ON
A RECENT visit to the United States, I was quite surprised by the apparent
one-sidedness of the press and public towards the present Israel and
Palestine conflict. Conversation with friends revealed my own seeming ignorance
of all things Jewish and our differing views of Middle Eastern affairs. James Carroll�s
history of Church (Catholic and not) relations with Judaism provides a partial
explanation of these differences. The book, a popular best seller and
promising candidate for the U.S. National Book Award, may be generally
described as a sort of �Harry Potter and the Vatican�s Hidden Skeletons.�
Carroll,
an important Catholic theologian-historian and former priest, is a shining
example of American liberal Catholicism, who is willing to look at the
Church�s darkest secrets while remaining faithfully both Catholic and American.
His narrative begins and ends with the Carmelite nuns� cross at Auschwitz
commemorating the martyring of Edith Stein, a converted Jew, to show
�solidarity� to the millions of Jews who died in Hitler�s gas chambers.
Surprise at the overwhelmingly negative reaction of Jewish opinion together with
the refusal of both the Church and the Polish government to remove the
cross lies at the root of the ambiguity of the Church�s history of
anti-Semitism over the ages.
The
author skilfully traces the history of the tortuous relationship between
Christian and Jew. This is not, as Pope John Paul�s recent apology to the
Jewish people (2000) would have it, a case of acts by some of the Church�s
children, but is rather at the very roots of Christian teaching. This
misrepresentation, as Carroll believes, of Christianity�s true Jewish
heritage starts with St Paul�s scriptures and continues unbroken to the foot
of that cross at Auschwitz.
Carroll
is willing to spare very few of the Church Fathers and philosophers that were to
shape the Church and European society for the following two millennia. St
Ambrose of Milan advocated the destruction of all Jews, while his
disciple, St Augustine, advocated the survival and dispersal of the Jews as
witnesses to the truth of Christianity. The author's deft treatment of
what could otherwise have turned into a very difficult to digest Church
history is interspersed with flashbacks to more personal experiences of his own
life. The seamless robe of Christ, the cult of the True Cross of
Constantine's mother and the suffering of Christ at the hands of the Jews
� are all paralleled by his own childhood as son of a US air force general and
his pious mother in post-war/cold war Germany. So too are the (sometimes
rather stretched) parallels between Church history and modern
anti-Semitism. Thus the pogroms of the first and second crusades in the
Rhineland are the seeds of the Final solution and Cardinal Pacelli�s
(later Pius XII) Concordat with Hitler. The Spanish Inquisition, despite
initial papal opposition, is seen as the theological foundation of anti-Semitist
racism. Certainly Carroll does underline the papacy�s attempt to attenuate and
indeed protect Judaism whenever possible, i.e. its frequent appeals of Sicut
Judaeis, in defence of Jews. However, the overall picture of condemning and
mitigating evidence up to and including Pope John Paul II�s apology in 2000
remains at best ambiguous.
His
heartfelt condemnation of the Catholic Church, however, is not an endorsement of
its alternatives. Lutheranism, the Enlightenment and even (or especially)
Karl Marx all come under heavy fire for perpetuating anti-Semitism and
indeed more relevant causes of the Holocaust. Luther�s own personal Jewish
hatred is considered a more direct perpetrator of the modern German state
than indeed Catholicism. Both Voltaire and Marx are also painted in a none
too flattering light. Sometimes, however, the willingness of Carroll to find
�inevitable� threads throughout history detract from his main message.
Constantine�s Basilica at Trier, the Rhineland pogroms, Karl Marx�s birth in
Trier, the public showing of Jesus� seamless robe after Pacelli�s Concordat
with Hitler, Eisenhower�s liberation of Nazi Germany, through Trier? It�s
all a bit more of �I want to believe� rather than true historicity.
Surprisingly, the only group which comes out of his story well is Calvinism,
although how much he may be angling for support from Ian Paisley is difficult to
say.
Carroll�s
treatment of church history and indeed philosophy is good and generally brings
alive a subject that has usually been restricted to academics. However, at the
beginning of his book he gives a one-sentence apology to what must go down as
his principal failing: �We are the products of our time�. The book is as
much a product of American liberalism as it is an atonement for Catholic
failures. At times, Carroll�s objective failure detracts from an otherwise
balanced view of Church history and is as much a relic, however unwittingly, of
the Post War/Cold War American view of Europe. Thus the Roman Empire is
portrayed as the real villain of Jesus� death and also, incidentally, as the
�totalitarian� state of antiquity. The need to recast the Jewish sects of
the first century as long lost brothers in faith and democracy is necessary for
Carroll�s historical thread but bares as little resemblance to historic
reality as these sects now reflect modern Judaism. Augustus� Rome was
genuinely indifferent to religion as long as politics was left to the Roman
state. Historically, Jesus�s �leave unto Caesar what is Caesar�s��
sounds like first-century Realpolitik much more than the Zealot�s insistence
on a disastrous and bloody first century Jewish State and Carroll�s picture of
Jesus as an anti-Roman religious dissident.
Furthermore,
Carroll�s insistence that social and economic factors were only incidental to
anti-Judaism does not convince. There is no mention of the Pope�s movement in
the 11th century: �the Peace and Truce of God� as an attempt to
reduce all bloodshed was the prototype of the Crusades whose pogroms were beyond
the control of either papacy of leaders of the Crusade. Louis� IX�s burning
of the Talmud and appropriation of Jewish property in 1245 is mentioned while
the vicious appropriation and massacre of the Church�s own Templars by his
grandfather is not. The fact that both acts may be linked to the growth of
national monarchies is either conveniently overlooked or ignored. A more
worrying omission is the total lack of anything on American anti-Semitism, as
part of wider anti-immigration sentiment or early 20th century social
Darwinism, especially in view of his insistence on Marx�s anti-Semitism.
Carroll
is very good at what he knows: Church theology and philosophy. His picture of
the deeply rooted nature of Church and indeed European anti-Semitism should be
read, noted and understood, not only by the Catholic Church, but also by
Europeans and European governments in general. However, the reader should be
aware of his willingness to leave aside facts which don�t quite fit the
picture. This is a book written by an American Catholic as atonement for the
Catholic Church�s sins against the Jewish people. Unfortunately the solutions
he gives, his Agenda for Catholic reform � Vatican III, probably have as much
relevance to Papal reform as the first-century Jewish state does to the modern
state of Israel. Perhaps a call for the central issue of his book, i.e. to judge
a people not for what they are but for what they do, would have been a more
realistic proposal.
Robert Coates holds two honours degrees from the University of Edinburgh, where he specialised in mediaeval history with a thesis on the Normans in Sicily. An Adelaide Australian who was brought up in Fife, Scotland, he has been teaching English at the University of Brescia in Italy since 1987.
Note: This review was first published on June 27 2002 by JUST Book Reviews.
Home | Feedback | About us | JUST Response