American Catholic Attitudes Toward the Zionist Movement and the Jewish State As Reflected in the Pages of America, Commonweal, and the Catholic World, 1945–1976

In May, 1948, the third Jewish commonwealth in the Holy Land—the State of Israel-came into existence. After the horrors of the Holocaust, the creation and survival of the Jewish state almost seemed to be an act of divine redemption to many Christians as well as to Jews. Many Catholics also were drawn into this wave of popular support for the Zionist cause, and this contributed to a new attitude in the Catholic Church toward the Jews and Judaism. Nostra aetate was an important expression of this new attitude in the Church; although the Holy See carefully explained that the term “Israel” in Nostra aetate referred only to the spiritual Israel and not to the State, nevertheless, the reestablishment of the latter was an important fact in the Church's reassessment of and new attitude toward the Jews.