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"The Catholic Church and the Jewish People".

Article Excerpt
The Catholic Church and the Jewish People, edited by Philip A. Cunningham, Norbert J. Hofmann and Joseph Sievers. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. 271 pp. $50.

The Second Vatican Council that lasted from 1962 to 1965 and the revolutionary document it approved, known as Nostra Aetate, proved to be a sea change in Catholic-Jewish relations. It is the first fully articulated document that defines the relationship between the two faiths: it stresses the Jewish roots of Christianity, absolves all Jews then living or subsequently alive of the death of Jesus; it deplores antisemitism; it calls for fraternal dialogue between the two faiths so that Christian doctrines may no longer depict Jews as rejected or cursed; and it notes that Jews are still and forever in God's covenant. In the wake of that historic statement, many studies and analyses have been published. In fact, I edited such a symposium for Midstream in the issue of September/October 2005 in which Jewish, Catholic and Protestant theologians and historians evaluated the impact of that great Council and its document on the Jews.

On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Nostra Aetate, The Pontifical Gregorian University in the Vatican teamed up with Boston College's Center for Christian-Jewish Learning in convening a scholarly symposium of some of the best scholars and thinkers in the realm of Catholic-Jewish relations. The result of that symposium, held at the Cardinal Bea Center in Rome, is the volume, The Catholic Church and the Jewish People It is an important study and contains a significant number of truly insightful and valuable essays that derive from the papers read at that symposium. It records the profound changes in relations between the two faiths and the historic rapprochement that has resulted from Vatican II. There are five parts to the book reflections on the relationship between the two faiths; the need to re-examine the painful past; the struggle to frame a new Christian theology of Judaism; the nature of the post-Shoah dialogue; and the new relationship between the Holy See and the State of Israel. A valuable Appendix of relevant documents rounds out the book.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Commission for Religions Relations with the Jews, reflects on the surprising developments "which have changed to a great extent the two-thousand-year history of Jewish Christian relations, with momentous consequences for the whole world." He reminds us that the tragic Arab-Israeli conflict highlights "the very urgency of the dialogue between the three Abrahamic religions" and exhorts us that "there cannot be peace in the world without peace between the world religions." He pays...

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