Fr David Neuhaus SJ recently spoke at the Jesuit Institute South Africa during a celebration of the anniversary of the declaration on the relation of the Church to Non-Christian religions, Nostra Aetate’s 60th anniversary.

Video of celebration at the Jesuit Institute South Africa

Introduction by Fr David Neuhaus SJ

Good evening.

Welcome again.

Today is the actual day — the 28th of October 1965 — when Nostra Aetate was published by the Second Vatican Council and signed by Pope Paul VI.

I think it’s a big day. The document really changed, or at least was the beginning of a change, in how we as Catholics interact with people of other faiths. And hopefully, we’re on that path — developing as we go along.

I want to make just a few introductory remarks.

One: this was a gift of the Holy Spirit. When Pope John XXIII thought of having a council to update the Church, interfaith relations were not on the agenda. But it was the fact that the Jewish French historian Jules Isaac asked to see him, and asked, “We as Jews — can we expect something good from the Council?” That set John XXIII thinking.

He called Cardinal Bea — the great biblical scholar, the German who was responsible at that time for ecumenical relations, improving relations with other Christian churches — and said, “Get to work.” That was the first movement of the Holy Spirit.

And then there was a second movement of the Holy Spirit, when bishops all around the world — but particularly in the Middle East — said, “Okay, Jews — not bad. But we live with people of other religions. And our relationship with the Jews in the Middle East is complicated. Can we please open it up? Can we speak also about our attitude to other religions?”

And of course, we celebrate that tonight — a second movement of the Holy Spirit: an opening to real relationship with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and people of many, many other religious traditions.

Pope John XXIII died during the Council, and his role was filled by Pope Paul VI. Pope Paul VI showed himself equal to the task, and really embraced the vision of John XXIII. But he developed a new concept in the life of the Church — the concept of dialogue.

In his 1964 encyclical — his first great letter to the Church, Ecclesiam Suam — he spoke of dialogue: dialogue with all of those outside the Church, that they too have something to teach us.

So again, we are celebrating tonight, I think, a movement of the Holy Spirit.

This evening is not a time for lectures. What we’re going to do is hear the document read by different readers — slowly, clearly, meditatively. We are not in a hurry.

It will be broken up with pieces of music that I chose, hoping that they will inspire us to deeper prayer, deeper reflection on this theme of relations with people of other religions.

Let’s remember two things.

One: the document was written sixty years ago. Some of the language is not exactly what we would say today. It was a beginning — and we are moving. We haven’t reached the end. We are moving.

The second point is this: I think it’s very necessary for us, when we are reflecting and praying, to pray for a world that so often seems to be sinking back into a teaching of contempt, of suspicion, and of hatred.

Let us pray for that world — that it too can be brought into the light that started to shine with the promulgation of Nostra Aetate.

Conclusion by Fr David Neuhaus

We want to thank you for joining us in this moment of remembering what happened sixty years ago.

We want to thank you for joining us in this moment to hope that what started then is still developing — and that we can be participants in a future in which our speech is a speech of respect for others, especially at a time when there is so much suspicion, contempt, hatred, and war.

So maybe we can just take a moment of silence as we draw this evening to a close.

[silence]

Amen.

Music Credits

Music Credits:

Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions

Nostra Aetate

Proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965

1

In our time, when day by day humanity is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among people, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what people have in common and what draws them to fellowship.

One is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth.¹ One also is their final goal, God. God’s providence, God’s manifestations of goodness, God’s saving design extend to all people,² until that time when the elect will be united in the Holy City, the city ablaze with the glory of God, where the nations will walk in God’s light.³

People expect from the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles of the human condition, which today, even as in former times, deeply stir the hearts of people: What is the human person? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What is moral good, what is sin? Whence suffering and what purpose does it serve? Which is the road to true happiness? What are death, judgment and retribution after death? What, finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery which encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and where are we going?

2

From ancient times down to the present, there is found among various peoples a certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and over the events of human history; at times some indeed have come to the recognition of a Supreme Being, or even of a Father. This perception and recognition penetrates their lives with a profound religious sense.

Religions, however, that are bound up with an advanced culture have struggled to answer the same questions by means of more refined concepts and a more developed language. Thus in Hinduism, people contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible abundance of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry. They seek freedom from the anguish of our human condition either through ascetical practices or profound meditation or a flight to God with love and trust.

Again, Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world; it teaches a way by which people, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination.

Likewise, other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing “ways,” comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites.

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all people. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), in whom people may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Godself.⁴

The Church, therefore, exhorts her children, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions—carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life—they recognize, preserve, and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these people.

3

The Church regards with esteem also the Muslims. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Godself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth,⁵ who has spoken to people; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even God’s inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God.

Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Muslims, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all humanity social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.

4

As the sacred synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock.

Thus the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to God’s saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets. She professes that all who believe in Christ—Abraham’s children according to faith⁶—are included in the same Patriarch’s call, and likewise that the salvation of the Church is mysteriously foreshadowed by the chosen people’s exodus from the land of bondage.

The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in God’s inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles.⁷ Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in Christ.⁸

The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kin: “theirs is the adoption as children of God, and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the ancestors and from them is the Christ according to the flesh” (Rom 9:4-5), the Son of the Virgin Mary. She also recalls that the Apostles, the Church’s main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ’s Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people.

As Holy Scripture testifies, Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation,⁹ nor did the Jews in large number accept the Gospel; indeed not a few opposed its spreading.¹⁰ Nevertheless, God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their ancestors; God does not repent of the gifts God makes or of the calls God issues—such is the witness of the Apostle.¹¹

In company with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and “serve him shoulder to shoulder” (Soph 3:9).¹²

Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies as well as of fraternal dialogues.

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.

Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any person, the Church—mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love—decries hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.

Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of humanity and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church’s preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God’s all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.

5

We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any person, created as they are in the image of God. The human person’s relation to God the Father and their relation to people, their brothers and sisters, are so linked together that Scripture says: “He who does not love does not know God” (1 John 4:8).

No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between one person and another or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.

The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against others or harassment of them because of their race, colour, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to “maintain good fellowship among the nations” (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all people,¹⁴ so that they may truly be sons and daughters of the Father who is in heaven.¹⁵

Cf. Acts 17:26 ↩︎
Cf. Wis 8:1; Acts 14:17; Rom 2:6–7; 1 Tim 2:4 ↩︎
Cf. Apoc 21:23 f. ↩︎
Cf. 2 Cor 5:18–19 ↩︎
Cf. St Gregory VII, Letter XXI to Anzir (Nacir), King of Mauritania (PL 148, col. 450 f.) ↩︎
Cf. Gal 3:7 ↩︎
Cf. Rom 11:17–24 ↩︎
Cf. Eph 2:14–16 ↩︎
Cf. Lk 19:44 ↩︎
Cf. Rom 11:28 ↩︎
Cf. Rom 11:28–29; cf. Lumen Gentium AAS 57 (1965) p. 20 ↩︎
Cf. Is 66:23; Ps 65:4; Rom 11:11–32 ↩︎
Cf. John 19:6 ↩︎
Cf. Rom 12:18 ↩︎
Cf. Matt 5:45 ↩︎

60th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate