The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism

...but unlike "old soldiers", they seldom fade away. Instead they are refurbished, recycled and reapplied. It's the similarities that I note, between the rise of pre-Shoah anti-Semitism and the new anti-Semitism of Mark Steyn and his ilk - remembering that Arabs are Semitic also - which has led me to re-read this book from 2001 with a new perspective. Before Steyn's "Eurabia", there was the Jewropa of anti-Semitic Catholics such as Father Giuseppe Oreglia, editor of Civiltá Catolica, and Eduard Drumont, author of La France Juive. Before Islamic terrorism, there was ritual murder of Christian children for the baking of matzos - one a real threat, one a horrific libel, but both manipulated un scrupulously for political gain. Before the power of petro-wealth, there was the pelf of banking to explain how the 0.2% of the population of Italy that was Jewish could be running the whole show. Before Steyn's "exposure" of Islam's grand ambition to dominate the world, there were the "Protocols of Zion" and other fabricated evidence of Jewish plans for dominion. I'll return to this comparison later, but first I want to address the theses and the methodology of David Kertzer's convincing indictment of the Popes and the Vatican bureaucracy for having a major role in the rise of violent anti-Jewish inhumanity from roughly 1800 to 1940. Kertzer states his central thesis succinctly on page 205 of The Popes Against the Jews: "Efforts to deny Catholic Church involvement in the rise of modern anti-Semitism have made much of the presumed lack of a racial element in whatever hostility the Church had directed against the Jews in the past. As embraced by the 1998 Vatican Commission report on the Shoah, this argument consists of three parts: (1) One of the defining features of modern anti-Semitism is the view that the Jews constitute a separate, and inferior, race; (2) the Church has always condemned racial thinking, for it goes against the Church's universal mission; and so (3) the Church could not have been involved in the development of modern anti-Semitism." In other words, Kertzer regards the Vatican's We Remember statement as a thorough white-wash, and he marshals example after example from the recently available Vatican archives to prove his point. On the next page, he continues: "...even if we identify modern anti-Semitism with racism, it does not follow that racism id the only significant feature of modern anti-Semitism. In fact, there are other, equally important components of the ideology that produced the first modern anti-Semitic political movements in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Any list would have to include the following: There is a secret Jewish conspiracy; the Jews seek to conquer the world; the Jews are an evil sect who seek to do Christians harm; Jews are by nature immoral....Jews control the press; Jews control the banks...Jews are responsible for Communism; Judaism commands its adherents to murder...Jews seek to destroy the Christia

Books on what Pius XII did or did not do for the Jews during World War II seem to be a dime a dozen these days. We have books by John Cornwell, Susan Zucotti, Ronald Rychlak, Margaret Marchione, and many others trying to prove either that Pius was silent in the face of genocide, or that he did more to help the Jews than anyone else at the time. According to Kertzer, this attention is misplaced, since it ignores how the Vatican propagated anti-semitism. Specifically, this happened from Paul IV's order to confine Jews in Papal States to ghettoes, down to Pius XI. Kertzer quotes from a relevant passage of "We Remember," a Vatican statement on the holocaust: "By the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, Jews generally had achieved an equal standing with other citizens in most States and a certain number of them held influential positions in society. But in that same historical context, notably in the 19th century, a false and exacerbated nationalism took hold. In a climate of eventful social change, Jews were often accused of exercising an influence disproportionate to their numbers. Thus there began to spread in varying degrees throughout most of Europe an anti-Judaism that was essentially more sociological and political than religious." He goes on to note that "this argument, sadly, is not the product of a Church that wants to confront its history. If Jews acquired equal rights in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was only over the angry, loud, and indeed indignant protests of the Vatican and the Church." (p. 6) In 1551, Paul IV, arguably the most hated Pope in history, issued an edict requiring Jews residing in the Papal States to live in ghettoes. They were denied most rights, were restricted in what professions to choose, banned from attending universities, had to wear Jew badges, and on and on. During the Carnival season, several of them had to dress up and make a humiliating public offering in the streets of Rome, and they had to attend "Saturday sermons" in which priests attacked their religion, on a rotating basis (though Pius IX abolished these two practices). When Napoleon invaded the Papal States, he threw the gates of the ghettoes open, but when he was defeated, the Jews were forced back in. After the end of the Napoleonic wars, the church was at a turning point- it could adapt to the modern world or continue with medieval practices. One man who was pushing for the former was Cardinal Consalvi. He argued that to drive the Jews back into the ghettoes would be "to give ammunition to those who argued that the papacy was an anachronism, a hopeless relic of medieval society." Unfortunately, Pius VII did not listen to him. He saw the Jews as forever degraded for crucifying Christ, and he was backed in this view from all other Cardinals than Consalvi. The ghettoes continued to exist until the final dissolution of the Papal States in 1870 when Italian Nationalist forces captured Rome. In 1880, Civilita Cattolic

I was not surprised by the facts exposed in this much needed bood. Unbelievably, the Catholic Church's anti-semitism is still alive and flourishing. My daughter,a Catholic, was asked to be godmother to her cousin's child. She needed a letter from her parish priest, who said "he would not allow her to be a godmother to a child...you're married to a Jew". My only point of contention is that the author often refers to Catholicism and Christianity as one and the same. They are not...any humble, Bible practicing Christian knows that the Catholic Church is not true Christianity, and any true Christian would not accept the abominal practices dictated by the Popes and the Catholic clergy on any of their fellow man.

David Kertzer's book deserves and needs to be read by Christian and Jew alike. The history of the Catholic Church's racial anti-Semitism is a sordid tale- of accusations of ritual murder, torture, inhuman repression, and slander, taking place in the twentieth century! Raised as a catholic, I am sickened and saddened by what took place, but until the Church faces up to its past, and not some fabricated history of its own making, no real reconciliation can take place between Christian and Jew.