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Entry: Mopping up the Israel Lobby Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/mopping_up_the_israel_lobby#9312 Post contents: Kari Konkola, if you don't like what people write, then don't read it. Simple enough. The so-called "blood guilt" of the Jews is a grave issue. It is not a teaching of the Catholic Church. To say so defames the Church and gives antisemites their ammo and accusers of putative antisemitism their ammo. To accuse the Church of fostering this heresy is one of the tricks of Goldhagen & Co. To discuss it fits in just fine with Paul Gottfried's theme. All the same I'll help out Kari Konkola and advise that she not read what follows. Paul, to answer your question, “who is responsible for Our Lord’s death?” I shall have to discuss the complex dogma of the Redemption, discuss it the best I can as a Catholic Christian. Two preliminary remarks. 1. The Jews are not the one who committed Deicide, not even a few of them. Not even the candidate that the NT text singles out, Pilate, a Roman, was responsible. “Father, forgive. They know not what they do,” renders the Jews and Pilate innocent. 2. As bad as the “Jew as Deicide” theory is, there is a worst one called “Penal Substitutional Atonement”, originating in Calvin: that supposedly the Father wishes to kill us and decides to kill his Son instead. This theory thus has the Father responsible for killing the Son, the Father as the Deicide. Were this theory true, then the Father Himself, <i>per impossibile</i>, would need the Redemption for killing an innocent man. So we need to work our way there the correct dogma of the Redemption, step by step. Call this theory the Kenosis (“emptying”) theory, based on the very early Christian hymn that St. Paul quotes in Philippians 2: 5-11. 1. Start with the Blessed Trinity, the inner life of the One God. In the Blessed Trinity that relation called “Son” always gives Himself totally ("empties" Himself) to the Father. This means that from eternity The Son is always the Self-Emptying One, always the obedient Crucified One. The Father, in turn, always bestows upon the Son glory. This means that from eternity The Son is always the Resurrected One. 2. Upon His incarnation through the Mother of God and throughout His entire earthly life, the Son continued always to give Himself totally to the Father, and to live always totally for the Father. This means that throughout His entire earthly life He was always the Crucified One. And, as the Transfiguration proves, He was also always the Resurrected One. The Eastern Church is particularly good about this matter, taking the dogma from St Irenaeus, sometimes called the “recapitulation theory of the redemption”. And the instrument of the incarnation is the Blessed Virgin, and hence the emphasis upon her in the Eastern Church. 3. Satan wars with God. Satan could win only by making the Son not live for the Father and not give Himself totally the Father. When the Son was on the Cross, Satan did the ultimate to get the Son to curse the Father. Satan failed. The Son lived for the Father and gave himself totally to the Father to the end on the Cross. The Western Church is right to put special emphasis on the Cross as the supreme moment in the Redemption, when the temptation was strongest not to live for the Father. Von Balthazar goes even further in his theology. On Holy Saturday the Son descended into Hell, and thus went as far from the Father as one can go, and He stilled lived only for the Father. 4. Thus the Father raised the obedient, meritorious Son in glory from the dead. 5. Now for what I shall call the “unification” theory of salvation, salvation being how the Redemption is applied to humans: We do not live for the Father and give ourselves totally to the Father. This is, existentially, what sin is. We cannot do so, and this is, existentially, what original sin is. 6. How is this overcome? Because the Son overcome all temptation not to live for the Father, then it is by our union with the Son, by our becoming sons in the Son, <i>filii in Filio</i>, that we are enabled to live totally for the Father. This is effected first by the Son becoming man (and only in this sense is His sacrifice to the Father vicarious); it is effected second, normally and normatively, by reception of the sacraments, beginning in Baptism. (Romans 6:1-4, the Paschal Mystery). In a sacrament, one is united <i>in and with</i> the Son, and dies and rises <i>in and with</i> the Son, and thus gives oneself to the Father <i>in and with</i> the Son, and thus receives <i>through</i> the Son what was bestowed upon Him by the Father: glory and eternal life. Thus this is what is correctly meant by “Jesus saves”. Now my sketch is indeed very sketchy. I don’t have the time or space to tie up the lose ends and cite all the proofs. As I said, the Redemption is a very complex dogma, with many aspects. I ask readers therefore for their indulgence and for their reflection. For our purposes, to answer the opening question, we can say that it was Satan, in attempting to get the Son to not live for the Father and give himself totally to the Father, who killed the Son; and thus Satan is the Deicide and the only Deicide. But because the Son kept on giving Himself to the Father, Satan lost, his power was killed, and the Son and those in the Son live. Enough then with the heretical teaching of “Jew as Deicide”. Enough with Goldhagen's liable of the Church for a supposed teaching which she does not teach. Some other charges of Antisemitism are equally false, as Paul Gottfried discusses. Sent at: 2008 05 15