Further reading on Catholicism and non-circumcision:
From the document, "Cantate Domino" (A.D. 1442), signed by Pope
Eugene IV, from the 11th session of the Council of Florence (A.D.
1439, a continuation of the Council of Basle, A.D. 1431, and the
Council of Ferrara, A.D. 1438):
[The Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes and teaches that
the legal prescriptions of the Old Testament or the Mosaic law, which
are divided into ceremonies, holy sacrifices and sacraments, because
they were instituted to signify something in the future, although
they were adequate for the divine cult of that age, once our Lord
Jesus Christ who was signified by them had come, came to an end and
the sacraments of the new Testament had their beginning. Whoever,
after the Passion, places his hope in the legal prescriptions and
submits himself to them as necessary for salvation and as if faith in
Christ without them could not save, sins mortally. It does not deny
that from Christ's passion until the promulgation of the Gospel they
could have been retained, provided they were in no way believed to be
necessary for salvation. But it asserts that after the promulgation
of the gospel they cannot be observed without loss of eternal salvation. Therefore it denounces all who after that time observe
circumcision, the [Jewish] sabbath and other legal prescriptions as
strangers to the faith of Christ and unable to share in eternal salvation, unless they recoil at some time from these errors.
Therefore it strictly orders all who glory in the name of Christian,
not to practise circumcision either before or after baptism, since
whether or not they place their hope in it, it cannot possibly be
observed without loss of eternal salvation.
- affirmed by Pope Pius XII in 1952
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