By Franciscan University of Steubenville plants flag as first chapter.
The Coalition of Catholics Against Antisemitism (CCAA) will soon launch its first college chapter at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
The chapter, set to start in fall 2026, marks continued growth for the Coalition, founded in October 2023 at a Franciscan University conference on “Nostra Aetate and the Future of Catholic‑Jewish Relations at a Time of Rising Antisemitism.”
“The CCAA is proud that Franciscan University serves as the founding Catholic home of the Coalition,” Simone Rizkallah, founding member of CCAA and manager of Jewish-Christian partnerships at the Tikvah Fund, an influential Jewish think tank, told EWTN News.
She said CCAA is open to adding more chapters at other colleges and universities, to the extent student leaders elsewhere also take the initiative to do so.
“The launch of this new campus chapter is a sign of hope, born from the initiative of two Gen Z students: one, a former antisemite, whose perspective was transformed through friendship with the other, a Catholic Zionist,” she said. “Their story is a powerful witness to the possibility of conversion, dialogue, and authentic friendship.”
Colin Reitmeyer, president of CCAAʼs Franciscan University chapter, told EWTN News the chapter’s goals for the new academic year include starting conversations “with those under the sway of antisemitic propaganda, leading them to rethink their deeply flawed ideology.”
“We seek to befriend them, help them see why their ideology is flawed, and help them better embrace the Churchʼs position on the Jewish people,” Reitmeyer said.
He said the chapter also aims to “spread awareness to unaware students about the rise of antisemetism, and how they can combat it” as well as foster greater appreciation of Jewish culture. This latter goal, he explained, involves “going beyond merely stopping antisemitism and cultivating philosemitism.”
Curt Stambaugh, an associate scholar at Franciscan University’s Veritas Center for Catholic Ethics in Public Life, will serve as the chapter’s sponsor.
Stambaugh traced the impetus for the organization of the chapter back to a campus debate on U.S-Israeli relations. Students directed questions to him during the session, where he met Reitmeyer and learned students wanted a grassroots group to counter antisemitism.
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Anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism.
It most certainly is. You are defending the indefensible.
What is indefensible is stealing the land that belongs to others under the guise of God.geta
Indefensible is stealing another’s home claiming the cover of God.
I guess you would need to take that up with God since He gave that land to His Chosen People in the first place. Reclaiming isn’t stealing. Especially when the original deed of ownership is found in Sacred Scripture.
The modern nation state of Israel was not given their land by God but by the British Although the English sometimes confuse the two 😉
Dear Mrs. Cracker,
We now have the New Covenant. The Covenant with Abraham has been fulfilled and universalized; the People of God is now called the Catholic Church (this is also the teaching of Vatican II). One is grafted onto this Covenant through baptism and faith in Jesus Christ, not through blood descent. By rejecting the promised Messiah, “Israel according to the flesh” (I Cor 10:18) has now removed themselves from the People of God, which is why “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (Rom 9:6).
A good (or at least reasonable), natural law, secular argument can be made for supporting the modern-day state of Israel (arguments which Catholics, like others, can evaluate on their own merits … but there is no Catholic “party line” on this question), but it is ridiculous to suggest that 1948 Israel is justified by Old Testament promises made to Abraham. First of all, the People of God is now the Catholic Church and not “the Jews” (post-Temple Judaism being formally distinct from the religion of the Old Testament). Secondly, many modern-day Israelis/Zionists are not even believing religious Jews, and quite of few of them (especially Eastern European Jews) have very dubious claims on the bloodline of Abraham anyway. Let’s not let things get mixed up, even if they can potentially overlap: Anti-semitism is a form of racism and thus a sin; anti-Zionism is a political position (a position held by some Orthodox Jews, in fact); anti-Judaism is a theological position.
There’s a difference Mr. Peter between fulfillment & replacement.
The myths about European Jews not being real children of Abraham but Khazars was an anti Semitic conspiracy story to cast Ashkenazi Jews as imposters & invalidate them. The Soviets & others have used this to promote the “colonizer/settlement” anti Zionist narrative.
I don’t agree Mr. Gerard but that was a good quip.
🙂
Anti zionism is the sanitized version.
Only in your head.
