Dr. Gavin D’Costa on the Jewish Roots of Christianity: From Sinai to Rome

What does it really mean to say Christianity is “rooted in Judaism”? In this conversation, Dr. Gavin D’Costa—Emeritus Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol and visiting professor at Rome’s Angelicum—unpacks the argument of his new book From Sinai to Rome: Jewish Identity in the Catholic Church. We explore how early Christian faith grew from Jewish soil, where continuity ends and discontinuity begins, and why terms like “Judeo-Christian” both clarify and confuse. We also dive into Hebrew Catholicism, Messianic movements, Passover and the Eucharist, interfaith empathy, immigration anxieties, and what a Christ-honoring “rubric” looks like when discerning which practices to carry forward.

Dr. D’Costa challenges modern Christians to rediscover the richness of their Jewish roots without collapsing distinctions or erasing theological difference. He argues that recovering this lineage isn’t simply an academic exercise—it’s a spiritual one that can help the Church understand itself, its liturgy, and its moral imagination in a fragmented age. For listeners wrestling with how faith and identity intersect in pluralistic societies, this conversation offers both historical grounding and a compelling call toward deeper empathy and continuity within the Christian story.

Buy the book 
From Sinai to Rome: Jewish Identity in the Catholic Church https://ignatius.com/from-sinai-to-rome-fstrp/

Guest bio:
Born in Kenya to Indian parents, Gavin D’Costa has shaped contemporary conversations on how Christians theologically relate to Jews and Muslims. He is Emeritus Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol and serves as a visiting professor at the Angelicum in Rome. His books include Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims (OUP, 2014), Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II (OUP, 2019), and (as co-editor) From Sinai to Rome: Jewish Identity in the Catholic Church (Ignatius Press, 2025).

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. If you're watching on our YouTube channel, I am your political host Will Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. What's going on, Josh? Doing just fine, well thanks. And today we have joining us Dr. Gavin DeCosta. He's an Emirates professor of Catholic theology at the University of Bristol and a leading scholar on inter-religious dialogue. He's advised the Vatican and written influential books on Christian, on Christianity's relationship with other faiths. And it is just so great to have you today. We're going to be talking today about your most recent book, which we'll let you talk more about from Sinai to Rome. But yeah, welcome to the show, Gavin. Thank you so much. It's great to be here and I'm excited about talking about the book. Thanks. So before we get into the book, I would love to just learn a little bit more about who is Gavin DeCosta. I don't think that my little short intro to who you are did you any justice whatsoever. So um tell us who is the real Gavin DeCosta. Okay, so I'm a lay person. I'm married. I have two children. I often come to the States for conferences and are connected with the Catholic community there and finding the dynamics there very interesting. I also spend time teaching in Rome right now for the last five years. I teach at the Angelicum, which is the Dominican institution. So I retired from Bristol and then started in Rome and my other interests. I love walking and I write poetry and I am fascinated by Catholicism and its different countries and manifestations. That's me. That's awesome. Well, man, thank you for your work, Gavin. It's such a pleasure to be able to talk with people with such a diversity of experience, breadth of uh different experiences. I really do love it because, you know, I wouldn't say I was sheltered growing up. definitely wasn't sheltered, but I did have an almost like... uh psychological shelter that I put up uh growing up as an evangelical Christian, a Pentecostal Christian, uh more specifically. You know, I had a lot of uh probably internal barriers, uh especially for people in different religions. And I got to say one of the things uh that really was a challenge for me growing up was actually being able to enter into the worldview of someone else, of a Muslim, someone who's Jewish. know that you expertise, you have a lot of expertise in Jewish-Christian relations and in, or even someone who is Hindu. know even recently Will and I have talked about some of the um just, don't know, xenophobia, maybe we call it, racism. Some people would definitely call it. uh where there was a lot of uh anger and antagonism about posts about Diwali, um which is like my kids have Diwali, Diwali I think that's how it said, they have that off actually in Henrico, Virginia, they have it off. it's like, it's interesting. And I would just love to kind of be kind of setting the groundwork for your book and moving through its argument, like how... How have you learned to enter into the worldview of m other religions where we can feel like we can understand them without having to convince them? Or do we need to convince them from our call from Christ? That's what I always grew up with. Like, you can't really be empathetic because you need to convince. They are lost souls that need a savior. uh And yet that doesn't seem to work many times. when we're not really being empathetic or getting into someone's worldview, how have you learned to do that? Yes, I kind of was born into a very religiously pluralist situation because uh basically my parents are Indian and they moved to Kenya in terms of the British Empire and were working there and I was born there. And all of the Indians used to live in an area. uh Whites lived in one area, Indians lived in another area, Africans in another. And therefore in the... compound, which was a series of houses. Basically we had Hindu neighbors, Muslim neighbors and Sikh neighbors and we were