The New Catholic Zionism

Despite the drastically falling rates of religious affiliation and practice in advanced Western countries—and despite the claims of secularists that religion has altogether caused quite enough trouble in the world and should best be ignored or kept private—religious faith itself has stubbornly declined to disappear.

Not only has the world’s population at large continued to be deeply religious, if not increasingly so, and not only has secularism, for its part, compiled its own record of shame in terms of tyranny, persecution, and bigotry, but the deep convictions instilled by religious faith have inspired any number of history’s noblest achievements for the betterment of humankind.

In what follows, I want to bring to the fore a little-known development in, specifically, modern Catholic thought that has the capacity to render a wholly positive service of its own. The development in question is the salutary emergence of, in brief, Catholic Zionism, a stream of thought that has the potential to influence for the good the attitudes toward the state of Israel held by billions of believers around the world.