Priest: Flawed book tells story we must hear

National Catholic Reporter, Feb 2, 2001 by John T. Pawlikowski

In addition to demonstrating how Jews became the principal opponents of the Catholic church over the centuries, the other important strength of this volume lies in its challenge to Catholic theology. Carroll contends that Catholic theologians have failed to confront the patristic anti-Judaic legacy as well as the broader implications for Catholic self-understanding today of the Second Vatican Council's document on other religions, Nostra Aerate. The Jewish-Catholic question has largely been a marginal issue for Catholic theology since the council, despite the emphasis that Pope John Paul II has given it. The conciliar and subsequent Vatican statements as well as the many speeches of the present pope are almost never referenced in discussions of Catholic self-identity. They remain largely documents for dialogue with Jews. Yet as Johann Baptist Metz has rightly emphasized, they are documents that profoundly affect Catholic theology. The patristic adversos Judaios tradition was central, not marginal, to Catholic theological self-understanding. So Gregory Baum was quite correct when he argued in a plenary address at the 1985 Catholic Theological Society meeting that Nostra Aetate represents the most profound change in the ordinary magisterium coming out of the council.

I have heard Catholic leaders assert that we have solved all the problems we had in the past with the Jews. Carroll insists, and I concur, that we have hardly begun to probe theologically the full implications of the process that began with Nostra Aetate and has continued throughout the pontificate of John Paul II.

Carroll's volume has some similarities with recent books by Gary Wills and John Cornwell. All use the Catholic-Jewish relationship as an argument for a major reform of the Catholic church, particularly in terms of its approach to power and authority. Carroll clearly identifies himself as a Catholic dissenter who left the priesthood to save his faith. There will be those who will be turned off by this personal designation in terms of his fundamental argument. I hope people can see beyond this. His work is far more substantive than Wills and certainly far, far more than Cornwell. It is regrettable that Carroll repeats his praise for Hitler's Pope, Cornwell's flawed book on Pius XII, which Carroll reviewed for The Atlantic Monthly in 1999.

In reading the chapters at the end that move beyond the parameters of the Catholic-Jewish relationship to current situations in the church generally, there are many critical questions one can put to Carroll. His attempt at a new Christology takes some interesting directions but shows little contact with the body of literature on Christology in light of the new understanding of the Catholic-Jewish relationship that has surfaced in the last 20 years.

In many ways, Constantine's Sword stands as a monumental achievement in terms of popular history. Whether its embrace of the growing trend to link this history with opposition to current Vatican policies helps or hurts the central thesis may be debated. I for one would prefer to keep the two issues distinct.