Sister Rose Thering

Sister Rose Thering, O.P., (August 9, 1920 in Plain, Wisconsin – May 6, 2006 in Racine, Wisconsin) was a Roman Catholic Dominican Religious Sister, who gained note as an activist against antisemitism, educator and a professor of Catholic-Jewish dialogue at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

Rose Elizabeth Thering was born in Plain, Wisconsin, the sixth of 11 children in a German-American farm family that prayed together daily. She entered St. Catherine of Siena Convent of the Racine Dominican Sisters in Racine, Wisconsin at age 16. After taking her permanent vows in the Congregation, she earned a bachelor's degree from Dominican College in Racine in 1953, then a master's degree from the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1957 and, finally a doctorate at Saint Louis University four years later.

Her doctoral dissertation at the Jesuit-run Saint Louis University concerned the treatment of Jews in Catholic textbooks. She was shocked by her findings. The film, Sister Rose's Passion, depicts her recalling how she "almost got ill" reading texts that were used across the country to educate school children. Her work was published later in an anthology, Faith and Prejudice.

In 1962, when Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council, Cardinal Augustin Bea used Thering's study to draft portions of the 1965 Vatican II document “Nostra aetate” (“In Our Age”), which declared of Christ's death that “what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today”. As regarding how this issue was to be handled in catechetical instruction, it added, “The Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God.”

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