US Bishops Call for Catholics to ‘Stand Clearly’ Against Hate, Violence Toward ‘Our Jewish Brothers and Sisters’

As antisemitism in online Catholic discourse has accelerated under influencers Candace Owens and Carrie Prejean Boller — both recent converts to the religion — US Catholic leadership has again spoken out firmly by releasing a video condemning hate targeting the Jewish people as heretical to the faith.

“Sadly, the celebration of Easter has at times been the occasion for outbursts of hatred and even violence against Jews,” said Archbishop Alexander K. Sample of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon. “The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that the Jews do not bear the collective guilt for the death of Jesus. The church made this teaching explicit at the second Vatican council in Nostra Aetate.”

Catholics are called to reject antisemitism and the lies and conspiracies that fuel it, and to stand clearly against hatred and violence directed toward our Jewish brothers and sisters. To defend religious freedom with integrity, we must also reject antisemitism.@ArchbishpSample… pic.twitter.com/PlGZT0ZARb

— U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (@USCCB) March 18, 2026

The 1965 Nostra Aetate teaching instructs Catholics that “indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in Himself.”

Sample said in the video posted last Wednesday that “Good Friday ought to be an occasion for us to return to the Lord, not to scapegoat others. Holding the Jews collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus represents a profound misunderstanding of what took place on Good Friday.” He warned that this theological belief has caused “a great deal of the hatred for the Jewish people that we have seen in history and continue to see today.”

Deicide, the concept of collective Jewish guilt for the execution of Jesus, inspired the antisemitic epithet “Christ killer” and justified centuries of pogroms and forced conversions throughout Europe. This conspiratorial view of Jews scheming to crucify Jesus often went in tandem with the Medieval blood libel, which asserted that Jews would plot in secret to murder Christian children to collect their blood as an ingredient in Passover matzos.

Sample called out this history of conspiracism and its ties to antisemitic theology. “As Catholics, we are called to walk in the truth and so to reject the conspiracies and lies that lead to harassment and even violence against our Jewish brothers and sisters. There is a strong connection between religious freedom and working to counter antisemitism,” he said.

Noting that “the Jewish community is attacked at a far higher rate than any other religious group in the United States,” Sample asserted that “if we Catholics, in truly living out the gospel, are to defend religious freedom with integrity, we must clearly speak out against antisemitism.”

The ongoing tensions among Catholics over Israel, antisemitism, and the impact of far-right podcasters boiled over on Feb. 9. when Carrie Prejean Boller, a conservative activist and former Miss California, chose to hijack a hearing of the White House Religious Liberty Commission to question panelists about their views on the war against Hamas in Gaza, religious beliefs about Zionism, and opposition to Owens.

This provoked Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas and chair of the commission, to announce Prejean Boller’s removal from the group. She responded in a statement on X addressed to President Donald Trump where she wrote, “You knew exactly who I was when you appointed me,” and declared her “unwavering commitment to the Christian principles I stand for.”

Prejean Boller’s “unwavering commitment” to her newfound theological beliefs inspired the anti-Zionist political group Catholics for Catholics to present the former beauty pageant contestant a “Catholic Champion” award during Thursday’s Catholic Prayer for America Gala.

Speakers at the event included retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Owens, her former Daily Wire podcasting colleague Matt Walsh (who supplied a video address) and Joe Kent, the recently-resigned director of the National Counterterrorism Center who stepped down from his position on Tuesday before beginning to publicly blame Israel for drawing the United States into the ongoing conflict with the Islamic regime in Iran.

In a discussion last week with far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson, Kent promoted the longstanding antisemitic trope that Israel controls the US government. He asked rhetorically, “Who is in charge of our policy in the Middle East? Who is in charge of when we decide to go to war or not?”

Kent also suggested a potential Israeli hand involved in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. While refusing to blame the Jewish state outright, he said, “When one of President Trump’s closest advisers who was vocally advocating against a war with Iran is suddenly publicly assassinated, and we’re not allowed to ask questions about that — it’s a data point. A data point that we need to look into.”

On Monday, John Grosso, the National Catholic Reporter‘s digital editor, analyzed the anti-Israel sentiments as “a major rift in the coalition that elected Donald Trump, split between traditionalist Catholics and evangelicals.” Grosso noted a similar online incident, pointing out that “shortly after Israel and the United States started a war with Iran, a viral post on X by user ‘Insurrection Barbie’ amassed more than 5 million views, bringing the conflict into the mainstream — earning the endorsement of Cruz.”

On March 15, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — one of the Republican Party’s most vocal opponents of far-right antisemitism — shared a post from the anonymous user titled “The Long Game and the Conservative Right,” which has since received 4.1 million views, and wrote, “READ every word of this. It’s the best & most comprehensive explanation of what we’re fighting.”

The essay on X is more than 8,000 words and says it seeks to expose “How a Network of Political Catholic Integralists, Russian Ideologues, and Media Provocateurs Are Systematically Dismantling the Evangelical Foundation of the American Right.”

“I am going to map out what I think is the most sophisticated attack in modern political history and all of its corresponding vectors — institutional, intellectual, theological, generational, and media — and explain how each one feeds into a single ten-year project: the replacement of evangelical Protestant political theology with a Catholic integralist or ethnonationalist framework that views Jews, Israel and Protestants not as covenant partners but as adversaries of Christian civilization,” the essay states.

Before laying out the map, the author makes clear the distinction between mainstream Catholics and Catholic Integralists, the latter of which seek to impose a theocratic government on the world. “The political integralist Catholicism being deployed in this operation bears no relationship to the ordinary American Catholic faith — it uses the vocabulary and symbols of a faith tradition as a vehicle for a power project that most practitioners of that faith would find alien and alarming,” Insurrection Barbie explains.

The essay identifies Russian political theorist Aleksandr Dugin and his 1997 textbook The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia as a key influence on these efforts with his ideas passing through former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, a Tridentine Catholic who advocates for the Latin mass. The two reportedly met secretly in Rome for eight hours in 2018.

“Trump’s voters deserve better than to be used as raw material for a project imported from Russian geopolitical theory and pre-Vatican II European political theology,” Insurrection Barbie writes.

Podcaster Nick Fuentes is a key influencer in this network, with the essay describing how on his shows, which reach more than a million viewers each episode, “every weeknight, before streams begin, viewers see scrolling text from the Apostles’ Creed alongside images of Christ and Scripture passages. Catholicism — specifically the SSPX-adjacent traditionalist Catholicism the Vatican has repeatedly disciplined — is at the heart of his presentation. He actively recruits viewers into his version of the faith. He is building a movement, not just an audience.”