Can Traditionalist Catholics Really Accept Catholic Zionism?

Prologue

How might a traditional Catholic respond to Gavin D’Costa’s essay in Mosaic describing and advocating a specifically Catholic form of Zionism? In what follows, I’d like to explore and answer that question by imagining, but hardly fantasizing, such a Catholic. Let’s call him T.

Though a traditionalist, T. is not a member of a reactionary or breakaway sect. He belongs to a Catholic church in communion with Rome. Demographically, he is in some ways like D’Costa (or me). Born or raised Catholic in 1950s and 60s America, he was educated in parochial elementary schools and at St. Thomas Academy, a Dominican secondary school. In the aftermath of Vatican II, Catholic high-school education typically included three to four years of Latin, which T. pursued while also studying theology in preparation for a possible entry into the priesthood. Today, long decades after leaving the seminary to marry, launch a career in the law, and begin a family, he remembers, imperfectly, the sounds and murmurs of the traditional Latin mass even as he attends English mass in his parish church almost every Sunday.