Scripture and the Law

So, I had a tremendously interesting discussion last night about Romans 8, which is well worth exploring in more detail. It revolves around what is meant by "the law". The best resource to consider this discussion is Thomas Aquinas' Treatise on Law, from the Summa Theologica, questions 90-97. If you have time to read Aquinas' treatment, the study will richly repay you. Here, I will attempt a summary of the 139 pages, with a bit of explanatory commentary.

Aquinas distinguishes four different kinds of law, each one a different reflection of the one Divine Law:

1. the laws of nature,
2. natural law written on the heart,
3. human law aka "man-made" law,
4. Mosaic ceremonial law, the precursor/foreshadowing of the sacraments

In Romans, Paul references three of those four categories:

Mosaic ceremonial law (with references to natural law in first part of v. 2 and in v. 7)

Romans 8:2-3:  2 For the law of the Spirit[a] of life in Christ Jesus has set you[b] free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin,[c] he condemned sin in the flesh... 7 For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot,

The Natural Law (cf. ceremonial law)

Romans 2:12-15: 12 All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. 15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them

Human "Man-Made" Law (cf. natural law in verse 5)  

Romans 13:1-5: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; 4 for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority[a] does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience.

God is several things at once. He is pure Rationality. He is pure Love. He is the Divine Law. So, to fulfill the Divine Law, the only rational thing we can do is love, after the manner of God. And that is where distinguishing the different kinds of law becomes important.

The natural law, that is, the Ten Commandments, is written on our hearts (Romans 2). However, because we are fallen, our intellects are darkened and our will is weakened. We have trouble discerning what we should do (darkened intellect), and even once we identify it, we have trouble doing it (weakened will):

Romans 7:19 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do....22 For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind...

So, the natural law is the moral law, held in our hearts, but hard to access due to the Fall. Even though the Fall has marred our understanding and our ability to live it, because we are in the image and likeness of God, the law of human nature (i.e., the natural law) is always present in our inmost self. How can we access it? God made it easy by writing it down for Moses in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are therefore not an external law, but a concise summary of the natural law, which is our inmost self, the image and likeness of God within us. Within us, the natural law is part of who we are, it is wordless. In the Ten Commandments, God wrote it out in order that we might more clearly see and understand it. 

In a like manner, the laws of nature are also wordless, but the laws of nature still reflect God's Divine Law, His Divine Being:

Psalm 19:1-3
The heavens are telling the glory of God;
    and the firmament[a] proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours forth speech,
    and night to night declares knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words;
    their voice is not heard;

The laws of nature are the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. These laws are not just extrinsic, they are, like the natural law, also woven into our bodies, our very being. The natural law fills our hearts and mind, the laws of nature weave together and mold our bodies, through both sets of these laws, we function within the physical world. Both kinds of law reflect who God is in Himself. 

The difference between the laws of nature and the natural law is a difference in the ability to choose. The laws of nature cannot be ignored or broken. I literally have no choice in whether I follow them. Gravity, radiation, electron shells - these express God's will, they operate independently of my will. The laws of nature are a reflection of God's love, a love that can be absolutely pitiless, relentless, impossible to ignore, impossible to break. Sometimes these physical laws are conducive to our physical well-being. But, if every intricacy of the physical laws is not fully understood and lived (and even if the intricacies are understood and lived), these laws of nature just as often bring inexorable suffering. In fact, the laws of nature eventually bring death. Yet, paradoxically, even those these inexorable laws of nature inflict remorseless suffering and death, still they "tell the glory of God's" love.

In contrast, the natural law "written on our hearts" is the moral law of the Ten Commandments and their implications. I can choose whether to live by or against the natural law in a way that I simply cannot choose whether to live the laws of nature. This ability to choose has implications.

Consider two sets of parents, each with a newborn child. Let us assume that, due to the laws of nature, each child is seriously ill and suffering. The parents have essentially two possible responses. The first is the response of the ancient pagan Romans: abandon the child on the side of the road, or in the forest, and let the laws of nature take their course. The child will naturally die, possibly in great agony, but will die in a completely natural way. The second possible response is to take the child to the hospital, where s/he will be hooked up to machines, IV infusions, injections, drugs, artificial temperature control, and the like. 

