Last week, three major bodies of the Holy See jointly published A Journey of Hope, a new document approved by Pope Leo XIV marking sixty years since Nostra Aetate, the declaration promulgated during the Second Vatican Council on October 28, 1965.

Although Nostra Aetate is now remembered as a landmark in the Catholic Church’s dialogue with other religions, its origins were more specific. As the new Vatican document recalls, it was initially conceived as a response to the “tragic consequences of antisemitism, which culminated in the Shoah.” After meeting the French Jewish historian Jules Isaac, Pope John XXIII entrusted Cardinal Augustin Bea with drafting a text aimed at healing and renewing the relationship between the Church and the Jewish people.

The result was one of the most important documents for Jewish-Christian relations in nearly two thousand years of history. Nostra Aetate reaffirmed Christianity’s Jewish roots, rejected the collective responsibility of Jews for the death of Jesus, and condemned antisemitism.

In the decades that followed, the Church went further. The new Vatican document reiterates one of the most consequential developments of this postwar theology: “God’s covenant with the Jewish people is irrevocable.”

Sixty years later, however, some of these achievements appear to be under pressure again.

The Holy See itself acknowledges the problem. A Journey of Hope notes that the conflicts that have erupted in the Middle East in recent years have left their mark on Jewish-Christian dialogue. “Many channels of communication have been strained,” it states.

Indeed, the October 7, 2023 massacre and the war that followed in the Gaza Strip have made relations between Jews and Christians more difficult. Alongside the suffering of Palestinian civilians and questions over Israel’s conduct of the war came a new wave of antisemitism around the world. And a particularly uncomfortable part of this phenomenon has emerged from within Christianity itself.

The........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)