Recently there has been some discussion on-line about whether Catholics who assist at the traditional Roman Mass are more likely than others to be anti-Semitic. In following this discussion I came across an article by John Lamont from 2014, “Why the Jews are not the Enemies of the Church”. As anyone familiar with Dr Lamont’s work would expect, it makes a clear and forceful case for its thesis. He points out that rabbinic and conservative Jews do not seek to convert Christians away from belief in Christ, while secular Jews who attack Catholics do so not in virtue of Jewish beliefs but in virtue of Enlightenment principles which were opposed in their origin by both Catholics and Rabbinic Jews. He also points out that conservative Jews are often active in defence of the moral principles upheld by the Church, and even of the Church herself.
All this is important and needs to be said. At the same time there is the doctrine of the two cities to uphold, articulated among others by St Augustine and St Thomas. It was expressed thus by Leo XIII:
The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, “through the envy of the devil,” separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God (‘Humanum genus’, 1).
St Thomas, for his part, wrote:
The end of the devil is the aversion of the rational creature from God; hence from the beginning he has endeavoured to lead man from obeying the divine precept. But aversion from God has the nature of an end, inasmuch as it is sought for under the appearance of liberty, according to Jeremiah 2: “Of old time thou hast broken my yoke, thou hast burst my bands, and thou saidst, ‘I will not serve.'” Hence, inasmuch as some are brought to this end by sinning, they fall under the rule and government of the devil, and therefore he is called their head (Summa theologiae 3a, 8, 7).
The angelic doctor also holds that in this age of the world, one can be liberated from the dominion of sin only by explicit faith in the mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ. From this it follows that not Jews only but all non-Christians are subsumed into the counter-Church, which St Augustine calls the city of man or of the devil. However well-disposed non-Christians may be as individuals, they are still for the moment part of the enemy’s forces, conscripts in his attempt to maximise the aversion of the rational creation from God. In holding this it is important to remember the words of Bl. Pius IX:
God forbid that the children of the Catholic Church should ever in any way be unfriendly to those who are not at all united to us by the same bonds of faith and love. On the contrary, let them be eager always to attend to their needs with all the kind services of Christian charity, whether they are poor or sick or suffering any other kind of visitation. First of all, let them rescue them from the darkness of the errors into which they have unhappily fallen (Quanto conficiamur moerore, 9)
St Thomas also holds that the sin of unbelief is worse in heretics than in Jews, but worse in Jews than in pagans who have heard the gospel and rejected it.
The unbelief of heretics, who confess their belief in the Gospel, and resist that faith by corrupting it, is a more grievous sin than that of the Jews, who have never accepted the Gospel faith. Since, however, they accepted the figure of that faith in the Old Law, which they corrupt by their false interpretations, their unbelief is a more grievous sin than that of the heathens, because the latter have not accepted the Gospel faith in any way at all (Summa theologiae 2a 2ae 10, 6)
He then makes an important qualification:
The second thing to be considered in unbelief is the corruption of matters of faith. In this respect, since heathens err on more points than Jews, and these in more points than heretics, the unbelief of heathens is more grievous than the unbelief of the Jews, and that of the Jews than that of the heretics, except in such cases as that of the Manichees, who, in matters of faith, err even more than heathens do.
However, he concludes:
Of these two gravities the first surpasses the second from the point of view of guilt; since, as stated above, unbelief has the character of guilt, from its resisting faith rather than from the mere absence of faith, for the latter, as was stated, seems rather to bear the character of punishment. Hence, speaking absolutely, the unbelief of heretics is the worst.
From this it follows that, say, animists or Zoroastrians, are less inimical to the Church than Jews, but that Jews are less inimical than, say, Anglican bishops or members of the editorial board of the Tablet. All this is per se, of course. Per accidens, anything can happen.
Laodicea 
September 1, 2019 at 4:59 pm
Interesting that you chose zoroastrianism rather than islam for your example. If you had mentioned islam everyone would have immediately realised something wasn’t quite right in St. Thomas’ reasoning.
