Passion in context 2

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Foxman cited Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's praise of a Passion play from the 1930s to illustrate his point:

"When Hitler walked out [of a Passion play] in 1934, he declared that 'the whole world over should see...this Passion play, then they will understand why I despise the Jews and why they deserve to die,'" Foxman told the crowd of about 400 attendees.



2.  New Belief:  Only those persons who actually participated were responsible for Jesus' death.

The Second Vatican Council, a pastoral, non-dogmatic ecumenical council of the Catholic church (1962 - 1965), has often been described as the most significant event in Catholicism in the 20th century.

One of the most influential documents of Vatican II was Nostra Aetate, which affirmed that "the Jews" as individuals are no more responsible for the death of Christ than Christians are.

Nostra Aetate states:

True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.

Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.