Jews' responsibility for killing Jesus---when repudiated?

[Sherlock]

As another thread has discussed, Fox news annoyingly refers to the second Vatican Council as “repudiating” centuries of Church teaching that the Jews were responsible for killing Jesus. I seem to recall that the council of Trent stated that we are all reponsible, as well as Aquinas. Is anyone familiar with early Church documents that I can refer to?

 

[PeterC]

True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ;(13) still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, 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.

stjosef.at/council/search/NA4.htm

 

[Damascene]

Sherlock:

As another thread has discussed, Fox news annoyingly refers to the second Vatican Council as “repudiating” centuries of Church teaching that the Jews were responsible for killing Jesus. I seem to recall that the council of Trent stated that we are all reponsible, as well as Aquinas. Is anyone familiar with early Church documents that I can refer to?

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

598 In her Magisterial teaching of the faith and in the witness of her saints, the Church has never forgotten that "sinners were the authors and the ministers of all the sufferings that the divine Redeemer endured."389 Taking into account the fact that our sins affect Christ himself,390 the Church does not hesitate to impute to Christians the gravest responsibility for the torments inflicted upon Jesus, a responsibility with which they have all too often burdened the Jews alone:

We must regard as guilty all those who continue to relapse into their sins. Since our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross, those who plunge themselves into disorders and crimes crucify the Son of God anew in their hearts (for he is in them) and hold him up to contempt. And it can be seen that our crime in this case is greater in us than in the Jews. As for them, according to the witness of the Apostle, “None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” We, however, profess to know him. And when we deny him by our deeds, we in some way seem to lay violent hands on him.391 Nor did demons crucify him; it is you who have crucified him and crucify him still, when you delight in your vices and sins.392

389 Roman Catechism I, 5, 11; cf. Heb 12:3.
390 Cf. Mt 25:45; Acts 9:4-5.
391 Roman Catechism I, 5, 11; cf. Heb 6:6; 1 Cor 2:8.
392 St. Francis of Assisi, Admonitio 5, 3.

The Roman Catechism was published by Pope St. Pius V as the Catechism of the Council of Trent, and St. Francis is, well, St. Francis.
St. John Chrysostom (347-408), Doctor of the Church and Patriarch of Constantinople, preached in his Homily LXXXVI on the Gospel of Matthew:

What then did they? When they saw the judge washing his hands, and saying, “I am innocent,” they cried out "His blood be on us, and on our children."Then at length when they had given sentence against themselves, he yielded that all should be done.

See here too their great madness. For passion and wicked desire are like this. They suffer not men to see anything of what is right. For be it that ye curse yourselves; why do you draw down the curse upon your children also? Nevertheless, the lover of man, though they acted with so much madness, both against themselves, and against their children, so far from confirming their sentence upon their children, confirmed it not even on them, but from the one and from the other received those that repented, and counts them worthy of good things beyond number. For indeed even Paul was of them, and the thousands that believed in Jerusalem; for, "thou seest it is said, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe."And if some continued in their sin, to themselves let them impute their punishment.