Nostra aetate

Nostra aetate (from Latin: "In our time"), or the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, is an official declaration of the Second Vatican Council, an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. It was promulgated on 28 October 1965 by Pope Paul VI. Its name comes from its incipit, the first few words of its opening sentence, as is tradition. It passed the Council by a vote of 2,221 to 88 of the assembled bishops.

The shortest of the 16 final documents of the Council, it is "the first in Catholic history to focus on the relationship that Catholics have with Jews." Similarly, Nostra aetate is considered a monumental declaration in describing the Church's relationship with Muslims. It "reveres the in all the major faith traditions." It begins by stating its purpose of reflecting on what humankind has in common in these times when people are being drawn closer together. The preparation of the document was largely under the direction of Cardinal Augustin Bea as President of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, along with his periti (advisors), such as John M. Oesterreicher, Gregory Baum and Bruno Hussar.

Following an approach by Jules Isaac, a French-born Jew who was associated with the Seelisberg Conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews, in which he claimed that Christian antisemitism had prepared the way for the Holocaust, a sympathetic Pope John XXIII endorsed the creation of a document which would address a new, less adversarial approach to the relationship between the Catholic Church and Rabbinic Judaism. Within the Church, some conservative Cardinals were suspicious and some Middle Eastern Catholics strongly opposed the creation of such a document. After going through numerous drafts, compromises were made and a statement was added on Islam to mollify the security concerns of the Arab Christians. Finally, statements on Eastern religions, Buddhism and Hinduism were also added.