the only Catholics. And as a kid, and I think this is kind of getting to your question, Josh, as a kid, my memory of other religions was just, wow, I look forward to their next festivals so I can get sweets and we have a lot of fun together. So like Diwali, funnily enough, you've just mentioned it. our neighbours used to come round with a big tray of sweets and my sister and me used to be terribly excited waiting for them. We had no idea about the kind of big questions that separate us. It was based on human friendship and a certain level of civility to each other, recognising that we were different. So I did have that kind of like start and then when I came to England at the age of 11 I then suddenly realized that one, being a Catholic, two, being an Indian, made me an outsider in all sorts of ways. um So the idea of empathy seems kind of vital. mean, just not even religions, political differences, social class differences. If humans are to engage with each other, I would say imagination and compassion are vital. This is not kind of just, you know, furry hug you politics. It's actually saying to understand someone you do need imagination and you need to have a desire to be in their shoes. But to pick up the other point, Josh, as I um increasingly became an alive Roman Catholic, it seemed to me pretty important that part of the friendship I had with people was also sharing what moved me most. So, you know, like if I saw a good film, I'd want to tell my friend, you've got to go and see this. And it just happens that uh my viewers, that Jesus Christ transforms my life and that brings in good news and to share it would be a real privilege. But you've got to be sensitive. It can't be rammed down people's throats or... And most importantly, I think with some traditions, if they hear about your Christianity, they may have associations of it which are deeply negative. And if you don't understand that, it's like, you know, talking to someone who maybe have experienced sexual abuse, you don't know it, and you just happily talk about the topic without realizing you may be quite dangerous ground and you learn and you need to learn how to talk to be an effective communicator. So I think there's a kind of great big mountain ahead but it's like the thrill of climbing mountains to actually engage with different people in different worlds, the joys of being human. I love that and I love your analogy about talking about your favorite movie. Recently, had a conversation. Josh and I are in America and um I had a conversation with a uh person who was a rather... um big Trump supporter. And we got to talk in about a movie. One of my current movie obsessions right now is K-Pop Demon Hunters, which is a great movie, by the way. they saw it too, because I've been sort of like elbowing them, like, you really got to watch it. It's really funny and you can't get these songs stuck out, you know, and can't get these songs out of your head. And they watched it. And we had a good conversation about the movie, about like it's a kid movie. But here we are two grownups. We're like, yeah, like we're obsessed with soda pop. uh And the words are completely inappropriate. it was a great bonding moment where, you know, here I am talking to somebody who probably shared the same faith I have as a Christian. But, you know, we were able to just connect on a completely different level ah about something that wasn't political or dealing with faith. Arguably, could probably say Demon Hunters is a faith movie. But uh for the purposes of our conversation, you know, we had a bonding moment. uh But I want to switch to your book, though, because we're not here to talk about K-Pop, TV, and hunters, although we could, if you want it. uh Your book from from Sinai to Rome, uh like on its surface, if you know nothing about kind of the history or geography or anything about that, I think you could probably really miss the impact of that title has. But I'd love for you just to talk about what is the book about and why why did you decide to write it? Yeah, thanks Will. ah It's like, you know the title of the movie Demon Hunters that you're talking about? Immediately it makes me think, wow, XXX. So our title, we had a lot of discussion about it and I think it has to be read with the subtitle of the book. So it's called From Sinai to Rome, Jewish Identity in the Catholic Church. So it's the subtitle that kind of like slightly illuminates what's going on and the basic punchline. is if you are a Catholic, and I would say if you're a Christian, I mean this is not a uniquely Catholic issue and Josh of course you can jump in here, to recognize who we are in our Christian identity means that we have to recognize we come from a Jewish root. And if you don't recognize that you're actually kind of covering up history and denying your own identity. And if I can give a kind of slight example here personally, just moving the lens. So I'm Indian, my mum and dad come from India, and I discovered I was Roman Catholic when I first had consciousness, I was baptized when I was a kid. And to me, Roman Catholicism, as I grew up, didn't connect me with India at all and my Indian identity. It was a Latin European right. Western right. And it's only after I began getting in touch with my Indian roots that I began to think, oh, you know, how do I fit into this picture? Now, the issue of the Jewish roots is so much more serious because essentially after the 60s in the Roman Catholic Church and different movements going on in certainly reform Protestant evangelical wings. The recognition is that we Gentiles, i.e. non-Jews, are grafted into and plugged into a Jewish religion. It's a real shock to the system to put it like that. And I think it's worth putting it like that because the shock value is like, you know, demon hunters, you think, wow, this is, what kind of plot's going on there? So if one wanted to say what is the plot line, it's saying discovering our identity as Christians means we need to