For centuries, one of the most virulent antisemitic accusations was that of deicide, that Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus. It wasn’t until 60 years ago – and two decades after the Holocaust – that the Vatican addressed this through the Nostra Aetate. The anniversary was marked earlier this month with a partnership of several of Minnesota’s Jewish and Catholic institutions.
“The point was to raise consciousness about it,” said Steve Hunegs, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. The JCRC partnered with: the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis; the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies and the Encountering Judaism Initiative (Department of Theology) at the University of St. Thomas; the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at Saint John’s University; Benilde St. Margaret’s; and the Minnesota Catholic Conference. The events started with a dinner at Adath Jeshurun, where it was announced that the Minnesota Private Business Council was making a contribution to the Jewish & Catholic communities for their respective security needs.
“In this day and age when there are often difficulties in the world, it’s good to lift up and celebrate the positive,” Hunegs said. “You look at six decades of the Nostra Aetate, particularly in North America, it’s significantly responsible for the upward trajectory and relationships between Catholics and Jews.”
The Nostra Aetate instructed the entire Catholic world, among other things, that:
- Jews were not collectively responsible for the death of Jesus;
- Antisemitism is a sin against God; and
- The Jewish covenantal relationship with God continues astride the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus.
Hans Gustafson, the director of the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at the University of St. Thomas, said the Nostra Aetate is incredibly significant, particularly taking into account its historical context.
“Reading it today, it may not sound terribly earth-shattering, but in its historical context in the 60s, in the wake of the Shoah and the Catholic Church’s long history of Christian-Jewish tensions, it was a big deal,” said Gustafson. “Even many non-Catholic Christians, including Protestants, have described it as a watershed moment.”
Gustafson said that other Christian denominations have issued similar statements on interreligious relations, and many of them emerged in the wake of Nostra Aetate.
“But this came from the Second Vatican Council,” he said. “And while the Catholic Church has held only two Vatican councils in the modern era, Vatican I and Vatican II, it has rarely convened councils of this magnitude.”
The document, for all of its importance, is relatively short compared to other Vatican proclamations.
“It’s only about two pages long, by far the shortest document of the Second Vatican Council, but it probably has the most significance. It’s the one many people remember the most.”
The scholar-in-residence for the week was Rabbi Abraham Skorka, a former pulpit rabbi and now a teacher at Georgetown University.
“I felt that I could build a bridge between many people and myself, especially between the youngsters,” Skorka said. “How they are going to elaborate my message, this is another story. But they received the message.”
“So the promulgation of Nostra Aetate is a watershed in the history between Jews and Catholics,” Skorka said. “The word ‘deicide’ doesn’t appear in the document, but there are two very transcendental phrases: We cannot blame all the people in the times of Jesus, that the Jewish people were the killers of Jesus, point one, and of course, moreover, we cannot blame the Jews of of of the present, as the killers of Jesus. And the second point, which is very important, is that Jews continue to be a loved people by God.
“Such a document opened the hope on both sides that some kind of new era could occur.”
One of the stops on Skorka’s tour through the Twin Cities was to speak to 1,100 students at Benilde-St. Margaret’s, a Catholic school in St. Louis Park. Peg Hodapp, a theology teacher at the school, has a long history of working with the JCRC having been on two of its “Power of Place” educator’s trips to Europe, and has worked with Holly Brod Farber in developing a presentation touring the schools to explain Nostra Aetate.
“Most [Catholic] schools have [teaching the Nostra Aetate] built into their curriculum,” Hodapp said. “I know, for our school, that all of the ninth graders get a short segment of it in theology class. And then all of our world religions classes, which would be all of our juniors also have read the document and are taught things about the document.”
Rabbi Skorka has a long, deeply personal history with the Vatican. In his native Argentina, he was the rabbi of Benei Tikva synagogue for 42 years, and the rector of the Rabbinical Seminary for 20 years. In his work there, he became close friends with the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis in 2013, and he served in that role until he passed away this past April.
Skorka spoke to the students at Benilde, and Hodapp said they were fascinated with his relationship with Pope Francis.
“The kids were really intrigued by that,” Hodapp said. “And I knew they would, just because of the nature of it. They know who the Pope is and what that’s all about. And so for them to hear about Pope Francis, especially since he just passed and they got to see the election of the new pope, which is something not everybody gets to see in their lifetime.”
Hodapp said Skorka reminded the students that all faith traditions have their own way of connecting with God.
“It’s important that people respect and honor differences,” Hodapp said.
Before a dinner that was held to kick off the events of the week, Skorka showed Archbishop Bernard Hebda a letter he had received from Pope Leo XIV.
“He read it great attention, and his first comment was ‘The Pope usually doesn’t write letters to us,’ Skorka recounted. “He repeated that in his speech, and that fact is a consequence of the friendship that I had with Francis, because Francis was a mentor to Leo. This story was the fruit of Nostra Aetate.”
