Judaism – the only religion not mentioned in Nostra aetate

On October 28, 1965, the declaration Nostra aetate on the Church’s relations with non-Christian religions was promulgated. Originally, this declaration was meant to deal uniquely with the relations of the Church with the Jews. The Council discussions led to the development of the original text in order to include all the other religions, particularly Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam.

When the Council spoke of these religions, it discussed what is thought and professed by those who belong to them, describing in particular the conceptions of life and of the world and what is beyond this world when it came to Hindus and Buddhists. The description of Islam was more developed and spoke of the Muslims “adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men”. In addition, “they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees”.

There is nothing comparable to be found in paragraph 4, entitled nonetheless “the Jewish religion”. One can find the word “people” three times as well as the expression “Abraham’s stock” and ten times the word “Jew”, used to define the members of this people, but the word “Judaism” does not appear in the declaration, which had mentioned Hinduism, Buddhism and the Islamic faith in the preceding paragraphs. Nothing is said of what Jews believe, their conception of life and their relationship with God, of their religious traditions and their customs. When it engages in the issue of the relations between the Church and the Jews, the Council situates itself in a totally different perspective from that of the preceding paragraphs and sets out from a different starting point: “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.” The first words of the declaration on the non-Christian religions announced the intention of the Council to fix its regard on the external world. The text on the Jews breaks with this perspective in order to affirm that the relationship with the Jewish people induces the Church to remember her origin and to meditate on her own identity. In one word, the Council does not speak of the “Jewish religion” as it speaks of the other religions but rather of the connection which unites the Church with the Jewish people.

The Council encourages Christians to get to know the Jewish world better by means of “biblical and theological studies as well as fraternal dialogues”. The ultimate reason for this recommendation is the congenital link which unites the Church with the people from whom she was born. There would be no Church if God had not made a covenant first with the “stock of Abraham”. The Church, today and always, “draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles”. Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Nostrae aetate is first of all remembering, according to the formulae of John Paul II, that the Church and the Jewish people “are related to each other at the very level of their identity”, that these relations are “established on the plan of God of the Covenant” and that with the Jews, we have “relations that we have with no other religion”.