Catholic Reactionaries and Jew Hatred are like Peas and Carrots

Go to a Reactionary Catholic site (typically billing itself as Traditionalist and usually spending a lot of time on conspiracy theories and Francis hatred) and you nearly always find that these specimens of the Greatest Catholics of All Time spend an enormous amount of time hating Jews, theorizing about Jewish conspiracies, fearing Jews, accusing Jews, and telling Jewish Catholics what is wrong with them.  A few months back, I chronicled the adventures of Jewish Catholic convert and theologian Dawn Eden Goldstein and the viciously antisemitic turn the MAGA Catholic cult over at Crisis took, featuring commentary like this:

This is simply a tiny sample of the anti-semitic stew one finds in
Reactionary circles.  A number of Catholics I know from Jewish backgrounds have run into it enough that they now enjoy putting their names in the (((triple parentheses))) that Jew-hating kooks always use to designate suspected members of the tribe.

(I, alas, do not have a drop of Jewish blood in my veins but my hostility to Jew-haters has long earned me the delightful charge of “being on Soros’ payroll” from combox weirdos.  Would that it were true. Nothing would suit me better than to have the dump truck back up to my Scrooge McDuck swimming pool and fill it with Soros’ Jewish gelt of Jewishness while I sit sipping mimosas with (((Simcha Fisher))), (((Rebecca Bratten Weiss))), and (((Dawn Eden Goldstein))).  But alas, here in the real world, the Deep Jewish Church of Nice, like the Deep State, is just a fever dream of Reactionaries bent on proving that conspiracy theories are history for stupid people.)

Speaking of Dawn and her crazy Reactionary Jew-hating obsessive stalkers, she periodically challenges their nutty commentary:

…and the kooks instantly reply:

Jews bring nothing to Catholicism other than their bad habits.

One of the worst bad habits Jews bring into the Church is accusing fellow Catholics of being anti-Semites.

Baptism removes Original Sin, it does not take away bad habits. For that you need the help of a confessor. pic.twitter.com/kkWRO7UreR

— E. Michael Jones (@EMichaelJones1) January 14, 2020

…and their toadies chime in:

Isn’t the term “anti-Semitism” a racial term? I don’t believe that “the Jews” are a race so it’s a nonsense term.

— Catholic Vision X (@CatholicVisionX) January 16, 2020

Note the incoherence. Dawn Eden Goldstein is a baptised Catholic. So why is this weirdo cult obsessing over the Jewishness they just pretended to deny she possesses?

“Because you cannot be a ‘Jewish Catholic’!” they cry back, “You are either Jewish or Catholic!” Our great spiritual guide E. Michael Jones hath spoken it!

There is no such this as a “Jewish Christian.” You are either a Jew or a Christian.

According to the Israeli Supreme Court, baptism separates you from the Jewish people.

You are no longer a Jew if you’re baptized. https://t.co/wXpFtCPeG7

— E. Michael Jones (@EMichaelJones1) January 14, 2020

You may be wondering why an American Jewish Christian is somehow bound by Israeli law. And its definitely not because E. Michael Jones and the rest of Reactionary anti-semites are racists who believe all Jews are secretly Israelis. No sirree bob! It’s because the Bible and the Church clearly teach that all Jews are bound by the Israeli Supreme Court or that no Jews are Christians or no Christians are Jew or Jews who are definitely not ethnically Jews are bound by Israeli law even when they are Americans–or something.

In the Reactionary cult that is definitely not Jew-hating or anything, you are either a Jew or a Christian.

Funny thing: Nobody in the cult says you are either Irish or Christian on St. Patrick’s Day. Nobody says you are either American or Christian on the Fourth of July. Nobody says you are either German or Christian on Oktoberfest. Nobody says you are either Chinese or Christian at Chinese New Year.

Jews are the one and only ethnicity Reactionary Catholics designate for eternal shame.

“But Judaism was abolished by Christ!” say the Reactionaries.

Uh, no.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.” (Mt 5:17).

“But now that Christ has come, Jews are forbidden to observe their rites, customs and culture!”

That will come as news to the apostles, who observed Temple piety and Jewish custom and culture all their lives.  What they actually said was that the Jewish rites, customs and culture prescribed in the Old Testament were signs pointing to Jesus Christ, who fulfilled those signs and laid bare their deepest meaning. Paul called the revelation given to Israel “the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2). So the apostles insisted that Gentile Christians were under no obligation to observe them but that Jewish Christians could feel free to do so just so long as they did not imagine that doing so made them superior to Gentile believers and just so long as they did not imagine that doing so was salvific apart from Christ.

Contra Jones and similar Jew-haters, Paul did not deny his Jewish heritage but celebrated it. Against his interlocutors, Paul said:

Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. (Co 11:22).

And introducing himself, Paul said:

“I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.” (Ac 21:39).

According to Jones’ absurd theology, Paul denied his Christian faith by making this claim.

That would be the same Paul who, as a Christian, observed Jewish custom by means of a Nazirite vow (cf. Numbers 6:18; Acts 21:17-26).

Let me put it plainly: Just as the Catholic faith does not reject anything good in the non-Jewish cultures it meets in the world, all the more does the Catholic faith draw on all that is good in the Jewish culture and revelation from which Messiah sprang.  Israel is the olive tree, not E. Michael Jones and Reactionaries of his ilk.  We Gentiles are the wild branches grafted on.  Speaking about Jewish Catholics as though they are foreign invaders in “our” Church is about as insane as it gets.

“For if you have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree.” (Ro 11:24).