Letter: Vatican's Sealed Archive Hampers Christian-Jewish Understanding

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Sir: By common consent the Roman Catholic Church has played a distinguished role following the Shoah in mending the historic breach between Christians and Jews.

The encyclical Nostra aetate (1965) emphasised the unique place for Jews as a people with whom God has made a covenant which is irrevocable. Subsequent documents have therefore invited Christians to see the anti-Judaism in the Gospels in its context as a product of sibling rivalry, and to work to avoid both the suggestion that Judaism is superseded by Christianity and the consequent tendency for religious anti-Judaism to fuel widespread anti-semitism. Furthermore, individual Roman Catholics have rightly been …