Guest Post #1

Here's a guest response by Mrs. Darcy (a frequent commenter on this blog) to a post on Per Christum. It's posted here as it didn't fit in their comment box. Comments of course welcome:


Sometimes I read a post and I get a bit frazzled. Sometimes I follow the links in said post ... and go nuts. This is me. This is not everyone. I have two distinct pet peeves (though, who am I kidding, I'm a woman, pet peeves are hard-wired into the menagerie of circuits called my brain). The first: reading antiquated material out of it historical context or inserting modern assumptions or prejudices in historical works. The second is hiding the Church from catechumens for reasons of personal prejudice or anxiety that they might be scared off by some discipline, history, or even moral precepts.

David B. from Per Christum has asked the question: "Is the epistle to Diognetus antisemitic?" This was prompted by a post from Meg at News of the Dea. Meg is partaking in the Church Fathers Lenten Reading Plan and upon coming to the Epistle to Diognetus she pronounced with incredulity: “What, did this guy not read the Torah? At ALL!?”

The two comments in the 'combox' seemed to agree that indeed! Forsooth, anon! The Church, she's a sullied bride, full of hate for the Jews. As if this weren't enough there is some doubt cast upon the process by which the Church Fathers are proclaimed such and finally that the RCIA goers would be best served by being warned that they ought not perceive that antisemitism is the standard of today's church. I'm a bit nuts, but having read the epistle in question (one) and having attempted to ascertain its relevance historically and presently, I do not find this to be a pertinent or sound criticism. Worse (two), I find her assumptions to be based completely upon her own prejudices and the over use of the guilt muscle.

If fellow Catholic laypeople are going to take up the admirable work and sacrifice of helping with RCIA they must first avail themselves of some excellent formation and secondly have confidence that the Truth will win out. The Church is not a lamp to hide under a bushel. Far from it, it is the orthodoxy of the Church that draws the faithful to her.

To the Epistle: the time: early second century. John the Apostle has but only just passed. The disciples of the original Apostles certainly are living and the sense of betrayal by the Jews of not only Jesus, God-Man of the Jews, but of the Christians (or Nicenes as they were still sometimes called) is fresh. Worse , after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, the proto-rabbinic council of Jamnia closes the canon of Hebrew Scriptures dismissing the Wisdom of Solomon and 2 Maccabees as Greek books (despite the fact that the Greek translation of the Scriptures, the Septuagint, had long been held to be considered authentic and inspired). In truth, each of these books make potent prophesies that were necessary to be rid of in order to continue on waiting for the Messiah as the chosen race in the post-Temple period.

The author: Mathetes is likely a disciple of Paul and thus a gentile. And as a gentile, he is fully aware that one need not be a Jew to be a Christian. Far from hostility towards the Jews, Mathetes is really the proto-apologist! He sets out to explain how Christian worship differs from that of the pagans and Jews, whence sprung this new faith, and finally the affection which distinguished them from all others.

If Mathetes betrays a sense of incredulity towards what he calls Jewish superstitions” it proceeds him with the Didache (do not fast as the hypocrites on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but fast on Wednesdays and Fridays) and goes on past St Athanasius (who in his preaching to the Jews would challenge them to give proof to their miracles and revelation if they be the true and only people of God). Neither of these examples bespeaks hatred to me, but it is tinged with the reality of the second and third centuries. These men were handed down the Gospels by word of mouth, they were not casual partakers in the word. These were men who risked and sometimes paid with their lives for the Word, they could not have afforded the kind of hatred attributed them by a twenty-first century reader.

When Mathetes calls the practices of the Jews superstitions he is referring to the practices particularly of no work on the Sabbath (which Jesus himself criticizes the Pharisees saying: "What man is there among you who has a sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it and lift it out?” Matt 12:11). When Mathetes strikes again at the practices of the Jews regarding circumcision he is only saying that who among them can make up in the shedding of his own blood that which has already been done for us all, that circumcision is worthless in a world where the Lord himself has remade creation and risen from the dead. When he speaks of moons and the stars it was by the notion that the Sabbath had not begun or ended until three sizable stars shone. It was to these additions to the law that he found silly. To a philosophically minded Greek that would be ridiculous!

These are such small passages, completely unworthy of notice by comparison with the love and beauty with which he goes on to describe the Christians, the Faith, and finally the Lord, King Comforter or as he supplies: He desired to lead us to trust in His kindness, to esteem Him our Nourisher, Father, Teacher, Counselor, Healer, our Wisdom, Light, Honor, Glory, Power, and Life ...

Mathetes correctly states that it is not by imitating a tyrant (by holding supremacy over those who are weaker), but by taking on his neighbor's burden that Diognetus can imitate God and become holy.

The five marks of a Church Father are:

1. citation by a general council, or
2. in public Acts of popes addressed to the Church or concerning Faith;
3. encomium in the Roman Martyrology as "sanctitate et doctrina insignis";
4. public reading in Churches in early centuries;
5. citations, with praise, as an authority as to the Faith by some of the more celebrated Fathers.

(Catholic Encyclopedia, www.newadvent.org)

Finally, Mathetes exhorts Diognetus and all of us:

Let your heart be your wisdom; and let your life be true knowledge inwardly received. Bearing this tree and displaying its fruit, you shall always gather in those things which are desired by God, which the Serpent cannot reach, and to which deception does not approach; nor is Eve then corrupted, but is trusted as a virgin; and salvation is manifested, and the Apostles are filled with understanding, and the Passover of the Lord advances, and the choirs are gathered together, and are arranged in proper order, and the Word rejoices in teaching the saints,—by whom the Father is glorified: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

So neither is this an ignorant man nor a hateful man. But a Christian apologist from the second century, disciple of the Apostles, righteously incredulous at the claims of the Jews even after they had received their Savior in ignominy, welcomed the curse of his death upon themselves and their children, and then despite his resurrection the outright rejection of the Messiah who being God himself had given them the Law which they held up and made idol while He walked among them.

P.S. I love the Jewish people, I in no way condone antisemitism, and I find it to be one of the great and hateful hallmarks of the past century (though name a century when the Jews were not chased from one end of the Earth to another, persecuted by someone?). There are many evil acts committed by people in the name of Jesus against the Jews and none of this would I deny, but! The eternally valid covenant of Jews precedes us with our father in faith, Abraham and therefore it is a sin and an immense folly to harass, persecute, murder, or malign the Jewish people. God promised Abraham that Jews would remain on the Earth all of its days, and until the new Jerusalem comes I expect that prophecy will hold true until we neither be Jew nor Gentile, and the face of the Lord will shine upon all and we will not hide from his radiance but join the choirs of angels singing Holy, holy, holy ... Amen.