Abstract

Canning, Raymond I was born on 15 September 1947. That same year, on 5 August, the International Council of Christians and Jews, meeting in Switzerland, had issued what have become known as 'The Ten Points of Seelisberg'.1 As grief and shame over the Shoah took root, the necessity for a radical change of theological, cultural and political attitudes on the part of Christians became clear. These Ten Points articulate key dimensions of that growing perception. They can therefore be understood as forming an initial basis for the Christian-Jewish dialogue that was already gathering momentum.2 They also represent a first step in the process that led, eighteen years later, to Nostra Aetate, the document on the Catholic Church's relation to non-Christian religions that would emerge from the Second Vatican Council in late 1965. At various stages during the council years, it had appeared that the bishops' engagement with the new demands and manifold ramifications of Christian-Jewish relations expressed at Seelisberg might fail to produce any new official statement of Catholic Church teaching on the matter. Would the council after all remain silent on this crucial question? Yves Congar expressed the sentiments of many when, faced with this prospect in May 1965, he wrote in his council diary: 'For myself, however, I am in no way in favour of the pure and simple withdrawal of the text. Twenty years after Auschwitz it is impossible for the Council to say nothing'.3 And, as we now know, with the declaration Nostra Aetate the 'something' the council did succeed in saying, however small it may have appeared at that time, continues to resonate more than fifty years later.