In 1965, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate) represented a remarkable reversal of the Catholic Church’s teachings on Judaism—from what theologians characterized as a “teaching of contempt” for Judaism to one of respect in view of “the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews.”

With this reversal gradually came public apologies, the cleansing of catechetical materials, invitations for dialogue to better understand each other’s truth, and the search for concrete ways to link Christians and Jews in service to the larger community. For Catholics, the journey has entailed the recognition that the Church cannot truly be Christian without accepting its Jewish roots and inherently Jewish character. There is thus a certain asymmetry in the new relationship, as Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, has noted: “The Christian cannot do without Israel; the Jew, in his faith, must do without Christ.”

The Jewish community has been responsive to the Church’s efforts and also wary. Many times over the past two millennia, periods of tolerance have blossomed into mutual respect and then shifted into intolerance and persecution.

Recent events have, in fact, evinced concern among both Jewish and Catholic leaders. For example, the Church’s 2008 revision of the Good Friday prayers in the 1962 Latin Missal, already scrubbed of the phrase “pro perfidis Judaeis“—a reference to Jewish “perfidy”—reintroduced the problematic notion of conversion: “Let us pray for the Jews,” the text now reads, “that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the Savior of all men.”

The conversion issue surfaced again in 2009, with publication, by a committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), of a “Note on Ambiguities Contained in ‘Reflections on Covenant and Mission.'” The original “Reflections,” written by a bishops’ advisory group and published on the USCCB website in 2002, had concluded that targeting Jews for conversion was “no longer theologically acceptable.” But in their clarification, published in July 2009, the bishops chose instead to stress that for Catholics Christ fulfills “the special relationship that God established with Israel.” They continued: “Though Christian participation in interreligious dialogue would not normally include an explicit invitation to baptism and entrance into the church, the Christian dialogue partner is always giving witness to the following of Christ, to which all are implicitly invited.” After complaints from U.S. Jewish leaders, that offending sentence was excised. It was an unsuccessful attempt at clarification, to be sure.

A final example of recent tensions—and a highly public one—followed Pope Benedict’s initial conciliatory gesture in 2009 toward four bishops from the Tridentine Society of Pius X Lefebvrite community, when it came to light that one had been a blatant Holocaust denier.

In each instance, we might explain the intentions and the human errors involved, or clarify the inner Catholic controversies. But the fact remains that the composite of such examples leads to legitimate concern about the possibility of yet another return to intolerance, hostility, and persecution.

We now have some serious inside-Catholic, or inside-Christian, issues to resolve, and our Jewish partners in dialogue need to understand them and be patient with us. For example, we need to find a way to maintain both our commitment to seeing Judaism as an irrevocably valid, enduring witness to God’s action, and our Christian conviction that Christ is the agent of universal redemption. Or, relatedly, Christians must harmonize the sayings of Paul to the Romans, which declare that “the gifts and the calling of God [to the Jews] are irrevocable” with an apparent claim of the Epistle to the Hebrews that Christians have superseded Jews in God’s plan of salvation—without dismissing either. (Nostra Aetate virtually ignored the Epistle to the Hebrews.)

It would signify growing maturity in our relationship if Christians and Jews came to understand such intracommunity dynamics for what they are—theological problems that require time and imagination—and did not read into contemporary theological disputation a desire, by the Church, to roll back advances made since Vatican II. That, however, is a challenge not easily sorted out, especially in the glow of the media. Another sign of interreligious maturity will be when, as we deal with our own problems, we remain alert to how people who do not share our history might misunderstand us.

Marriage counselors tell us that one test of a healthy marriage is how a couple argues. An argument, addressed seriously, can signify a commitment to coming to grips with something that matters. Similarly, serious disagreements between communities can be healthy and even beneficial. We must care enough to argue. This type of clarity in communication began during Vatican II, when Jewish guest observers were encouraged to offer reactions to proposed documents or to debates on the Council floor. The public response from Jewish leaders to the bishops’ “Note on Ambiguities,” signed by four major American Jewish synagogue organizations and the Anti-Defamation League, was similarly healthy, in addition to being careful, pointed, and, at least in my judgment, angry. “The new statement,” wrote the Jewish leaders, “espouses a view of the objective of Jewish-Christian dialogue that threatens the mutuality and efficaciousness of the entire project.” The letter demonstrated a new level of confidence that we can speak to each other in that tone and with that level of authority.

One thing we have learned from these years of dialogue is the requirement of knowing each other accurately. Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism (1964), which addressed the Church’s relationship with other Christian churches and denominations, pointed out as a first principle the obligation to “avoid expressions, judgments, and actions which do not represent [the other] with truth and fairness and so make mutual relations . . . more difficult.” That means never to presume we can explain the others’ belief without using their words, citing their traditions, and ensuring the accuracy of our references. Documents and statements from the Holy See and the USCCB have repeatedly given directives on how to preach and teach correctly about Judaism and events of the New Testament. (For example, in 2004, the USCCB published The Bible, the Jews and the Death of Jesus: A Collection of Catholic Documents, as a response to the Mel Gibson film The Passion of the Christ.) The various centers for Jewish-Christian understanding at Catholic universities and theological institutes provide another vehicle to advance this understanding.

Once we appreciate each other’s religious traditions and practices correctly, we will be better able to grasp that what may appear as resistance to interreligious understanding may be in fact a very different reality. Consider the understandable pressure for the Holy See to recognize the State of Israel diplomatically. We can easily overlook the fact that the Holy See only entered into full diplomatic relations with the United States in 1984, more than two centuries after the American Revolution—and even then, against the wishes of the American episcopate. It occurred at the insistence of the Reagan administration, which wanted a formal relationship with the Vatican so as to be able to circumvent or influence, through Rome, the American Catholic bishops’ moral critique of U.S. economic and military policies.

As to the question posed by this conference—whether this or any other era is a “golden age” of Jewish-Christian relations—a judgment here must be tentative, especially after only 40-plus years of Vatican II influence. The number 40, however, is significant in biblical lore: the 40 years of Israel in the desert, the 40 days of Moses on Mount Sinai, Elijah’s 40-day journey to Mount Horeb, the 40 days of Jesus in the desert, or his 40 days of life with his disciples after the Resurrection. In all these cases, “40” presages a period of grace and preparation for a new action or revelation of God. It may well be that these years since Nostra Aetate have been a time of preparation for a new beginning in Christian-Jewish relations, a better beginning than we made of it the first time, two millennia ago.

Richard J. Sklba is vicar general and auxiliary bishop of Milwaukee. From 2005 to 2008, he chaired the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. His essay is drawn from a talk on April 14 at a conference organized by the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning.