Does Pope Francis's Evangelii Gaudium 247 contain heresy in saying the Jews' covenant was never revoked?
A viewer asks whether Evangelii Gaudium 247, saying the Jews' covenant has never been revoked, means the ordinary universal magisterium of Pope Francis contains heresy or contradicts traditional doctrine.
Answer
As far as what number 247 in Evangelii Gaudium says, there is not really a problem, because the terms are ambiguous, and you cannot accuse anybody of heresy if the terms are ambiguous. He says we hold the Jewish people in special regard because their covenant with God has never been revoked. That begs the question: what covenant? In traditional Catholicism we have always understood the Mosaic covenant as the old covenant, because old implies something new has replaced it, and Hebrews says four or five times that the Mosaic covenant has been abrogated, annulled, superseded. If the old covenant here means the Mosaic covenant, then yes, it is heretical, and I stand firm on that. But if it means the Abrahamic covenant, there is much less difficulty, because the Abrahamic covenant had a spiritual dimension, a covenant of salvation looking forward to Jesus Christ as the seed, and that is continued, not revoked, in the New Covenant; that is why it says the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable, the call to salvation. So the game being played today is that they use the ambiguous phrase old covenant and never define it. In the 1997 catechism the phrase is used 33 times and never once defined, which is atrocious, and it tells me they are hiding something, because the Jews would get upset if it were said plainly to be the Mosaic covenant. The USCCB did say Mosaic outright, in a 1988 liturgy document and again in their 2006 catechism, and I wrote to the Vatican and the USCCB, and the bishops voted 234 to 14 to remove that sentence, and Cardinal Levada approved its removal. So you cannot call Evangelii Gaudium 247 heresy because of the ambiguity, but the deliberate ambiguity is being used to favor the Jews for the sake of ecumenical dialogue.