It's hard to believe that my grandparents feared being beaten up on Easter for being Jewish. It's hard to believe that those fears were so credible. It's harder still to imagine a Catholic priest saying from the pulpit that Jews should be blamed for Jesus' death. It's nearly impossible to envision a Catholic Church whose clergy could sanction pogroms or the Crusades in which thousands of Jews were slaughtered.
The reason we can't 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.
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