A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (review)

The Harvard political scientist, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of the controversial work, Hitler's Willing Executioners, has taken a critical subject—the relationship between the Catholic Church and National Socialism—and presented conclusions that cannot be taken seriously. In his latest book, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, he argues that anti-Semitism was an integral part of Catholic doctrine; such teachings originated in the Gospels, which portray the Jews as the killers of Christ, "the minions of the devil" (p. 37). Popes Pius XI and XII inherited this tradition and were anti-Semites (p. 141). Not only did they fail to oppose National Socialism, but their servants elsewhere in Europe—nuns, priests, bishops, and ordinary parishioners—were thus complicit in, and by extension, willingly and zealously participated in the Holocaust.

This polemic has, in the meantime, triggered blistering reviews and a legal action in Germany, the result of slapdash scholarship and overblown moralizing. One infamous photo bears the caption, "Cardinal Michael Faulhaber marches between rows of SA men at a Nazi rally in Munich" (p. 178). In fact, the churchman in the photo was not Faulhaber but a papal nuncio, Cesare Orsenigo, the location Berlin, not Munich. This error led the archdiocese of Munich to seek an injunction against the German publisher, a subsidiary of Bertelsman, with a possible fine of up to $250,000.

Goldhagen brought no original research to this book, relying instead on the work of church critics such as David Kertzer, Susan Zuccotti, Michael Phayer, John Cornwall, James Carroll, and others. In so doing, he fashioned a manuscript that superficially spans two millennia. In arguing that the Christian Gospels were anti-Semitic, he ignores the fact that Jewish life in the first century was sectarian and pluralistic. Instead of painting 2000 years of history under one brush, he should instead have posed a more differentiated question: why did a religiously based anti-Semitism emerge at certain times and certain places, and less so at other times and other locations?

Goldlhagen cites a number of horrific expressions of anti-Semitism by prominent churchmen in Croatia, Poland, and Slovakia, and on these points he is correct—there were a number of churchmen who were anti-Semitic. But he glosses over the efforts of the Dutch clergy to oppose Nazi policies of annihilation as well as Angelo Roncalli's (later Pope John XXIII) rescue of nearly 25,000 Jews. Why were these leading clergy not rabidly anti-Semitic, if their foundational texts were as anti-Semitic as Goldhagen insists? Why was German Protestantism far more important in shaping Nazism than Catholicism? Goldhagen himself is even aware of this, pointing out that Streicher underscored the influence of Luther on his own vitriolic anti-Semitism (p. 163).

Perhaps most bizarre is his insistence that the Church should make restitution for its moral bankruptcy during the years of National Socialist rule by excising all anti-Semitic passages from the New Testament (p. 274). It should call for a "public convocation of all Christian churches in a collective effort to resolve the problem of the Christian Bible's anti-Semitism" (pp. 275-276). One is left with the impression that Goldhagen objectifies the Catholic Church (and Christianity) in much the same manner which he accuses the Church of doing to Jews. This is a shame, for this powerful subject—the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Holocaust—deserves much more careful and nuanced scrutiny.