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

Daniel Goldhagen asserts that the Catholic Church bears responsibility for fostering anti-Semitism. He is especially critical of Pope XII and the high echelon in the Catholic establishment that did nothing to prevent or even to protest the Nazis slaughter of millions of Jews. He substantiates his assertion by authentic documents that many priests and bishops actively cooperated with the Nazis. Although I had been personally affected by anti-Semitism, I have not been aware the extent of any Church's collaboration with the Nazis. Seeing in A MORAL RECKONING, one photograph of Roman Catholic nuns marching in a parade together with Nazi troops and another picture of Roman Catholic priests giving the Nazi salute is shocking to me; it is defamatory to God. Goldhagen argues that the two millenniums of anti-Semitism stemmed from anti- Judaism theology. He brings to the surface episodes of persecutions, inquisitions, expulsions, pogroms, and ghettoization initiated by Christians against Jews that had eventually led to Hitler's "Final Solution" to the so-called "Jewish problem" Goldhagen quotes Christopher Budd, a Catholic Bishop of England (page 236) who wrote: "The death of Jesus and the death of millions of Jews this century are tragically and inextricably linked. For centuries Jews have been pilloried, persecuted and blamed for the death of Jesus....this was fertile soil in which the evil of Nazism took root with catastrophic effect."

As a kid growing up in a small town in Poland, I was quite often harassed by Catholic kids. At school and outside the school, the epithet "Jesus killer" still rings in my ears. I did not understand at the age of eight and I do not fathom it at the age of eighty four why do I have to be blamed and suffer for something attributed to my ancestors' putative sins, thousand of years ago. Why tarring an entire people with the same brush of hatred for eternity. Why was I hated before I was born and why have I been hated since. Catholics in Poland disliked me because of the religion I was born into. The Germans hated me because of my race, my bodily constitution. It is just prejudice at its worst. Furthermore, Christianity started by the Jew, Jesus. It is indeed ironic for Christians to hate Jews - the very people that Jesus came from. The Jews did not kill Jesus; the Romans did. It is senseless as Sebastian Haffner, a German opponent of the Nazis wrote in 1939: "the Nazis assertions about the Jews are such plain nonsense that one demeans oneself when one discuss them even if only to refute them" (p.142). The same applies to everybody. Individuals should be judged on his or her merits or character and not on the race, religion, ethnicity or color of the skin. Hatred is self destructive. Stereotyping or sweeping guilt by association is essentially unfair and illogical. We can all sing together with different voices in a very successful choir.

There are two races of people in this world: the race of the decent people and the race of the indecent people. They are present in all groups of society. If every person on this planet shares the same beating rhythm of the heart, the same red color of the blood streaming in the veins, then the commonality of the human race transcends all the differences among man and peoples. Anthropology has proven that peoples and races are fundamentally very much alike. We have to focus on the common denominator that characterizes all of us humans rather on our differences. Fascination with ourselves prevents us from seeing the beauty of others. Pluralism may be dealt with by valuing each other and discovering each other. There is a certain genius in all of us. We are like diamonds. Every stone is different. The quality and flaws keep changing. The hardest stone becomes a shimmering diamond if cut and shaped correctly. If a person breaks out of all the barriers imposed upon him he will thrive and carry others with him. Bloodshed among nations,religions, races, ethnic groups etc. will end only when everyone sees one another as equal humans. Each person has equal worth. Reconciliation rather than polarization among ethnic and sectarian groups is the solution. Whatever our religious and ethnic differences are, we are one human family with a common destiny.

Konrad Adenauer, the first German Chancellor after WWII, wrote in 1946 "The German people as well as the bishops and clergy bear great guilt for the events in the concentration camps." However, I am not seeking vengeance against those who kept me incarcerated in concentration camps during the Holocaust. I do not ask penance from Christians for anti-Semitic acts committed in the past. All I am asking for is to be seen as member of the human race, equal to you and everybody is equal to me. We are all God's children who are entitled to have a peaceful and dignified life. My heroine, till the last day of my life, has been a German woman who had risked her life to help me. She was a righteous person as there were some other compassionate Germans. Goldhagen lists German clergymen who did speak up against anti- Semitism, against Nazism. Some priests risked their own life to save Jewish lives. Goldhagen has been unfairly accused as anti-Catholic for writing A MORAL RECKONING. Goldhagen is not anti-Catholic. His diligent research, for which he deserves our appreciation, led him to conclude that certain doctrines, theology, liturgy, or practices by the Catholic Church sprouted hatred for Jews. Ergo, Christians do have a moral responsibility to admit of its past anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism and see the Jews as Pope John Paul II did: "Christians' elder brothers"

