Friday, January 17, 2020

What does the Vatican Council’s document, Nostra Aetate, have in common with Rabbi Sack’s ideas as to the ways in which faith promotes peace?

The Vatican Council's "Nostra Aetate" was, simply put, a "peace declaration" between Christianity & non-Christianity, signed in 1965, that proved monumental in altering the relations specifically between Jews and Catholics—most importantly, the document exonerates Judaism from responsibility over the death of Jesus Christ some 2,000 years ago (and therefore, persecution of Jews is no longer justifiable).
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks states,

Peace in the Judaic sense will come not when all nations are conquered (as in tribalism) or converted (as in universalism) but when, under God’s sacred canopy, different nations and faiths make space for one another.
(Radical Then, Radical Now p. 94)

When addressing commonalities between Rabbi Sacks's words of peace (from the Judaic faith) and documents like the Nostra Aetate (from the Catholic faith), it is evident that faith itself should be an avenue for peace rather than an adversary to it. The "NA" did just that—create a safe space for different faiths to coexist beside one another, not through conversion, but through mutual respect and understanding.
The Nostra Aetate was conceived, in part, because of the Holocaust, and therefore Catholicism took responsibility over its seeming indifference to Jewish persecution (during WWII) through the signing of this document. Both religions appeared, at least at this time, to put aside differences in ideology for the sake of peace.
http://rabbisacks.org/topics/peace-2/

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html

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