Last week, recent Catholic convert, Carrie Prasjean Boland made headlines by complaining about Zionism at a hearing for the Justice Department's Religious Liberty Commission.

At the time of this recording, she had been allegedly removed from the panel on the grounds of, quote, hijacking a hearing for her own personal and political agenda, which raises a question about anti-Semitism and whether anti-Zionism is a similar evil.

And this raises another question. Can Catholics be Zionists?

We're going to answer that on today's episode. And before anyone can accuse me of being a

shameless shill for a foreign government, I would like to remind everyone, the only shameless shilling

I do is for myself. So if you like today's episode, please hit the

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All right, so can a Catholic be a Zionist?

Well, we can't answer that question unless we have a specific, accurate definition of the term that we're

describing.

So what is Zionism?

Roughly speaking, Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in 19th century Europe

as Jews sought to establish a homeland where they could be protected from anti-Jewish violence.

Even in the 19th century, pogroms or violent riots against Jews resulted in loss of property and loss of life.

If you're my age, your first exposure

to pogroms was probably in the 1986 animated film in American Tale, which depicts Russian Jews

and Jewish mice celebrating Hanukkah before their villages burned down, forcing them to flee to

other nations for safety. This movement to relocate Jews was called Zionism because in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible,

Christians call the Old Testament. Zion is the spiritual and geographic home of the Jewish people.

The name itself refers to a hill just outside Jerusalem, but the name came to represent the entire

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