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The Declaration
Nostra Aetate (NA) is Vatican II's ground-breaking document on the Catholic Church's relation with people of other religions.1 The two previous Popes have called it 'the Magna Carta' of the Church's new direction in interreligious dialogue.-' For centuries church teaching and practice in regard to other religions had been encapsulated in the axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the church no salvation). Nostra Aetate represents a 'radically new understanding of the relations of the church to the other great world religions."
Nostra Aetate did not spring out of nowhere. Its remote antecedents were the European Enlightenment and society's growing appreciation of other religions deriving from increasing contacts and study. More proximately was widespread revulsion at the Shoah and Christianity's complicity in the animosity which fuelled the Nazi racist ideology. Most immediately, its genesis was the mind and heart of Pope John XXIII, who had witnessed first-hand the tribulations of the Jewish people and had used his diplomatic role as Apostolic Delegate to Turkey to assist them in their need. This personal experience made him receptive to Jules Isaac's challenge to change the Church's attitude to the Jewish people. In this task, he found a willing collaborator in Cardinal Augustin Bea, who persevered in steering the document's difficult passage through the Council. Another important person was Pope Paul VI, through whose programmatic encyclical Ecclesiam Suam the word 'dialogue' entered the Catholic lexicon for the first time.4 Of course, Nostra Aetate was also fashioned in the ferment of Vatican II, so must be read in the context of the Council's other documents, especially Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes and Ad Gentes.
Nostra Aetate is the shortest of the Council documents, a mere forty-one sentences in five paragraphs. The first deals with the unity of the human race, our globalised world, our shared origin and destiny and religions' answers to our common questions on the meaning of life, suffering, good and evil and what lies beyond death. The second treats traditional religions in terms of awareness of a hidden power and then refers to the teachings and practices of Hinduism and Buddhism, acknowledging what is true and holy as 'a ray of that truth which enlightens all men and women.' The third treats Muslims, with...