What The Catholic Church Teaches About The Jews – Part 2
Table of Contents
The Catholic Church Teaches That Jews Killed Christ And Cursed Themselves
The Catholic Church teaches that the Jews that rejected Christ were responsible for deicide (God killing) and cursed themselves and their children.
The Bible On Jewish Deicide
The Bible says (regarding the masses of unbelieving Jewish people):
And the whole people answering, said: His blood be upon us and our children.
Matthew 27:25
Scripture also says (regarding the unbelieving Jewish priests):
When the chief priests, therefore, and the servants, had seen him, they cried out, saying: Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith to them: Take him you, and crucify him: for I find no cause in him.
John 19:6
And St. Stephen, speaking to the Jews about to martyr him, said:
You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do you also. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them who foretold of the coming of the Just One; of whom you have been now the betrayers and murderers:
Acts of Apostles 7:51-52
Also, St. Paul says:
For you, brethren, are become followers of the churches of God which are in Judea, in Christ Jesus: for you also have suffered the same things from your own countrymen, even as they have from the Jews, Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are adversaries to all men;
1 Thessalonians 2:14-15
Thus, the Bible is clear that the Jews that rejected Christ were responsible for killing Christ.
The Saints On Jewish Deicide
What did the Saints say regarding the Jews killing Christ and cursing themselves?
Agobard
Jews are cursed and covered with malediction. The curse has penetrated them like water in their bowels and oil in their bones. They are cursed in the city and cursed in the country, cursed in their coming in and cursed in their going out. Cursed are the fruits of their loins, of their lands, of their flocks; cursed are their cellars, their granaries, their shops, their food, the very crumbs off their tables!
The Anguish of the Jews, Fr. Edward H. Flannery, NY: McMillian Co., 1965
Alphonsus Liguori
Poor Jews! You invoked a dreadful curse upon your own heads in saying: ‘His blood be upon us and our children’; and that curse, miserable race, you carry upon you to this day, and to the End of Time you shall endure the chastisement of that innocent blood.
The Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, page 444
Augustine
Judaism, since Christ, is a corruption; indeed, Judas is the image of the Jewish people: their understanding of Scripture is carnal; they bear the guilt for the death of the Savior, for through their fathers they have killed Christ. The Jews held Him; the Jews insulted Him; the Jews bound Him; they crowned Him with thorns and dishonored Him by spitting upon Him; they scourged Him; they heaped abuses on Him; they hung Him upon a tree.
The Anguish of the Jews by Fr Edward Flannery, Macmillan, 1954
Basil the Great
If someone should kill the beloved son of a man, and then stretch forth their hands still stained with blood to the afflicted father, asking for fellowship, would not the blood of his son, visible on the hand of his murderer, provoke him to just anger instead? And such are the prayers of the Jews, for when they stretch forth their hands in prayer, they only remind God the Father of their sin against His Son. And at every stretching-forth of their hands, they only make it obvious that they are stained with the blood of Christ. For they who persevere in their blindness inherit the blood-guilt of their fathers; for they cried out: ‘His blood be upon us, and upon our children’ (Matthew xxvii.25).
“On Prayer,” Sermon IX, PG 32; SS vol.II p.384
Bernard of Clairvaux
The Jews must not be persecuted or chased like beasts….They are living signs that remind us of the Passion of our Lord. Besides, they are scattered through the world so that, while they pay for such a crime, they can be the witnesses of our redemption.
Letter #363, To the archbishops of the Eastern Francs and Bavarians
Hippolytus
But why… was the temple made desolate? … but it was because they killed the Son of their Benefactor, for He is coeternal with the Father. Whence He saith, ‘Father, let their temple be made desolate’; Cf. Matt. xxiii. 38. for they have persecuted Him whom Thou didst of Thine own will smite for the salvation of the world; that is, they have persecuted me with a violent and unjust death, ‘and they have added to the pain of my wounds.’ In former time, as the Lover of man, I had pain on account of the straying of the Gentiles; but to this pain they have added another, by going also themselves astray. Wherefore ‘add iniquity to their iniquity, and tribulation to tribulation, and let them not enter into Thy righteousness,’ that is, into Thy kingdom; but ‘let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous,’ that is, with their holy fathers and patriarchs.
Expository Treatise Against the Jews
John Capistrano
Christ is King, and Christ’s Church is the kingdom of God. The Jews are the descendants of those who killed this king. They have inherited hatred against Christ from their ancestors, and they give it full vent wherever they can do so with impunity. Therefore, we are justified in suspecting them. They are now simply our enemies and are known as such. They have crucified our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, Dr. E. Michael Jones, IN: Fidelity Press, 2020, pg. 226
John Chrysostom
You did slay Christ, you did lift violent hands against the Master, you did spill his precious blood. This is why you have no chance for atonement, excuse, or defense.
Adversus Judaeos, Homily 6
Thomas Aquinas
It would be licit, according to custom, to hold Jews in perpetual servitude because of their crime.
De Regimine Judaeorum
Many other Saints said similar things that affirm the Jewish blood curse for the Deicide of Christ.
The Magisterium On Jewish Deicide
What did the pre-Vatican II Magisterium say about the Jewish blood curse as a result of Deicide?
The 17th Council of Toledo said:
And since it is known that the Jewish people with wickedness, blasphemy, and the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ…
Council XVII of Toledo, Spain, Canon No. 8, On the Condemnation of the Jews
Pope Innocent III said:
As Cain was a wanderer and an outcast, not to be killed by anyone but marked with the sign of fear on his forehead, so the Jews . . . against whom the voice of the blood of Christ cries out . . . although they are not to be killed they must always be dispersed as wanderers upon the face of the earth.
Migne, Patrologia, CCXV, 1291
And:
Crucifiers of Christ ought to be held in continual subjection.
“Epistle to the Hierarchy of France,” July 15, 1205, PL 215
Pope St. Pius V said:
The Jewish people fell from the heights because of their faithlessness and condemned their Redeemer to a shameful death. Their godlessness has assumed such forms that, for the salvation of our own people, it becomes necessary to prevent their disease. Besides usury, through which Jews everywhere have sucked dry the property of impoverished Christians, they are accomplices of thieves and robbers; and the most damaging aspect of the matter is that they allure the unsuspecting through magical incantations, superstition, and witchcraft to the Synagogue of Satan and boast of being able to predict the future.
Hebraeorum gens
Therefore, it is clear that the Church has always taught that the Jews that rejected Christ are guilty of Deicide and cursing themselves.
Again, I will leave you with this quote from Our Lord:
