In our last communication to you we spoke of Bat Kol International’s plans to host a series of events to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the promulgation of Nostra Aetate.

Our year-long celebration will take the form of three separate events conducted through 2025.
 

See below for more information about each event.

Julien Fradette,
Chair, Bat Kol International Leadership Team

Series 1. Friday, January 31 - Saturday, February 1, 2025
Hosted in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Series 1 will feature Professor Murray Watson who will speak as follows.  In his own words:

The Second Vatican Council’s ground-breaking 1965 declaration on non-Christian religions (Nostra Aetate) remains one of the Council’s most theologically significant (but relatively unfamiliar) documents. Six decades later, we will look at why it was considered so controversial and revolutionary at the time, and some of the ways the Catholic (and Christian) world has changed (and continues to change) because of the theological and geopolitical risks the pope and bishops took in issuing it.

The sixty years since the promulgation of Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate have seen a dramatic and unprecedented evolution in Christian attitudes towards Jews and Judaism. But the groundwork for Nostra Aetate had already been laid by a group of earlier interreligious pioneers and postwar visionaries which included the distinguished Jewish historian Jules Isaac and the legal scholar and interfaith activist André Chouraqui. Chouraqui’s life intersected with that evolution in rich and fascinating ways, and he played a significant personal role in advancing dialogue among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, in France, Israel, and globally.

Series 1 will be uploaded to the Bat Kol International website in February 2025. We will be in touch with the link when it is available.

Series 2. In this series we offer you the opportunity to view three videos presented by Fr. David Neuhaus SJ in which he reviews the history of Nostra Aetate.

• In Presentation 1, Fr. David reviews the text and language of Nostra Aetate and the mission we have in regard to our engagement in dialogue with people of other religious faith.
   
• Presentation 2 will focus on Paragraph 4, the longest paragraph of Nostra Aetate, which deals with the relationship of the Church with the Jewish people, our brothers and sisters. This presentation will include a dialogue session with Dr. David Lubinski, a member of the South African Jewish community.
   
• In Presentation 3, Fr. David looks closely at Paragraph 3 of Nostra Aetate which speaks of the relationship of the Church with Muslims. This presentation includes a dialogue session with a Muslim woman, Hakima Haithar, the deputy director of the Jesuit Refugee Service regional office for Southern Africa.