Look carefully at the word "artificial." It means "made by human artifice, human art, human skill." The child will be subject to the tools of men, to man-made technology, to the rules of man-made technology and to all that is artificial. Which response best expresses the natural law? God seeks our good, He does not abandon us, and we are in the image and likeness of God. Thus, since the second response seeks the healing of the child, even though it invokes enormous man-made artifice and man-made rules, taking the child to hospital is in best accord with the natural law. By healing the child, even though we subject ourselves to man-made tools and rules, we image God.  

Man-made tools, whether those tools be heart-lung machines, or man-made law, are in accord with the natural law when those tools (including the machinery of law) properly reflect the Divine Law. Remember, all law flows from the Divine Law. Natural law is a reflection of the Divine Law written on our hearts. Man-made, artificial tools, such as man-made law, are valid insofar as they reflect the natural law, itself a reflection of the Divine Law.

This is why St. Paul can insist that a governing authority (pagan Roman law) which was, at best, indifferent to Christianity, and on several occasions actually implacably opposed to Christianity, was both a man-made law and a governing authority that Christians were required to obey. Any law which did not directly impinge on Christian belief had to be obeyed because those laws came from the hearts of men who were trying to do right. So, Christians could disobey the emperor's command to offer incense to pagan gods, because that human law directly contradicted the Divine Law, but those same Christians could not refuse to be offered up to the lions in the colosseums, because that refusal to accept the legal penalty would undermine the authority of all human penalties, and thus undermine the authority of other human laws which were valid.

By their willing submission to the penalties imposed by even an unjust human law, each Christian could "make up in my body what was lacking" in the human law, which was supposed to reflect the Divine Law. Submission to the law, even the pagan Roman law, was critically necessary for Christian life precisely because that pagan law was a "darkened... weakened" attempt to write in words the law that is written on every person's heart. Human law is man's co-creation with God, it is man's attempt to write the image and likeness of God into the world, it is his imitation of God writing the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Human law is what we are called to do to image God. 

If all of this is true, then what is the law Paul rails against in Romans? This is the ceremonial law of the sacrificial Temple. The ceremonial law was also an expression of God's Divine Law. How could it be anything else, given that God himself gave instruction on the ceremonial Temple Law? 

But if the ceremonial law is a reflection of the Divine Law, then how could Paul insist it only brought death because it was impossible to follow? Why is it the subject of Paul's calumny? Paul takes pains to point out that the ceremonial law is detailed and unbreakable, just like the laws of nature, the laws of physics, chemistry, and the experimental sciences. But, while the ceremonial law is, like the laws of nature, inscrutably complex, unlike the laws of nature, the ceremonial law was a choice. In fact, it was not only a choice, but a shadow of things to come.

The ceremonial Temple law of ritual sacrifice and ritual purity were foreshadowings, harbingers, of the sacraments which Christ established. As long as the Temple stood, the ceremonial law could not be ignored:

Matthew 5:18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter,[a] not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

According to Jewish teaching, the Temple represented the entire earth, it was earth's connection to heaven. In Matthew 5:18, Jesus tells us that even though the ceremonial law no longer had force, the law had to be obeyed until God destroyed the Temple. The Temple tax still had to be paid. But, as Paul pointed out, the ceremonial law was no better than the laws of nature. It was too complex, and like the laws of nature, no matter how scrupulously we follow and implement the laws of physics, chemistry or ritual Temple sacrifice, we are still going to die.

But that sacrificial death was acceptable because ceremonial law was a reflection of Divine Law. Like the pagan Roman law, the ceremonial law still had to be submitted to and obeyed insofar as was physically possible. The punishments of the ceremonial law still had to be accepted, even if we could not, with our darkened intellects, fully understand why the punishments were being administered. None of that mattered. The punishment came from the law, from the authority of God, and had to be accepted. 

In Romans, Paul contrasts the foreshadowing with the reality that it pointed to. Christ establishes the new law of the sacraments, replacing the ritual ceremonial Temple law. Paul knew that, once the Temple was gone, new ceremony, new ritual, the new sacramental law, would replace the old ceremonial law.

The old law came from God's prophets, the new law comes from Christ, His apostles and their spiritual authoritative successors. This new law is the law that describes how to administer and live the sacraments. This is new law is the law of the Magisterium, the laws of the canonical code, promulgated by the successors to the apostles, who carry the divine authority of the First Apostle sent from the Father, Jesus Christ.

