Among the many brilliant insights and vital truths that the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen, now set for official Catholic beatification this year, made was that to be antisemitic is to be anti-Christian. Our cause is one and the same; without Judaism, there is no Christianity, and we worship the same God.
In 1941, before he was an archbishop and before most of the free world knew or acknowledged the Holocaust unfolding in Nazi territories, Monsignor Sheen stated in a broadcast, “The persecution of the Jews is not the concern of the Jews alone, but is also a Christian concern.”
Jewish Telegraphic Agency preserved Sheen’s comments, which continued, “There is no such thing as anti-Semitism as such. To be anti-Semitic is also to be anti-Christian. We must look upon the persecution of Jews and Christians today not as separate, unrelated cause, but involving one another in some way because both are related to God.”
If only more Christians both then and now had Sheen's attitude. Over the weekend, we saw a shocking illustration of just how many Westerners, including many American politicians, reporters, and religious leaders, are anti-Jewish. Without the barest amount of fact-checking, without looking at any of the multiple Israeli government accounts stating that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sites in Old City Jerusalem are closed due to repeated Iranian strikes on them, Western Christians spread the lie that Israeli authorities blocked Palm Sunday Mass in the Holy Sepulcher without reason or explanation.
Meanwhile, also on Palm Sunday, Islamic jihadis massacred Nigerian Christians in Plateau state, while in Syria, the Islamic militants are out attacking Christians again. Western Christians obviously need to relearn the tragic lesson of the Holocaust and the truth that Fulton Sheen spoke, that to be antisemitic is to be anti-Christian.
Related: As Jihadis Massacred Nigerian Christians on Palm Sunday, the West Smeared Israel
Jesus Christ was a rabbi, and He, His Mother, and all of His Apostles were Jews. Jesus Himself said, "Salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22). Yes, Christ came to die for and redeem all men, but this was an expansion of God's merciful favor to mankind, not the transfer of God's favor from the Jews. It meant that now both Jews and Gentiles would worship the true God, not that Jews were rejected and condemned. We are brothers, not enemies.
St. Paul wrote (Romans 11:26-29), "And so all Israel should be saved, as it is written: There shall come out of Sion, he that shall deliver, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob ... For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance." Thus when God granted Israel to the Jews as a "perpetual possession" (Genesis 17:8), or when He called them His Chosen People, He did not later reverse His decision. Therefore, we ought to beware, for God promised Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 12:3), "I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, and IN THEE shall all the kindred of the earth be blessed." Those who curse the Jewish people and Israel are putting themselves in danger of damnation.