Entering the world of the Holocuast is walking into a dark realm. I'd imagine many other students of the Shoah are like me - you dive into the study but after a while must leave it because of its pure evil. Genocide is beyond comprehension, yet it is part of human history. Throughout time, people have crushed and eliminated others - often whole villages, whole ethnic groups, whole native peoples. I believe Mark Twain once remarked, "There is not a square yard of earth in the possession of its orginal owners."

The Holocaust of the 1940's stands out from this tragic fact of human life because so much of it is documented and because it is in living memory. It should never be forgotten and deserves all the scrutiny we can give it. Never again? We can only hope and pray. But to help live against genocide, it must be understood.

It is a sad, sad fact that there is no correlation between being a Chirstian, and standing against the slaughter of the Jews, and the other innocents of the Holocaust. There were Christians who helped and rescued Jews. But there were far more who not only ignored it, but by virtue of their anti-Semitism also allowed for it and abetted it.

This book examines the culpability of the Roman Catholic Church and the pope in those years in the Holocaust. Goldhagen's assertions are frightening and sobering. He believes the church could at least have saved some and slowed the slaughter by the questioning and criticism of Hitler's policies by the church's hierarchy.

Goldhagen calls for an honest inquiry into the churches reactions to what it knew was happening to the Jews, and admission of guilt, and lastly of some restorative justice. Thus in the book's title the word "reckoning." Whatever one thinks of the the book's slant - it is doggedly accusatory and absolutely certain in assigning guilt to the Roman Catholic Church - it is a book which evokes the deepest reflection.

I am a Protestant minister. I found myself deep in shame as I turned the pages of this book. No matter what else can be said, this much is certain - the church failed to reflect the love of God. And it was not only the Roman Catholic Church - Protestants also share guilt. And Christians are not only tried and found wanting for the Shoah, but for centuries of brutal anti-Semitism taht paved the way for the path of evil which was trod in this unbelievable chpater of human history. Goldhagen's book makes us who follow Christ think.

To me, there is no greater irony than that the church, which says it was started by the Jew, Jesus, hates Jews - the very peope to whom Jesus came. Goldhagen paints the Bible stories of the persecution and death of Jesus Christ as a huge part of the problem. With that I patently disagree. It takes but a modicum of intelligence to understand that when the Bible says "Jews" - it means those Jewish leaders who made themselves Jesus' enemies, not all the people! For example, Jesus' own disciples were Jews - they did not want him dead and they did not call guilt down upon themselves.

Goldhagen is right, however, in showing how these passages have been twisted by the church (!) through the years to incite hatred for the Jews which has led to their slaughter again and again.

If this book leads the church to honest reflection and confession of sin and vigilance for the future, then it is a worthy book for that alone. Opening it to read, however, once again takes a person into that realm of horror and profound sorrow at the evil of which we are capable. Enter with caution.

Hitler's Willing Executioners by Goldhagen caused an uproar. In Hitler and the Holocaust, Robert Wistrich does not entirely agree with him but reveals the extent to which all ordinary continental Europeans were involved, with the noble exception of particularly Bulgarians, Danes, Finns and Swedes. To an admirable degree, Italians also sabotaged the Nazi effort. Here the author addresses culpability & morality and their political & social implications through an empirical focus on the Catholic Church & clergy, not lay Catholics. Much of this analysis could be applied to Protestant churches, clergy & lay members too but this study intends to be exemplary rather than comprehensive. It also serves as a general framework on how to conduct a moral reckoning. Moral investigation is carried out in Parts 1 & 2 whilst Part 3 considers moral repair & restitution.

The introduction includes critiques of Hannah Arendt's and Sartre's opinions. Starting at the source, the foundational documents of Christianity, Goldhagen mentions the absurdity of the accusation that all Jews of that time, some millions spread throughout the Mediterranean area, could be held responsible for killing Christ. Even more ludicrous is the notion that all of them, in unison, assumed such guilt, simultaneously declaring all their descendants culpable. These New Testament books contain further outrageous slanders as explored in more detail by Jules Isaac in The Teaching of Contempt & Lillian C Freudmann in Antisemitism in the New Testament.