The Mosaic ceremonial law was written out by Moses so that the people could learn the foreshadowing, and be able to recognize the sacraments when they came. The code of canon law is written out by the divine authority of the Church, to provide a written guide to our darkened intellects and weakened will on how to live. 

Now, some of canon law may seem obscure or even a violation of modern state or national law. For instance, 

Check the 1983 Code of Canon Law.  Canon 1083 currently sets the age of marriage as 16 years of age for boys and 14 years of age for girls. This maintains the ages set in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 1067. But, the 1917 code was a change from the pre-1917 code, which set the canonical ages of marriage at twelve for both ages (younger marriage was possible if the spouse had entered puberty). And for most of the Church's history, one could be betrothed to marriage by the age of seven, although younger betrothals were not uncommon.

I have heard many Christians express horror at these facts. It is certainly the case that canon law is not in conformance with the man-made secular law on age of consent for marriage in some (albeit not all) US states. In fact, it is arguably the case that pregnancy at age 14 is not even in accord with biological laws of nature, as pregnancy at 12 or 14 is often much more dangerous than pregnancy after age 18, and that, precisely because the female body is often not yet mature enough to carry a baby to term.  

So, why does the Church still permit marriage at such a young age? Just as the people at the foot of Mount Sinai spent a long time practicing the ritual ceremonial Temple Law, so that they might more easily recognize the sacraments later on, so the canons remind parents that we must be prepared to accept our children as adults. We must constantly remember we raise the child so we might have a colleague, an adult brother or sister in Christ, who must be treated as an adult, not a child. 

Is the code of canon law primarily man-made law? Most certainly. But, like the injections, the IV infusions, the antibiotics, the artificial temperature control, man-made canon law is the divinely authoritative reflection of the natural law. It is the law written on the heart now written out so that we may more clearly see. 

Every teacher has encountered students years later, outside of the classroom. Both student and teacher see each other with new eyes: the student suddenly recognizes the shrunken old man as a former source of god-like classroom authority, but now a mere shadow, at best, of that former lofty status. Meanwhile, the teacher sees in the student the living adult who was only foreshadowed in the classroom. Both recognize the locus of authority has shifted: one has decreased, the other has increased. Some teachers welcome this, others find it an unpleasant shock. But, shock or no, this is how the laws of nature, written into our bodies and our hearts, work. 

As parents, we must transition from seeing our children as children and constantly practice seeing them as adults, fully capable of making their own decisions, fully capable of leading their own lives apart from our authority. The fourteen year-old may not take wedding vows on her fourteenth birthday, but we, as parents, must be prepared to treat her as an adult woman capable of taking adult vows by that day.

By twelve, by fourteen, by sixteen, our children must be prepared to leave their father and mother and cleave unto each other. God the Father grants each Christian, each of His children, a radical freedom. This freedom is so radical that one Christian may choose to pick up a sword and cleave his brother in two (Luke 22:35-38), and God - who holds all things in existence - will hold that sword in existence as one Christian uses it against another to cleave joints from marrow. It matters not whether the Christian does this out of justice or injustice, God will not cause the sword to fall out of existence. He will hold everything in existence so we may do as we please. Even if we are immature. Even if we mis-use the freedom. Even if the hand that wields the knife is only two or three years old. It doesn't matter. God gives each of us that level of radical freedom from the moment we are born, until the day we die.   

If God the Father grants that level of radical freedom to His children, so also we, as parents, must be willing to grant that level of radical freedom to our own children by the age of 12, 14, 16. We must have raised them in such a way that the children we raised can bear that radical freedom without breaking under the load. This is the cross that parents bear, the cross that they hand onto their children. It is the cross each adult Christian bears, of being personally responsible for one's own life decisions. In a family, parents train children as the vinedresser trains the vine, but parents must also train themselves to release their doves into the flood, knowing full well that they may "not return to him anymore."  And the parent has to trust their own 12, 14, 16-year old children enough be ok with that. 

Holocaust: Do Non-Jews Count?

Statista lists around 5.3 million Jews killed: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1287892/holocaust-jewish-deaths-by-location/

BBC lists around 5.5 million non-Jews killed:

"Historians estimate that between 1.5 and 1.8 million non-Jewish Polish people died during Nazi occupation...

Of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war who were captured during the invasion of the Soviet Union, 3.3 million were killed...

