St. James, the Pope has said this, do you accept it with submission of intellect and will?
"Yes, once again, through myself, the Church, in the words of the well-known Declaration Nostra Aetate (no. 4), “deplores the hatred, persecutions and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone;” I repeat: “by anyone.”
I would like once more to express a word of abhorrence for the genocide decreed against the Jewish people during the last War, which led to the holocaust of millions of innocent victims.
When I visited on June 7, 1979 the concentration camp at Auschwitz and prayed for the many victims from various nations, I paused in particular before the memorial stone with the inscription in Hebrew and thus manifested the sentiments of my heart: “This inscription stirs the memory of the People whose sons and daughters were destined to total extermination. This People has its origin in Abraham, who is our father in faith” (cf. Rom 4:12), as Paul of Tarsus expressed it. Precisely this people, which received from God the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill,” has experienced in itself to a particular degree what killing means. Before this inscription it is not permissible for anyone to pass by with indifference" (Insegnamenti, 1979, p. 1484). The Jewish community of Rome too paid a high price in blood. And it was surely a significant gesture that in those dark years of racial persecution the doors of our religious houses, of our churches, of the Roman Seminary, of buildings belonging to the Holy See and of Vatican City itself were thrown open to offer refuge and safety to so many Jews of Rome being hunted by their persecutors.
- Today’s visit is meant to make a decisive contribution to the consolidation of the good relations between our two communities, in imitation of the example of so many men and women who have worked and who are still working today, on both sides, to overcome old prejudices and to secure ever wider and fuller recognition of that “bond” and that “common spiritual patrimony” that exists between Jews and Christians.
This is the hope expressed in the fourth paragraph of the Council’s Declaration Nostra Aetate, which I have just mentioned, on the relationship of the Church to non-Christian religions. The decisive turning-point in relations between the Catholic Church and Judaism, and with individual Jews, was occasioned by this brief but incisive paragraph.
We are all aware that, among the riches of this paragraph no. 4 of Nostra Aetate, three points are especially relevant. I would like to underline them here, before you, in this truly unique circumstance. The first is that the Church of Christ discovers her “bond” with Judaism by “searching into her own mystery” (cf. Nostra Aetate, ibid.) The Jewish religion is not “extrinsic” to us, but in a certain way is “intrinsic” to our own religion. With Judaism therefore we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.
The second point noted by the Council is that no ancestral or collective blame can be imputed to the Jews as a people for “what happened in Christ’s passion” (cf. Nostra Aetate, ibid.) Not indiscriminately to the Jews of that time, nor to those who came afterwards, nor to those of today. So any alleged theological justification for discriminatory measures or, worse still, for acts of persecution is unfounded. The Lord will judge each one “according to his own works,” Jews and Christians alike (cf. Rom 2:6)
The third point that I would like to emphasize in the Council’s Declaration is a consequence of the second. Notwithstanding the Church’s awareness of her own identity, it is not lawful to say that the Jews are “repudiated or cursed,” as it this were taught or could be deduced from the Sacred Scriptures of the Old or the New Testament (cf. Nostra Aetate, ibid.). Indeed, the Council had already said in this same text of Nostra Aetate, but also in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, no. 16, referring to Saint Paul in the Letter to the Romans (11:28-29), that the Jews are beloved of God, who has called them with an irrevocable calling."
