When The Catholic Church Embraced ‘Abraham’s Stock’

Fifty years ago, for the Catholic faithful from New York to New Zealand, Jews, according to Church teaching, were seen as Christ killers. Back in the 1960s, Judaism was a religion that had been overtaken, supplanted. A half-century ago, for the Church hierarchy in the Vatican, the scrappy little nation in the Middle East, not yet 20 years old, that sat on land holy to the three major religions, was not even worthy of diplomatic relations.

And then, in the fall of 1965, came these shocking words:

“As the sacred synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock. Thus the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to God’s saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. … Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in Himself.”

The words, which are found in a lyrically written 1,600-word document called “Nostra Aetate” (Latin for “In These Times”) would come to revolutionize Catholic-Jewish relations, according to interfaith leaders. Judaism was now a religion officially redeemed by the Catholic Church, a spiritual equal to Christianity and, after 20 centuries, part of “God’s saving design.”

“It would be hard to overstate the dramatic revolution that Nostra Aetate represented,” said Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious and intergroup relations at the American Jewish Committee. He called Nostra Aetate “a game

Article source: http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york/when-catholic-church-embraced-abrahams-stock