October 28, 1965 – Pope Paul VI Absolves Jews of Collective Guilt for the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ

The Second Vatican Council was convened by Pope John XXIII to bring the Church into dialogue with the modern world. After John XXIII died in 1963, Pope Paul VI continued the work of the Council. Catholics were primarily affected by the modernization of the liturgy allowing for Latin to be replaced as the language of worship. But the work of the Council having the most effect on non-Catholics was the Nostra Aetate, or Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions.

The fourth section of the Declaration dealt with Judaism, and repudiated anti-Semitism and the charge that Jews were collectively guilty for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. As summarized by Tablet Magazine:

The most focused, concrete, and revolutionary assertion was that only those 1st-century Jews directly involved bore responsibility for the Crucifixion. Contemporary Jews are entirely without guilt. Beyond this, the document, invoking a classic but historically underemphasized passage in Romans chapters 9-11, asserts that Jews and Judaism are the root of Christianity and that the gifts of God, in this case the divine election of Israel, are not revoked. At the same time, it affirms that the Church awaits the day when ‘all people will address the Lord in a single voice and ‘serve him shoulder to shoulder.’’ It ‘decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone’ and calls for ‘fraternal dialogues.’”

Specifically, the Nostra Aetate stated (sounding as if it were begrudgingly conceded):

True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. The Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ. Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, 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.”

The impact of these words was profound, but did not have the effect of eliminating Anti-semitism altogether. Unfortunately, the common schoolyard taunt and neo-Nazi chant of “Christ killer” just morphed into a different rationale for the appealing resort to scapegoating.

Pope John XXIII in 1959