(from Latin: "In our time"), or the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, is an official declaration of the Second Vatican Council, an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. It was promulgated on 28 October 1965 by Pope Paul VI. Its name comes from its incipit, the first few words of the opening sentence of the Latin version, as is tradition. It passed the Council by a vote of 2,221 to 88 of the assembled bishops.
The shortest of the 16 final documents of the Council, it is "the first in Catholic history to focus on the relationship that Catholics have with Jews." Similarly, is considered a monumental declaration in describing the Church's relationship with Muslims. It "reveres the work of God in all the major faith traditions." It begins by stating its purpose of reflecting on what humankind has in common in these times when people are being drawn closer together. The preparation of the document was largely under the direction of Cardinal Augustin Bea as President of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, along with his periti (advisors), such as John M. Oesterreicher, Gregory Baum and Bruno Hussar.Melloni, Alberto. (2015). The “Nostra Aetate” Generation. Amicizia ebraico-cristiana di RomaConnolly, John. (2012). Converts Who Changed the Church. The Forward
Following an approach by Jules Isaac, a French-born Jew who was associated with the Seelisberg Conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews, in which he claimed that Christian antisemitism had prepared the way for the Holocaust, a sympathetic Pope John XXIII endorsed the creation of a document which would address a new, less adversarial approach to the relationship between the Catholic Church and Rabbinic Judaism. Within the Church, some conservative Cardinals were suspicious and some Middle Eastern Catholics strongly opposed the creation of such a document. After going through numerous drafts, compromises were made and a statement was added on Islam to mollify the security concerns of the Arab Christians. Finally, statements on Eastern religions, Buddhism and Hinduism were also added.
Summary
The document begins by stating:
The key observation about other faiths reads: "The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings, which though different in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of truth which enlightens all men."
Religious freedom became a new part of Catholic teaching with Vatican II and this declaration. Nostra aetate declared that there are positive elements in other religions and religious stereotypes and prejudices can be overcome through interreligious dialogue. Pope Francis said, "From indifference and opposition, we've turned to cooperation and goodwill. From enemies and strangers, we've become friends and brothers."
The final paragraph calls on Catholics to enter into "dialogue and collaboration" with those of other faiths.Fredericks, James L. "Nostra Aetate and Pope Francis: Reflections on the Next Fifty Years of Catholic Dialogue with Buddhists." Nostra Aetate, edited by Pim Valkenberg and Anthony Cirelli, Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C., 2016, pp. 43–57. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1g69zbs.10.
It describes the eternal questions which have dogged men since the beginning, and how the various religious traditions have tried to answer them.
It mentions some of the answers that some Hindus, Buddhists, and members of other faiths have suggested for such philosophical questions. It notes the willingness of the Catholic Church to accept some truths present in other religions in so much as they reflect Catholic teaching and may lead souls to Christ.
Part three goes on to say that the Catholic Church regards the Muslims with esteem, and then continues by describing some of the things Islam has in common with Christianity: worship of One God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, Merciful and Omnipotent, Who has spoken to men; the Muslims' respect for Abraham and Mary, and the great respect they have for Jesus, whom they consider to be a Prophet and not God. The synod urged all Catholics and Muslims to forget the hostilities and differences of the past and to work together for mutual understanding and benefit. Some of these themes are repeated in chapter two of Lumen gentium.
Part four of the text deals with Jews. Repeated in the text is the traditional teaching that the Catholic Church sees the beginnings of its Faith in the Patriarchs and Prophets of ancient Israel. It also notes that the Apostles and many of the early Disciples of Jesus Christ at the founding of the Catholic Church had their roots in the Jews of that time, despite the fact that "Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation, nor did the Jews in large number, accept the Gospel; indeed not a few opposed its spreading." The most significant departure in the document from previous approaches was that "this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies as well as of fraternal dialogues." This paved the way for Catholic–Jewish interfaith dialogue in the decades following on from the Second Vatican Council in a manner which was not commonplace before.
The final text of Nostra aetate, as promulgated in 1965, in regard to the question of Jewish deicide (that is to say Jewish culpability for the trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ) did not include the word "deicide" specifically, as it had in some previously proposed versions. On this issue, the document says "what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today." The exclusion of the specific term "deicide" and the textual ambiguity resulting from the fierce debates at the council is such that the text has been interpreted in different ways, the "cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction" allows conservatives to present that the Jews who had become Christians, then and since, were not culpable, while others present it as exonerating the Jews of deicide as a whole. At the time of its promulgation, liberal elements within the SECU and American Jewish organisations saw the final version of the text as a defeat for their position on this issue.
On the question of antisemitism, the document says that the Church "decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone." Earlier versions of the text said that it "condemns" it, but this was removed from the final version.
The fifth part states that all men are created in God's image, and that the "Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion."
History of the document
Before his death in 1963, Pope John XXIII wrote a statement which he intended to be read aloud in all Roman Catholic Churches of the world on a fixed date:
Originally, Nostra aetate was only supposed to focus on the relationship between the Catholic church and Judaism. There were five different drafts of the document before a final version was accepted. Some bishops and cardinals objected, including Middle Eastern bishops who were unsympathetic to the new state of Israel. Cardinal Bea decided to create a less contentious document which would stress ecumenism between the Catholic Church and all non-Christian faiths. While coverage of Hinduism and Buddhism is brief, two of the document's five sections are devoted to Islam and Judaism. TitleDateAuthorDecree on the Jews (Decretum de Iudaeis)1 November 1961Written by Secretariat for Christian UnityOn the Attitude of Catholics Toward Non-Christians and Especially Toward Jews8 November 1963Written by Secretariat for Christian UnityAppendix 'On the Jews' to the "Declaration on Ecumenism"1 March 1964Written by Secretariat for Christian UnityOn the Jews and Non-Christians1 September 1964Written by Second Vatican Council Coordinating CommissionDeclaration on the Church's Relationship to Non-Christian Religions18 November 1964Written by Secretariat for Christian UnityAmendments to Section 41 March 1965Written by Secretariat for Christian Unity
Before the Council: Decretum de Iudaeis, 1960–1962
The specific origins of Nostra aetate can be traced directly to a meeting between Pope John XXIII and Jewish-French historian Jules Isaac on 13 June 1960.WJC. (2020). June 13, 1960: A turning point in Catholic-Jewish relations. World Jewish Congress Isaac wanted a document at the Second Vatican Council, in light of the Holocaust, to specifically address the relationship between the Catholic Church and Judaism. In his meeting with John XXIII, Isaac used diplomatic language, pointing to the Fourth Chapter of the Catechism of the Council of Trent, in which Jews are mentioned in combination with the Romans as "advisors and perpetrators of the passion" and that the Catechism lays ultimate responsibility for the death of Jesus Christ, not just upon the Jews, but upon humanity's original sin and the "vices and crimes which people have committed from the beginning of the world to the present day and will go on committing until the end of time." Thus, Isaac, argued, even within the context of Catholic doctrine, it would be possible for the Holy See to make a statement distancing the Church from preaching the concept of Jewish deicide (to which Isaac attributed a significant bulk of what he called "Christian anti-semitism"). John XXIII, more so than his predecessors, was favourably disposed to such a suggestion; previously as the Archbishop Apostolic Delegate to Turkey, he had had a long relationship with Jewish communities and since being raised to the Papacy in 1958, had ushered in a period of "openness to the world" (what was called giovanissimo). John XXIII had already removed from the Good Friday prayer for the Jews the term "perfidious" (meaning faithless) in 1959.
Isaac, a French-born Jew, had a long history of activism in regard to Jewish ethno-religious concerns, tracing back to the Dreyfus affair when he was a teenager. Leading up to the Second World War, he had been part of the left-wing group CVIA and after the war he had founded, along with Jacob Kaplan, Edmond Fleg and other French-born Jews, the Amitié Judéo-chrétienne de France on 26 February 1948. This was following on from the Seelisberg Conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews (originally an American-British initiative) a year earlier at which Isaac had been a key speaker. Through several works, Jesus and Israel (1946), the Genesis of Anti-Semitism (1948) and The Teaching of Contempt (1962)—the latter published at the start of Vatican II—Isaac had laid out his central thesis that, the "most dangerous form of anti-semitism is Christian anti-semitism", which he treats not as a peripheral anomaly, but inherent in its origins, from the Passion as described by the Four Evangelists in the Gospels, through the Church Fathers to the present day. Isaac's solution to this was that Christianity must "amend" its beliefs, expunge from its doctrines any "teachings of contempt" which present Rabbinic Judaism as rejected or inferior and adopt a new relationship with Jews.