| How ironic that the primary catalyst in connection with the reorientation of the Catholic Church's attitudes toward Jews and Judaism should have been a Jew. Having lost his wife, daughter and son-in-law in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, septuagenarian French Jewish historian Jules Isaac emerged from the Second World War to wage a single-handed campaign, in words and in deeds, for the rectification of Roman Catholic teachings about Jews and Judaism, contemptuous teachings, argued Isaac, that overreached the bounds of scriptural and historical accuracy, contemptuous teachings, contended Isaac, that had sustained and nourished other varieties of anti-semitism for nearly two millennia. We now know that it did not occur to John XXIII to add to the agenda of Vatican Tithe relationship between the Church and the Jews until one week after the close of the pre-preparatory phase of Vatican II when John XXIII met one-on-one with Jules Isaac. |
