Supercessionism is, ultimately, concerned with the eternally important matter of the salvation of souls.  It is formally and officially noted, furthermore, in the Code of Canon Law, Canon 1752, meaning in terms of saving souls.  The hope of Christianity, for the entire world, is to provide a needed means by which billions of people can achieve, through holiness, the end result of attaining the permanent joy and happiness of eternal blessedness, meaning the ability to get to Heaven. 

Yet, this quite wonderful theological aspiration is thought, by uninformed and other people, to be just truly evil and monstrous as a concept.

Ignorance, hatred, superstition, or worse, inclusive of deliberately gross misrepresentation, usually greets the doctrine of supercessionism by which it is asserted that the New Testament, meaning salvation by, through, and of Jesus Christ had, in fact, replaced the Old Testament, meaning, of course, in terms of Christian teachings.  This is supremely because the Christ qua Messiah was the complete fulfillment of all of the Law and the Prophets, as He Himself said, and not their destruction.

Moreover, Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II have both been falsely, wrongly, accused of heresy in the claim they had supposedly denied supercessionism as to the teachings of the Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium, the three pillars of the Faith, of the Roman Catholic Church.  It would be the same, of course, as denying, by definition, the truth of the Catholic faith itself.

Pope John Paul II, it can be recalled, had the statement Dominus Iesus (Lord Jesus)  issued through the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, meaning the then German Curial Cardinal Josef Ratzinger.  This important document, explaining the many still existing imperfections of the Protestant and those Eastern Orthodox churches out of communion with Rome, was approved by John Paul on June 9, 2000.

Among other matters importantly addressed, it was stated that churches which do not have a valid Episcopate [Bishops in an asserted unbroken line from Peter] and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharist mystery [the creation of Christ’s body and blood, soul and divinity, in the Mass] are, in fact, not truly churches in the proper sense.   

In addition, the document further set out to show that all other Christian faiths had no valid claim on the salvation that was to be found "only in the unique and universal Catholic Apostolic Church."  Dominus Iesus, also, asserted that there exists only a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the one Catholic church, governed by the Successor of St. Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. 

This pertains to the proclaimed theological authority and power, of course, of the Roman Catholic Church, inclusive of popes being totally free of ever officially advancing heresy by ecclesial action.

By Catholic doctrine, therefore, any (valid) pope, meaning regarding the legitimacy through apostolic succession, must be and is always free from any promulgation of heresy, meaning that a heresy cannot ever be proclaimed as an ex cathedra Church teaching.  A pope’s freedom from heresy, according to the Faith, is guaranteed by the power of the Holy Ghost, one of the three divine persons of the Trinity. 

This does not mean, however, that popes are also free from making some erroneous or even stupid statements given privately and/or publicly as their merely personal opinions, which can and, in fact, has happened (and more often than the papacy, during its history, may really care to admit). 

If the Church, however, were ever to deny that Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, did not truly forever constitute, by definition, the beginning of a genuinely new covenant, the New Testament, then it might as well go out of business; it would significantly then, in fact, no longer have any true and legitimate, logical and functional, operational and foundational, reason to exist at all. 

And, that is always a most pivotal and highly critical point to note:  No supercessionism, no Christianity. 

The salvation of souls has been and is its primary mission— and trumps all else.  The Church, therefore, cannot contradict itself as to its valid, proclaimed existence and righteous justification on earth.  This is what is meant by there being no salvation outside the Roman Catholic Church, (which is explained in more detail later in this article), the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Thus, Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II could never have proclaimed as a Church teaching that the religion of Judaism (or any other faith for that matter) provides salvation in and of itself; only Jesus Christ, through the mission of the Church, has the divine power to actually determine who is going to Heaven, which is, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, open to all people regardless of their religion or lack thereof. 

Any pope, furthermore, who would repudiate supercessionism would, in effect, also fully repudiate himself at the same time; he would be, automatically, denouncing himself as a total fraud; it is just neither rationally nor theologically tenable a matter to consider; thus, Abe Foxman in his criticism of this theological asseveration is being absurd, to say the least. 

In specific terms of this presented controversy, therefore, it can be rightly said that Ann Coulter, though she is not always articulate enough and often engages in much deliberate hyperbolic rhetoric, was still completely correct.  And, of course, Gentile baiting is as bad as Jew baiting in such a context. 

What it often actually amounts to, moreover, is either covert or overt Christophobia, a fear of Christians and/or of Christianity in general.  But, God’s Kingdom is always open to all people, regardless of race, religion, nationality, etc., as a real possibility, though any supposed notion of a “universal salvation” is just a damnable neo-Pelagian heresy.  The doctrine of free will cannot be set aside; it is in opposition to determinism as seen in, e.g., Protestantism.

It is still to be properly understood, nevertheless, that all those people who truly do the will of God are invited into the Kingdom of Heaven; this is because all human souls, according to Catholic and most (traditional) Protestant thinking, can only, after the Last Judgment, go either to Heaven or Hell; and, every such righteous, meaning holy, soul is, thus, a true member of the Church, even if only through what is called the Baptism of Desire, as is taught by the Roman Catholic Church. 

Unlike all the Biblical Fundamentalists among the Protestants, for instance, there is no absolute requirement of a physical baptism with a formal profession of faith in Christ; Jesus, according to Roman Catholicism, always knows His sheep and they will, thus, know Him in Paradise forever.   But, as stated previously, all salvation is only by the will of Jesus who is, therefore, known to be the actual Lord God Almighty, the true Messiah. 

And yet, it is an interrelated doctrine of the Church that St. Peter controls the keys to Heaven as the chosen Vicar of Christ on Earth in affirmation of Catholicism, in with the universality of the Church. 

One sees this very properly expressed in the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus est as it was strongly defended, e.g., by Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215; Pope Boniface VIII in the Papal Bull Unam Sanctum of 1302, Pope Eugene IV in his Bull Cantate Domino of 1442, etc.   Of course, most recently, Dominus Iesus  endorsed fully by Pope John Paul II was, as noted previously, promulgated in the year 2000.

No dogmatic statements, moreover, are ever capable, in any way whatsoever, of abrogation, reversal, elimination, or denial; every dogma is, therefore, explicitly definitive and must be believed in by all the faithful without any exception or disagreement whatsoever.

If the dogmatic teachings of the Church are found to be offensive, however, then so be it; these teachings are defended theologically as being the truth, not mere suppositions or propositions subject to ever endless debate.  No one, however, is forced to believe.  It is a matter of faith. 

Many religions in the world also make absolutistic statements that people are free to believe or not, except in almost all Moslem countries, of course, where belief in Allah is legally and otherwise demanded; and, many times, at the price of death, not simply, e.g., mere imprisonment. 

The fully murderous persecution of Christians in Moslem countries is, therefore, real and growing.  To be fair, however, even Hindus and others murder Christians.  But, the martyrs are, as ever, still the seeds of the Church and further prove the validity of its moral and theological claims to holiness and religious truth, by the deaths that occur, due to Christian belief.

The point being made, nonetheless, is that assertions made by the Church harm nobody (though martyrs are “harmed” willingly, of course), meaning, at the least, in any physical sense of persecution.   Supercessionism is a theological matter having no force among nonbelievers who can simply ignore it as meaningless to their own lives in any tangible sense, if they wish to do so. 

The Christian religious claim, moreover, is that the leadership of the Jewish people, in ancient Palestine, had mainly rejected Jesus; Caiphas, the then High Priest of Israel, had, in fact, physically ripped apart his sacred garments (committing thereby an open act of sacrilege) in so signifying his total disbelief and evident disgust and complete rejection of Jesus at his “trial.”  He had adamantly refused to recognize Him as the (one and only) promised Messiah, the Redeemer.

Furthermore, at the moment of the death of Christ, the curtain of the Second Temple at Jerusalem was fully torn in two, thus, further visually and symbolically indicating the breaking of the Old Covenant with the Jewish people by God the Father.  This is because it takes (at least) two parties to form a covenant.  The destruction of the Second Temple later occurred, besides the Diaspora, of course.  These were, in fact, direct and logical consequences due to the deliberate rejection of the Messiah, according to, it can be said, Christian beliefs. 

Roman Catholics as Christians, therefore, are logically believers in the true New Covenant, the New Testament, who accept the Christ as their true Lord and Savior, their Messiah, as was indicated as to the Promise of the Messiah, according to Jewish and Christian belief, by the Old Testament.  Of course, both Testaments are fully accepted parts of the Christian Bible, which further indicates, moreover, the real fullness of the Gospel being acknowledged and affirmed. 

In conclusion, one must yet plainly note that supercessionism is, therefore, a forever necessary part of basic Christianity that cannot be denied as to the theology that grants the aforesaid religious legitimacy to Christianity, meaning that it is not to be just dismissed, for instance, as a mere Hebraic heresy.  Of course, those who are and remain of the Judaic faith totally deny all this and most, though not all, tend to, also, see it as merely pernicious nonsense or (much) worse. 

And yet today, about 800,000,000 Roman Catholics and, in addition, approximately another 500,000,000 Christians of various denominations or persuasions are believers (in the supposed nonsense).  Glory be to God in the highest!

Athanasius contra mundum!

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