A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair
Daniel Jonah GoldhagenOverview
From the internationally renowned author of the best-selling Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust comes this penetrating moral inquiry into the Catholic Church's role in the Holocaust that goes beyond anything previously written on the subject. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen cuts through the historical and moral fog to lay out the full extent of the Catholic Church's involvement in the Holocaust, transforming a narrow discussion fixated on Pope Pius XII into the long-overdue investigation of the Church throughout Europe. He shows that the Church's and the Pope's complicity in the persecution of the Jews goes much deeper than has been previously understood. The Church's leaders were fully aware of the persecution. They did not speak out and urge resistance. Instead, they supported many aspects of it. Some clergy even took part in the mass murder.But Goldhagen goes further. He develops a precise way to assess the Church and its clergy's culpability, which was more extensive and varied than has been supposed. He then devotes the largest part of the book to proposing a new and fuller understanding of restitution, including moral restitution, and shows that the Church has, even according to its own doctrine, an unacknowledged duty of repair. He explores this duty, analyzes the Church's tactics of evasion, and delineates all that the Church must do to redress the harm it inflicted on Jews and to heal itself. Brilliantly researched and reasoned, A Moral Reckoning is a pathbreaking book of profound, and far-reaching, importance.
Synopsis
With his first book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen dramatically revised our understanding of the role ordinary Germans played in the Holocaust. Now he brings his formidable powers of research and argument to bear on the Catholic Church and its complicity in the destruction of European Jewry. What emerges is a work that goes far beyond the familiar inquiries—most of which focus solely on Pope Pius XII—to address an entire history of hatred and persecution that culminated, in some cases, in an active participation in mass-murder.
More than a chronicle, A Moral Reckoning is also an assessment of culpability and a bold attempt at defining what actions the Church must take to repair the harm it did to Jews—and to repair itself. Impressive in its scholarship, rigorous in its ethical focus, the result is a book of lasting importance.
Publishers Weekly
Harvard scholar Goldhagen, author of the bestselling and controversial Hitler's Willing Executioners, turns to a question left unanswered in his earlier work: to what extent are Catholics and the Catholic Church morally culpable for the Holocaust? As in his earlier book, Goldhagen pulls no punches. In the second paragraph he writes, "Christianity is a religion that consecrated... a megatherian hatred of one group of people: the Jews." The story of this hatred, which Goldhagen views as a betrayal of Christianity's own moral principles, has been told many times and, most recently, in the works of Susan Zuccotti and Michael Phayer. In contrast to these accounts, Goldhagen offers not an objective history of the Church's role in the Holocaust but, as the title promises, a moral examination. Goldhagen makes no apology for engaging in a sustained ethical inquiry and rendering judgment. (In fact, much of the book is either a direct or indirect defense of his much-criticized first work.) Goldhagen demands material, political and moral restitution but ends questioning whether the Catholic Church can "muster the will" to undertake these actions. There is little new information here; a definitive history of this dark chapter must await the opening of the Vatican archives. Readers should not skip the extensive and detailed endnotes, which contain a wealth of fascinating material. 25 b&w photos. Agent, Esther Newberg. (Nov. 3) Forecast: This ground has been prepared for Goldhagen by Zuccotti and Phayer, as well as John Cornwell, James Carroll and Garry Wills. Still, as with Hitler's Willing Executioners, Goldhagen's passion will generate controversy and sales as Knopf clearly expects, with a 75,000 first printing. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewDaniel Jonah Goldhagen set the world of Holocaust studies afire with the 1996 publication of his controversial Hitler's Willing Executioners, in which he saw the Holocaust as primarily the murderous acts of ordinary individuals who were deeply anti-Semitic. Now, he shifts his focus to the Catholic Church's role in the Holocaust and again stirs a controversial brew.
Offering more proof than other scholars who have addressed the issue, Goldhagen charges that Pope Pius XII and his colleagues were guilty, at minimum, of turning a blind eye to what the Nazis were doing throughout Europe. Goldhagen holds that Pius, through the strength of the Church and the large number of European Catholics, could have compelled Germany to end the Holocaust or -- at the very least -- saved many Jews from extermination. Instead, the Church's influence went unused. For example, Goldhagen charges that Pius allowed the deportation of Italy's Jews although he surely knew about the gas chambers. He puts forth many other charges that are equally disturbing and also condemns the modern-day Church's efforts to make rhetorical amends for the Holocaust, insisting that it must do more to atone for its anti-Semitic past.
A Moral Reckoning is a densely written book, and its academic tone might be a bit much for some readers. But, as this historical and polemical work digs into the dark corners of Holocaust, it offers enlightenment that is both important and essential. Here, then, is a work that ranks as an invaluable contribution to the literature on the subject. Glenn Speer
Publishers Weekly
Harvard scholar Goldhagen, author of the bestselling and controversial Hitler's Willing Executioners, turns to a question left unanswered in his earlier work: to what extent are Catholics and the Catholic Church morally culpable for the Holocaust? As in his earlier book, Goldhagen pulls no punches. In the second paragraph he writes, "Christianity is a religion that consecrated... a megatherian hatred of one group of people: the Jews." The story of this hatred, which Goldhagen views as a betrayal of Christianity's own moral principles, has been told many times and, most recently, in the works of Susan Zuccotti and Michael Phayer. In contrast to these accounts, Goldhagen offers not an objective history of the Church's role in the Holocaust but, as the title promises, a moral examination. Goldhagen makes no apology for engaging in a sustained ethical inquiry and rendering judgment. (In fact, much of the book is either a direct or indirect defense of his much-criticized first work.) Goldhagen demands material, political and moral restitution but ends questioning whether the Catholic Church can "muster the will" to undertake these actions. There is little new information here; a definitive history of this dark chapter must await the opening of the Vatican archives. Readers should not skip the extensive and detailed endnotes, which contain a wealth of fascinating material. 25 b&w photos. Agent, Esther Newberg. (Nov. 3) Forecast: This ground has been prepared for Goldhagen by Zuccotti and Phayer, as well as John Cornwell, James Carroll and Garry Wills. Still, as with Hitler's Willing Executioners, Goldhagen's passion will generate controversy and sales as Knopf clearly expects, with a 75,000 first printing. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.Foreign Affairs
Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners was a work of political interpretation. But this study of the Catholic Church and the Holocaust is a work of moral evaluation. Goldhagen reviews trenchantly the attitudes of the pope and the Church, the roots and manifestations of antisemitism, and the arguments of the Church's defenders. Here again, Goldhagen is more concerned with getting to the essence of a phenomenon than in dealing with qualifications and nuance. Whereas the Vatican has tried to separate Nazi "pagan" antisemitism from the traditional Catholic version, Goldhagen asserts that there was a "symbiosis" between the two. As he writes, the Church and the pope "failed during the Holocaust ... because they believed the Jews to be evil and harmful, and because they did not object in principle to punishing the Jews substantially."The third part of his book is the most original. It treats the Church as a rigidly authoritarian institution that has betrayed not only Jews but also Catholics. It therefore has, in Goldhagen's eyes, a duty to confront its own offenses and sins of omission, make amends with the victims, and reform itself. In examining the last two tasks, he distinguishes among material, political, and moral restitution, discusses what these should entail, and assesses how far the different Church leaderships have gone in telling the truth and breaking with the past. He concludes that the Church must stop being a political institution and become a moral one, and that this step requires eliminating from the New Testament the "ferocious" antisemitism "spread throughout the text." Goldhagen's insistence on writing a moral history may make readers uncomfortable. But his polemicalstyle and moral intransigence are in the service of values that need to be defended. Goldhagen's voice is a salutary one.