Goldhagen explores the suicidal pathology of antisemitism in Europe with its legacy of oppression, expulsion and murder. The 1st recorded instance of mass murder occurred in Alexandria in 414 whilst the First Crusade of 1096 established a pattern of periodic massacres that culminated in the Shoah/Holocaust and continued even after the end of World War II. The Reformation made little difference as Martin Luther was amongst the worst of antisemites. This record of horror was mostly absent from the history books until last century when James Carroll, Edward Flannery, David Kertzer, Franklin Littell and others started revealing the nasty secret.

The attitudes & actions of Pius XI & XII are scrutinized, followed by a dissection of the defenders of Pius XII's strategies of exculpation. The evidence is plentiful & painful to read. For example, in 1937 the Vatican journal 'Civiltá Cattolica' openly discussed the annihilation of Jews. Part 2 deals with culpability, outlining the matrix of the Church's failures compared to the exemplary conduct of the Danish Lutheran Church. It proceeds with the moral reckoning predicated upon the notions that individuals are responsible for their actions, that it is proper to do so, that clear & fair criteria must be applied and that judgments must be transparent in their reasoning. The author covers various types of culpability, affirmative offenses, offenses of omission & postwar offenses. It emerges that the distinction between antisemitism and "anti-Judaism" is nonsense.

Part 3 opens with examples of the fury that these revelations evoke in the defenders of the Church. Goldhagen condemns anti-Catholicism, especially the habit of criticizing Catholics based only on their religious identification. Yet the Church, a political & social institution is subject to the same evaluative standards applied to other institutions and individuals. It has failed to admit its specific offenses or punish the perpetrators, neglected making amends with the victims and never properly identified the source of its offenses or gone far enough to correct them. Decades later, Pope John Paul II and some national churches officially acknowledged guilt and took steps towards reconciliation.

No encyclical has appeared, only the brief statements in Nostra Aetate (1965) and We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (1998). Issues like restitution, telling the truth and repentance are discussed against the actions of the Carmelite nuns at Auschwitz in the 1980s and the statements of Cardinal Glemp. And John Paul II in 2001 by the side of Bashar Assad, passively listening to the Syrian dictator's venomous antisemitic libels and incitement to violence broadcast to a TV audience of millions. The pope continued his visit without protest. A determined & sustained program to combat antisemitism would have contributed much to prevent or counteract its current recrudescence.

Goldhagen's argument for the separation of church & state is of course correct but his suggestions that the Church give up its political ambitions & Vatican State will never happen. Nor will it renounce its claims of offering the only way to salvation or papal infallibility. Neither will it sincerely repudiate the doctrine of supersessionism. Referring also to political Islam and secular salvationist movements like Communism, the author puts it so well: "... the road to earthly hell has been paved by a claimed monopoly on the road to heaven."

The reactions to the 1st edition of this book are found in the afterword. The attacks began even before publication, following an article in The New Republic. In both Europe & the USA, church apologists distorted the contents & defamed the messenger. There were some welcome exceptions amongst Catholic & Protestant theologians and laity. It's no surprise that the author's bold stance on the antisemitism of the New Testament & this false witness that saddled an entire people with collective, intergenerational guilt proved the most sensitive issues. Myth is powerful & the full truth about Christianity's treatment of Jews is devastating. Yet, no matter how harrowing, it would be better for Christians to get to know the truth; it sets one free.

Seventy-one pages of notes with detailed bibliographical references and further information bear witness to meticulous research. Italicized entries in the index refer to pages with illustrations; the book concludes with a list of illustration credits. A Moral Reckoning is a magisterial work of admirable scholarship and an absorbing read. Although Goldhagen presents measured arguments with restraint, the book's content will shock Christians while its directness and honesty will offend fanatics.

Author Daniel Goldhagen arrays a formidable battery of evidence to support his assertion that the Catholic Church stood aside and did nothing while Hitler and the Nazis slaughtered millions of Jews. He further demonstrates that many priests and bishops actively cooperated with the Nazis in the deportations and subsequent extermination. Goldhagen cogently argues that the eliminationist anti-Semitism of the 1930s and 1940s was a direct consequence of centuries of formal Catholic (and Lutheran) anti-Semitic theology. He successfully links the persecutions, inquisitions, pogroms, deportations, and ghettoization instigated by Christians against Jews with the "final solution" to the so-called "Jewish problem". He evaluates the church against its own standards, and concludes that even to this day it has failed to take moral responsibility for its crimes.