September 3, 2019 at 9:39 am
I don’t think so. He is comparing the sins of *unbelief* of heathens (which in this context includes Muslims) and Jews, and saying that from that point of view the sin of the Jews is simply speaking worse, while that of the heathens is worse in a certain respect. That is compatible with the particular nature of the errors of the Muslims being more likely to lead them to other sins, not of unbelief, e.g. violence against Christians, than that of the errors of the Jews.
September 1, 2019 at 7:45 pm
Thank you for your kind words about my article. I would note that the Kingdom of Satan is not coterminous with everyone outside the Catholic Church, since many people within the Church are its zealous servitors. There are Catholics who in Leo XIIII’s words ‘refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God’. Examples will no doubt occur to you. Nor are all the members of the Kingdom of God contained within the set of baptised members of the Roman Catholic Church. The division between enemies and allies of the Church thus cannot be mapped on to the division between those who are within and those who are without the Catholic Church. In any case, one can be a member of the kingdom of Satan without being an enemy of the Church, in the sense of being one who consciously acts against the Church out of hatred of Her.
I later found that the point about Jews, unlike Muslims, not seeking to convert Christians had already been made in medieval papal bulls – not suprisingly since it is obvious. Your previous commenter does not take into account the fact that St. Thomas considered Islam to be a corruption of Christianity, plausibly so given its history. In any case St. Thomas’s remarks about the degrees of evil of different kinds of unbelief bear upon the wrongness of the personal sin committed by the unbeliever, not upon the extent to which a given from of unbelief is inimical to the Church.
September 3, 2019 at 9:49 am
My point though was that it is sin per se which makes someone an enemy to Christ and therefore to His mystical body. This is no doubt a specialised theological perspective which doesn’t warrant one in bandying around phrases like ‘Jews (or Sikhs or Zoroastrians) are enemies of the Church’ in ordinary speech.
As well as the doctrine of the two cities, there is also the fact that St Paul says of his non-believing fellow Jews: “As concerning the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake: but as touching the election, they are most dear for the sake of the fathers” (Romans 11:28). Since the context of the phrase is the Jewish people as a whole and their place in the history of salvation it doesn’t seem plausible that he would be referring in this verse only to those particular Jews who had obstructed the apostles’ preaching, especially as it would be strange to refer only to those people, rather than to other Jews, as “most dear”.
September 7, 2019 at 1:55 am
If I might chime in, I think that ThomasCordatus has the better of the argument, and there is something specious about the counterarguments.
Would it be fair to say that unbelieving Jews–including the naturally moral, “conservative” ones–generally seek to stifle Christian evangelization of themselves and their fellow Jews? That they would like Christians to cease trying to evangelize them, which is itself a form of seducing Christians away from the Church (into the error of indifferentism, at least regarding Jews)? And that in civil society they generally prefer a secular, effectively atheistic order to a Christian integralist one? And, at rock bottom, they still would not have Christ reign over them?
“I would note that the Kingdom of Satan is not coterminous with everyone outside the Catholic Church, since many people within the Church are its zealous servitors.”
True, and not the point at issue. Straw man.
“In any case, one can be a member of the kingdom of Satan without being an enemy of the Church, in the sense of being one who consciously acts against the Church out of hatred of Her.”
This is far too restrictive a definition because many are enemies of the Church out of culpable ignorance. At the Last Judgment, Our Lord will judge some who left Him shelterless, without food, without clothing, etc. “But Lord, when did we do this?” “Whatsoever you did to the least of my brethren, etc.” “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Often people are alienated from God through the darkness of ignorance, a darkness they might have shed by cooperating with actual graces. How many basically ethical Jewish people have disowned relatives for accepting the Gospel? And they refused to be reasoned with when their relatives tried to justify their decision? Do we think God doesn’t shed actual graces on such Jews when they are evangelized? Etc.
No, it’s not the same as a Hans Kung or Martin Luther, or an Annas or Caiaphas, but it’s also not nothing.
September 7, 2019 at 6:19 am
“He points out that rabbinic and conservative Jews do not seek to convert Christians away from belief in Christ, while secular Jews who attack Catholics do so not in virtue of Jewish beliefs but in virtue of Enlightenment principles which were opposed in their origin by both Catholics and Rabbinic Jews.”
Additionally, authors such as Fr. Fahey, C.S.Sp., and others of his ilk saw continuities between Rabbinic and secular Jews–being stiffnecked, rejecting the true Messias (whether in favor of a future Messias or a present false one), materialism/carnality, etc. The Sanhedrin, chief priests, and scribes preferred the revolutionary Barabbas to Christ. The various Jewish Marxist ideologues were in a certain sense errors of the rabbis, disputing about the Law of History and forming their own schools and dynasties, writing commentaries, etc.
September 7, 2019 at 7:33 am
“The various Jewish Marxist ideologues were in a certain sense errors of the rabbis”
I meant to type “heirs.”
September 8, 2019 at 1:13 am
“while secular Jews who attack Catholics do so not in virtue of Jewish beliefs but in virtue of Enlightenment principles which were opposed in their origin by both Catholics and Rabbinic Jews”
There’s something specious about this as well. For one thing, observant Jews are often hostile to Catholicism, and often enjoy the benefits of the emancipation that followed the Enlightenment. It’s not as though there are two categories: 1.) secular, anti-Catholic Jews who favor the Enlightenment and reject Judaism, and 2.) observant Jews who reject the Enlightenment and are fellow travelers of Catholics. There are also observant Jews who enjoy the full range of liberties they won post-1789 and who generally oppose the Catholic Faith, at least as an influence on society. Even observant Jews have tended, generally, to favor Liberalism. There’s a vast literature on this, much of it promoted (rightly or wrongly) by traditionalist Catholics, and it seems odd that Dr. Lamont doesn’t engage it (at least not here).
Also, even non-observant Jews (and Reform Jews; I’m not sure how Dr. Lamont would categorize them) are often formed by their Jewish ethnic identity. They often see opposition to Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, not in terms of being a “good child of the Enlightenment” (believe it or not, few people think in those terms), but in terms of being a good Jew, even if they personally are not observant, or at least not Orthodox. While E. Michael Jones is rather a crank, I think he’s done a good job of chronicling this particular phenomenon: anti-Christianity as part and parcel of Jewish ethnic identity. Now, partly that stems from an historical understanding that sees the Catholic Church as an unjust persecutor. To their minds, they’re simply opposing unjust persecution, and I can understand that position. So I’m not trying to measure personal culpability. But regardless of culpability and motive, there’s still hostility to the Church as an institution among what Dr. Lamont would call Rabbinic Jews.
September 4, 2019 at 9:50 pm
The corruption of the best is the worst, and they’ve been corrupt for a long time. Don’t underestimate them. The scriptures and the fathers are clear on this subject.
September 7, 2019 at 10:49 am
That it’s worse to corrupt something better, and by extension, worse to corrupt something good than simply not to have it, explains St Thomas’s ranking of pagan, Jewish and heretical unbelief. ‘Corrupt’ in ordinary speech, however, suggests absence of moral virtues, and in particular the use of some power instituted for a common good for private ends: I don’t think that St Thomas anywhere claims that Jews are more prone than pagans to corruption in this sense.
September 8, 2019 at 12:58 am
In his commentary on Galatians 4:29, St. Thomas writes, “The answer is that from the beginning of the early Church the Jews persecuted Christians, as is obvious in the Acts of the Apostles, and they would do the same even now, if they were able (et facerent etiam nunc si possent).” That’s from St. Thomas’ Commentary on Galatians, ch. 272.
So St. Thomas seemed to believe that the Jews of his own time period, taken as a community, were real or potential enemies of the Church. Also, the contrafactual “if they were able” seems to justify the restrictions that Christian rulers of his day had placed on Jewish communities within their realms on the basis of preemptively protecting the Church from persecution. For whatever that’s worth (and honestly, I don’t know what it’s worth).