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(LifeSiteNews) — Joining me on this episode of The John-Henry Westen Show is Joe Enders, who was recently fired by the Archdiocese of Detroit from his full-time job as a parish business manager after he denounced Zionism on a podcast. We discussed his firing without warning, the errors of Zionism, and more.
I opened the episode by asking Enders what led to his firing by the archdiocese. He explained that this began when he appeared on a podcast last week with his friend Timothy Gordon of Rules For Retrogrades titled “Catholics Confront Zionism!” The pair defended Carrie Prejean Boller after she denounced Zionism during a Religious Liberty Commission hearing.
“Ultimately, our conclusion in the show was that you can’t be a Catholic and assent to the tenets of Zionism as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the American Jewish Congress,” Enders said.
READ: Archdiocese of Detroit fires podcaster after he presented Catholic doctrine on Zionism
I asked Enders to clarify the tenets of Zionism he referred to. He delved into the three main principles of this ideology, which are that the modern state of Israel has a right to exist, that the Jewish people have a right to a homeland, and finally that if you don’t agree with the first two propositions, you are anti-Zionist and therefore an “anti-Semite” as well.
“(The Zionists are) saying that if you don’t assent to both of those propositions, that you are an anti-Semite, meaning you hate Jewish people,” he said. “I don’t hate any Jewish people. In fact, I wish the greatest happiness and joy upon them that they could ever possibly endure.”
“I’m talking about true spiritual joy, as Thomas Aquinas would put it. I want them to go to heaven, I want them to be baptized, and I want the Holy Spirit to reside in every Jewish person on earth,” he added.
Enders emphasized that Zionism contradicts Catholic teaching because the Jewish people no longer have a biblical right to the land of Israel, since the Old Covenant has been fulfilled.
“If you were to accept the propositions of the slogans that (the Zionists are) telling you that you have to assent to, you’re kind of forced into a very specific position. And that specific position that you’re forced into is that … somehow Jews, through their blood, have a right to the land of Israel,” he said. “And not just the land of Israel, but the land of Israel as outlined in the Bible, their ‘ancestral homeland.’”
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“Now, we all know that’s not just the Israel that we know today. It’s parts of Lebanon, it’s parts of Iraq, it’s parts of Syria, and Jordan, and all these other parts of the world,” he added.
Enders continued:
Now, we as Catholics believe that existing nations do have some level of right to their own sovereignty. … We can’t say that (about) Israelis, because the Bible, 3,000 years ago assented this land to these people. We don’t believe that that covenant is still in existence. We believe that God granted them that covenant. We believe that the Church is the new Israel, that Jesus Christ fulfilled the Old Covenant on the cross. When we think of Israel in the Old Testament, we see it as a foreshadowing of the Catholic Church. When we think of the chosen people, the Jews, we look at the baptized today. (Those) baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And the Church has held this view forever.
Enders stressed that expressing these views got him into hot water with the archdiocese, which ultimately led to his firing on Ash Wednesday of all days, without an explanation — putting his family in an extremely difficult financial position as they’re expecting a baby girl in two months.
“Everybody knows that when you take a job at a church, you take a reduced salary. It’s just always how it goes. (But) … they graciously… would pay for (my healthcare) in full. Well … I’m losing that at the end of the month,” he said. “And I have two options now: I have to either go on Medicaid … or I have to pay that $1,700 a month premium to cover my family for those months until my daughter’s born. And I … have no income through this entire process.”
He recalled his conversation with the man who informed he was fired over the phone last week.
“(I asked,) ‘Is there anything that (the archdiocese is) going to do? They’re not going to give me any severance. … There’s nothing they can do?’ (He said,) ‘No.’” he recounted. “And I (asked), ‘Well, can you at least tell me why this is happening? What have I done wrong?’ And he says ‘the archdiocese has instructed me not to tell you.’”
To hear much more from Joe Enders, watch my full interview above or by clicking here.
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