I’ve written about Hebrew Catholic matrimony before but I will re-articulate the principle with Aliyah in mind.
God created humans male and female to be one flesh. Jesus commanded against polygamy and divorce. A natural marriage is correctly ordered. A Catholic marriage is a sacrament elevating the natural marriage to indivisibility and holiness. Spouses take on the others’ cultures. While traditional Jewishness is not transmissible by marriage, in a mysterious way Saint Paul tells us if one is believing the entire house is holy. Even Christianity appears to be transmissible via the one flesh. The children, also called holy, are the physical proof of the principle of one flesh. They are physically molded with the cultural ethnicities of mother and father. The principle holds for adoption as much as for marriage.
A Hebrew Catholic, a Catholic with Jewish ancestry, makes a new Hebrew Catholic out of his spouse and their children. For Catholics, there should be no fretting about which ethnicity their children marry provided they marry Catholics (or the unbelieving spouse assents to raising Catholic children). They are all free to propagate by marriage—with desire and consent of course.
This is still a difficult prospect for all diaspora people. The land in which you live, marry and raise a family is going to be the dominating culture. A Hebrew Catholic may have an advantage over maintaining his culture because he derives from Jews who preserved their identity for 2000 years without land. I’m unaware of another diaspora people without a country that has managed the task of nation preservation. The diaspora Hebrew Catholic family can draw on Jewish traditions in a natural way to maintain Israelite culture.
There is now the unique opportunity for Children of Israel to return to the promised Land. Not every Hebrew Catholic would qualify to return because the State of Israel rules at least one Jewish grandparent is required. But most self-identified Hebrew Catholics might qualify at this point in history. This is a hypothetical exercise because currently no Catholic of Jewish background can openly become an Israeli citizen. A ruling we hope will change as it is illogical and unjust from both a secular and religious perspective. That said, we will speak as if the great day when the inustistice is lifted is upon us.
Because Hebrew Catholics transmit their identity primarily through marriage and secondarily through birth it is unencumbered by the difficulties and uncertanties of maintaining traditional Jewish identity. Undoubtably a good
portion of Hebrew Catholics qualify as Jews and this is important to them. In an Israeli situation, or even in a situation where a Hebrew Catholic community is enmeshed within a Jewish community, given enough time subsequent generations would likely meet the qualifications of traditonal Jewish identity.
Many Hebrew Catholics might marry other Hebrew Catholics who are considered Halachic Jews. Some might even marry secular Halachic Jews. It is less likely Hebrew Catholics would marry Orthodox Jews, but in that event the traditional legal identity questions would solve themselves over time. Diaspora Hebrew Catholics are much less likely to marry Halachic Jews. I consider this no problem at all, but one should be aware and prepared for the traditional Jewish ruling which will inevitably exclude some Hebrew Catholics from being considered technically Jewish despite their ancestry. Remember, we are mainly interested in these details so Hebrew Catholics would know if they would have the prerequisite ancestry to qualify for Aliyah.
The last issue I want to raise is the fortitude it would take to maintain a Hebrew Catholic identity for ones’ descendants in Israel, particularly on the point of marriage. A Hebrew Catholic who marries another Hebrew Catholic would have reduced difficulty except for the Zeitgeist pressure of apostasy which all Catholics face. A Hebrew Catholic who marries a secular Jew may get some political resistance regarding how the children are raised. There can be no compromise. Hebrew Catholic children must be baptized, catechized and receive the sacraments even if they are products of a natural marriage of a Hebrew Catholic and a secular Jew (or even a religious Jew). In the unlikely event that a Hebrew Catholic marries an Orthodox Jew, rather than each tradition cancelling the other out, great effort must be made by the parents to bring up the children authentically as both Orthodox Catholics and Orthodox Jews.