Historians estimate that around 220,000 Roma and Sinti were murdered by the Nazis...

It is estimated that around 200,000 people with disabilities were murdered during the Nazi regime." https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zh9dwnb#z29fydm

The Holocaust killed more non-Jews than it did Jews.

The only way to deny that is to say what the Jewish Virtual Library and Yad Vashem says. 

"However tragic, these non-Jewish victims are typically not considered victims of the Holocaust. According to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, “By the 1950s, the English term Holocaust came to be employed as the term for the murder of the Jews in Europe by the Nazis. Although the term is sometimes used with reference to the murder of other groups by the Nazis, strictly speaking, those groups do not belong under the heading of the Holocaust, nor are they included in the generally accepted statistic of six million victims of the Holocaust.”  https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/non-jewish-victims-of-the-holocaust

which is essentially, if you were murdered by the Nazis but you weren't Jewish, then your death doesn't count as a Holocaust death. They find circular definitions really useful.

It is interesting to note that: "No signed documents ordering Adolf Hilter’s “Final Solution” thus far have been found, because throughout their retreat the Nazis meticulously destroyed such documents along with, whenever they could, all physical evidence that death camps such as Sobibor had ever existed." https://www.historynet.com/did-hitler-sign-a-document-authorizing-the-killing-of-the-jews/

However:

"It may be added, as a reminder that we are not just discussing genocide against Jews, that documentation does exist, dated to August 22, 1939, of Hitler ordering the ultimate extermination of the Poles in order to assure that the “Lebensraum” of their soil would never again be disputed, with his notorious cynical reference to what the Ottoman Turks had done to the Armenians in 1915."
http://www.teachgenocide.org/background/hitler.htm

Glenn Reynolds Calls for Extermination of Israel

 Heh (link)

Glenn, how bad a look is it that you called for the extermination of Israel? 

"THE ONLY MORAL THING IS TO EXTERMINATE HAMAS: 

...And their well-insulated funders." 
https://instapundit.com/691001/

‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html

Here are some additional links documenting Israel's funding of a terrorist organization, Hamas:

• https://www.upi.com/Archives/2001/02/24/Israel-gave-major-to-aid-to-Hamas/6023982990800/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html 
• https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-funded-hamas-claims-eu-top-diplomat-josep-borrell/
• https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
• https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eus-borrell-says-israel-financed-creation-gaza-rulers-hamas-2024-01-19/
• https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
• https://www.heritage.org/middle-east/heritage-explains/whos-funding-hamas
• https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/11/middleeast/qatar-hamas-funds-israel-backing-intl/index.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/16/world/europe/israel-hamas-money-finance-turkey-intelligence-attacks.html
• https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2023/11/21/world/israel-failed-policy/
• https://digitaledition.carrollcountytimes.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=f63bc197-69a0-4ed4-a6e2-9af6131e2a16
• https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/20/divide_and_rule_how_israel_helped
• https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-gaza-humanitarian-aid-diverted-cf356c48
• https://www.upi.com/Archives/2001/02/24/Israel-gave-major-to-aid-to-Hamas/6023982990800/

Auschwitz Revises Holocaust numbers

 When the museum staff and historians at Auschwitz tell us, on their official website, that the 6 million number was dramatically wrong, that's a problem for the whole Holocaust narrative.

The original 6 million figure included 4 million killed at Auschwitz, two-thirds killed at Auschwitz alone. But the Auschwitz number was off by more than 60%. If Auschwitz was off by 60%, how many of the other numbers are correct?

"It was accepted for many years after the war that about 4 million prisoners died in Auschwitz Concentration Camp. That figure, which originated with the findings of the Soviet commission investigating Nazi crimes, was based on accounts by former prisoners, fragmentary records, and crime-scene investigation at the site. In 1983, the French investigator Georges Wellers, a former Auschwitz prisoner on the staff of the Center for Jewish Documentation in Paris, extended his research to include documents on the number of deportees to the camp and concluded that about 1.6 million people were sent to Auschwitz, where nearly 1.5 million of them died."
https://www.auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/majdanek-victims-enumerated-changes-in-the-history-textbooks,44.html

We already know that, per capita, more Roma were killed than Jews. We already know Generalplan Ost, the extermination programme also involved the policy known as the "Hunger Plan", which would have killed more than 30 million Slavic natives in forced starvations, was in the works.

The Holocaust was not just about, or even primarily about, Jews. Yet if anyone points that out, certain groups instantly label these facts "anti-semitic." That's a different perspective than what you were taught in high school, but it is far more historically accurate than what the popular press pushes. So, yes, there are at least two perspectives on the Holocaust, and the perspective you know, the idea that the Holocaust was primarily about killing Jews, is simply incorrect. The Slavs, the Roma, were both more viciously targeted, and in the case of the Roma, more viciously persecuted, than the Jews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1897511/

We also know that over 10 million Slavs were killed, roughly twice the number of Jews killed.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NAZIS.CHAP1.HTM

The attack on the Roma was so vicious, Germans didn't even bother to mention them in the law: "The Citizenship Law of 1943 omitted any mention of “Gypsies” since they were not expected to exist much longer."  
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/roma-gypsies-in-auschwitz

"It is difficult to determine the number of Roma killed during the Holocaust. It is estimated that of the approximately one million Roma living in Europe before the war, between 250,000 and 500,000 were killed."
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/roma-gypsies-in-auschwitz

"It is estimated that 3 million Christian Poles along with another 3 million Jewish Poles were killed during WWII-- a loss of 22% of their entire population (Silverstein). The occupation and genocide of Poland by the Nazis was known by the name Operation Tannenberg. This plan saw the Polish people executed as they were viewed to be subhuman by the German State. A lesser known plan, Intelligenzaktion Pommern, involved the elimination of Polish elites including teachers, doctors, priests, and community leaders."  https://nmu.edu/english/sites/english/files/d7files/WritingAwards/Cohodas/2nd_-_Human_Rights_Contest.pdf

Despite these facts, the Jewish Virtual Library then says, "However tragic, these non-Jewish victims are typically not considered victims of the Holocaust. According to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, “By the 1950s, the English term Holocaust came to be employed as the term for the murder of the Jews in Europe by the Nazis. Although the term is sometimes used with reference to the murder of other groups by the Nazis, strictly speaking, those groups do not belong under the heading of the Holocaust, nor are they included in the generally accepted statistic of six million victims of the Holocaust.” 
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/non-jewish-victims-of-the-holocaust

The deaths of the Roma, the Christian Poles, the Slavs in general were just as numerous, just as important, and just as much part of the Holocaust as that of the Jews. 

When Judaism Imposes the Death Penalty

 Jews can and do impose the death penalty on any Jew who collaborates with their enemies - it is a matter of legal jurisprudence in Judaism that anyone who collaborates with the enemies of Judaism should be murdered:

According to Rabbi Steinsaltz, "The Essential Talmud" (1992): 

"Anyone bearing tales against others [Jews] to the alien authorities - even if his evidence pertains to civil law, and even more so if a capital offense is involved - places himself outside the law by his action, and members of the community are permitted and even encouraged to kill him. Even when the death penalty was abolished in certain communities, informers were still sentenced to death. It is interesting to note that in medieval Spain the Jewish courts sentenced Jewish informers, but the sentence was carried out by the Spanish authorities, despite the fact that the informer had been acting on the latter's behalf. The courts continued to judge informers in this severe manner throughout the centuries, and informers have received death sentences within living memory in Soviet Russia and Nazi-occupied territories." (pp 173-174)

Who Knew Murdering CEOs Was Bad?

"UnitedHealthcare, in particular, has come under public scrutiny as it dramatically increased care denials for its Medicare Advantage enrollees.

The insurer more than doubled the rate of denials for care following hospital stays between 2020 and 2022 as it implemented machine-assisted technology to automate the process, according to a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation’s report released in October. That far surpassed its competitors, including Humana, whose care denials grew 54% during the same time period." 

A homeless person can kill two or three people in a night, and only gets what are in his victims' pockets.

A white collar CEO can kill thousands in a night, and make millions in the process.

Which is more dangerous?

Obviously, the homeless man. 

Nobody profits from the homeless man's murders but himself, whereas EVERYONE - employees, managers, and especially stockholders - benefits from the murders the CEO commits. That's why so many people applaud the murder of the violent homeless man, while being simultaneously outraged at the CEO's murder. They wanted the law to vet the CEO's murder, to make sure he absolutely had to be killed, and to delay his death enough to close out long positions.

People complain that Mangione embraced the Unabomber. Well, so has Elon Musk. 