It's clear from reading the reviews on this site that many Christians refuse to consider the culpability of the church in the Holocaust. I doubt that many critics have actually read this book. If they did, how could they ignore the overwhelming evidence of cooperation between the church and the Nazis? Of particular note is the work performed by priests and bishops in spiriting accused Nazi war criminals out of Europe at the end of the war. Adolf Eichmann was so pleased that he converted to Catholicism upon reaching South America.

I realize now why Jews sought a homeland in Israel. Christians have for millennia demonstrated an inability to respect the basic human rights of their Jewish neighbors. How can any Jew feel safe in Europe, even today?

Goldhagen has been pilloried as anti-Catholic for writing this book. He addresses this in the following quote:

"It is therefore that much more wrong for the church and its defenders to label someone anti-Catholic just because he criticizes the church as an institution, or its doctrine, theology, liturgy, or practices. We do not call someone anti-American or anti-German just because he criticizes aspects of American or German politics, such as their respective laws on freedom of speech or taxes or even citizenship requirements, or because he condemns some aspect of the country's foreign-policy or treatment of minorities. We do not call someone anti-Semitic just because he criticizes some aspect of Judaism, Jewish institutions, or Israel. We do not call someone prejudiced against any of these institutions, even if he subjects it to a thoroughgoing critique, when that critique is empirically, morally, and analytically well grounded and fairly applied."

We are living in an era where objectivity itself is under attack from all quarters. One critiques a powerful institution (i.e. the government, the church, a corporation) at one's peril. In another decade, it may no longer be possible to write a book like this. My advice is to read it now while you still have the chance.

My title is precisely the point.

Goldhagen assumes that the supposed power the Catholic Church possesses today over much of the world's culture, politics, and media is as it was in the early part of the twentieth century. It, most decidedly, was not.

The Church, in those days, was viewed in many parts of the West -especially in more economically and militarily powerful Protestant America and Europe - as a cultural hangnail from the Middle Ages: archaic, decaying, lifeless, semi-literate, and rife with crippling, sickly superstition. The overwhelming bulk of its' parishoners were little more than simple-minded peasants and the lowest members of the working class: penniless, starving, illterate (mostly), and quick to hop the next boat to North America in search of a better life. Catholic education was an oxymoron. In short, despite the revisionist histories of some modern Catholic historians and thinkers who portray the Church as eternally powerful, early twentieth century European Catholicism was recidivist and on the brink of utter disintegration, overrun by communism and socialism. It most certainly was NOT a healthy organization.

That the Catholic Church could then have been some agent provacateur, metaphysical master planner, or "Ur-Author" of the Holocaust strikes me, to say the least, as a bit of a reach. Goldhagen seems to be hitting here because the Vatican either hasn't properly fessed up to it's "control freak" role or, more likely, it is an easy and inviting target because it is the last significant Christian institution left standing in Europe. In critical and strategic ways, the Protestant churches (i.e., the Anglican, German Evangelical(Lutheran), Dutch & Swiss Reformed, etc.) were far more powerful early in the last century and held considerably more sway over their wealthier and more influential congregants. Alas, they no longer stand dominant in multi-cultural Europe; ergo, Goldhagen doesn't go after them because no one gives a damn about their dwindling numbers. Besides, who goes to THEIR churches? No one who matters - media wise, that is. In truth, the world wars were far more Protestant (esp. Anglo-German)induced; early twentieth-century European Catholicism was far too introverted, weak, and Third Worldish to matter much.

The Vatican, ironically, may have a hard time admitting any culpability not because Catholics did not participate, but because the Church in those days was too ineffectual to do anything about it. And in light of its new found late twentieth/early twenty-first century materialism, bejeweled ornamentation, lush bank accounts, and heightened world media position, that may be a reality more embarrassing to admit than anything to do with the Holocaust. After all, once one begins wearing items from the House Of Adolfo, it is hard to admit ever having been a client of the Salvation Army thrift shop.

This may be an alternative way of looking at this controversial matter, but I think it will help expose some of the pretensious, egotistical positions that Goldhagen and the Vatican possess and would rather not care to admit.