discover identity spiritually as Jews. That has all sorts of complex implications, but I think that's putting it dramatically and truthfully. Bye. I really like this. So there's a phenomenon I've been observing and I've seen it in a couple different places online and it's people that are kind of like going back and it's not like it's new, right? But it's kind of going back to a Jewish identity like you're saying, like even calling Jesus Yeshua instead of Jesus, the anglicized name, right? um Calling him Yeshua uh or Yeshua Mashiach, Jesus Messiah, right? instead of Jesus Cristo, right? I mean, we say Jesus Cristo, that's the Spanish, but uh Jesus Christos in the Greek or whatever. we, but we have these, like, I see this happening in different people and even people that are like, they're as white as me or whiter, and they're talking about Jesus as Yeshua, they're talking about covenant, they're talking about, which is stuff that I love, but one of my fears though, one of my fears, is that they're going back to the Old Testament and there's a political impetus behind it that we're gonna elevate the more political sections of the Old Testament, which there are many, right, in that sense, because there are governmental documents in the Old Testament, right, it's a story of a nation, quite literally. And so... One of my fears though is that they're going back and it's almost like they're taking the Old Testament and they're having the Old Testament reinterpret the new as opposed to where the new was actually there, Jesus bringing to reinterpret the old. So like to bring out my points of agreement with what you just said, Christians are technically, if you look at the Bible, old to new, if you're a Christian, believe that. We are the continuation of God's people and the Jewish people. We do have that deep identity in our hearts and should be very respectful of the Old Testament, its teachings, its authoritative, not just respectful, considerate of the level of authority of the New Testament when properly interpreted like Jesus said. So like, he fulfills the Old Testament, things like that. And there's a whole lot of nuance and a whole lot of debate that can go around. And I totally, I'm not trying to oversimplify something very complicated. And yet this concern is like, are we going here? What's the motivation here? And I think maybe that's what I would love to hear from you in this. What is the ultimate motivation? even maybe, what are you not claiming? What is your thesis not claiming? And maybe there are issues that, and I'm just imagining people, taking up arms because of Old Testament precedents of doing so, holy war, things like that, which can very much be justified if you're thinking in just Old Testament terms. I would just love to hear your thoughts on that. yeah, yeah. I think um the kind of question you raise is a very important one and it brings us to, if you like, a map which has got lots and lots of different contours, okay, so there's basically kind of Protestant originating movements of what is called messianic Judaism. then the Catholic movements which are called Hebrew Christians. And I just want to talk about the latter, the Catholic side of it. I think some of the points you were raising, Josh, have come out of certain of the Protestant messianic Jewish movements, which we can talk about, but just so that I can get this book at least into focus. Okay. So the book is trying to say, The Jewish roots are very important and we've lost touch with them because by the fourth century a divide began to happen between Jews and Christians and that divide meant we began to lose the memory of our origins in terms of being a Jewish sect that was bringing in the Gentiles. Okay, now there's no question in Catholic, in Hebrew Catholicism, of trying to resurrect the Old Testament, so to speak, as being the prime narration document, you know, the one that you read the whole world by. It is absolutely clear that you have the New Testament as the way in which to interpret the old, and then for Catholics you have the added complexity of saying you've got church tradition and the teachings of the popes that also have to be taken into consideration, which means that this is a very slow moving train. And it also means that instinctively it's a much more conservative tradition because you've got all these checks and balances built in. You can't just be radical, jump off the platform and get going with it. Okay, so the book then is trying to say if we imagine these roots what does it mean to us who are Gentiles like me but also and this is so important what does it mean for Catholics who actually are from a Jewish background okay now since working in this area and I think this will make the issue a bit clearer since working in this area I have met many Catholics in my book were translated into Hungarian and Polish. And I went to Poland and Hungary for the book launch uh and suddenly discovered in the audience of Polish Catholics, Hungarian Catholics, there were loads of people from Jewish backgrounds who until recently were scared to come out of the closet, if I can use that metaphor. and say, well, actually I am Jewish. My grandmother was Jewish. I used to keep this underground because it was a bad thing in Catholicism. Now Catholics are saying it's a good thing. I want to come out of this closet and connect with that background. So very importantly, people within the Catholic community are not trying to, if you like, become radical Zionists uh by virtue of this route. They actually have a solidarity with Jews, but are clearly accepting, if you like, they are now Jews who accept Jesus as their savior and as their authority. So, you know, there's virtually nothing in this movement of Hebrew Catholics that is politically radical in terms of very aggressive Zionism. the greater land is ours, we must have it back, kick out the Palestinians. The sort of policy that's reflected in a couple of uh Bibi's uh cabinet, Ben-Gavir, uh for