Transformative ‘Nostra Aetate’ at 60 years

In just over 1,100 words, the Catholic Church issued a document 60 years ago that fundamentally changed the relationship between Catholics and Jews.

“In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions,” Pope Paul VI wrote. “Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect.”

That document, “Nostra Aetate,” Latin for “in our time,” and issued as part of the Second Vatican Council, “totally reoriented the Catholic Church’s outlook toward other religions,” Philip Cunningham, director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, told JNS.

JNS spoke with Cunningham and Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, both of whom were in Rome for the anniversary at the end of October, about the legacy of “Nostra Aetate” and what it means for Catholics and Jews today.

“It reversed centuries of Christian negative teaching about Jews, most particularly that they were under a sort of collective guilt and curse upon them by G-d for the crucifixion of Jesus,” Cunningham said. “That basic ‘teaching of contempt,’ as it has come to be called, contributed to anti-Jewish sentiment down through the centuries in Christian Europe and later other places. It rejected and repudiated all such rhetoric.”

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The text of “Nostra Aetate” cites the Gospel of John in noting that Jewish authorities pressed for the death of Jesus but says that the crucifixion “cannot be charged against all the Jews” of that time or the present and “decries hatred, persecutions, displays of antisemitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

Marans described that declaration as creating “a transformative period in Jewish history.”

“The main vehicle for demonizing the Jewish people — the Catholic Church — was transformed in tangible ways,” Marans said.

Even as Catholic-Jewish relations are arguably better than at any point in history, Catholic leaders have been deeply critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, with Pope Francis, who died in April, saying that Israel should be investigated for war crimes.

“According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” Francis wrote in 2024.

Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See, Yaron Sideman denounced the pope’s claim.

“There was a genocidal massacre on Oct. 7, 2023 of Israeli citizens, and since then, Israel has exercised its right of self-defense against attempts from seven different fronts to kill its citizens,” Sideman wrote. “Any attempt to call it by any other name is singling out the Jewish state.”

Disapproval of Israel’s handling of the war against Hamas is also reflected in polling of lay Catholics in the United States.

American evangelical Protestants and Jews each have about a 70% favorable view of the State of Israel, whereas Israel’s favorability with Catholics is now underwater, with 53% saying they have an unfavorable view of the Jewish state, per a Pew Research Center poll from April.

“It’s perhaps among the most challenging in a series of moments in Catholic-Jewish relations over the last 60 years,” Marans told JNS.

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Since Francis’s death and the ascension of Pope Leo XIV to the throne of St. Peter in May, the new pontiff has repeatedly referred to “misunderstandings” between Catholics and Jews, most recently at the general audience in St. Peter’s Square marking the 60th anniversary on Oct. 29.

“We cannot deny that there have been misunderstandings, difficulties and conflicts in this period, but these have never prevented the dialogue from continuing,” Leo said. “Even today, we must not allow political circumstances and the injustices of some to divert us from friendship, especially since we have achieved so much so far.”

Marans and Cunningham disagreed about whether Leo’s statements were an explicit attempt to repair the damage his predecessor might have caused with his descriptions of Israel’s war against Hamas.

“I don’t think he’s speaking about Gaza, specifically,” Cunningham told JNS. Over “the 60 years since ‘Nostra Aetate,’ that there have been moments in Catholic-Jewish relations where there have been conflicts and controversies.”

Cunningham pointed to the opening of a Carmelite convent near Auschwitz in 1984 and the 1987 meeting between Pope John Paul II and Austrian Prime Minister Kurt Waldheim, shortly after revelations about the latter’s role in deporting Jews from Greece and Yugoslavia to death camps during his service in the Nazi Wehrmacht, as examples of what Pope Leo might have been referring to.

“There is no doubt in my mind that this is about the present tense and not the history of the relationship,” Marans said.

“The last two years have been so traumatic for the Jewish people, certainly the most traumatic in my lifetime,” he said.

Marans added that following Oct. 7, 2023, “the Jewish people expected more from the Catholic church.”

One element that may have contributed to the ongoing tensions between the Catholic Church, Jews and Israel over Gaza is what Cunningham described as the modern church’s adoption of “almost a pacifistic position,” in contrast to the centuries when popes commanded armies as heads of the papal states or called for crusades in the Holy Land.

“For Catholic leaders, there has to be a line somewhere where self-defense or preventing an enemy from attacking again becomes morally wrong when so many innocent lives are lost,” he said.

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Aside from denouncing antisemitism, one effect that “Nostra Aetate” has had has been to reorient the Catholic Church’s understanding of its relationship to other religions and particularly its historical relationship with Jews, including Jesus’s life as a Jew.

“For the first time in the history of the church, a doctrinal treatise on the Jewish roots of Christianity was to take shape, which on a biblical and theological level would represent a point of no return,” Pope Leo said of the document in October.

“The theological topics that we can now discuss together in a sustained manner has literally not happened in the history of the world,” Cunningham said. “That sounds hyperbolic and amazing, but it’s literally the truth.”

What was originally understood in “Nostra Aetate” as the opening of a religious dialogue might now have secular consequences as well, but Cunningham said that it’s unsurprising that that process has taken a long time and has involved the kinds of “misunderstandings” to which Leo referred.

“For almost 2,000 years, Jews and Catholics had never really spoken to one another, except in terms of disdain,” Cunningham said. “When the possibility of an opening for conversation on a deep level, a constructive conversation, emerged in 1965, it took time for Christians and Jews — Catholics in particular — to learn how to speak to one another, because we didn’t have much experience of it.”

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Marans said he expected there to be more “bumps in the road” in Catholic-Jewish relations, including over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but pointed to the record of recent popes, starting with John Paul II, in visits to Auschwitz, the grave of Theodor Herzl, the Western Wall and other places of meaning to Jews and the State of Israel as reason for Jews to continue to engage with “Nostra Aetate.”

“Those images do make a difference in how the world perceives Jews, not only for the 1.4 billion Catholics in the world, but for all who pay attention to what popes do, and that’s a lot of people,” Marans said. 

“If ‘Nostra Aetate’ had lay on a shelf, unattended, if infrastructure were not built around it, if the Catholic hand that had been extended was not received by a Jewish hand and most importantly, if the world did not see what these great religious exemplars were showing about what the Jewish people are and mean we would not be benefiting from the inter-religious harmony that we experience even in difficult times, especially in comparison to two generations ago and before that,” Marans said.

“That’s why ‘Nostra Aetate,’ a very brief document that doesn’t take very long to read, what it became, how it was applied — that’s why it’s important to Jewish people,” he said.