Christianity and Judaism

There is a similarity between Jews and Catholics that strikes me. Of course, there is much shared between Christianity and Judaism, proper, but I mean specifically with regard to the way a non-practicing Jew, for example, will say he is Jewish because of his distant ancestral connection to Israel. It’s not unlike the way a non-practicing Catholic may say he is Catholic because of his parents’ sacramental affiliation with a parish. But many Jews are no more Jewish, in the religious sense, than one who has no ties to Israel. Just as many Catholics are no more Catholic than a practical atheist.

Still, Jews are unique in that their political history is born of their religious identity. Indeed the two are united, since it was God who formed them as a people in that holy land. But one rarely hears the casual Catholic identify as “Catholic” the way a Jew says, “I am Jewish.” A non-practicing Catholic is more likely to identify with his nationality before his Catholicism, whereas even the non-practicing Jew identifies first with being Jewish.

I wonder what devout Jews think of the thousands in Hollywood, for example, who have squandered their inheritance, but who outwardly claim still to belong to the God of Israel. Perhaps they feel something similar to the practicing Catholic who sees so many of his brothers and sisters only on occasions such as Ash Wednesday. Perhaps devout Jews are happy to hear that secular Jews still identify with Judaism, at least politically. And perhaps it is true devotion for the Catholic to rejoice that there is some adherence to the Faith in our secularized brethren, even if it be by a smoldering wick.

A scene from Eveyln Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited helps me to look with hope at the current crisis of the aggressive secularization of society. The wayward Catholic, Julia, resolves not to “live in sin” with her lover, Charles, saying, “If I sacrifice this one thing that I want so much, perhaps God will not despair of me altogether.” As far away as she was from the Church, she was still a Catholic, and she still identified with what had been given to her in Baptism. I think she was right in saying that may yet be enough to save her. One can hope, anyway.

All year long, we worry about wayward Catholics (many of whom are of our own families) who adhere to the Church like a secular Jew clinging to Israel. And perhaps we should worry about them. But I wouldn’t want to get lost along the way, ourselves. Lent is a time for us (you and me), to walk closely with Christ, the New Moses, as He leads us through the desert of this passing life, even to the point of identifying with Him. Because if a Jew can claim to belong to Israel, even before saying anything else about himself, how much more should we who are Christian identify with Christ? Let the secular Catholic identify with the Church when it is convenient, but let us who love the Lord identify with Him even when it is not. +