example, and Smotrich. I think Ben-Gavir is over in the US right now, isn't he? Okay, and these guys have, if you like, in my view, extreme religious Zionism, which is a real problem. because it does not seem to be concerned with the questions of justice or the questions of making, if you like, peace in the Middle East. It's basically a policy, in my view, that will actually stimulate more turmoil, more destruction, which could hardly be in God's will. But of course, You know, like what we said about stepping in other people's shoes, I think what's really important is to actually engage in conversation with these different perspectives. But Josh, I think I answered your question a bit, but of course there are people amongst messianic Jews who are much, much more politically radical. And there is also a bit of a confusion because sometimes messianic Jews are not always ethnically Jews but are Gentiles, you know, broadly non-Jews, who want to inhabit that tradition. And in the Catholic Church there's certainly not a huge movement for the latter that, you know, I should pretend to be Jewish. I recognize because the early church was made up of Gentiles and Jews and what united them was following Christ, not per se being ethnic Jews. if that makes sense. Yeah, you know, so in America we have this phrase to describe Christians. ah it's, sometimes we say Judeo-Christian views or what have you, and I'd love to kind of just get your thoughts on, like, is this a phrase or a term? to sort of recognize this Jewish connection to the Christian faith or is this something else? I'm not sure if it's just like an American sort of like type of, you know, description or if that exists elsewhere. Yeah, yeah, no, I think it exists elsewhere for the simple reason that there's a recognition that out of the Jewish community came Christians and they shared fundamentally monotheism, fundamentally an ethical view about the nature of the universe and that the purpose of human beings was to serve God. And then, you know, there lots of differences, et cetera. But so the Judeo-Christian term is often used to say, compared to say Eastern traditions, which have a very, different intellectual history and culture, et cetera. And of course it leaves an intriguing question about Islam. Are they part of the Judeo-Christian tradition? Because certainly Muslims classically view themselves just as Christians view themselves as the fulfillment of Judaism. Islam sees itself as the fulfillment of Judaism and Christianity. You know, like the iPhone 13 is better than the iPhone 6 and suddenly comes along an iPhone 19 and it's better than both 6 and 13. So you've got this kind of complex thing going on. But I'd just like to say one of the reasons we are using the terminology Hebrew Christians rather than Jewish Christians, and this is really important. is contemporary day Jews are like different from biblical Jews. Okay, so you've got the Bible and out of the Bible come on one lane Christianity, which is rooted there and on another lane you have rabbinic Judaism, which is what we have today. I.e. the rabbis developed an oral tradition, which was a commentary on the Bible. they had to also live with the destruction of the temple. Christian Jews, Jews following Jesus, had to deal with the same problem, but their authority was not the rabbinic authority that was happening, but now the New Testament. So I think Judeo-Christian has a slight danger sometimes of imagining all these groups are happily ever after, hand in hand, Whereas actually within them there are a great deal of friction and tensions as well as what they have in common. But I think it's a good phrase. It helps people just focus. We're talking about this part of history and how it developed. I think Hebrew Catholics makes it clear that there's no claim to take over Judaism. Whereas messianic Jews has a different ring to it. Yeah, that seems to make sense to me. uh I'm curious, though, just to kind of expand on that a little bit. When we think of the Jewish roots of the church or Christian Catholics, whatever, do you view it as Christianity? broke away from Judaism to become its own thing or did it sort of like organically grow out of what was already out of the soil that was already there? Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, I'm sure Josh might have a take on this in terms of from your background, My reading is that the biblical evidence clearly points to the fact that Jesus was a Jew. He went and did Jewish things. He was circumcised. He went to the temple. He went to the Jewish feasts. Mary, his mum, was a Jew and all his followers were Jews. And they weren't kind of Jews who were saying, hey, hey, we are actually not Jews, we wanna be something else. They were seeing themselves as good Jews. And most importantly, they saw Jesus as, if you like, the hopes and promises of Israel had come in the person of Jesus. They saw him as the Messiah. Okay, so my take on it would be to say that Christianity is both in deep continuity with biblical Israel, as well as discontinuity because it began to interpret biblical Israel in a way that was in tension with the other interpreters of biblical Israel, which was Judaism. Like, so if you have one group saying, here the Messiah has come. and another group saying, no, that ain't the Messiah. You've got a clear conflict. because they're both identifying a figure who is the promise of the traditions they share. So you know, it's like if we have quarrels with people, they're bad. If we have quarrels with people who aren't in our own family, then it can become poisonous and very, very deep. It picks up on all sorts of things. So I see, if you like, the development of Christianity as a kind of... family quarrel so much so that both groups say go to hell quite literally get out of here this ain't you aren't in this family and of course it was the case that rabbinic law said any jew who followed jesus was anathema was actually cast out of the community and christianity