Seaghán Ó MurchúNostra Aetate gains the lion’s share of coverage here, of course. This revised the historical anti-Jewish charges in the liturgy, teachings, and popular preaching and devotional practices which promoted anti-semitism. I was in the first cohort of children entering parochial school after Vatican II ended, in 1966. So I grew up witnessing firsthand the shift. I’d say in retrospect that the legacy of hatred against the “stiff-necked rabble” who were depicted as rejecting Christ perpetuates itself in media, in the dramatizations earlier in the 20 c on screen, but likely later on in the last century into our own, that sensitivity has been scrutinized by audiences and critics and by those making such mass-market entertainment. Mel Gibson’s and Martin Scorsese’s films, the series The Chosen, Franco Zeferelli’s 1978 TV series, for example. I think this expansion of our topic is not a digression at all.
Consider how the famous Passion Play at Obergammerau has been revised to bring its depictions up to date.
This aspect, come to think of it, could have found its place in curriculum at Pathfinder, for it far more than Vatican encyclicals is how billions of Christians and non-Christians, and a goodly amount of secularized Jewish people, come to “know” what they believe about the roles of those who are perceived as having been the Jewish family and friends of Christ and apostles, those seen a his doubters, his opponents, his converts, and all not quite sure.
