A Messianic Jew Problem with Catholicism

I have recently watched a series of videos from this extraordinary Jewish Messianic ministry in Israel called, 'One For Israel'. Their staffs are dynamic and the quality of their message delivery is quite outstanding. This Christian ministry geared for the evangelization of non-Christian Jews is operated by Jewish converts to Christianity. By their own statistic of the year 2017, Messianic Jews (Israelite Christian) amount to only 0.3% of the Jewish population, which means they have approximately 50,000 Jewish Christians in the land of Israel. It is an extreme minority that is not always welcomed in the Country due in part by the opposition of Rabbinical Judaism (the predominant religion in Israel).

Despite the great work that "One For Israel" is doing, there is one particular feature of their work that tries to depict repeatedly Catholicism in the worst possible light. I think this may very well be due to the fact that One For Israel is a Christian organization run by protestant Christians trained at the Dallas Theological Seminary. This latter one is not known to being friendly to the Catholic faith as clearly articulated by David Currie. Due to the repeated comments against the Christian Catholic faith, I thought It would be useful if I put in this blog comments that I had put in the YouTubes where those issues were presented. I will focus on only two specific claims for now.

A. Is The Catholic Cross Problematic?

In a 2018 conference presentation by Dr. Eitan Bar about Jewish Evangelism in Israel which can be found in the following link (Click Here), Dr. Eitan Bar gave a message which can only be presented as being at the same time so encouraging in one hand and so disappointing on the other side. 

The disappointment comes from his repeated desire to divide furthermore the Christian Church founded by the Lord Jesus 2000 years ago with statements like this:

"We do not share [preach] the blond, blue eye gentile Jesus who is dead on a Catholic cross for 2000 years now. We share a Jewish, Israeli Messiah -Yeshua - who is not dead but alive and changing people's lives" (see comment in minutes 25:08).

Put aside the blond hair and blue eye comment which is inconsequential given that Asians depict him as an Asian, African depict him as an African, and Europeans depict him as a European for the simple reason that each world demography want to identify themselves with the Lord Jesus trans-ethnic work of salvation. None of these folks are saying with their images of the Lord Jesus Christ that he is not Jewish, or that he was not a Jew. This is not the point of the artwork. The art has an anthropological motif, not a historical motif!

Moreover, about the issue of the Cross of Christ in Catholic Churches, it is worth noting that St. Paul (a Jew himself) who was a witness of the resurrected Messiah spoke of the importance of a depiction of Jesus on the Cross:

A) 1Corinthians 2:2, "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with youexcept Jesus Christ and him crucified."

B) Galatians 3:1, "You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified."

Clearly, St. Paul the apostle does not shy away from the thought of a Crucified messiah even though he knew very well that he was resurrected and sited at the right hand of God as Lord overall. Dr. Eitan simply brings his extreme prejudice against Catholicism in his theology, and this prevents him to fully appreciate why the Cross has been so central to the Christianity of history.

I love "One For Israel" ministry but their attitudes towards Catholicism are extraordinarily misguided! May the Lord Jesus' prayer to the Father for the unity of his Church be fully realized once again!

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that ALL OF THEM MAY BE ONE, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me." - John 17:20-21 

B. Was Pope Pius XII Bad for The Jews?

In another video by Dr. Eitan Bar titled, "It is time to talk about Anti-semitism in the Church" (link here), he attacks again the Catholic church for what he perceives (incorrectly may I add) as the silent complicity of the Catholic Church in partnership with Hitler NAZI party for the killing of Jews during the Holocaust.

May I suggest a correction to the presentation of Dr. Eitan Bar? Since he repeatedly informed his listeners that he was once 'moved to jealousy by the truth' in his teenage years which inevitably led to his conversion to Christianity, I hope he can be again moved by jealousy for truth in his prime years as an important figure in Israel evangelism.

I take the liberty to replicate a small excerpt from a Protestant thinker about the significant role that the Catholic Pontiff - Pope Pius XII - played during the period of the holocaust in helping Jews. Since he might be less inclined to listen to Catholics (I presume), maybe listening to a fellow Protestant who ain't favorable to Catholicism would help him consider this point from a non-prejudicial place of thinking (Here is the link to the full source):

"For it was Pius XII, not the deceased Pius XI, who protested the October 1943 order from Berlin to arrest the 8,000 Jews in Rome. In a letter given to Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler, the SS Commander in Rome, the Vatican warned that the Pope would publicly denounce the planned arrests of all Jews of Italian citizenship if the Germans followed through with them. Adolf Eichman later wrote: "The objections given and the excessive delay in the steps necessary to complete the implementation of the operation, resulted in a great part of Italian Jews being able to hide and escape capture." 

Pius XII can also be confirmed to have vigorously and repeatedly protested the National Socialist actions through direct communications with the German government. The Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, testified at the Nuremburg Trials: "I do not recollect at the moment, but I know we had a whole deskful of protests from the Vatican. There were very many we did not even read or reply to."

Israeli sources report that papal relief programs saved more Jews than any other, an estimated 860,000. It is not an accident that 80 percent of Italy's Jews survived the war despite the German occupation, about four times more than survived the war in other occupied countries. Many important Jewish leaders of the era, including Israel's first president, first foreign minister, and chief rabbi were explicit in their gratitude towards Pius XII and the Catholic Church for their defense of the Jewish people.

Time Magazine printed a letter from Albert Einstein in 1940: "Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. . . . Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly."