What is the importance of Pope Benedict XVI's sweeping statements in the latest installment of his book series, Jesus of Nazareth, about the need not to hold the Jewish people responsible as a whole for the death of Jesus?
After all, the Second Vatican Council's revolutionary document Nostra Aetate, which enjoys a somewhat higher level of authority than a pope's personal reflections (especially in a book series which Benedict introduced by saying, "Everyone is free, then, to contradict me"), stated more or less the same thing in 1964.
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