had the same rule that anyone who was a Christian by the sixth century could not be associated in any way with Jews and Judaism. So you get this remarkable uh break and in answer to the question, Will, I think, uh you know, this, I always have this kind of moment of silliness when I'm teaching. I say to my students, okay, if Jesus came back today, what would he be? And they variously say, you know, the church they're in or most of them who are secular say he would be saying a curse on all your houses to the different Christian churches. And my view is that he would say, I'm the Jewish Messiah. I've come back and I'm wanting to stand in that line of Isaiah's prophecy which say all the nations will come to Israel, meaning biblical Judaism, and they will give praise to God. So I think there's profound continuity and a certain level of discontinuity. uh But you know, it's one of those fascinating questions, who owns the Bible? The Old Testament is owned by the Christians in calling it Old Testament. And of course, Jews, rabbinic Jews call it the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh. They don't think it's old. They think it's as new as you can get, you know. So that's the kind of interesting, both conflict, but also what we hold in common with Jewish people. You know, I wonder sometimes if we ought to, I mean, I understand why the history of what Old and New Testament came from. And of course, Testament is covenant and most, it's lost on most people, right? Testamentum, the Latin for covenant. And then the idea of a Hebrew covenant is certainly not common knowledge amongst modern Americans, at least, you know, there probably is increasing, but it's just not, it might, maybe, I don't know. They have the information available to them, um is what I'm saying. ChachiBT could be their friend and explain a covenant, right, or whatever it is, and they could, all these, or Gemini, or pick whatever one you want, they can explain it, but you have to have that awareness. first and you know thinking about all of these like the issues of discontinuity and and and continuity and I it's a fascinating topic and I do sorry getting back to what I was saying I do think it would be maybe better to call it first and second testament or or covenant or something like that instead of old and new. because old implies bad, new implies good, which again, uh proper understanding is that this whole covenant, including the Abrahamic covenant, including the Davidic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, these belong to the people of God to hear his heart and instruction and to be blessed through it. And yeah, I kind of don't like those. the more I learn, I don't like those labels. But I think that giving with this continuity-discontinuity idea, how did you address this? How would you address it? And explain to our audience how the book addresses this idea. Like, say a Jew, someone who's ethnically Jewish, they become Catholic, right? um What customs can they bring legitimately from their Jewish heritage and what customs need to be reinterpreted, replaced, rethought? How would you wanna say it? I don't know, but like I'm thinking maybe Passover Seder versus Eucharist. Are they both, they're happening at the same time? Are they at the same level of authority? um What? And then there you can add any number of other, you know, points of continuity versus discontinuity. What would that person do? How could they discern what parts of my tradition do I need to keep and what do I give away? And honestly, Gavin, this is, I already respect your mind greatly just from the few minutes I've been able to talk with you. um And I would really love to get your perspective because even beyond this, this goes to anyone who comes to know Christ from any place. There are principles, I think, that can be brought on what are those things that need to be essentially shed and what are those customs from my mother country, my, you know, my original culture. You could think Hinduism and the culture that you grew up in, in context you grew up in. or I guess that your parents had. I think you moved around. I'm sorry if I got that wrong. But I just would love to hear your thoughts on that almost individual level of continuity. yeah, that's such a great question. I mean, just before addressing it, can I just go back to your very interesting comments on old and new and the terms? And lot of people do actually call it the first and second covenant. And I just wonder, I just kind of throwing this out, whether the term old, because we live a you know, going back to the iPhone uh image, I'm not advertising here, but like, I have an iPhone 6 and a friend of mine says, how come you don't have a, and they tell me about their new one. Right, there you go. Yeah. Okay. So what it is, when we say old, my friend goes, that is so old. It's like denigratory. It needs to be changed. And I'm wondering, Like back in India, when we talk about someone being old or something being old, it can actually be a term that means reverence for because it's our ancestor. It isn't, they don't have to be chucked out. That something is old means it came before us and we deserve to respect it. It deserves respect. So I think you're right, and new does have the danger of sounding like, why don't I get a new car? I'm going to chuck out my old. But yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think actually it properly means in our tradition, this is our roots. This is the heritage. We realize we are the interlopers with the new. Okay, that's an aside, but I think it's a good point because certainly Jews often... when speaking to me don't like using the old because they think they're being the car that's replaced. Okay, but you're on the question about what elements can remain. Now I think this is just the question that percolates the whole of Christianity and it's not just about Judaism because if you look at the history of Christianity it's uh kind of like a, you know, I say