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Vol XV No 2 July - December 2025
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Towards the Future
Re-Thinking Nostra ætate Today In many different ways and venues, the week of October 26-31, 2025, was devoted to celebrating the 60th anniversary of the promulgation of Nostra ætate, the Second Vatican Council’s groundbreaking declaration on the Church’s relations with non-Christian religions. The main event was “Re-Thinking Nostra ætate,” a symposium co-sponsored by DIM·MID that was held at the Gregorianum. It was headed up by Professor Ambrogio Bongiovanni and took up most of Monday through Wednesday. All sessions were held in the Aula Magna at “the Greg.” Prof. Bongiovanni seemed concerned that few people would come, but the hall was about three-quarters full most of the time. It was a highly academic affair as befits the setting, and most of the talks given will later appear in a book.
There were several opening greetings and introductions, the strongest of which was given by Prof. Elias El Halabi from the World Council of Churches. He has a very global view and ended his presentation by saying that in our time religion is being faced with many struggles, but the worst are actually intra-religious not inter-religious. Ethnocentrism and political exclusivity are using religion to disguise ultranationalism. At one point he pointedly said, “The enemy of religion is from within.”
The inaugural lectures on the first day were dedicated to history. An excellent presentation by Prof. Paolo Trianni on the history of Nostra ætate in the Catholic Church was followed by a talk on the theological understanding of interreligious dialogue by Fr. Mario Imperatori, SJ, professor of dogmatic theology at a seminary in southern Italy. Unfortunately, his presentation sparked off a little firestorm. He decided to add some criticism about the State of Israel that included comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Shoah, some comments about “false messianism,” his interpretation of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, and even a mention of something being “satanic.” There were several rabbis among the Jewish attendees, and some of the rabbis were from Jerusalem. They did not hesitate to express their consternation. One suggested that Catholic-Jewish relations had just been set back decades, particularly with the mention of “satanic,” since that was one of the descriptors used for Jews and Judaism in the past. One rabbi pointed out that Fr. Imperatori offered a Christological interpretation of the Suffering Servant with which Jewish scholars do not agree. It was not a good way to begin, and many of us left the hall for lunch feeling very tense.
The afternoon was devoted to the dharmic religions: Hinduism and Buddhism. (I would have preferred that they had not been combined in this way.) A smaller fire was lit when the last speaker of the day, listed as a professor of Sanskrit and Asian and North African Studies, kept referring to “so-called Hinduism” and “neo-Hinduism.” This did not go over well with one of the Hindu scholars in the room who referred to this terminology as a “typical colonialist misunderstanding of Hinduism.” He also took exception to the fact that the professor had made an egregious error with one of the Sanskrit terms by using the masculine instead of the feminine form of the word.
I ended the day thinking, “If these kinds of skirmishes and serious misunderstandings can break out in a room full of religious scholars who are assumedly people of good will, is it any wonder that conflicts break out among people who do not have the benefit of education in this field and who cannot always be assumed to be people of good will?” On a positive note, Swami Sarvapriyananda, a Bengali monk of the Ramakrishna Order, gave a delightful presentation based on five parables of Vivekananda, and Venerable Yon Seng Yeath, a Theravadan monk from Cambodia, delivered a fine paper in praise of Nostra ætate, which he obviously knew well, referring to it as a model for interreligious dialogue for other traditions. This is a theme that came up often, and it made me think of the way the Roman Lectionary created after the Second Vatican Council became the standard for mainline Protestant lectionaries even though the Catholic Church had for centuries lagged behind Protestant churches in Scripture studies and the use of Scripture in the liturgy.
There was a question-and-answer period at the end of each long section, and since I was asked to be the moderator for the one on Tuesday, I was watching carefully to see what kind of questions were raised and how they were dealt with.
The second day went much better, and I was happy to see that the rabbis did not abandon ship! We spent the morning hearing about the traditions that Nostra ætate did not deal with––Sikhism, Jainism, African traditional religions, Taoism, and “new movements.” I was particularly happy to hear about Taoism since I have been reading so much about that tradition these last months and years.
The afternoon was entirely given to Islam, with six different speakers making presentations. That session did feel a little rushed, and consequently my time as moderator for the Q&A period at the end of the session was cut short so that we would be on time for an event at the Vatican that evening. Furthermore, I was asked to read a section of Stephen Mitchell’s version of Tao te Ching, and I was happy to be able to read it in both English and Italian. I am glad I did because immediately afterwards, the presenter to my left asked to take a photo of it, and then two people stopped me on the way out the door and asked for the reference. I explained that what I read was a poem from Stephen Mitchell’s version (rather than a “translation”) of the Tao te Ching, and thus there is a good chance that it is nowhere near what the original Chinese says—although it is still a nice poem.
I have only three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These are your three greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with friends and with enemies,
you are in accord with the way things go.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile with all the beings in the world.
The poem is from the second half of #67. Mind you, this is my translation back into English of somebody’s Italian translation of Mitchell’s English translation of the Chinese, if his version is actually a translation at all! That’s why I say, it’s “a nice poem.”
That evening there was the big event in honor of Nostra ætate’s 60th anniversary at the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall organized by the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue. The hall was about half full and we were treated to a grand multicultural event that featured dancers from Sri Lanka and Indonesia, a guitar-violin-bass trio that played Jewish music from Yemen, three pop singers from India, and several pieces, such as John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Michael Jackson’s “We Are the World,” sung by a local children’s choir. In front of the barriers were representatives of the world’s religions and right behind the barriers were other VIPs, cardinals, bishops, and some political leaders, though not many of the latter. We had seats right behind them, thanks to the Dicastery. Of course, the highlight of the evening was Pope Leo’s presence at the very end. He gave a short speech and had his picture taken with the children’s choir before greeting each of the representatives of the religions. I would have preferred an event (and music) that was a little more interreligious than intercultural, since that is my area of expertise, but I understand their caution. There was already a chorus of traditionalist Catholic voices berating the entire enterprise.
During the conference, many mentioned that a meeting between a French Jewish scholar and Pope John XXIII is what gave rise to Nostra ætate. This is how I would summarize the fascinating history of its origins and development: There was supposed to be a document on ecumenism that would include a section on relations with the Jews, but when it was learned that a council was going to be convened, the French president commissioned Jules Isaac to have an audience with Pope John XXIII specifically to request that the Church address certain antisemitic teachings that were prevalent in Catholic preaching. Remember, this happened not even twenty years after the Shoah. It was after his meeting with Jules Isaac that John XXIII proposed that there be a separate document devoted to the Catholic Church’s relations with the Jewish people.
But there were three major problems with that proposal, and the historical context is particularly important in understanding these problems. First of all, some of the more conservative bishops from Latin America, Italy, and Spain thought that the whole idea was simply against Church teaching and tradition. Secondly, the State of Israel had only been founded in 1947. When the Arab governments learned that there was a portfolio on “the Jewish question,” their diplomats rushed to the Vatican to find out what was going on. Many Arab countries—Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, not to mention Israel itself—had large Christian/Catholic populations, but they were still a minority in these countries. These bishops thought that if they did not protest a document devoted to the Catholic Church’s relation to the Jews, they would never be able to return home and face their people. As late as the 1950s, Arab governments in the Mideast still considered themselves at war with Israel, so many bishops of Eastern Catholic Churches in the region thought they had to protest anything that appeared to give special treatment of the Jews. On the other hand, the African bishops thought that it was not enough to deal only with Christian-Jewish relations. They wanted to include the Muslims, who make up approximately 25% of the world’s monotheists. They were backed up by the folks from the churches in Asia who wanted Hinduism and Buddhism included as well. This was a watershed moment in another way: the Roman Catholic Church was breaking out of its Eurocentric container and really becoming a world church.
Here is how the Venerable Yon Seng Yeath put it earlier in the week.
Nostra ætate was not merely a statement of tolerance; it is an act of courageous spiritual curiosity and theological generosity. It acknowledges that within other religious traditions, there are “seeds of the Word,” “rays of truth,” and wisdom that merit reverence and respect.
On the morning of the last day, everyone was invited to the General Audience in St. Peter’s Square. At that General Audience, the Holy Father dedicated his address to interreligious dialogue, focusing on the issue of antisemitism.
In particular, it should not be forgotten that the first focus of Nostra ætate was towards the Jewish world, which Saint John XXIII intended to re-establish the original relationship. For the first time in the history of the Church, a doctrinal treatise on the Jewish roots of Christianity was to take shape, which on a biblical and theological level would represent a point of no return. A “bond … spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock. Thus, the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to God’s saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets” (Nostra ætate, 4). In this way, the Church, “mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone” (ibid.). Since then, all my predecessors have condemned anti-Semitism with clear words. And so, I too confirm that the Church does not tolerate anti-Semitism and fights against it, on the basis of the Gospel itself.[1]
The final conferences that afternoon were dedicated to Judaism, offered by both Jewish and Catholic scholars, and they were excellent. Among the closing remarks was a very strong statement by Fr. Pino Di Luccio, SJ, the President of the Collegium Maximum at the Gregorianum, who, while acknowledging and thanking everyone involved, also added a strong statement, circling back to the first day, that those who link the aftermath of the Hamas attack of October 2023 to the Shoah are over-stepping their bounds. And certainly, any mention of satanic or false messianism is to be rejected.
One last thought. . . . One of the last speakers (I do not remember who) made a strong statement, which does not strike me as always being true: “Dialogue is not about finding common ground: common ground is the starting point.”
If that is true, then there are times when it seems as if we have not even begun. I am reminded of something Thomas of Celano tells us that St. Francis of Assisi said to his brothers toward the end of his life: “Let us begin again! For up ‘til now we have done little or nothing.”
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