Again, “We adore God Who is love, who in Jesus Christ gave Himself for us, Who offered Himself on the Cross to expiate our sins, and through the power of this love, rose from the dead and lives in His Church. We have no God other than Him.”
(Pope Francis, 6/212/14)
“We know Jesus only in the proclamation and tradition of the primitive Church,” writes the eminent Catholic Biblical scholar, the late Rev. John L. McKenzie. He continues, “We know what he said of himself only as the Church reported it. If the Church did not tell us what he was, then there is no way in which his true identity can be ascertained…We know Jesus only through the witness of the primitive Church, to question that witness is to make it impossible to share the faith of the primitive Church” (The Power and the Wisdom, (1965), Imprimatur).
The proclamation, tradition and witness to Jesus of the primitive Church as it is definitively recorded in the Gospels is that Jesus is Nonviolent, that He is the Nonviolent Messiah of Israel and that He teaches a Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies—among other truths. If any post-primitive institutional Church teaches other that this, then it is not sharing the faith of the primitive Church, then it is neither proclaiming nor following the only Jesus there is to know, proclaim and follow.
If any institutional Church that comes after the primitive Church is not sharing the faith of the primitive Church then what faith is it sharing? What Jesus does it say it knows and professes, when it preaches and teaches by word and deed what is in direct logical contradiction to the explicit witness of the primitive Church? And, how does it know and validate that it is presenting the true identity of Jesus when it parts company with the witness to Jesus of the primitive Church? And, what are the necessary implications of this for the God image, as well as, the truth concerning the will of God, it is imparting to people? If it is not the Jesus of the primitive Church who is Nonviolent, who is the Nonviolent Messiah of Israel and who teaches a Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies as God’s will that a post-primitive Church is calling people to have faith in, then who or what is it that that Church is calling people to have faith in and to follow?
Any departure from the faith and witness of the primitive Church to Jesus can only result in tremendous evil being propagated under the patronage of Jesus. This is proven, historically verifiable fact, not personal conjecture.
So let me end this FAST FOOD Helping where it began, with a statement from Rev. John L. McKenzie, a Catholic biblical scholar with over fifty years of the highest quality of scholarship to his credit: “Jesus taught that violence belongs to the Reign of Satan, and that men must expel violence if they wish to liberate themselves from the Reign of Satan. If Jesus did not reject any type of violence for any purpose, then we know nothing of him.” The Jesus of whom McKenzie is speaking is the only Jesus there is to know, the Jesus who is “known only through the witness of the primitive Church, the Jesus who is known “only in the proclamation and tradition of the primitive Church.” He is speaking of The Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels who is the Nonviolent Messiah of Israel and who teaches a Way of Nonviolent Love (Agape) of friends and enemies.
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy (To be continued)