"Elon Musk, a businessman who’s building some of the most advanced technology the world has ever seen, suggested the Unabomber may have been right about the rise of tech creating too many problems for humanity. Musk tweeted, “he might not have been wrong,” in response to a tweet about Ted Kaczynski, the 81-year-old terrorist who died in prison on Saturday.  Musk’s comment was made in response to conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, who tweeted a quote from Kaczynski on Saturday: "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.""  

So, Mangione was merely parroting Musk. 

Trump is a billionaire who got elected by representing that he felt the pain and stood in the place of the poor and marginalized. Mangione's family was wealthy, but Mangione did exactly what Trump said Trump could do "Shoot someone... and I would not lose voters."

Brian Thompson was being investigated for insider trading.
Brian Thompson's company, under his leadership, was actively impoverishing and killing people. 

Mangione is simply an instantiation of Trump's entire campaign. It is not at all clear why the right embraces Daniel Penny (who was neither attacked by Jordan Neely, nor did he see Jordan Neely attack anyone) while actively distancing themselves from Mangione (who was not treated by United Health Care, nor impoverished by them). 

UPDATE: Apparently doctors were a little miffed with United Healthcare for killing patients.

Mary Did You Know You Are ... Palestinian?

So, the claim is that since Netflix cast the woman who portrays Mary in part because she is Jewish, everything is ok.

But, notice that she is an Ashkenazi Jew. According to DNA testing, while some (but not all, cf. Levite) Ashkenazi Jews can be traced back to the Middle East in the paternal line (Y chromosome), it has been well-established that Ashkenazi Jews CANNOT be traced back to the Middle East along the maternal line (mitochondrial chromosomes). 

According to the maternal line, over 80% of Ashkenazi are purely European, with no ties to the Middle East at all. And, of course, rabbinic Talmudic Judaism claims to trace descent by the maternal line, not the paternal line.

So, according to the Ashkenazi's own genetic rules, most Ashkenazi Jews are not actually Jewish. And yes, the Israeli rabbinate is known to do DNA testing to establish Ashkenazi descent.  They test DNA, all the while (accurately) denying that Judaism is a race or that there is "Jewish DNA." Obviously, given that Hitler argued precisely that Judaism was a race, this rabbinate-approved DNA testing is somewhat fraught with controversy. 

And, to be fair, there is NOT such a thing as Jewish DNA. There is no DNA test that proves you are Jewish, no DNA segment that is unique to Jews. The best you can get is "Middle East descent." Which could as easily include Arab Muslims (70% and 82% commonality in the Y chromosome) or Arab Christians (50% commonality). 

Thus, the Palestinians are not entirely wrong when they claim Netflix' casting is not genetically authentic. Indeed, they are correct to point out that, from a genetic perspective, anyone whose ancestors have an unbroken history of residing in the Middle East, such as, say, Palestinians, is much more suited to the role.

But, that's just genetics. When it comes to actual cultural/ethnic practice, any Jew who follows the rabbi-Talmud-synagogue system of authority is not very similar to Mary at all. Mary and her parents participated in the blood sacrifice of live animals at the Temple. They did not recognize the authority of rabbis or the Talmud. Before the destruction of the Second Temple, synagogues were more of a social club than a religious experience. No Jew alive today, no one alive today at all, shares a cultural or ethnic experience that has any real overlap with Temple Judaism. 

Besides which, Christians insist that while Mary may have begun her life as an observant Jew, she became the very first, and greatest, Christian. She was also dirt poor. So, from a cultural perspective, the person best suited to the role of Mary would be one of three people, in order of descending preference: (a) an impoverished Palestinian Christian, (b) an impoverished Palestinian Muslim or (c) a 21st-century Jew who had converted to Christianity. 

After all, Muslims are much more aligned to Christian theology than unconverted Jews. Muslims agree that both Jesus and Mary were sinless. Muslims agree that Mary was a virgin and Jesus entered the world via virgin birth. Muslims at least have partial belief in Christian precepts.

Jews, on the other hand, don't agree with any of those things. Given that 21st-century Judaism is almost entirely unlike Temple Judaism, the Jew who converted to Christianity would be converting from an essentially monotheistic paganism to Christianity. As such, a Jew would need to learn to accept both sinlessness and virgin birth, two things which Mary understood from her lifetime of personal experience.

