The recent Middle East armed conflict has been a paramount occasion for many American Catholics and Jews to realize that their dialogue, begun in the early sixties, was at an end. That conflict did not end the dialogue; but the dialogue, such as it was envisaged by its initiators, had in fact ended sometime between the June, 1967, Six-Day War and the November, 1973, ceasefire.

The reasons for its end now appear obvious: the primary aims entertained by both Catholics and Jews were achieved; and, quite importantly, the chief participants in that dialogue—Catholics, their Church, American Jews and Israel—all had undergone an evolution. They are no longer what they were in 1960.