Nostra Aetate after fifty years: Covenant and the election of Israel

Abstract

The genesis of Nostra Aetate, no. 4 has generally been analyzed in the narrow context of its place in the history of Jewish-Catholic relations, and its passage has been credited in major part to the efforts of Jewish activists and scholars as well as Catholic thinkers engaged in a wrenching post-Holocaust re-examination of the Church's teachings regarding Jews. The validity and importance of this perspective is beyond question, but the wider environment has, I think, been underappreciated (from Introduction)