A Critique of: "If You Believed Moses"
By Dr. Robert Sungenis · 2023 · ISBN 978-1-939856-77-7
Fr. James Mawdsley's If You Believed Moses argues that the Jews are promised a future conversion, and that the traditional Latin Mass teaches it while the Novus Ordo does not. Sungenis answers both claims. The Good Friday rite, he points out, does not teach a future conversion at all; it leads us to pray for the conversion of the Jews now and in the future, which is a different thing. From there the critique goes to the verse the whole expectation rests on, Romans 11:26, "and thus all Israel shall be saved."
The exegesis works through Romans 11 in sequence, asking who the olive tree is and what Paul means by "all Israel," then tests the reading against Augustine, Jerome, Pope Gregory the Great, Venerable Bede, Thomas Aquinas and Cornelius Lapide, against Challoner's annotated Douay-Rheims, against Pius IX and Augustin Lémann, and against the Catechism. Jesus' own statements get a section, including the parable of the two brothers, Jairus' daughter and the fig tree. So do the prophets the expectation is usually drawn from: Sirach 36:10-14, Isaiah 59:20, Hosea 3:1-5 and Malachi 4:5-6, with Jesus' own interpretation of Malachi 4:5 set against the modern one. The conclusion is that the Jews belong to the whole story of salvation, not only to its last chapter.