From Sinai to Rome: Jewish Identity in the Catholic Church

Can you be a Jewish Catholic? At first glance, the idea could seem scandalous. Catholics affirm that Jesus is the Messiah; Jews do not. Jews hold that the Torah’s precepts should be diligently kept; Catholic Christians hold that Christ has fulfilled the law. Can they really be reconciled?

Yet Jesus, a Jew, tells us that “salvation comes from the Jews” (Jn 4:22). Pope Pius XII once remarked, “Spiritually, we [Catholics] are all Semites.” In a sense, Christians are Jews by adoption, as Saint Paul writes to the Romans. Since the days of Peter and Paul, the Church has struggled to understand her close yet complex relationship with the people from whom she came, at times stressing stark differences, at times treasuring their close brotherhood.

This essential collection by Professors Angela Costley and Gavin D’Costa examines the question of Jewish–Catholic relations from every angle. With contributions from some of the Church’s greatest theological minds—Scott Hahn, Brant Pitre, Bruce Marshall, Roy Schoeman, Robert Fastiggi, Lawrence Feingold, Fr. Antoine Levy, and Fr. David Neuhaus—From Sinai to Rome probes the possibility of Hebrew Catholicism, which nurtures its Old Covenant roots from within the Church.

This book refuses to shy away from historical knots in Catholic and Jewish relations, but seeks to understand them thoroughly, in the context of the sacred Catholic tradition. This timely volume gives intellectual grounds for the hope that Jews might find their true homeland in Christ, with the holy Church that he himself founded.

KEY POINTS

• A rigorous study of the rich relationship between Judaism and Catholicism
• An in-depth account of the Church’s Old Testament roots
• An honest, focused summary of the Church’s complex history with Jewish practice
• A robust exploration of a possible Hebrew liturgical rite within the Church