Nostra Aetate - In Our Time

XI he usual image of religious communities draws them as either constantly referring to highly esteemed, age-old source texts or discussing controversially recent questions on their modern interpretation. It seems rather unusual that a text such as Nostra Aetate – neither ancient nor very recent – could have found its way into the very focus of intellectual attention. So what are the reasons that not only Catholics and Christians of sister churches, but also members and rep- resentatives of other religions as well as secular thinkers refer to this relatively short declaration of the Second Vatican Council? The answer to this question is shorter than the doc- ument itself. The text is, even today, both revolutionary and modern. “Revolutionary” because it marks a clear turning point within Catholic tradition in favour of – always somehow existing but often rather obscured – open-minded attitudes towards other religions, and “modern” because the visionary aim and intention of the text are not yet entirely fulfilled today, neither among religions or society, nor within the Church itself. Nostra Aetate realises a very simple but far-reaching concept which I would like to call “the unconditional affirmation of the other”. When coming to discuss the Church’s relations to Hinduism and Buddhism, the text states that the Catholic Church “regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those pre- cepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonethe- less often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men” (NA II). The surprising element in the above sentence is that this recognition of non-Christian religions is articulated in full awareness of the existing differences between those religions and the Catholic Church’s own positions. Moreover, one could usually expect a compromise for- mula stating that recognition is possible because of the religions’ many common positions, whereas differences are rather regarded as a more or less tolerable obstacle to this recognition. But here we find the opposite type of argumentation – that even the ways of religious con- duct and teachings that differ from those of the Catholic Church often correspond to God’s truth. Truth is not the exclusive possession of one specific religious community, i.e. the Catholic Church, but it is the truth of God who wants to enlighten all men and women, and it is therefore also found in other religions. Difference does not bring dialogue to an end, but rather to an opening. The process of the text’s composition might also be a source of astonishment. The original draft was designed to focus on only one important issue, a Catholic decla- ration condemning anti-Judaism, without touching other religions. Nevertheless, this version met with resistance during the discussions of the council. The background of this resistance was not a persisting anti-Semitism but a quite realistic fear by Christians in the Middle East. Their objection was that Muslim leaders and countries would misunderstand a Christian document seeking reconcilia- tion with Judaism as an articulation of political approval to the freshly established state of Israel, and therefore place massive pressure on Christian minorities living in those countries. For this reason the original draft of the declaration was given a broader horizon than Judaism, and it now covers all major world religions. Viewed retro- spectively, this widening has been an important gain for the final text which did not drop the original intention, but included the Church’s attitude towards Judaism in the most elaborate chapter of the Declaration. This short historical remark on the genesis of the text shows the connection of the document with the global political situation. At the same time, it engenders deep respect for the Council Fathers who successfully defended their convictions against those who wanted to skip the Judaism issue as well as those who opposed any open-minded approach to other religions. In Nostra Aetate , the Catholic Church is not talking about other religions themselves, but about her own relations to these other religions. The perspective is not objectified judgement, but human relation. This inten- tion is also expressed by the Declaration’s terminology, at least with reference to Judaism and Islam, where the text does not speak about those religions as such but about Muslims and Jews. Fifty years ago, therefore, Nostra Aetate opened a space for genuine dialogue and encounter which is also sincerely realised in this conference and this publication by the following series of profound contributions. T