Hello all -- new here, but not to the subject matter.
Have a book out that some Jews find very interesting about the Lost Tribes -- there's a link to it in the topic I posted here. Roman Catholic theologian Dr. Warren H. Carroll gave it a quick look see and encouraged me in this way:
"God wants all of the Jews, of any tribe, to be members of the New Covenant, the Catholic Church. Anything you can do to help Jews see that they are called to the New Covenant is important work and I encourage you to continue it."
It made me think of what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman:
"Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews."
John 4:22
If Our Lord meant what He said, and the way He said it (and of course He did) then the Catholics have to go to the Jews for salvation, not the other way around.
Jews are the only people who have ever lived who don't have to go to someone else to be saved. Everyone else has to come to them. It's just not in the way -- or to whom specifically -- most of them thought it would be.
The strange dichotomy is that you can be anything and still be a Jew -- even an atheist. But if you express a belief in Jesus -- the most successful historic Jew who ever lived -- you're on the slippery slope of losing your Jewish identity. On the other hand, the more we Christians worship a Jewish man as God, and read and listen to the words of His Hebrew forbears and followers, the less Semitic they all become.
Something is amiss, methinks ....
I much appreciated Pope Benedict's predecessor's attitude toward the Jewish people. We all need to be furthering John Paul the Great's work in this regard.