life of grace and faith in Jesus tend inevitably to drag life down to an infra-human level. We have, therefore, to resist and defeat Jewish efforts to dominate our society and mould it along naturalistic lines. In particular, the creation of money and the regulation of the volume of exchange-medium used by Christian peoples must be taken out of their hands. I have seen a saying of Meyer Amschel Rothschild quoted as follows: “Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.”
On the other hand, our Lord, true man as well as true God is a Jew of the House of David, born of the Virgin Mary, the Lily of Israel. Our Lord’s individuality, that by which as a man He is distinct from other members of the human race and belongs to a certain environment and a certain descent, is Jewish. The Blood that was poured out on the Cross at the hands of the official leaders of His own nation for the restoration of the divine life of the world was Jewish blood. Our Lord’s Sacred Heart is a human heart and He loves His own nation with a special love. We must never forget that or allow ourselves to fall victims to an attitude of hatred for the Jews as a nation. We must always bear in mind that He is seeking to draw them on to that supernatural union with Himself which they reject.
The Jewish nation has gradually become the most strongly organised non-secret visible force working for the elimination of the supernatural outlook in society and for the installation of naturalism. The supernatural outlook insists that we are a race whose highest life, the divine life of grace, by which the Blessed Trinity dwells in our souls, was lost by the fall of Adam, but restored by our Lord Jesus Christ. Naturalism denies the existence of any life higher than natural life and maintains that social relations must be organised on that basis. As members of Christ we are bound to work for the return of society to our loving Saviour, so that social organisation may be permeated with the reality of the supernatural life of grace. Pope Pius XI insists on this in the encyclical on the Kingship of Christ. Let us now take two examples of how our efforts to combat naturalism will bring us into conflict with the Jews in their preparations for the naturalistic Messias. The first example will deal with the political, the second with the economic, organisation of the world.
States and nations are bound to acknowledge the Catholic Church as the one true Church. Pope Pius XI shows that the naturalistic spirit has gradually come to infect society, because “by degrees the religion of Christ was put on the same level as false religions, and placed ignominiously in the same category with them.” [9] Previously Pope Pius VII had written: “By the fact that the freedom of all forms of worship is proclaimed, truth is confused with error, and the holy and immaculate Spouse of Christ, outside of which there can be no salvation, is placed on the same level as heretical sects, and even as Jewish perfidy.” [10] Now, since the French Revolution, states have placed all forms of error on the same level as the Mystical Body of Christ, and Jews have been admitted as full citizens of the once Christian states.[11] By granting full citizenship to members of the Jewish religion, the state, to all intents and purposes, gives free rein to the naturalistic moulding process pursued by the Jewish nation, in view of the elimination of membership of Christ and the inauguration of the new messianic, era. It thus shows itself indifferent in the struggle between the true supernatural Messias, who has come, and the naturalistic messias, to whom the Jews look forward.
In regard to the economic organisation of the world, Pope Pius XI insists that “then only will it be possible to unite all in harmonious striving for the common good, when all sections of society have the intimate conviction that they are all members of a single family and children of the same heavenly Father and further, that they are one body in Christ, and everyone members one of another (Rom. XIII, 5).” [12] To have lasting peace in society we Catholics, then, must strive to bring back the great truth that employers and employed must treat one another as members of Christ. It is, as we have seen, part of what we promise Christ as King, when we make submission to our Heavenly Father along with Christ as Priest at Mass. Now, the aim of the Jewish nation is to substitute for the supernatural Messias in whom we are members of one body, the rule of the natural messias. Accordingly, in virtue of Catholic principles, we must oppose the efforts of the Jews to get control of the economic organisation of society. How can we succeed in getting employers and employed to treat one another as members of Christ, if we allow social organisation to pass into the hands of those who have persistently denied and rejected His divine mission and for whom the supernatural Kingdom of His Mystical Body is simply a fraudulent attempt to turn Israel aside from its destiny.
We have, therefore, to resist and defeat Jewish efforts to dominate social organisms and mould them along naturalistic lines, in opposition to our Lord and His Mystical Body. The guilds of the Middle Ages, which reflected the solidarity of the members of the Mystical Body of Christ in economic organisation, rendered wonderful services to their members in times of sickness and need, thus efficaciously preventing Jewish money lenders from gaining control of families and property.[13] We too in our day must safeguard the poor and needy from being tortured by Jewish money lenders. Our action in this connection however, must not be merely the negative one of combating illegalities and getting laws suitably amended, but the positive one of setting up organisations which will render services similar to those rendered by the guilds. Besides this safeguarding of the poor and needy, there is the more far reaching question of the creation of money and the regulation of the volume of exchange medium used by Christian peoples. That power must not be allowed to fall into, some would say to remain in, Jewish hands, or to fall into the hands of nominal or erstwhile Christians, Masons and others, who are dependent upon, or in alliance with Jews. We must combat Jewish attempts to bring under their domination individual Catholics and Catholic countries, even more vigorously than we must struggle against Freemasonry, because the Jews form a more strongly organised and more cohesive naturalistic force than Freemasonry.[14]
It is not easy to combat Jewish naturalism in public life and at the same time keep oneself free from racial hatred, which is itself but a form of naturalism. Yet it must be done. On March 25th 1928, the Congregation of the Holy Office abolished the association called The Friends of Israel, which in action and language had departed from the mind of the Church and of the Fathers and had adopted a mode of procedure abhorrent to the liturgy, thus falling into naturalism. Nevertheless in that same decree, the Church insists upon the fact that she “habitually prays for the Jewish people which was the custodian of the divine promises down to Jesus Christ, and this, in spite of, nay rather on account of, their subsequent blindness. Actuated by this spirit of charity the Apostolic See has protected this people against unjust treatment and, as it condemns every kind of hatred and jealousy between nations, so in a special manner it condemns hatred of the people once chosen by God, namely, that hatred commonly designated as ‘Anti-Semitism.’”[15]
Particular attention must be called to the phrase once chosen by God. It is the second time that the Holy See uses the phrase in recent years, the other being in the text of the prayer approved of by Pope Pius XI for the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Holy See is evidently insisting upon the fact that there is no longer any chosen people or race, except in so far as the Jews, who were the custodians of the divine promises until the time of Jesus Christ, despite their official rejection of the Supernatural Messias, have not ceased to be the members of His own race. Certain nations have at times shown themselves, to some extent at least, dazzled by the belief that they were the chosen people or race, in the natural order. The pagan cult of race is but a modern manifestation of naturalism.
The Jews look upon themselves now as the Chosen People, because they hold that they are the people destined to bring happiness to the world in the messianic era yet to come. Catholic writers would do well not to pander to this naturalism, by speaking of the Jews simply as the Chosen People, for thus they increase the confusion of thought in modern times. The Jews were chosen to be the custodians of the divine promises until the coming of Jesus Christ, of whom they were to be the fount according to the flesh. They have not ceased to be the race in which the “Word was made flesh,” and as such, they are the object of special love on the part of our Lord. But the naturalism by which they rejected Him and continue to hold that the happiness of the world is to come through their messianic aspirations is false and must be everywhere combated.
We have, therefore, a twofold programme set out before us. We must, on the one hand, defend our Lord’s rights and, on the other, seek to tear away the veil from the eyes of those whose blindness hurts Him in a special way. This is the programme set before us in these words of the Encyclical Letter, Quas Primas of Pope Pius XI. “If the faithful generally would understand that it is their duty to fight bravely and continually under the banner of Christ their King, then, fired with apostolic zeal, they would endeavour to win over to our Lord those who are estranged from Him or know Him not, and would valiantly defend His rights.”
Pope Pius X insisted in most appealing fashion upon the need for courage on the part of Catholics in the modem world, in the discourse he pronounced on the 13th December 1908 at the beatification of Joan of Arc. To St. Joan’s mind the coronation and anointing of the King of France were ever present, because that anointing did homage to the universal Kingship of Christ and linked up political power with the government of the Lord Jesus. She was the saint sent to remind the world, at the decline of the Middle Ages, of the formal principle of order in the world, the acknowledgment of the Kingship of Christ. The saintly Pope spoke of the heroism of Blessed Joan, and contrasted it with the timidity of so many Catholics in our day: “In our time more than ever before, the chief strength of the wicked lies in the cowardice and weakness of good men . . . All the strength of Satan’s reign is due to the easy going weakness of Catholics. Oh! if I might ask the Divine Redeemer, as the prophet Zachary did in spirit: What are those wounds in the midst of thy hands? the answer would not be doubtful: With these was I wounded in the house of them that loved me. I was wounded by my friends, who did nothing to defend me, and who, on every occasion, made themselves the accomplices of my adversaries. And this reproach can be levelled at the weak and timid Catholics of all countries.”
1. L’Antisémitisme, p. 361.
2. Cf. The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, Chapter V., p. 54.
3. Quoted by L. Fry in Waters Flowing Eastward, p. 17.
4. Quoted in The Patriot, August 12th, 1937.
5. Les pourquoi de la Guerre Mondiale was published by Desclée, De Brouwer et Cie, Lille and Paris, in 1922.
6. The special position of La Civilità Cattolica amongst Catholic reviews and the enconiums bestowed on it by Sovereign Pontiffs deserve to be more widely known. Let us mention a few of them. Pope Pius IX gave the review its status in the following terms: “By this Letter, in virtue of Our Apostolic Authority, we erect and constitute in perpetuity the College of Writers of the periodical La Civilità Cattolica.” Pope Benedict XV blessed its work: “We bless the fruitful Apostolate which the Venerable review, La Civilità Cattolica, carries
on courageously and unwaveringly on behalf of the Christian cause.”Pope Pins XI praised its devotion to the Holy See: “From your assiduous activity and from the whole life of La Civilità Cattolica, there radiates that special devotion to the Holy See which has deservedly won for you the benevolence and esteem of Our Predecessors and Ours.”
7. With regard to the 1915 agreement between the Sherif of Mecca, Hassein, and Sir Henry MacMahon, acting for the British Government, conceding the Arab claim to Palestine, cf. Waters Flowing Eastward, by L. Fry, pp. 68-69 and the literature there cited. “In the 9 o’clock news (B.B.C.) on Sunday, Nov. 2nd, 1941, General Smuts was quoted at some length as applauding the Balfour offer of Palestine to the Jews as a permanent home. He seemed to be as ignorant as Mr. Balfour appeared, some twenty-five years ago when the declaration was made, that we had previously admitted and acknowledged the claims of the Arabs to the same property.” (The Weekly Review, November 6th, 1941).
8. Some writers state that Great Britain offered Uganda to the Jews. Cf. Waters Flowing Eastward, p. 38. Of course, the rights of the original inhabitants should be respected.
9. Encyclical Letter, Quas Primas, On the Kingship of Christ.
10. Letter, Post tam diuturnas.
11. “The sententious maxims which in 1789 were declared to be the synthesis of the Rights of Man, were in point of fact, merely the Rights of the Jews, to the detriment of those peoples amongst whom those ‘Rights’ were enthroned.” (Article in the Civilità Cattolica, Della Questione Giudaica in Europa, November 15th, 1890).
12. Encyclical Letter, Quadragesimo Anno, 0n the Social Order.
13. Cf. Les corporations 0uvrières au Moyen Áge, by Godefroid Kurth. A translation of this pamphlet by the distinguished Belgian historian will be published later in this series.
14 The Jews exercise a very real and efficacious power of influence in Freemasonry and direct its action, thanks to the B’nai B’rith lodges, which do not admit non-Jews, but whose members are admitted to ordinary Masonic lodges.
15. It is to be regretted that in a pamphlet published by the Paulist Press, entitled, The Church and the Jews, the above mentioned decree of the Holy Office is quoted as if its main purpose were to condemn anti-Semitism. The decree does condemn anti-Semitism in unequivocal terms, but its main purpose was to suppress a society which by its coquetting with Jewish naturalism was becoming a source of confusion. In addition, the significant phrase once chosen by God (olim a Deo electum) is omitted from the text of the decree, as quoted in the pamphlet, and there is no indication in the pamphlet of its suppression. This is regrettable. A carefully thought out explanation of all that is implied
in that phrase would, it seems to me, have helped to clarify some of the paragraphs of the pamphlet. Again the title of the pamphlet is too wide for the matter treated. It does not treat of the whole question of the relations of the Catholic Church and the Jewish nation nor of naturalism and supernaturalism. It deals rather with the refutation of the arguments used by the Hitlerite Government of Germany to justify its treatment of the Jews. A more accurate title would be The Church and the Hitlerite Campaign against the Jews. As such, it would be excellent.