The arrival of Pope Francis in America and the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s landmark declaration, Nostra Aetate, have allowed us, as Jews, to marvel at the revolutionary developments in our relations with the Catholic Church in the past half-century. But while the church has taken great strides in re-examining the way it considers and interacts with Judaism and the Jewish people, Jews have done little in response.
When Pope John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council in 1962, it was not simply to bring about an aggiornamento , an updating, of the church’s relations with the world; it was also to come to terms with the Catholic teaching of contempt for the Jewish people, which was in part responsible for the grievous suffering and eventual destruction of European Jewry. The pope wanted to face up to the Holocaust.
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