In light of recent debates surrounding the actions of the Israeli government, many Catholics hear about “Zionism” and that Catholics “must be Zionists” or “can’t be Zionists.”
But in order to see if those claims are true, we must define the term in question.
Roughly speaking, Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in the nineteenth century as European Jews sought to establish a homeland where they could be protected from anti-Jewish violence. Even into the nineteenth century, pogroms, or violent riots against Jews, resulted in loss of property and life.
The movement to relocate Jews was called Zionism because in the Tanakh—the Hebrew Bible, which Christians call the Old Testament—Zion is the spiritual and geographic home of the Jewish people (Ps. 132:13, Isa. 2:3). The name refers to a hill just outside Jerusalem, but the name came to represent the entire land of Israel.
(Keep in mind that this is a very minimal definition, since Zionism has fragmented into many different articulations, with unique goals related to securing a state for Jewish people.)
There’s nothing in Catholic teaching that prohibits supporting the existence of a nation that prioritizes a particular ethnic or non-Catholic religious group, as long as that nation respects the rights of people outside the group it prioritizes. Ideally, all nations would prioritize the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church as the true religion while respecting the rights of non-Catholics living in their borders. One prudential reason for such support might be the good of protecting members of a religious minority from persecution. The Bible tells us to “rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter” (Prov. 24:11).
When it comes to Jewish Zionism, alternative locations like Uganda and Eastern Russia had been proposed to the movement’s leaders over a century ago, but Palestine was ultimately chosen due to its historical connections to the Jewish faith.
In response, some people cite the teachings of Pope St. Pius X as evidence that Catholics cannot support a Jewish state in the land of Palestine. In 1897, Austrian Jewish journalist Theodore Herzl founded the World Zionist Organization and became one of the most famous figures in early Zionism. In 1903, Herzl met with Pope Pius X in a private audience to discuss the matter, and a quote is passed around the internet as coming from a “Letter from Pope Pius X to Theodore Herzl.” The quote says,
We are unable to favor this [Zionist] movement. We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem, but we could never sanction it. The ground of Jerusalem, if it were not always sacred, has been sanctified by the life of Jesus Christ. As the head of the Church, I cannot answer you otherwise. The Jews have not recognized Our Lord; therefore, we cannot recognize the Jewish people. . . . If you come to Palestine and settle your people there, we will be ready with priests and churches to baptize all of you.
This statement is not found in any Church document, and it is not a teaching of the Catholic Church. Instead, it comes from Herzl’s diary recollections of his encounter with the pope.
What did subsequent popes have to say about Zionism? In 1987, Pope St. John Paul II said,
After the tragic extermination of the Shoah, the Jewish people began a new period in their history. They have a right to a homeland as does any civil nation, according to international law. “For the Jewish people who live in the State of Israel and who preserve in that land such precious testimonies to their history and their faith, we must ask for the desired security and the due tranquility that is the prerogative of every nation and condition of life and of progress for every society.”
In 1993, the Vatican officially recognized Israel’s existence as a country. The Holy See recognized Israel as a legitimate nation and affirmed Israel’s duty to maintain a status quo in Christian holy sites and a guarantee of freedom of worship at Catholic ones.
One prudential argument for a Jewish state in Palestine is that the alternative would probably be a Muslim state, which would not be as amenable to respecting religious liberty. For example, in Israel, it is legal to attempt to convert an adult Jew as long as bribery, like promising gifts or money, isn’t used. However, in Muslim-majority countries, sharing the Faith with Muslims is illegal and, in some cases, can be punished with death.
In Israel, the site of Christ’s ascension has been controlled by Muslims since the twelfth century. As a result, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass can be celebrated on the site only once a year, on the Feast of the Ascension, and no sacred images are allowed at the site, in accord with Muslim principles. Although some ultra-orthodox Jews illegally harass Christian pilgrims, one could make the argument that this arrangement is still preferable to the land being under Muslim control.
So the Catholic Church does not forbid Christians to recognize the existence of Israel as a distinctly Jewish state. They are also free to protest this political arrangement and make a prudential argument in favor of that view, but Catholics aren’t obligated to hold that view.
However, the Catholic Church does prohibit a more radical kind of Zionism, popular among some dispensationalist Protestants, that identifies the modern nation of Israel with the Israel described in the Bible. In Galatians 3:7-9, Paul makes it clear that all who believe belong to the true Israel that God will bless, and not just those who belong to the Jewish faith or have Jewish ancestry. And the Second Vatican Council taught in Lumen Gentium that “Israel according to the flesh, which wandered as an exile in the desert, was already called the Church of God. So likewise the new Israel which while living in this present age goes in search of a future and abiding city is called the Church of Christ” (9).
But the Church also condemns the view that God has simply abandoned the Jewish people, and so they are on par, or even morally inferior to, other non-Christians. The Second Vatican Council taught that “although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the holy scriptures” (Nostra Aetate 4).
Throughout Christian history, whereas pagan temples were often destroyed and their worship banned, Jewish synagogues were allowed to exist because Jews were seen as still having a special witness to God’s promises. Romans 11 even says Jews who rejected Jesus “are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (vv. 28-29).
Zionism is incompatible with Catholicism if it contradicts the Church’s theological claims about Christ and the Jews. In 2018, Pope Benedict XVI published an essay on Judaism and Israel where he said the following:
After the establishment of Israel as a country in 1948, a theological doctrine emerged that eventually enabled the political recognition of the State of Israel by the Vatican. At its core is the conviction that a strictly theologically understood state—a Jewish faith-state [Glaubenstaat] that would view itself as the theological and political fulfillment of the promises—is unthinkable within history according to Christian faith and contrary to the Christian understanding of the promises.
At the same time, however, it was made clear that the Jewish people, like every people, had a natural right to their own land. As already indicated, it made sense to find the place for it in the historical dwelling place of the Jewish people.
So a Catholic cannot support a theological Zionism that sees modern Israel as a divine promise, but he can support a more political version that sees Israel as one geographic homeland among many in the world. Catholics can even, as Pope Benedict references, see God’s providence at work in a non-prophetic but still fitting turn of events. Or as the late pontiff put it: “the Vatican has recognized the State of Israel as a modern constitutional state, and sees it as a legitimate home of the Jewish people, the rationale of which cannot be derived directly from Holy Scripture. Yet, in another sense, it expresses God’s faithfulness to the people of Israel.”
That’s one position. Catholics can also be critical of the way Israel was founded in 1948, just as Catholics are free to be critical of how European settlers founded many colonies and nations across the world. One could be anti-Zionist in this sense without being antisemitic, as long as he treats similar establishments of modern nations in the same way. Finally, a Catholic could endorse something like a “two-state solution” for Palestinians, as Benedict XVI did.
But if the person holds this view only toward Israel, then there is the risk of a double standard, like with someone who agrees with historians about the reality of every genocide in history except the genocide of Jewish people in World War II. This kind of person is arguing not in good faith, but with specious reasoning for the simple, malicious purpose of opposing “the Jews.”
It is incorrect to say that this “anti-Zionism” simply “is” the Catholic view and that Catholics must be or are anti-Zionist. We’ve already seen that such an attitude contradicts recent popes’ prudential judgments, as well the Holy See’s acknowledgment of Israel’s legitimacy as a fellow member of the community of nations.
The bottom line is that Catholics are not obligated to give the nation of Israel more obedience than any other nation on earth, and their first allegiance should be to God and his Church. However, Catholics are permitted to support the existence of a justly administered Jewish homeland in accord with what the Holy See has already set forward in several agreements made over the past few decades.