In my head and the head of many others you have a right to your property not that of others. See Putin in Ukraine for more.
In Scripture those property rights are clearly laid out.
Read again. That wasn’t addressed to you.
That is what the IDF would have you believe and support with your tax dollars.
Only in your radical leftist scheme of things.
“Coalition of Catholics Against Antisemitism (CCAA)”
Is there per chance a group Coalition of Catholics Against Anti-Catholicism (CCAA)?
Is there per chance a group Coalition of Jews Against Anti-Catholicism (CCAA)?
Stop being such a snowflake. Catholics who get triggered by Nostra Aetate are such a sad lot.
Keep enjoying your Carrie Prejean content, Pitchfork!
I believe he was remarking that tongue in cheek.
But he forgot CPAA – Coalition of Protestants against anti-Catholicism.
It was not tongue in cheek. I believe in reciprocity.
“Yet both the market and politics need individuals who are open to reciprocal gift.” ¶ 39
“By considering reciprocity as the heart of what it is to be a human being” ¶ 57
Pope Benedict XVI,CARITAS IN VERITATE Paragraph 39
And you keep freebasing Mark Levin.
Well, you freebase Rachel Maddow half the time, so call it even.
Sure thing.
Nobody with a single working brain cell would think I have even a tangent with the left.
These days one doesn’t need to go to the Left for that sort of thing. There’s plenty to find on the Right.
There’s a point where Right & Left agree on this issue. Unfortunately.
I guess you missed it when PBXVI spoke of reciprocity, because it wasn’t on Flox News.
Vince, I did not see anyone say anything about Nostra aetate, still less get triggered by it. In fact, in some circles today, N.A. would probably be seen as a “supersessionist” text because it proclaims that “the Church is the new people of God.” (Lumen gentium likewise says: “the new Israel which while living in this present age goes in search of a future and abiding city is called the Church of Christ.”)
This is far more relevant to U.S. Israeli-Relations, than N.A.
“[We] must remember that the ultimate goal of Israel, and not necessarily the United States, is to undermine and weaken the regime in Iran – to the point of overthrowing it,”
“The current situation is the best one for us.”
-finance minister Bezalel Smotrich
At a session at the Katif Conference for National Responsibility
On July 19, Sgt Michael Swinton died for a foreign country’s interests. There’s a picture of him hugging a little girl I presume to be his daughter. She’s wearing elasticized jeans-he’ll never hug her in a prom dress, a graduation gown or wedding dress.
Unlike Ted Cruz, who reminds us of P.J. O’Rourke’s “Parliament of Whores” and is richly rewarded for being a foreign agent masquerading as a Senator, mrscracker shills for free. (Bless her little heart).
Is St. Paul going to be critiqued?
1 Thessalonians 2:14-15: “For you, brethren, are become followers of the churches of God which are in Judea, in Christ Jesus: for you also have suffered the same things from your own countrymen, even as they have from the Jews, / Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are ADVERSARIES TO ALL MEN…”
As usual, Franciscan is rather confused on its values!
“As usual, Franciscan is rather confused on its values!”
Alas, if only Franciscan U would embrace Charles’s pro-pogroms outlook. Take heart, you can probably get E Michael Jones to give you a retweet!
Does this presuppose a Catholic Coalition FOR Antisemitism (organized or otherwise)??????????????
Well, it has a simpler name: The Candace Owens Show.
There are other podcasters like that today, too. I’ve been really shocked & disappointed at what I’ve heard from some Catholic college students recently.It’s like the 13th century all over again.And not in a good way.
If Gerard and Athanasius want to debate over whether “Anti-Zionism is [not] anti-Semitism,” it would be very useful to define what they mean by anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and, for that matter, Zionism.
When Carrie Prejean and that rabbi had their showdown in February, they both used the word “Zionism” but in very different ways, which was part of the problem.
Meanwhile:
From the USCCB (who occasional fix their gaze on something other than excusing mass invasion)
“Arson, Vandalism, and Other Destruction at Catholic Churches in the United States”
Summary
At least 416 incidents have occurred across 43 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020. Incidents include arson, statues beheaded, limbs cut, smashed, and painted, gravestones defaced with swastikas and anti-Catholic language and American flags next to them burned, and other destruction and vandalism. This list shows incidents of vandalism, arson, or other destruction at Catholic sites that have been publicly reported in news media. It excludes incidents where circumstances suggest a motive other than hostility toward the Church.