this I use this term, it's like a parasite, it just engages with culture and traditions and practices and then it takes what it wants and it discards other things which it sees as incompatible with its healthy life. And that's like the history of saying no no no no, you can't carry out multiple marriages anymore. You can't carry out baby sacrifice anymore. You can't do this, which comes from your tradition, because it doesn't fit with the organic gospel message. But at the same time, and there's a great guy called Cardinal Henry Newman, who actually said Christianity was nothing but the baptism of Greco-Roman culture, i.e. taking, you know, like what ministers wear. came from Roman antiquity. uh A lot of the form of the mass is actually taken out of the courts uh in Greek and Roman culture. The language of the Nicene Creed, for goodness sake, know, the confession of faith is Greek and the term is not found at all in the Bible and people say, hey, this is bad. This is weird. We should use biblical language. But one of the genius bits of Christianity is that it is this kind of fantastic organism that grows like yeast and just takes up, now hopefully not in a destructive way, but a transformative way. So what elements can a Jew take from their Judaism if they were to become a Christian, if they were to become a Catholic? And the answer varies enormously. And I think it's like, watch this space. This is where there's a lot of thinking going on and a lot of different practices. So on one end of the spectrum, it's minimal. Two very, very famous Catholics, uh Saint Edith Stein and Cardinal Lustiger, who was the Cardinal of Paris. Lustiger was Jewish, right? And he said, when he became a Catholic, his mum burst into tears. as any good Jewish mother would, because she'd be thinking, I'm losing my son. And Listege said to his mum, no, this is me finding how my Judaism is true. He saw it as a confirmation. And then he asked when he became Cardinal, that when he was buried, he wished the Jewish rights of the dead. to be said over him, the Kaddish prayers. Now you can imagine this was like a kind of politically rather complicated thing because he was gonna get a high mass in uh the most beautiful of the Parisian cathedrals in uh Notre Dame. So the question then was how could one accommodate Jewish religious rites for the cardinal, because he wished them, in a Christian church. And wonderful solution was his brother, who was Jewish, said the Jewish prayers over the coffin outside the church, and then the coffin was taken inside of the church. Now that kind of shows an attempt to recognize that this blessing that he wished had an authenticity. But to do it inside the church would have been confusing to both Jews and Catholics. So try to work out a particular way of not bringing scandal, not causing confusion. And then you go to the other side of the spectrum. So Lustiger sort of said, could I do this as a Jew after I die? But there are some Jews who say they actually wish to continue going to the synagogue. and be Catholics. And one's instinct may be, hey, that you can't belong to two, you've got to choose your community and sit with them. And of course it depends on the attitude of the community. Now the Catholic Church's basic line is that anything that a person does which denies that Jesus Christ is the sole cause of salvation If it denies that, it cannot be acceptable. If a Jewish person said, I must do all these Jewish rites, I must practice the law because that is the cause of my salvation, that ain't compatible with a Christian Catholic understanding. But if they say, just like the early disciples did, of course I want to carry on Shabbat. Of course I want to carry on circumcision. but I do these honoring the Messiah. Now that's the last part of the answer to your question, Josh. What is the criteria by which we can incorporate other elements? answer if they honor Jesus Christ, if they honor God as Trinity, if they honor the Church as the chosen means of salvation. So you can actually begin to look around and ask the question uh connected with Islam, which at first uh value, uh first look, looks like these are just not incompatible. But fascinatingly, there are Christians who do employ the term Allah, which is an Arabic word for God, but happens to be the Quranic word for God, in the New Testament translations into Arabic, and in liturgical prayers. Now, I'm fully aware that all of these things could cause scandal and confusion, and that ain't helpful. But the reverse of the scandal and confusion is, are you asking everyone to become European if they become Christian? You know, like you pointed about calling Jesus... this way in America too. Go ahead, sorry. Yeah, like messiac is the Hebrew for messiah and Latin Christians are just so comfortable about saying Christ, whereas Christ is the English translation of the Greek word Christos, which is the translation of messiac, which is the Hebrew word. And in a way, I think there's a great danger of a kind of cultural imperialism if we insist. that it has to be done in this way, if we don't recognize this way might actually be a European tradition and it's not the only way in which to honor God. know, so I mean like last point I wanna make, sorry, I don't want to go on is as, and in India, I see Indians trying to say, hey, when we become Catholics, we don't wanna lose. all our identity and heritage, we want to make sense of some of this as pointing our way to Christ. And very famously, John Paul II wrote a wonderful encyclical, if anyone needs good bedtime reading, it's called Faith and Reason, and he simply argued that Christianity's genius is that reason operates on culture taking up all that is good, true and holy in every culture and trying to then organically develop local churches so that in due course Indians should draw on their great philosophers just as Thomas Aquinas drew on Aristotle. You know this is a universal church, it's not a small segment of humanity that are being glorified, it's all the nations. I mean, I really, really love that. as you were talking, so I'll just go back to something I alluded to earlier, and that I've seen several instances of, particular, Hinduism um come under fire recently, just in post. I'm not saying this is some big trend. It may be or may not be. I haven't looked into that, so I'm not going to make a claim on that. I'm saying that I've seen them and Will and I have talked about it, but the basic argument is, hey, this is my country. I have a right to vote how I want in my country. I have a right to vote against cultural change, essentially. an influx of such immigration, because immigration is a political issue, an influx of Hindu, in particular this was talking about, but I'm sure it will be expanded to other religions and ethnic groups and cultures. uh And it could be, the argument could be expanded very easily to those. um And so, and basically it's like, hey, I have a right to vote on this. I have a right to preserve my culture and vote. And I'm going to vote because I see essentially golden monkey gods. This is uh a quote from something that was said. I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I see golden monkey gods, like, you know, basically painting the cityscape of Houston, I think it was. And I see, you know, this massive Hindu temple, the greatest, the biggest outside of um India in New Jersey. I don't even know if that's true. I've heard that a couple of times from different sources, people saying that. And then, of course, you could think about the massive mosques that have been built in America and the Midwest and people looking at these things, and not just in the Midwest, but I'm just thinking of one in Toledo, I think, is the one that I was thinking of, but there are more, I believe. What am I getting at? Well, it's that this very thing that you're talking about in terms of how do you, this discontinuity versus continuity, or the assimilation, maybe is another word in terms of like a cultural assimilation into America, this quote unquote American culture that's being defended. At what point is that racism? At um what point is it legitimate to say we're going to impose certain regulations on this culture? coming in and having too much influence? And at what point is that just like racism? I know it's a complicated question, but I would love to get your thoughts on it because of your international experience. You've been in America. You understand Europe. You understand India and kind of that is the Southeast Asian continent or Southwest. I'm forgetting whatever Southwest anyway, but I'm sorry. I'm so American. But do you understand what I'm getting at? I don't need to keep going, but it's like, how do we take that and put that in what's happening in America right now? That's what I'm really concerned about. And these arguments that are being made against these cultures coming in and immigration because it's changing American culture. Yeah, yeah. And actually the same kind of debates happening over in the UK. We have the ascendancy of a political party called Reform, whose major kind of platform is stopping immigration in brackets, particularly dark-skinned immigration. I mean, they're not like saying, The UK took in a lot of Ukrainians who are white skinned and no one's batting an eyelid. But if they happen to be dark skinned, it's a kind of thing that's seen as particularly problematic. And of course, Germany, Europe, we're seeing the whole question that you're talking about in the States going on in Western so-called developed countries. And I guess I would say a couple of things. First, I think you've got to take why people are concerned seriously. I mean, often, you know, people start noticing difference when they are made to feel uncomfortable and they embrace difference when they're feeling comfortable. Like I go back to say the Indian community in Kenya. We were very different religions, but we all had jobs. We were economically stable and we thought, hey, these people are not trying to kill us, displace us, take our jobs. And while they have lovely suites and other festivals, which we don't do, and we can enjoy this. So I think the whole question of the economic conditions of recession. of the huge gap between the rich and poor and, if you like, the global South and Europe and the United States all feed into this. So what do we, how do we respond? I think, again, I can only respond as a Catholic, right, who happens to be Indian, but first and primarily a Catholic. And central to the Catholic tradition is that we should do I'm not saying this isn't found in other traditions. I'm just trying to underline where I'm coming from. It's to always seek the common good. What is best for the community? Which includes marginalized, includes people who feel excluded and on the outside, and includes the powerful and the rich. Each and every one needs to be thought about when considering what is the common good. So I would say in terms of this kind of issue, one has to look at the entrance of, say, Islam in the UK is causing a lot of consternation, partly because some of the groups connected with Islamic terrorism are now homegrown. I don't think that's racist. I think, yeah, we should be concerned about it. But we should also be concerned with the growth of right-wing white fascism. And that is slowly coming up on the screen. And we should be concerned about both those groups because they are not interested in the common good. They would like to get rid of a lot of people and say common is just like us. So I think there's a long conversation to be had politically and interreligiously. to say, do all these Hindu temples and mosques truly represent a threat to social cohesion and unity? And sometimes they can, or do they simply represent, if you like, a kind of white reaction to simplify, to losing its privileges and powers? And I don't know the answer to that. And I think I'm nicely biased because as you can tell from my