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by David I. Kertzer. Published by Knopf.
Just what role, if any, did the Roman Catholic Church play in the development of anti-semitism during the modern era? This is a serious question, because the answer to it also helps us answer the question of what sort of culpability the Roman Catholic Church has for the eventual Holocaust and deaths of millions of Jews. Although David Kertzer is certainly not the first historian to tackle the Vatican's role in the Holocaust, he does approach the issue from an unusual perspective. Usually, when people address this issue, they focus on the years immediately surrounding World War II, and only look at the Vatican's actions which related directly to Germany and the Holocaust. Kertzer, however, takes a much broader view and attempts to find out just what sort of ideological responsibility the Vatican has. After gaining access to large amounts of previously unavailable Vatican material, he delves into the role the Vatican may have played in the development of modern anti-semitism, an ideology which played a large role in the eventual attempt to exterminate Europe's Jews. The Vatican has attempted to try and deal with its ideological responsibility in this area, and in 1998, it isued the report "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah," which was supposed to exonerate the Church of complicity in the Holocaust. The thesis of this report is essentially that the Holocaust grew out of "an anti-Judaism that was essentially more sociological and political than religious." In this way, the Vatican can take responsibility for the obvious and ancient religious prejudice while refusing to take responsibility for the modern racial and social prejudices which have come to be labeled anti-semitism. But is this distinction accurate? According to Kertzer, this report is "not the product of a Church that wants to confront its history," because the distinction created simply does not exist. There are a number of key ideas which Kertzer describes as characterizing modern anti-semitism:
All of these developed largely due to a fear of modernity. Socially, the Jews were the group which benefited from modernity in some of the largest and most obvious ways. Because of this, at least in part, they became identified with modernity unlike any other group, and thus they became the scapegoat of modernity. This explains why the anti-semitism in Catholic literature actually increased during the 19th century, rather than decreasing or remaining constant. Anti-semitism became a vital component of Catholic identity during these years, because it was the easiest way to communicate anti-modernism. As such, it was a new development rather than vestiges of medieval attitudes. The characteristics listed above all share another important thing in common: all but a couple were very prominent in the beliefs and writings of the Roman Catholic Church, especially during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is because of this fact, exhaustively documented in Kertzer's book, that it is impossible to exhonerate the Church from responsibility for having helped develop the ideology behind the Holocuast. The Vatican has tried to argue that their anti-Judaism was never "racial," but this can be demonstrated as false:
A good example of someone who explicitly used race when condemning the Jews was a French priest named Ernest Jouin who wrote during the 1920s, "From the triple viewpoint of race, of nationality, and of religion, the Jew has become the enemy of humanity." According to the Vatican, this is the sort of attitude which it rejected and condemned - yet Jouin was never criticized for his anti-semitic diatribes. In fact, Pope Benedict XV made a point of praising Jouin's work. Shortly after Jouin published the first French edition of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," Pius XI praised him in a private audience because he was "combating our mortal enemy." It is worth noting that Pius XI has been seen in a very favorable light regarding the suffering of the Jews, but in a report of his while he was examining the situation in Poland following World War I, he stated, "One of the most evil and strongest influences that is felt here, perhaps the strongest and the most evil, is that of the Jews." The Vatican has also tried to argue that in their anti-Judaism, they never portrayed the Jews as "irredeemable." This would be an important difference, because acceptance of it would cause people to move away from attempted conversions and toward expulsion or extermination as a "solution" to the "Jewish problem." But again, it is a difference that does not really exist:
The fact of the matter should now be clear: fascist anti-semitism in the twentieth century was a direct ideological outgrowth of Catholic anti-semitism of the nineteenth century. The connection is so close that many of the fascist anti-semitic policies and programs are direct inheritances from Vatican policies. The chapter on Austria from the time of Pope Pius IX in the mid 19th century through the early 20th century is particularly interesting. For most of the book, Ketzer focuses on the actions of the Vatican in the areas where they had political control, because it is here that the responsibility of others can be factored out. Indeed, Ketzer is able to demonstrate that Jews had more rights and freedoms in many other places in Europe than they did while under the direct control of the Vatican. But Austria, and particularly Vienna, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries is an especially important time period, because it was here that Adolf Hitler developed his political and social views towards the Jews. As Ketzer describes the situation, the papal nuncio, Monsignor Antonio Agliardi, enthusiastically supported the aggressively anti-Semitic political leader Karl Lueger, head of the nationalist Christian Socialist party, even though the Austrian church hierarchy itself was disturbed by Lueger's extremism. The Vatican's attempt to make a distinction between its older, "religious" anti-semitism and the more recent "political" anti-semitism is not a new development. On the contrary, it first started just prior to World War II, when a few religious leaders started to realize that the anti-semitism they helped create might get out of their control. As a result, they tried to tell people that there was a difference between the "good" anti-semitism promoted justly by the Church and the "bad" anti-semitism promoted by self-serving politicians and hate-mongers. But how could anyone really tell the difference? A good example of this comes from a pastoral letter written by the leading churchman of Poland, August Cardinal Hlond, in which he describes the Jews as "the vanguard of atheism, the Bolshevik movement and revolutionary activity." He added, however, that "one may not hate anyone. Not even Jews." It must be remembered, of course, that the Vatican did not cause the Holocaust. It must also be remembered that even during the times when Catholic anti-semitism was at its worst, there were many Catholics who did not accept it. But if we can remember that, the Vatican should also be expected to remember just what responsibility - ideological and actual - it does bear. Instead, the truth is hidden or denied, which ultimately leads to victimizing the Jews all over again.
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