There are many reasons I am Catholic, but perhaps the most compelling is that I believe the Church, for all her human frailty, is prophetic: He who hears you, hears me. (Luke 10:16). It was a complete surprise to find myself called into the work of Jewish-Catholic relations, yet I see now how providential it was. In the spring of 2023, I was in Israel with Philos Catholic—the special project I now lead—on what would become our last trip before the war in Israel and Gaza. Just months later, only two weeks after the Hamas attack on October 7, I was speaking at Franciscan University of Steubenville alongside Catholic and Jewish scholars, addressing the rise of antisemitism in the Church and the world. That conference had been planned for the anniversary of the release of the Church’s declaration on our relationship to the Jews and other non Christian religions Nostra Aetate—with an awareness that antisemitism was growing—but no one could have predicted how suddenly and tragically the conversation would shift in light of such horror.
Is Catholic antisemitism still a problem? Strangely, yes.
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