The root that bears the branch.

Summary

The Second Vatican Council taught that the Church “draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles”⁠.¹ “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues”⁠.¹ The Catechism draws the distinction that sets Judaism apart: “The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant”⁠.²

The take: the Church holds two things together. The covenant with Israel “has never been revoked”⁠,³ and yet “Church and Judaism cannot then be seen as two parallel ways of salvation”⁠.⁴ She does not organize missions to convert Jews, and she does not stop proclaiming Christ. How Jews share in God’s salvation without confessing Christ explicitly “is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery”⁠.⁵

What the Council taught

Nostra Aetate begins from the bond “that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock”⁠.¹ It then sets aside an old charge: “what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today”⁠,¹ and “the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures”⁠.¹ It gives the reason Christians hold: “Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love”⁠.¹

The Church “decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone”⁠.¹ Lumen Gentium places the Jewish people first among those who have not received the Gospel: “On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues”⁠.⁶

Teaching and preaching

The Holy See’s commission for relations with the Jews applied the Council in two documents. The 1974 Guidelines ask Christians to “learn by what essential traits the Jews define themselves in the light of their own religious experience”⁠,⁷ and warn against presenting the Old Testament as “a religion of only justice, fear and legalism, with no appeal to the love of God and neighbour”⁠.⁷ The 1985 Notes teach that “Jesus was and always remained a Jew”⁠.⁴ and tell Catholics to “rid ourselves of the traditional idea of a people punished”⁠⁴ On the State of Israel, they say its existence “should be envisaged not in a perspective which is in itself religious, but in their reference to the common principles of international law”⁠.⁴

Repentance after the Shoah

In 1998 the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews published We Remember. It calls the Shoah “the work of a thoroughly modern neo-pagan regime” and asks whether anti-Jewish prejudice among Christians made the persecution easier⁠.⁸ Its sorrow is “an act of repentance ( teshuva ), since, as members of the Church, we are linked to the sins as well as the merits of all her children”⁠.⁸ It resolves that “the spoiled seeds of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism must never again be allowed to take root in any human heart”⁠.⁸

John Paul II went to the Synagogue of Rome in 1986 and called the Jews “i nostri fratelli prediletti e, in un certo modo, si potrebbe dire i nostri fratelli maggiori,” our beloved and, in a certain way, our elder brothers⁠.⁹ At the Western Wall in 2000 he left a prayer: “asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant”⁠.¹⁰

Covenant and mission

Pope Francis wrote that “We hold the Jewish people in special regard because their covenant with God has never been revoked”⁠,³ and also that “the Church cannot refrain from proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Messiah”⁠.³

The commission’s 2015 reflection, which “is not a magisterial document or doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church”⁠,⁵ sets out the Church’s present practice. “Since God has never revoked his covenant with his people Israel, there cannot be different paths or approaches to God’s salvation”⁠.⁵ Accordingly “the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews”⁠,⁵ while Christians still bear witness to Christ, “in a humble and sensitive manner, acknowledging that Jews are bearers of God’s Word, and particularly in view of the great tragedy of the Shoah”⁠.⁵ It recalls Pope Francis: “a Christian can never be an anti-Semite, especially because of the Jewish roots of Christianity”⁠.⁵

The Catechism names the hope the two peoples share: “expectation of the coming (or the return) of the Messiah”⁠.²

Pope Leo XIV and the Jewish people

The Note A Journey of Hope (2026), from the dicasteries for the Doctrine of the Faith, Christian Unity and Interreligious Dialogue, recalls that Nostra Aetate was first conceived “as a response to the tragic consequences of antisemitism, which culminated in the Shoah”⁠.¹⁸ It holds that “Jewish-Christian dialogue cannot be regarded as a secondary activity for Christians”⁠.¹⁸ It calls God’s covenant with the Jewish people “irrevocable,” adding: “This does not mean, for Christians, that there are two paths to salvation,” for “the Church teaches that Christ is the one and only Redeemer”⁠.¹⁸ Of the conflicts in the Middle East it says that they “have also left their mark on Jewish-Christian dialogue” and that “Many channels of communication have been strained,” but that “the pillars of dialogue among believers, built over sixty years of common effort, have remained firm”⁠.¹⁸

The kinds of Jews

The Holy See’s commission for Jewish relations “aims in fact at being open to all streams within Judaism”⁠.⁵ Those streams describe themselves in their own words; the Church does not rank them.

In the United States, “37% identify as Reform and 17% as Conservative,” 9% call themselves Orthodox, and the share who belong to no stream “is now 32%”⁠.²⁰ In Israel nearly all Jews place themselves in one of four groups, Haredi, Dati, Masorti or Hiloni, which Pew renders “ultra-Orthodox,” “religious,” “traditional” and “secular”⁠:²² 9%, 13%, 29% and 49% of Israeli Jews.

Messianic congregations describe their members as “lineally Jewish people that believe that Yeshua (Jesus) fulfilled prophecies in the Scriptures”⁠.³¹ The Rabbinical Assembly has stated that Messianic Judaism “is not a Jewish movement”⁠.³²

Orthodox Judaism and the Church

The deepest Catholic dialogue with Orthodox Judaism runs through the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Its first contacts with the Holy See’s commission “date to 5 June 2002”⁠.³³ The commission says this dialogue “has to that extent enabled more open relations between Orthodox Judaism and the Catholic Church at a global level”⁠.⁵

The two sides set a rule at the start: “Dialogue is a value in itself and excludes any intention of converting”⁠.³⁴ They have spoken together on life (“every human life is holy, sacrosanct and inviolable”)⁠.³⁴ and “affirmed a common rejection of any attempts to persuade people to reject their own heritage”⁠³⁵ The 2009 meeting was cancelled over the remission of Bishop Richard Williamson’s excommunication⁠;³⁶ the meetings resumed, and the 17th was held in Jerusalem in 2023⁠.³⁷

Orthodox rabbis have answered in their own voice. In 2015 a group of them wrote that “the emergence of Christianity in human history is neither an accident nor an error, but the willed divine outcome and gift to the nations”⁠,³⁸ and that God “willed a separation between partners with significant theological differences, not a separation between enemies”⁠.³⁸ In 2016 the Conference of European Rabbis, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Rabbinical Council of America issued Between Jerusalem and Rome. It is frank: “The theological differences between Judaism and Christianity are profound”⁠,³⁹ and “The doctrinal differences are essential and cannot be debated or negotiated”⁠.³⁹ It is also warm: “we Jews view Catholics as our partners, close allies, friends and brothers in our mutual quest for a better world blessed with peace, social justice and security”⁠.³⁹ Pope Francis received it on Aug. 31, 2017, noting that it “does not hide, however, the theological differences” and that “it expresses a firm resolve to collaborate more closely”⁠.⁴⁰

The approach of American Modern Orthodoxy goes back to Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who held that “our common interests lie not in the realm of faith, but in that of the secular orders”⁠.⁴¹ In the 1960s the Rabbinical Council of America declared itself opposed “to any public debate, dialogue or symposium concerning the doctrinal, dogmatic or ritual aspects of our faith,” while finding that on “humanitarian and cultural endeavors, communication among the various faith communities is desirable and even essential”⁠.⁴²

Reform, Conservative and Modern Orthodox bodies speak to the Holy See together through the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, whose members include the “Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (OU)”⁠.⁴³ Pope Leo XIV calls the chapter of Nostra Aetate on Judaism “the heart and generative core of the entire Declaration”⁠.⁴⁴ Of the years since, he said: “We cannot deny that there have been misunderstandings, difficulties and conflicts in this period, but these have never prevented the dialogue from continuing”⁠.¹³

Hebrew-speaking Catholics

In Israel the Latin Patriarchate keeps a vicariate that “serves Roman Catholics who live in the Hebrew-speaking Jewish milieu in Israel”⁠.⁴⁵ It gathers Catholics “belonging to the Jewish people together with those coming from the nations”⁠,⁴⁶ and it says of itself: “we are at home in the Israeli Jewish, Hebrew speaking society”⁠.⁴⁶