Second Vatican Council

The Second Vatican Council, a solemn conclave of the world's Roman Catholic bishops, met from 1962-1965. It was convened by Pope John XXIII, who died in 1963, and then presided over by his successor Pope Paul VI. It issued sixteen conciliar documents, two of which were particularly significant for Catholic-Jewish relations. They were Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (promulgated on  November 21, 1964) and Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (promulgated on October 28, 1965). This section of Dialogika focuses particularly on the latter, providing the history of its drafting and the "great debate" on it that occurred during the Council in September 1964.