The Catholic Church and the Jewish People ─ Recent Reflections from Rome

This book makes available in English important essays that mark the fortieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate). Surveying Vatican dialogues and documents, the essays explore challenging theological questions posed by the Shoah and the Catholic recognition of the Jewish people's covenantal life with God.Featuring essays by Vatican officials, leading rabbis, diplomats, and Catholic and Jewish scholars, the book discusses the nature of Christian-Jewish relations and the need to remember their conflicted and often tragichistory, aspects of a Christian theology of Judaism, the Catholic-Jewish dialogue since the Shoah, and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel. The book includes an essayby Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, and documents on the rapprochement between the Church and the Jewish people.

PHILIP A. CUNNINGHAM, a member of the Advisory Committee on Catholic-Jewish Relations for the U.S. Bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, was the founding Executive Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Relations at Boston College.

NORBERT J. HOFMANN, S.D.B., is Secretary of the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.

JOSEPH SIEVERS is former Director of the Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome.