Toward Fullness and Reciprocity — The Path Forward for the Church and Torah-Observant Hebrew Catholics

Over the past sixty years, the Catholic Church has undertaken a profound re-evaluation of its relationship with the Jewish people. Beginning with Nostra Aetate§4 (1965), and further elaborated in the 1974 Guidelines, the 1985 Notes, the 2015 The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable, and the 2022 The Promises of God Are Irrevocable, the Church has moved toward a theology of irrevocable election, shared covenantal memory, and genuine dialogue. Most recently, Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium reasserts the Church’s spiritual kinship with the Jewish people and invites a relational model of dialogue grounded in friendship, reverence, and complementary witness.

Within this trajectory, the small but spiritually significant presence of Torah-observant Hebrew Catholics — Jews who have come to faith in Jesus as the Messiah of Israel while retaining elements of Jewish religious life — poses both a challenge and a promise. This concluding synthesis will reflect on what still needs to be developed theologically and pastorally by the Church, and will propose a possible way forward in which the unique vocation of Hebrew Catholics is not only recognized but valued as a gift for the entire Church.

The Church has made irreversible theological moves in its affirmation of:

• the ongoing election of the Jewish people (Rom 11:29),

• the permanent validity of the Old Covenant,

• the rejection of supersessionism, and

• the recognition that Judaism is not merely preparatory or deficient, but in itself a response to divine revelation.¹

Through Nostra Aetate and the subsequent Vatican documents, a new ecclesiological vision has emerged in which Israel and the Church are no longer conceived in opposition but in mystical parallelism—two expressions of God's faithful presence in history.² Pope John Paul II called the Jewish people "our elder brothers in the faith of Abraham"³ and Benedict XVI emphasized the “internal relationship between the two Testaments.”⁴ Pope Francis has deepened this even further, articulating a theology of ongoing complementarity and shared mission.⁵

These developments have transformed Jewish-Christian relations in the post-Shoah era, establishing mutual trust and a common witness to the one God of Israel. However, there remains unfinished theological and pastoral work, particularly in relation to Jews who embrace faith in Jesus while seeking to retain fidelity to the Torah.

The Church’s magisterial teaching has not yet fully addressed the vocation of Jewish believers in Jesus who wish to remain observant of the Torah. This group — most commonly called Hebrew Catholics or Catholic Jews — exists in a kind of theological lacuna: accepted sacramentally, but often misunderstood ecclesially and culturally.

The current situation reveals several areas needing clarification:

1. Canonical and Liturgical Structures: There is no formal structure, akin to the Eastern Catholic Churches, in which Hebrew Catholics may express their identity liturgically or communally.⁶

2. Theological Framework: While the 2015 document affirms that the Jewish covenant is ongoing, it does not explore how Torah observance might function within the Church, particularly for those of Jewish origin who profess Jesus as Messiah.

3. Formation and Catechesis: There is a lack of theological formation that affirms the value of the Jewish traditions — not merely as preparation for Christianity but as enduring witnesses to God’s covenant fidelity.

4. Ecumenical Caution: The Church has rightly been cautious not to suggest a program of “conversion” for Jews in the post-Holocaust era. However, this pastoral restraint has sometimes led to a muted or confused understanding of Jewish believers in Jesus, who do not represent a breach with Judaism but rather a fulfillment lived within its rhythms.

Hebrew Catholics challenge the Church to ask anew: can the Torah still be a living path within the Body of Christ, for those to whom it was given?

Rather than being a pastoral anomaly or theological conundrum, Torah-observant Hebrew Catholics may be seen as a prophetic bridge, revealing the eschatological unity of Jew and Gentile in the Messiah.⁷ Their fidelity to the Torah — understood not as a means of justification but as a covenantal way of life given to Israel— serves several purposes for the Church:

• Eschatological Witness: They foreshadow the time when “all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:26), embodying the union of faith in Jesus and faithfullness to Israel’s calling.

• Hermeneutical Depth: Their lived practice enriches the Church’s understanding of Scripture, liturgy, and moral tradition from within Judaism’s own frameworks.

• Covenantal Continuity: Their presence affirms that the God of Israel has not abandoned His people, and that the “new” does not abolish the “old” but transforms it from within.

• Healing Historical Wounds: Their existence offers a tangible healing of the tragic history of Christian-Jewish estrangement and persecution.

To realize this potential, the Church may need to develop a distinct ecclesial expression — perhaps akin to a ritus hebraicus or an Ordinariate — where the Hebrew Catholic identity can flourish liturgically, catechetically, and communally without fear of assimilation or erasure.⁸

As Pope Francis has written, “the Church also is enriched when she receives the values of Judaism.”⁹ This reception must go beyond external appreciation into an internal participation— a Catholic Judaism that confesses Jesus while honoring the Torah as God’s gift to Israel. This is the heart of the Hebrew Catholic vocation: not to Judaize the Church, nor to Christianize Judaism, but to live in the tension and beauty of both, as a sign of the coming reconciliation in the fullness of the Messianic age.

There is still much work to be done — ecclesial, theological, pastoral — but the road has been opened. In the words of The Gifts and the Calling, the “unfathomable divine mystery”¹⁰ of Israel and the Church continues to unfold. Torah-observant Hebrew Catholics, walking with reverence in both worlds, may be the quiet heralds of what is to come.

1. Vatican II, Nostra Aetate§4 (1965).

2. Cf. Brill, Alan. Judaism and World Religions: Encountering Christianity, Islam, and Eastern Traditions, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, ch. 3.

3. Pope John Paul II, Address to Jewish Leaders in Mainz, 1980.

4. Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Part Two, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 44–45.

5. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §§247–249.

6. Cf. the establishment of the Personal Ordinariates for former Anglicans as a precedent in Anglicanorum Coetibus (2009).

7. Cf. Messianic Jewish theologians such as Mark S. Kinzer, Postmissionary Messianic Judaism (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005).

8. On the need for liturgical space, see Ariel Burger, “The Challenge of Catholic-Jewish Integration,” Communio, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Fall 2016): 473–498.

9. Evangelii Gaudium§249.

10. The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable (2015), §6.