Although I find Jones’ style unnecessarily provocative I do believe he is accurate in many core Catholic truths he conveys. To get right into it, his assessment of the Jewish rejection of Christ as the birthing of what he calls the Jewish Revolutionary Spirit seems to have some dire inaccuracies and omissions.
First of all, Jesus was the ultimate revolutionary in the true sense of the word. What this implies is that the Jewish revolutionary spirit is intrinsic to the Jewish soul pre-Christ as well as post-Christ. This also would mean that the revolutionary spirit is not necessarily negative if the Lord himself is the full realization of it.
I think it is more appropriate to identify the Jewish revolutionary spirit as the Messianic spirit. The Jews were “programmed” by God at Sinai to yearn and work for the Messiah. When they tragically rejected the fruit of their labor, the incarnation, this Messianic spirit remained unsatiated.
Rabbinic Judaism had been the dominant container for this potent Messianic energy since the fall of the second temple in 70ad. The Enlightenment brought the opening (or breaking down) of both Judaism and Christianity. Certainly it’s a positive that people had more free will to genuinely choose or reject God and/or orthodoxy. But its degenerative effects have had a huge corrosive effects on culture that has never abated.
After the Enlightenment This Messianic spirit (also understood as the Jewish drive) remained with Jews but many were now “emancipated” from the regulating container of Judaism. I hope it’s not controversial to assert that this drive is the flame that led to the perceived outsized Jewish success and influence on the secular culture in the last few hundred years. Whereas that energy had prior been hyper-focused on Torah, directed outwards and often severed from Torah, its energy and influence had a big effect in the wider world. I think those of the Jones mentality tend to think of it as negative. In reality, it’s had both very positive and some negative effects if we cumualtively look at science and art.
Jones believes he’s seeing a dangerous Jewish Revolutionary Spirit primarily in the realm of ideology. To play along, A Jew with this drive who engages in non-Christian or non-Jewish ideology could be amassing this potent Messianic energy in direct opposition to God’s will. The most extreme example I can cite is Karl Marx who was born a Jew (yet disliked Jews), raised a Christian and rejected both to ideate his secular theory of everything—Communism. I’m not going to list other Jews who may fit this negative “revolutionary”profile as I think it inevitably leads people to the to the wrong focus and conclusions, a diversion, on how to understand the Messianic spirit.
This is my primary concern about Jones’ approach. Whereas I kind of do think it is a good idea for Jews to hear out Jones’ ideas, I also think it can be disastrous for Gentiles to adopt Jones’ criticisms of Jews. Although I don’t believe Jones is an antisemite, antisemitism may be the inevitable result for many who engage his ideas who don’t have a strong religious, philosophical, historical and experiential background with both Judaism and Catholicism.
Something I heard him say on Reason and Theology which I have to take explicit objection to (unless he means otherwise) is that a Jew who becomes Catholic ceases to be a Jew. This seems like antiquated thinking. As a Catholic Jew myself, how exactly do I deny my ancestry when Catholicism is not itself an ethnicity? I realize it’s probably a more complicated parsing of language. When I refer to myself as a Jew, I mainly mean ethnically. I do understand that I am still considered under the yoke of Judaism according to Orthodox Jews (regardless of who I believe the Messiah is). I suppose if what Jones actually means is he’s going to let me keep my identity as a Jew, but one who is not tethered to the Rabbinic authority, perhaps we are in agreement. But it sure doesn’t sound like that from the flamboyant way he articulates these concepts. It sounds like Jones is saying when a Jew becomes Catholic they must deny being Jewish. This is bearing false witness. It might play well to a certain crowd but ultimately he undermines any merits his arguments might have with such grotesque suggestions.
How would Jones address the Biblical Church of the Circumcision? He is at odds with actual scripture. But again, I think his manner is to get people’s attention and his own understanding may not be as distorted as it will unfortunately be construed by most who hear it.
I don’t want to belittle Jones’ ax to grind with secular liberal Jews. I think I’ve laid out a better case for why things are the way they are. Jones’ approach feels more like a trope that conflates all Jews as an organized entity which they most certainly are not. The broad brush he uses can easily become the instrument of antisemitism. Even in his speech (as I’m unaware of it in his writing,) it can sound like he is even rebuking his fellow Catholic Jews.
To Jones I want to say, a Catholic Jew is still a Jew. A Catholic Jew understands the authority of the Apostolic Priesthood established by Christ and is not tethered to the Rabbis who rejected it. A Catholic Jew has found the fulfillment of the Jewish yearning, the satiation of the Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, the Messianic Spirt, the Jewish Drive. It is in the body, blood and real presence of the Messiah, God-incarnate, we receive in the Eucharist. And I am still a Jew. The Revolutionary Spirit of man has been replaced by the Revolutionary Spirit of Christ—the Divine Will.
