This again?

Having grown up in the years after Nostra Aetate – the Vatican document rejecting the traditional accusation that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus – I assumed it was a settled issue.

But only earlier this month, a major body that sets the liturgical calendar for a number of mostly Protestant churches said that “a common misreading of the Gospel story” fomented anti-Jewish bias.

The Consultation on Common Texts, or CCT, recommended modifications to the reading cycle that would dispel the poisonous notion that “Jesus died because of the behavior of non-Christian Jewish people, rather than because of the decisions by Roman officials or the sinfulness of all humanity.”

Apparently, the charge that the Jews killed Jesus is itself the slur that will not die. Earlier this month, a newspaper columnist in upstate New York casually referred to the “Jewish Leaders” who persecuted Jesus in an article lambasting President Trump’s critics. Last year, Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to scuttle a house antisemitism bill that she thought would prevent the “gospel” teaching that “the Jews” handed Jesus over to his crucifiers. A month later, the NFL player Harrison Butker gave a commencement speech in which he complained, “Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.”

Such insistence on the “deicide” charge —........

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