The Impact of Non-Western Participants at Vatican II

In a way, this article is about a dialectical interaction between religious politics and political religion through an examination of a turn of events during Vatican Council ii. It shows the impact made by global Catholicism on the council and the production of what is now a benchmark document, Nostre Aetate. It provided an impetus for liturgical reforms and developments in the Church's social teachings that made room for non-European cultures, or the 'other,' thereby making the Church truly global for the first time. This has its origin with a small minority of participants, those outside the Eurocentric zone, at the Council. This article demonstrates that the minority exerted considerable influence in producing the aforementioned document. Their influence widened the scope of discussions and later engagement of the Church, transforming the scope of the Nostra Aetate from solely Judaism to all non-Christian religions. This article traces the handful of participants and pivotal events that brought the largest Christian Church into a dialectical dialogue with non-Christian religions and examines their significance in a global context.