{"id":80017,"date":"2015-10-28T04:50:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T09:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aleteia.org\/?post_type=post&p=80017"},"modified":"2015-10-28T04:50:02","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T09:50:02","slug":"how-the-catholic-church-forever-changed-jewish-life-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2015\/10\/how-the-catholic-church-forever-changed-jewish-life-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Catholic Church forever changed Jewish life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"prayer-801509_640\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At the clergy convocation in my diocese last week, a rabbi got up to speak\u00a0about the 50th anniversary of Nostre Aetate<\/em> and noted\u00a0this sobering fact: when he was growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s, he would try to time his departure from school so that he wouldn\u2019t run into the Catholic kids who went to the nearby parochial school.<\/p>\n

Because if he encountered them, odds were he would be beaten up.<\/p>\n

This was life\u00a0growing up Jewish 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

How things have changed. Today, a rabbi writes at Huffington Post:\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to believe that my grandparents feared being beaten up on Easter for being Jewish. It\u2019s hard to believe that those fears were so credible. It\u2019s harder still to imagine a Catholic priest saying from the pulpit that Jews should be blamed for Jesus\u2019 death. It\u2019s nearly impossible to envision a Catholic Church whose clergy could sanction pogroms or the Crusades in which thousands of Jews were slaughtered.<\/p>\n

The reason we can\u2019t even conceive of such cruelty is in large part because of a radical transformation (or clarification, depending on your viewpoint) that took place 50 years ago today within the Vatican.<\/p>\n

On October 28, 1965, Pope Paul VI pronounced the following, as part of a broader declaration on \u201cThe Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions<\/a>\u201c:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ[\u2026] still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Though this was but one\u00a0part of one document put forth by the Second Vatican Council<\/a>, which changed the Catholic Church in innumerable ways, its impact was landmark to the point that most\u00a0Millennials<\/a>\u00a0like me cannot remember a world without it. Since then,\u00a0multiple popes have apologized for the role of some Catholics in the Holocaust<\/a>\u00a0and reached out proactively to the Jewish community and its leaders.<\/p>\n

For young Jews to grow up without Catholic friends would be the exception. For young Jews to grow up in fear of Catholics would be practically unheard of.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, the declaration that forever changed Jewish-Catholic relations is part of\u00a0Nostra Aetate<\/em>, a document that literally means \u201cIn Our Time<\/a>.\u201d The document marks the single greatest improvement in interfaith collaboration in history, forever reducing anti-Semitism and creating the framework in which the largest religious institution could improve relations with countless other traditions, including Buddhism<\/a>, Hinduism and Islam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more.\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the clergy convocation in my diocese last week, a rabbi got up to speak\u00a0about the 50th anniversary of Nostre Aetate and noted\u00a0this sobering fact: when he was growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s, he would try to time his departure from school so that he wouldn\u2019t run into the Catholic kids who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,469],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interfaith-news","category-jews"],"yoast_head":"\nHow the Catholic Church forever changed Jewish life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"At the clergy convocation in my diocese last week, a rabbi got up to speak\u00a0about the 50th anniversary of Nostre Aetate and noted\u00a0this sobering fact: when\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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