Summary
Title: A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair
Author: Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0375414347
Pro:
• Very detailed and informative endnotes - don't skip them
• Provides a moral perspective not usually present in most historical studies
Con:
• Nothing really new from a historical perspective
• Places too much blame on Catholicism and Catholic leaders as compared to Nazis
• Spend too much time attacking critics of previous book
Description:
• Moral analysis of the Catholic Church's reactions to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
• Argues that Catholic Antisemitism was an important factor in the Holocaust
• Argues that the Vatican owes moral and financial reparations to Jews
Book Review
One frequent criticism of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair is that there is little to nothing here that is new from a historical perspective. Goldhagen didn't comb through archives of original documents to present new facts to analyze; instead, he relies upon others who came before and who did all that work. Since those books aren't dense scholarly tomes accessible only to academics, what was the point of publishing this book which appears to add nothing?
There is something to this criticism, and the same is true of the complaint that Goldhagen engages in frequent, heavy-handed moralizing. When taken together, however, we find that at least the first isn't as strong as it initially appears. True, there are other books presenting all these facts and the authors of those books don't hide their criticism of Pope Pius XII or the Vatican; however, those books tried to offer objective historical research in order to make case that the Vatican's actions were morally objectionable.
Goldhagen basically accepts the validity of these arguments (another point of criticism for some) and is trying to move past this: if the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII acted badly, what's to be done now? The major thrust of Goldhagen's book is to explore the moral dimensions of the Vatican's failure to act and speak in a morally appropriate manner. Only the first part of the book focuses on examining what the Vatican actually did; the second deals with evaluating moral culpability and the third is about how the moral damage can be repaired. Thus this book is at least as much about applied moral philosophy as it is about history.
This is not to say that there aren't legitimate criticisms and serious flaws in Goldhagen's book. Too much of the introductory section is taken up by snide swipes at critics of his previous work. He seems to justify this as an attempt to explain why he has to be so careful in setting out his terms and arguments, but that doesn't ring true to me. Another problem is that he spends a lot of time arguing against "collective guilt," but then he has to explain how that differs from "institutional guilt" such that the Catholic Church today can be held responsible for reparations and apologies to Jews.
A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust, by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
Perhaps more serious is that in his effort to indict Catholic leaders, Goldhagen at least appears to thereby minimize the guilt of Nazi leaders. If too much responsibility for Nazi anti-Semitism is placed at the feet of Catholics who undeniably kept anti-Semitism alive in Europe, then not enough is left to lay at the feet of the Nazis who actively worked to exterminate the Jews. A clear connection can be made between traditional Catholic anti-Semitism and Nazi anti-Semitism, but the Nazis also drew from other sources and the two forms of anti-Semitism cannot be completely equated. The over-emphasis on the failures of the Vatican would thus appear to undermine the goal of placing guilt and responsibility where it is most deserved.
I wouldn't recommend that people rely upon this as their first or only book on the subject of what the Vatican and Pope Pius XII did during World War II, but if you are already familiar with the subject then this might provide a different way to approach the material.
