From Our Archives

A well-known Jewish parable tells the story of a young man who was hiking on a journey. It was common at that time to follow signposts, which displayed the names of various destinations and pointed in different directions. At one particular crossroads on his way, the young man found the signpost had

The Catholic Church is unique in having a magisterium, a hierarchical structure through which declarations on teachings can come formally from “the center.” This, however, raises the question of who exactly is being addressed in those declarations that are reaching out to other faiths. I

The Latin words nostra aetate mean “in our time,” a fitting opening phrase for the declaration promulgated by the Second Vatican Council in 1965 that has truly transformed our time. In Nostra Aetate the Catholic Church accepted that those of different faith communities, the “others

For the Catholic Church in India, Nostra Aetate came more as an encouragement than as a new beginning. In the 19th century, Hindus like Keshub Chandra Sen looked on Jesus as a guru who inspired them to reform their own religious tradition. One of them who became Christian, Brahmabandab Upadhyaya, th

The final volume of the History of Vatican II series (Orbis 1995-2005) presents Nostra Aetate as “the outcome of one of John XXIII’s original insights.” Ever since the idea for that declaration originated as a request in 1960 to reformulate Christian teaching, preaching and cateche

What do we really know about the woman we call Mother of God and Mother of the Church, the first of all the saints, the model believer? What do contemporary Scripture studies, archaeological research and analysis of the literature of her time reveal to us about Mary? I invite the reader to reflect w