Catholics and Jews After Nostra Aetate and the Evangelical War on Halloween

Nostra Aetate:The Vatican’s Reconciliation with Judaism

When our own Maureen Fiedler attended mass as a child, the priest would pray for the conversion of the Jews, to “remove the veil from their hearts.” And for centuries, Catholic tradition taught that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. But that all changed in 1965, when the Vatican published a ground-breaking official document called Nostra Aetate. Now, fifty years later, we confront the long history of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church and find out what still needs to be done. With James Carroll, Writer-in-Residence at NYU author of Christ, ActuallyThe Son of God in the Secular Age and Rabbi Jack Moline, Executive Director of the Interfaith Alliance.

The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler

The Vatican and Pope Pius XII are routinely criticized for silence and inaction during World War II and the Holocaust. Some commentators go as far as calling Pius XII “Hitler’s Pope.” But after years of digging through Vatican and German archives, Mark Riebling found new evidence for a story that historians have known for decades: that the pontiff kept up good relations with Hitler for diplomatic reasons, all the while secretly plotting to kill him.

A Wiccan and Christian View on Halloween’s Dark Side

When Halloween rolls around, many devout Christians turn off the lights and head for the basement. As Candy Gunther Brown explains, for many conservative Christians, all those sinister decorations “make the occult seem fun, and not all of these spiritual forces are for good.” We’ll hear a different take from a Wiccan priestess, who says the pagan holiday of Samhain can be a time to reconnect with departed loved ones. From Oct. 2014.


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