Nostra aetate, Roman Catholic declaration that was proclaimed by Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965, during the final session of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65; commonly called Vatican II). Vatican II was an ecumenical council convened to foster spiritual renewal for the Roman Catholic Church and promote unity among Christians, and it was in that spirit that Nostra aetate rejected the traditional accusation that the Jews killed Christ, recognized the legitimacy of Judaism and Islam, and condemned antisemitism.

Significance and historical background

In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions.

These words begin the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,” which is usually referred to by the first words of its Latin text: Nostra aetate (“In Our Age” or “In Our Time”). This declaration is vastly important because it inaugurated a positive approach to other religions that was markedly different from the usually negative tone that had characterized such Christian discourse.

For example, in an attempt to unseat Judaism and make the Christian message universal, most early Christian authors felt it necessary to proclaim that the practices of the Jewish religion were no longer valid after the coming of Christ. (For more information, see antisemitism: The origins of Christian antisemitism.) After Islam was proclaimed in the 7th century ce by the Prophet Muhammad, Christians in the Middle East, such as St. John of Damascus (who was born less than 50 years after Muhammad’s death in 632 ce), argued that the Prophet was an imposter who claimed a revelation from God that he in fact had taken from Christian heretics. Between the 11th and 16th centuries, western European Christians organized the Crusades, military campaigns waged in response to Muslim expansion in the Holy Land. This era was one of bloody hostilities between the Christian and Muslim faiths in which many Jews were subjected to pogroms or massacred.

In Spain and Portugal, the Roman Catholic inquisitions beginning in the 1400s and 1500s were initially intended to detect crypto-Judaism among Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants (and later to detect and eradicate heresies). The Spanish Inquisition (1478–1834) resulted in many atrocities against Jews and Muslims. Thousands of people were burned at the stake under Tomás de Torquemada, a Dominican friar who was the most notorious of the grand inquisitors. Beginning in 1609 tens of thousands of people were killed during the forced expulsion of Moriscos, Spanish Muslims who had been baptized as Christians. These actions were overseen by the Vatican, and grand inquisitors were appointed and sanctioned by the pope. For further discussion, see inquisition and Spanish Inquisition.

Main points

Nostra aetate itself is brief, consisting of five short sections. The first of these points to the common origin of all humans as creatures of God and enumerates a number of general questions to which all religions try to answer: What is the meaning of human life? How do we reach fulfillment? Where do we come from and where are we going?

The second section focuses on some enduring religious traditions—Hinduism and Buddhism are mentioned by name—that have developed profound language to answer such questions. It concludes by stating, “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions,” and declares that Catholics should work together with followers of these religions, even if Christians differ from them in considering Jesus Christ “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

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The third section focuses on Islam and begins with words of appreciation—“The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems”—underscoring common points between Islam and Christianity, such as the worship of one God, the Creator and final Judge of humankind. Further, this section insists that Christians and Muslims should leave behind past disagreements and hostilities and work together for social justice and the promotion of moral values.

The fourth section is the longest and engages with Jews as the partners of God’s covenant and with Judaism as the root of Christianity. It contains arguably the most influential statement in the entire document: “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues.” Rejecting centuries of Christian antisemitism, this statement affirms that God did not relinquish the relationship with the Jewish people after the coming of Christ and that the Jewish religion is still valid in the eyes of God. This section also makes clear that the death of Christ cannot be held against the Jews and that they should not be seen as cursed or rejected by God.

Nostra aetate concludes in the fifth and final section by stating that Christians must reject any discrimination on the basis of “race, color, condition of life, or religion.”

The Holocaust and the Catholic Church’s “teaching of contempt”

The final two sections of Nostra aetate form the historical core of the declaration, which was originally promulgated as a statement about the Jews. Its origin is connected to the horrors of the Holocaust, which prompted a growing awareness in the Catholic Church that Christians should approach Judaism in a different way than the traditional “teaching of contempt,” as the French Jewish historian Jules Isaac called it. During World War II (1939–45) Isaac had been forced to go into hiding, and his wife, daughter, and son-in-law were murdered in the extermination camp at Auschwitz. Isaac’s later relationship with Pope John XXIII (1958–63) was crucial to the development of a profound change in church teaching.

Before he became John XXIII, Archbishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli served as papal nuncio in Turkey and Greece (predominantly Muslim and Eastern Orthodox countries, respectively). During World War II he helped many Jews escape the Holocaust. As pope he made ecumenism a focal point of his papacy and removed certain words offensive to Jews from the church’s liturgy for the Good Friday mass. He convoked the Second Vatican Council in 1959 and had a private meeting with Isaac in 1960, in which he was receptive to Isaac’s request to redress church teaching and asked the Vatican’s Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity to prepare a document on the Jews.

Evolution of Nostra aetate and influence of Lumen gentium

The history of this document’s evolution during the Second Vatican Council is complicated, in part because of political situations at the time. The bishops of Christian minorities in the Middle East did not want a declaration on Judaism without a similar statement on Islam. Similarly, Pope Paul VI, who succeeded John in 1963, wanted to include a passage on Muslims because of his interest in dialogue and peace in the Middle East.

It is also important to note the close connection between Nostra aetate and Lumen gentium (“Light of Nations”), which was promulgated by Paul VI in November 1964, nearly a full year before Nostra aetate. As a dogmatic constitution, Lumen gentium has a higher level of authority in the Roman Catholic Church than a declaration and thus provides a theological foundation for the points expressed in Nostra aetate. The constitution gives an idea of how the Catholic Church understands itself in relation to those who are, in certain ways, connected to the church and thus not totally outside the church, including those who are Christians but do not profess the Catholic faith and those who have not yet received the Gospel (i.e., non-Christians).

As Nostra aetate was being drafted, the council bishops discussed a first version of the document that would mirror the structure of sections 14–16 of Lumen gentium. Indeed, the principles unfolded in Nostra aetate are grounded in the similar ideas of those sections—namely, that the church extends to all people because of the presence of God in the entire creation. In Nostra aetate, however, the document begins with broad, general questions before narrowing in on the church’s relationship with the Jews, a section that was initially discussed as an appendix to Lumen gentium but was not included in the final version of the constitution.

Reception and impact

When Nostra aetate was voted on at Vatican II, there was hardly any opposition; less than 4 percent of the bishops voted against it. Yet, for some ultra-conservative bishops, such as French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who would later become the founder of the traditionalist (and, for a time, schismatic) Society of St. Pius X, Nostra aetate was one of the documents that showed the council had strayed from what some Catholics deemed to be the true tradition of the church.

Nostra aetate was promulgated in October 1965, and the history of its reception mirrors the history of the document’s origins: the final two sections about the church’s relationship with those of the Jewish faith have by far received the most attention in the general media and by scholars. Indeed, there have been many subsequent documents, both by the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews (established by Paul VI in 1974) and by national episcopal conferences, that urge a further implementation of the positive approach to Jewish people.

By comparison, the sections addressing relations with Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists have not received the same attention, and the same holds for the church’s dialogue with the adherents of these religions. This can in part be explained by the fact that the church relates to Judaism as part of its own history: the Hebrew Bible is read and interpreted as the Old Testament, and the first Christians, including Jesus and Mary, were Jews. Therefore, the relation with Jews in the Roman Curia is represented by the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews in the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, while the relation with other religions is represented by the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue (established by Paul VI in 1964).