According to the Catholic view they do not. The Catholic position is that Israel has a right to exist according to what the Church calls the natural law, a law which applies to all people and all nations. However, many self-proclaimed “Zionists” among both Jews and Christians often go far beyond this and instead claim that the 1948 state of Israel is the inheritor of God’s covenant with Abraham according to divine law that applies only to them, thereby entitling them to sovereignty over the Holy Land by divine right. They thereby define the right to exist as a theological claim under divine law grounded in the Bible and unique to the 1948 state of Israel. Those who embrace this false belief are inclined to consider that Israel has a God-given right to continue in its occupation of Middle East territories such as the West Bank, Gaza and and Lebanon.  As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI asserted, a Jewish religious state that wanted to be considered the political and religious fulfilment of the promises of God is historically unthinkable according to the Christian faith, and would be contrary to the Christian understanding of the promises. 

 

At the root of this issue is whether or not we really believe our Lord when he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” In what St. Peter, our first pope, preached to Jewish leaders in Jerusalem — that there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. As St. Paul himself, an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin, taught us: “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” Thus, Vatican II’s teaching in Nostra Aetate that the Church is the new people of God, and in Lumen Gentium that the Church is also the new Israel.

 

We do not say this with pride against our Jewish friends, whom we love and long to see come to the Messiah and his Church. We reject all anti-Semitism, which is simply hatred of Jews — we desire no harm to come to our Jewish friends, but only their true and highest good, which is found in their Christ and ours. The ranks of the Church have included Jews from the beginning to this very day, and its apostolic foundations were entirely Jewish. Indeed, the Jews remain Christ’s family according to the flesh, and he longs and weeps for their salvation as he once wept over Jerusalem. Likewise, the Jews are the only nation to whom he promised a final conversion before his return. We await this day with expectation and hope.

 

(This article is a summary of the podcast “Catholics and Zionism” by the American organisation Catholic for Catholics.)