There are profound spiritual and moral reasons for us to do so.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel stands apart as a unique horror. Much of the reaction in the rest of the world has also been unsettling, however. Many American universities have stained themselves by playing host to a resurgence of antisemitism and, in most cases, failing to condemn or punish it, much less offer meaningful, proactive support for Jewish students.
A notable exception is Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. As Zach Kessel reported earlier this week, the Catholic school has offered an “expedited transfer process for Jewish students in danger of antisemitic discrimination and violence on campuses across the United States.” The school considers it “the right thing to do,” whatever the logistical difficulties would be of accepting more students than it had planned.
Such charity ought not to surprise, though it is welcome. There are profound spiritual and moral reasons for Catholics to stand against antisemitism. To do otherwise would be counter to Catholic teaching. As Mary Eberstadt, a senior research fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute, explained in a recent speech at Steubenville, “to say that an antisemitic ‘Catholic’ believes in Catholic teaching is incoherent. It’s like saying ‘carnivorous vegan’ or ‘teetotaling drunk.’ It’s an oxymoron.” Catholics and Jews have a spiritual kinship that transcends their religious differences. Andrew Doran, director of Philos Catholic, pointed out to Zach that Saint Pope John Paul II called the Jewish people our “elder brothers in faith.” Both have historically stood against a paganism that terminates in a crude identitarianism, one that threatens us again now. “As many have noted, ‘the hate that begins with the Jews never ends with the Jews,’” Doran added.
Catholics also ought not to accept apathy or equivocation concerning Hamas’s attack on Israel. Both are temptations. “We might be tempted here — because of our distance from Israel, or our distance from our own Jewish origins — to feel safe from that evil, like the defenseless families sleeping on the morning of October 7,” Doran told Zach. But we have already seen evidence of that selfsame evil in our own country. And it is evil; blurring the lines will not do. The view that “moral lines can’t be drawn in the matter of October 7, or anywhere else . . . is not Catholic,” Eberstadt rightly asserts. She quotes Doran: “The monstrosities in Israel crowd out moral ambivalence.”
Eberstadt calls for “a new alliance between Jews and Catholics, the like of which has not existed before.” It is in the hopes of creating such an alliance that the Philos Project — for which Doran works, and which co-sponsored the conference on Jewish–Catholic relations amid rising antisemitism at which Eberstadt spoke — has spearheaded the Coalition of Catholics against Antisemitism. Signatories to the group’s statement (including myself and our own Ramesh Ponnuru, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and Michael Brendan Dougherty) “commit ourselves to combating resurgent hatred of the Jewish people today — in our country and around the world.” One wishes the task was not necessary, though it is eminently worthy. Let Catholics and all others of goodwill unite in contesting what the coalition calls the “spiritual evil” of antisemitism.