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Books Centuries of Jew hatred brought to light: Rabbi:
Will painful tale find Catholic reception?
CONSTANTINES
SWORD: THE CHURCH AN THE JEWS By James Carroll Houghton
Mifflin, 756 pages, $28 |
By A. JAMES RUDIN
There have been more positive
encounters between Roman Catholics and Jews since the conclusion of the Second
Vatican Council in 1965 than took place in the previous 19 centuries of the
church. The councils historic Nostra Aetate declaration of that
year was overwhelmingly adopted by the worlds bishops and asserts that
the Catholic church deplores the hatred, persecutions and displays of
anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and from any
source.
Nostra Aetate strongly repudiated the infamous deicide or
Christ-killer charge that some Catholics had hurled against Jews
for centuries, and it also called for building mutual respect
between the two ancient faith communities. The now historic declaration broke
the high dam of indifference, suspicion and ignorance that previously
existed.
During the past three-and-a-half decades, Nostra Aetate was
followed by a blizzard of urgently needed bishops statements, guidelines,
notes, reflections, liturgical reforms, a host of other official Catholic
pronouncements, and hundreds of interreligious conferences all intended to
reverse the long record of malevolent Catholic actions and teachings
vis-à-vis Jews and Judaism.
The past century was a wretched one for what is euphemistically
called inter-group relations. It was a 100-year period that
tragically included two world wars, fascism, Nazism and communism, atomic and
hydrogen bombs, the Holocaust and other acts of brutal genocide. Against that
grim record of mass murder and totalitarianism, the inauguration of
constructive Catholic-Jewish relations and the attempt by Christian leaders to
eradicate the taproots of religious anti-Semitism was a true revolution of the
human spirit, and ranks among the 20th centurys most positive
developments.
This first phase of post Vatican Council relations was capped by
Pope John Paul IIs trip last March to Jordan, the Palestinian Authority
and Israel. I was in Jerusalem during those days, and vividly remember the
popes dramatic meeting with Israels leading rabbis and his visits
to the Israeli presidents residence and the Yad Vashem Holocaust
memorial. The culminating event was the heartfelt written prayer that John Paul
II lovingly placed in a crevice of the Western Wall, Judaisms holiest
site, on the last day of his visit.
The popes physical presence and personal piety in Israel
dramatically concluded the initial chapter of positive Catholic-Jewish
relations that began with Nostra Aetate and ended at the Western Wall.
The next chapter requires the full implementation of those positive gains in
every Catholic parish, school, seminary and university.
In its own way the poignant prose of James Carrolls new
book, Constantines Sword, represents a kind of closure as well.
Like a Middle East archeologist, Carroll, a Boston Globe columnist and
former Paulist priest, has dug deeply through layer after layer of historical
debris in an anguished and fervent attempt to discover the core of Christian
hatred of both Jews and Judaism, a hatred that has permeated and bedeviled the
church for centuries. Of course, he did not have to dig too far to locate the
basic problem.
In the middle of his lengthy and eloquent work, an exhausted
Carroll ruefully concludes that Christian theology itself is the root cause of
Jew hatred: However pagan Nazism was, it drew its sustenance
from groundwater poisoned by the churchs most solemnly held ideology --
its theology.
While almost every major figure and every important event in
Christian-Jewish relations appears in Constantines Sword,
beginning with Paul of Tarsus and ending with John Paul II of Wadowice, Carroll
believes the warrior emperors conversion to Christianity in 312 A.D. was
the critical turning point for both church and synagogue, when the power
of an empire became joined to the ideology of the church. The results of
this second greatest story ever told [Constantines conversion]
led to consequences better and worse [for the church] -- although not
for the Jews, for whom, nothing good would come.
Carroll is horrified by his findings and ends his book with a
personal plea for a new relationship between Catholics and Jews built upon
mutual respect and understanding: I have felt flayed
my faith is
forever shaken, and I will always tremble. The Anguish of the
Jews, written by the late Fr. Edward Flannery in the 1960s, is a major
pioneering work, a figurative bookend of Catholic self-discovery of religious
anti-Semitism. Constantines Sword, written 35 years later, is
another painful voyage of self-discovery and it represents the other
bookend.
Not surprisingly, the cross as symbol and reality is a major
leitmotif in both books. Flannery opens his work describing how the electric
light cross on a Manhattan office building caused his Jewish friend to shudder
in fear during the Christmas season. Even in modern New York, the cross ignited
bitter memories of Christian-led physical assaults, pogroms upon European
Jewish communities.
Constantines Sword also opens with a cross, the one
standing in the Auschwitz death camp. Carroll angrily decries the utter
inappropriateness of the large wooden cross erected at a place where over a
million and a half Jews were murdered during the Holocaust: For Jews
[Auschwitz is] the abyss in which meaning itself has died; what happens when
Auschwitz becomes the sanctuary of someone elses recovered
piety?
Because Carroll is a former priest and his book is a brilliantly
written personal mea culpa, it will undoubtedly be positively received
by what is often called the secular media. They frequently adore
mavericks and iconoclasts who seemingly have rejected their religious or
political past. But members of the media would be making a big mistake if they
define Carroll and his book in such terms. He simply does not fit into their
neat categories.
Carroll remains a faithful Catholic who dearly loves his church,
warts and all: Jesus offers me, a non-Jew, access to the biblical hope.
The church is how Gods promise to Israel is available to me, a
Celt whose ancestors could have been among the northern tribal peoples
recruited to the army of Constantine.
The Jewish community will also warmly welcome
Constantines Sword, but unlike the secular media, it will, I hope,
do so for the right reasons. That is because Carroll forthrightly addresses the
evils of anti-Semitism and confirms, indeed validates, the bitter history that
Jews have stored up in their collective memory banks.
But I am most concerned about the books reception and its
lasting impact, if any, among Catholic clergy and laity. The books most
controversial section deals with the church and Hitler, and Carroll saves his
most withering criticism for Pius XIIs actions and inactions during the
Second World War.
However, Carroll does not indict or demonize the
wartime pope as John Cornwell does in his 1999 book, Hitlers Pope: The
Secret History of Pius XII. Instead, Carroll asserts that Pius XIIs
actions and inactions during the 1930s and 1940s are the telltale
evidence of the Catholic churchs basic problem with Jews and
Judaism: The popes silence is better seen
not as the
indictment
of Catholicisms moral failure
but as the
evidence
of the worst thing about my church, which is the worst thing
about myself. I offer [Constantines Sword] as my personal penance
to God, to the Jewish dead and to my children.
I wonder whether Carroll will quickly be discredited and labeled a
self-hating Catholic who is piling on a beloved pope who may be destined for
sainthood. Will Carrolls rich historical research be nitpicked and
minimized in an attempt to discredit his awesome and troubling conclusions?
Will Carrolls ardent plea for a a new Christology that will
embrace a pluralism of belief and worship
that will banish from
Christian faith the blasphemy that wills the suffering of Gods beloved
ones [the Jews] and the inhuman idea that anyones death can be the
fulfillment of a plan of Gods be dismissed as inauthentic Catholic
doctrine?
It would be an enormous loss if Carrolls book were relegated
to the literary dustbin of neglected and unread books. Constantines
Sword is useful, even indispensable, as we enter the second phase of
Catholic-Jewish relations, a period that will increasingly emphasize
theological issues and questions. Carroll posits a radical Christian
theological approach to Judaism that merits full discussion in both
communities.
An important theological question involves the place of messianism
within the Catholic-Jewish encounter. The precise details of messianism were
always controversial but are central in Jewish religious thought. Today
Israelis of every religious persuasion are grappling with the political and
social dimensions of messianism within a Jewish state. Carroll has painfully
constructed a coherent messianic vision that is profoundly rooted in his
religious faith. It, too, demands thorough consideration at any serious
encounter between Catholics and Jews.
Another feature of current Catholic-Jewish relations is the
intensified call coming from both communities to open up all the pertinent
wartime records of the Vatican to competent Catholic and Jewish scholars of the
period. So far this has not been done, but the issues raised about World War II
in Constantines Sword cannot be summarily dismissed. The many
unresolved questions surrounding the churchs action during the Holocaust
will be a key focus of all future interreligious relations. They cannot be
avoided, and Carroll tells us why.
Unfortunately, Constantines Sword is being published
at a moment in history when many leaders of Christianity, Judaism and Islam are
retreating from interreligious outreach and the critical self-examination of
their own traditions. Extremists in all three camps are using strict
theological conformity as a potent weapon to club opponents into submission and
to gain political power for themselves.
It remains an open question whether Carrolls painfully
honest and important book will thrive, even survive, in such a climate. The use
or abuse of Constantines Sword will be an accurate barometer of
our religious condition.
Rabbi A. James Rudin is the American Jewish Committees
senior interreligious adviser. His e-mail address is
rudinj@ajc.org
National Catholic Reporter, February 2,
2001
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