Undated, but it references a letter dated June 2025.
This continues unabated, undiscussed.
“An Antisemite used to be a person who disliked Jews. Now it is a person who Jews dislike.” – Dr. Hajo Meyer, Jewish Auschswich Survivor
Mrs. Cracker, thank you for your reply. For some reason, I am not able to post a response (maybe “reply to reply” is not a supported option). In any case, you are correct that fulfillment and replacement are different — but that does not mean they are mutually exclusive, depending on how one understands “replacement.” Sometimes replacement is by simply substitution, like when you send an old car to the junkyard and replace it with a new one. Perhaps some people do indeed understand the passage from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant in that way, but this would be incorrect. But sometimes replacement is BY MEANS OF FULFILLMENT, like when the caterpillar is replaced by the butterfly. It is the same thing, but in two sequential phases, of which the latter is the perfection of the former. It is also necessary to be very specific about WHAT or WHOM was replace by WHAT or by WHOM. Did the Gentiles replace the Jews? Did Christianity replace Judaism? Did the Catholic Church replace Israel? People — both “supersessionists” and “anti-supersessionists” — get tripped up sometimes by not discussing the appropriate pairing, and by using equivocal terms, so let’s have a look.
– It would be wrong to suggest that the Gentiles as such have replaced the Jews (descendants of Abraham) as such (and if you would like, we can even stipulate that everyone who claims to be Jewish today is a descendant of Abraham without any significant admixture of Gentile blood). The Church has always been made up of both Jews and Gentiles. But it is baptism and faith in Jesus Christ which now admit someone into the People of God. Throughout sacred history, the people sometimes rebelled against God and then there was a faithful remnant. This is what also happened at the decisive moment of Israel’s history, when the large mass of the people rejected the Messiah. The faithful remnant (Mary, the Apostles, the holy women, etc.) became the kernel of the Church. Some Gentiles were then grafted on. “Many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness” (Matthew 8:11-12). The invitation is still open to Jews just as much as to Gentiles (which is what it means to say that God has not “forsaken” the Jews: the invitation is still open); this is why it would be very wrong to say the Gentiles have “replaced” the Jews. Nonetheless, the Jews who rejected Christ did indeed fall away from the People of God.
– Christianity has not replaced “Judaism” for the simple reason that the Judaism that exists now is a *new religion* created after the time of Christ. It is no longer the Temple-based religion of the Mosaic law (see Jeremiah 31:31 and the gloss on it in Hebrews), and perhaps more to the point, Judaism now is formally different from the religion of the Old Testament, because the O.T. awaited the coming of Christ and believed in him, which is why we Christians have the same faith as the Patriarchs, whereas modern Judaism is distinguished precisely by its rejection of Christ. Catholicism and Judaism both come from the Old Testament, but that does not mean that Catholicism comes from Judaism; a dead leaf and a fruit can both come from the same tree, but the fruit does not come from the dead leaf. So, we are not saying Christianity has replaced “Judaism,” since “Judaism” was invented at the moment Christianity was being established and consolidated in the following centuries as a Temple-less, sacrifice-less Religion of the Book.
– The replacement that did happen was that the Church “replaced” Israel — NOT as a substitution but precisely as a fulfillment, like the butterfly that replaces the caterpillar (and note that in this analogy so often used by the Fathers of the Church, the cocoon serves a purpose but is then discarded once the change has occurred; this is what happened to the ceremonial Law, which has now been abrogated). The subject which continues is the People of God, even if, in terms of its material membership, most Jews fell away and many Gentiles were grafted in.
All that is to say, that the Jews of today — whether they are ethnic Jews practicing post-Temple Judaism, or converts to post-Temple Judaism, or secular ethnic Jews — do not have a divine right to the Holy Land in virtue of God’s grant to Abraham. (This does NOT mean, of course, that the State of Israel has no right to exist; that is a separate question: of course, logically, if that State exists *in virtue of the grant to Abraham*, then that State also has the right to be MUCH larger than it currently is, with the geopolitical and military consequences that would imply …).