On Sept. 29 over 200 people gathered at St Peter’s College to hear a presentation by Rabbi Fred Morgan, a guest of the NZ Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Interfaith Relations.  Rabbi Morgan is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Beth Israel in Melbourne where he served for many years, and currently serves as Professorial Fellow at the Australian Catholic University in the area of Jewish-Christian relations. His talk was in honour of 50 years since the document “Nostra Aetate” (In Our Time) was produced by the Second Vatican Council. This document opened the door to new possibilities for Jewish/Catholic relations, and redefined the Catholic Church’s approach to inter-religious dialogue. He explained how 14 sentences in the document revolutionised almost 2000 years of barriers to dialogue between Jews and Catholics. Rabbi Morgan gave some background as to how the document was created, and explained the important role of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in dialoguing with Pope Paul VI to help clarify the Jewish position on various topics. The final document revealed what Rabbi Morgan summarised as four significant shifts in the Catholic view of Judaism: It rejected the notion that Jews today are responsible for the killing of Jesus; It acknowledges that Jews have a unique and on-going covenant with the Almighty (i.e. that Judaism has not been superseded or abrogated by Christianity); It acknowledges that Judaism offers a viable path to salvation for Jews, without the need for redemption by Jesus; It denounces Anti-Semitism in any form as unacceptable and wrong. Rabbi Morgan
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