Casting a 21st-century Ashkenazi Jewish woman to play Mary is like casting Elizabeth Warren to play Pocahontas - you could do it based on her claims, but neither the genetics nor the history nor the culture really work to justify the claims.

Women, Do Not Behold Your Son

The Church's teaching on IVF rescue is inscrutable. In Dignitas Personae #19, the Church tells us "All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved." 

Think about that.

With that statement, the Church tells us that women cannot adopt frozen embryos.

This means IVF is a sin of such magnitude, that a Catholic cannot even offer her own womb as sanctuary for a child who will otherwise starve and freeze to death, buried alive in a frozen nitrogen grave. Yes, this is the fate of every abandoned embryo. Such children cannot even be baptized, for the simple act of baptizing an embryonic frozen child would kill the child. So, since the Church forbids IVF rescue and cannot apply the sacraments, all those thousands of abandoned embryonic children cannot be adopted, they must instead die unshriven, placing their salvation into a state known only to God. (CCC 1261).

Whenever anyone tells you the Church cares more about embryos than it does about women, bring forward this counter. It is essentially the only time a woman can be uniquely damned to hell for having saved a child's life. Women are forbidden to save children conceived through IVF.

The Church looks upon the freezing, starving IVF children, throws up her hands and says, "Well, isn't that sad? Ladies, don't even think about rescuing those children. You are not permitted to take up that cross or lay down your life for them, not even your wombs. For these IVF children, you cannot even temporarily donate the use of your organs. We're fine with wet nursing, but we have to draw the line somewhere. You just stand back and watch them die, do you hear?"

Makes you proud to be a Catholic, don't it?

Judeo-Christian Morality at Work

So, if today's Jews are REALLY Jews, and if Christians are grafted onto the Jews, so that our morality is founded on Jewish morality, what do we do with this?

According to Jewish theology, it's ok for a man to have sex with a two-year old.
Remember, this is "Judeo-Christian theology".

https://x.com/SMSASSASMS/status/1852052059073483009
Rabbi #1: ISIS are better friends to Jews than Christians
Rabbi #2: Islam should invade Europe, Europe must be destroyed
Rabbi #3: An adult man who has intercourse with a toddler... this is not a crime.
Rabbi #4: This rabbi and his colleagues were jailed in Mexico for trafficking minors in Chiapa State
We get upset with Mohammed for having sex with a nine-year old. Jewish men can have sex with two-year olds, and it's fine (link). This is "Judeo-Christian morality."
https://x.com/SMSASSASMS/status/1852111497343709634
Now, keep in mind the Vatican has said Christians should not target Jews for evangelization:

"In spite of the historical breach and the painful conflicts arising from it, the Church remains conscious of its enduring continuity with Israel....Judaism is not to be considered simply as another religion; the Jews are instead our "elder brothers" (Saint Pope John Paul II), our "fathers in faith" (Benedict XVI). Jesus was a Jew, was at home in the Jewish tradition of his time, and was decisively shaped by this religious milieu. (cf."Ecclesia in Medio Oriente", 20). His first disciples gathered around him had the same heritage and were defined by the same Jewish tradition in their everyday life." (#14) 

"[Thus,] In concrete terms this means that the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews." (#40)

Likewise, the Vatican condemns all forms of anti-Semitism: "The path that the Church has walked with you, the ancient people of the covenant, rejects every form of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, unequivocally condemning manifestations of hatred toward Jews and Judaism as a sin against God,"

So, Judaism teaches that men can absolutely have sex with girls under the age of three, and Judaism teaches that a girl aged three years and one day can be married to a man by virtue of having had intercourse with that man. But, remember, these two rules govern having sex with Jewish children. Jews can have sex with Gentile children under a different set of rules: Gentile children can be raped until they attain the age of nine years and one day. Since these ideas are integral to the Judaism taught by most of Judaism's most august and revered rabbis, then this must be respected. Christians who hate or reject Judaism's treasured theological teachings, which include the right to have sex with children, are arguably being anti-Semitic.

Also, keep in mind that this teaching about sex with children is not new, or invented by post-Temple Judaism. Rebecca (hebrew רִבְקָה rivqah), wife of Isaac (hebrew יִצְחָק‎ yīṣḥāq), mother of the twins Jacob and Esau (hebrew יַעֲקֹב ya'ãqōb and עֵשָׂו êśāw‎), was underage when she met Isaac, her family sent her off with her nurse Deborah (hebrew דְּבוֹרָה Deborah). The Hebrew word translated as nurse (in Genesis 35:8) is מֵינֶ֣קֶת mêneqeṯ which comes from yanaq, a primitive root meaning to suck, causatively to give milk. Using this word in reference to Deborah indicates that she was a wetnurse, breastfeeding a child. But the text says nothing about Deborah having an infant. Who was the child Deborah was nursing? According to many strands of Jewish teaching, when she left her family to join Isaac, Rebecca was still a child. Her age is still debated, but some Jewish scholars hypothesize she was 3 years old:

Since Isaac was twenty-six years old at the time, and forty when he married Rebekah (Gen. 25:20), she was thus fourteen years old when she married (Seder Olam Rabbah 1). Another tradition gives her age as three years and three days when she left her father’s house (Tractate Soferim, Hosafah [addition] 1, 1:4).

Also, see the Khehot Chumash: (https://www.sefaria.org/search?q=three%20years%20old&tab=text&tvar=1&tsort=relevance&svar=1&ssort=relevance) see also this link: (https://www.sefaria.org/Avodah_Zarah.37a.2?lang=bi)

Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebecca, in the year 2088, when she was three years old.

So, child marriage and consummation by age three may have been common to Abrahamic Judaism. Child marriage is certainly accepted by post-Temple Judaism. It is reasonable to conclude that child marriage was common and accepted in first century Judaism, the Judaism of Jesus' time. 

Oddly, at no point did Jesus, Peter, Paul or any of the early apostles condemn adult-child marriage or sex. There is simply nothing in Scripture to support the idea that adult-child sex was in any way considered wrong or sinful. Indeed, recall that the Blessed Virgin Mary, greatest saint of the Church, could have been as young as 12 when she was impregnated by the Holy Spirit. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

From the age at which Hebrew maidens became marriageable, it is possible that Mary gave birth to her Son when she was about thirteen or fourteen years of age. 

Even if one were to argue that the Church forbids it now (although young Catholic saints did it), it is clearly the case that adult-child sex is an ancient and venerable Jewish teaching. Therefore, it is a teaching Catholics cannot attack, lest they be anti-Semites. Indeed, since Catholics are not supposed to evangelize Jews in a way which attacks Jewish faith, Catholics shouldn't even try to persuade Jewish men that having sex with three-year old Jewish girls or eight-year old Gentile girls is wrong.

Furthermore, given the irrevocable salvific covenant God has with ancient Judaism, given the fact that God incarnated as a Jew "at home in the Jewish tradition of his time", Catholics can be assured that Jewish men who have sex with Jewish or Gentile children are going to heaven, as long as they follow Talmudic rules.

As a Catholic, that's certainly something to be proud of, right? 

Addendum:

So, this website has this amazing statement, which provides an alternate explanation for why Mary might be called virgin even if she had borne children other than Jesus:

“…the Greek parthenos could also mean that the girl was young and/or unmarried. In fact, in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament parthenos was used to render three distinct Hebrew words, ‘Virgin’, ‘girl’ and ‘young woman’. Already Rabbis in the Tannaitic era (first to second century ad) subscribed to further nuances, and there is no reason to think that all these were invented by them. Even the word betulah, which normally means virgo intact, when used by them could carry the laternal sense of bodily immaturity with the consequential inability to conceive. In Rabbinic terminology this type of virginity in a woman ceased with the physical onset of puberty. The Mishnah, the oldest of the rabbinic codes, defines a virgin: 

"Who is the woman characterized as a virgin in this context? It is any woman who has not seen the flow of menstrual blood in all her days, even if she was married and has experienced bleeding as a result of intercourse consummating her marriage." (Mishnah, Niddah 1:4).

The Tosefta, another early Jewish code of law, claims in the name of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (late first century ad) that such a woman would continue to count as a virgin even after she had conceived and borne children without prior menstruation:

Who is [considered to be] a virgin [for purposes of niddah] (see Niddah 1:3)? Any girl who has not seen blood in her days, even if she is married and she has children, I call her a virgin, until her eyes have seen the first. Do not call her a virgin with respect to virginity, rather a virgin with respect to blood. (Tosefta, Niddah 1:6)

To understand these statements, we must remember that in the InterTestamental and early rabbinic age, pre-puberty marriage was generally permitted."