Jesus, Jews, and the Shoah

National Review, Jan 27, 2003 by Mark Riebling

Goldhagen exaggerates it. He argues that Catholic "demonology of Jews" was "compatible with or implied eliminationist solutions, including perhaps extermination." But in fact, Pope Calixtus II's 1120 bull Sicut Judaeis specifically forbade the harming of Jews. Goldhagen fails to mention this.

From what he calls his "measured and nuanced account of [Catholic] culpability for various aspects of the Holocaust," Goldhagen deduces proposals for restitution. The Church must not merely pay Jews money, and must not only "support, protect, and sustain" Israel, but must also change its doctrine. Specifically, the Church must cease to be Catholic: It must disavow its universalist claims and instead affirm that "The Jews' way to God is as legitimate as the Christian way." The Pope should convene a Third Vatican Council, as proposed by the liberal former priest, James Carroll, at which "Jews would have a full voice." At this congress it might be agreed, as Carroll urges, that "the Church not treat the Christian Bible as a divine and sacred text" and that "the anti-Semitism of the Christian Bible be excised." Granting, however, that the Church is unlikely to do any of these things, Goldhagen proposes a prophylactic dose of political-religious correctness:

[The Church] could include in every Christian Bible a detailed, corrective account alongside the text about its many anti-Semitic passages, and a clear disclaimer explaining that even though these passages were once presented as fact, they are actually false or dubious and have been the source of much unjust injury. They could include essays on the various failings of the Christian Bible, and a detailed running commentary on each page that would correct the texts' erroneous and libelous assertions.

Goldhagen does not say it, but one has the sense that he would affix, to every Christian Bible, the warning label: "This text contains hate speech."

It is a shame that someone who wrote such a good book in 1996 should have allowed himself to become a rank pamphleteer. Among the many sad results of his fixation on Catholicism is that Goldhagen overlooks a more compelling interpretation of the Shoah -- one that he, as a "big picture" historian, might otherwise have been well equipped to probe. As Lucy Dawidowicz saw in 1946, the Holocaust was the product not of Christendom, but of Christendom's collapse. The destruction of Christendom effected (1) the rejection of Catholic natural law and (2) the rise of the absolute nation-state, previously impossible because popes could depose and counterbalance kings. Hitler, to be sure, contributed a neo-paganism and anti-Semitism all his own. But in mobilizing opinion and wielding power, he was helped more by these two innovations than by any Catholic doctrines.

Goldhagen does not turn the issue in the light to catch this edge of it. Instead, he mounts his hobbyhorse for a spree of intellectual wilding. Mindful that he must not seem a bigot, he sprinkles, at intervals, some deferential disclaimers: "The Catholic Church and its moral creed . . . [are], at [their] core, good and admirable." But as we ride with him, these caveats become increasingly desultory and rhetorical; and by the work's end, he finds that "the Catholic Church . . . by its actions has forfeited its claims to deference." For indeed, if what Goldhagen writes about the Church is true, then the Church is at its core not good, but evil. And that Goldhagen in fact believes Christianity, as such, is bad for Jews -- even deadly to them -- is suggested by the weight and odor of abuse he heaps upon it.