accent, some people who haven't seen my face think, oh, he's Indian. otherwise I'm sounding like kind of the white elite of the UK. So in some ways, I think oh we've got to be taking concerns seriously and then positively addressing. What's at stake? So I don't know the US well enough, but it seems to me there is no going back. And Pope Francis and Pope Leo have been adamant about this. We are facing a situation where migration is going to increase. Places are being flooded, places are war torn, suddenly desert. And there's a point when people are going to say, hey, look. We can't just be going down in this ship and you don't care a damn. Okay, so it's complicated, but I think each one has to be assessed from where their vision is and what their vision is. And you can ask Muslims in certain countries, why don't you allow religious freedoms? to Christians. This is what the Vatican's line is very strongly. And you can say to Hindus in India, the BJP party, which is a very nationalist party, what about Christian freedoms in this country? They're becoming increasingly bad. But we don't have to say you Hindus are the problem. It is that version of Hinduism that needs to be addressed. I really love that and this is our last question just because we're getting close to time. um earlier you had mentioned um something about, I don't know if you would call it a rubric, but it was just some sort of... um template you can use if whether or not the tradition or the thing that like whether it's Jewish tradition or Hindu or any other, as long as it kind of meets the requirement of basically, yeah, Jesus is our guy. ah So I'd love for you to uh maybe help explain like what are some Jewish traditions that you feel or have even done that are kind of perfectly in alignment with uh the rubric that you offered earlier? Yeah, I think like going back to Joshua's, I would want to say everything is an alignment because Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and everything is not an alignment because Jews today think he ain't the Messiah and therefore say you can't, you know, so for example, concrete example, Passover. This is Pesach is a Jewish festival. which is central to understanding why table fellowship and Christianity is so important. Christians are just food mad and always, you know, then pretend to eat food but really don't have it in the mass because you just have a kind of small wafer and a drop of wine and that wouldn't feed anyone but we call it the bread of life. So you understand what's going on when you understand the fact that the Jewish festival from which it originates is precisely saying This is how God nourishes you, feeds you and guides you. Now it's totally compatible and I would want to say if you read the book of Acts, you see all these people carrying out their Jewish practices in perfect alignment and they can go and pray in the temple. They can actually go and worship in the temple because the temple is where God's presence resides. So I would want to kind of slightly say get your head round in a different manner and say no one owns Bible and therefore the Christian way of reading it and therefore Jewish practices are intrinsic and perfectly okay and normal. They're only abnormal if they deny the Messiah. So traditional Jewish prayer when you wake up is, and we look forward to the Messiah. Now you couldn't say that as a Christian, you could say we look forward again to the Messiah because he's coming again. So there are all these modifications one would have to make. because the fact that the Messiah is here. uh But I'd want to kind of finish on that radical note and say try and work out what you would have to say absolutely no. Well, of course you couldn't have anathema for Jews who become Christians, ah but from the Christian point of view it's saying hurrah. They've come to where they were desired by God, but this is a free an open uh pathway. I don't think I've answered your question there Will, sorry. I haven't given you a concrete example. did. um It's fine. mean, you didn't have to like break down the fine art of, you know, doing Seder meals or something like that. But I totally get it and definitely appreciate it. Great. Yeah, same here. And Gavin, this has been such a pleasure. I could keep talking to you honestly for like another hour or more, and maybe we can set something up again to just come and talk about something else in your expertise. But I really appreciate you coming, spending some time with us and our audience. How can people, well, is there a preferred vendor for the book and how can people follow your work if they can or connect with you? Well, thank you. mean, I've just loved the conversation we've had and thank you for your generosity and hospitality. I think if you wanted to follow my work in any way, then just type into your search engine or well, go into Amazon, which will have all the books or type into the search engine, Gavin DeCosta, Angelicum, and you will get a full CV. um But there's a lot of free stuff out there and YouTubes and things like that. um So uh thank you for being so positive about the work and uh I hope we will meet up soon. Maybe we can have a beer one day when I'm next over. That would be awesome. yeah, well again, I appreciate it so much. Gavin, thank you for joining us on the show. It's been awesome. Absolutely, and too, you're very welcome. Absolutely. Oh, oh, yeah. finished, aren't I? I'm closing right now. So we'll just mark this well and then I'm closing right now. No worries. So yeah, and to our viewers and our listeners, guys, thanks for joining us for another episode of Faithful Politics. We're going to have all of Dr. DeCosta's uh information there in the show notes. You can check that out. We'll put links there for you to look if you're curious. Make sure you like, subscribe, do the stuff that helps us out because we want to get this great material to more people. And until next time, guys, keep your conversations that right or left, but up. Thank