Relations Between Catholicism and Judaism - Second World War To 2005

Second World War To 2005

The Second Vatican Council, commonly known as Vatican II, was a pastoral ecumenical council of the Catholic church opened under Pope John XXIII in 1962 and closed under Pope Paul VI in 1965. One of the most revolutionary changes that resulted from interpretations of this council's documents concerned the document Nostra Aetate.

True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead did not press for the death of Christ. The Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ. Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.

In 1971 the Catholic Church established an internal International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, outside the Church's Magisterium, to further these efforts.