shadowsource
A Flash In The Pain
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- Jun 1, 2001
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A new book, using material from the Vatican Archives, answers lots of questions that were raised in a recent thread about WW II (and the Holocaust). Sorry about trhe text post, but I recalled that the topic was of interest to a number of people here, and you have to sign into the Times' site to access articles.
September 19, 2001
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
THE POPES AGAINST THE JEWS
The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism.
By David I. Kertzer.
355 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the 1920's a French priest named Ernest Jouin emerged as one of the more prominent of that European species, the professional anti- Semitic ideologue. This charming person was the first in his country to publish the classic forgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which had been concocted by the Russian police two decades earlier to blame the Jews for the Czar's problems. Earlier, he founded a publication called International Review of Secret Societies that issued steady warnings about the supposed Jewish-Masonic conspiracy to dominate the world. "From the triple viewpoint of race, of nationality, and of religion, the Jew has become the enemy of humanity," was one of many statements made by Father Jouin in his long career of Jew hatred.
It is also the kind of statement that the Vatican, according to its own examination of the historical record, is supposed to have disapproved. In 1998, a commission created by Pope John Paul II to investigate possible Vatican responsibility for the slaughter of the Jews in World War II, announced its main finding. It was that the church had made mistakes over the centuries in fomenting religious anti-Semitism but that it had always condemned anti-Semitism based on racist ideologies or political demagogy.
But the Brown University historian David I. Kertzer, given privileged access to the Vatican archives, found no such condemnation in the case of the troubling Father Jouin, or of many others who spoke of the Jews in demagogic and racial terms. On the contrary, as Mr. Kertzer reports in his new book, "The Popes Against the Jews," Pope Benedict XV seemed to go out of his way to praise Father Jouin. "We know that you have conducted your sacred ministry in an exemplary manner," he wrote to Father Jouin in 1918, six years after the founding of his secret societies journal. Later, at a time when his publication of the "Protocols" was bringing him great attention, the new pope, Pius XI, honored him with a private audience. "Continue your review," the Pope told him (according to Father Jouin's own published account of this meeting), for "you are combating our mortal enemy."
There are scores of similar episodes in Mr. Kertzer's important new book, which consists of a sober and well-documented accumulation of evidence supporting his main conclusion: that for the better part of a century and a half, from the fall of Napoleon to the rise of Hitler, the church not only failed to combat anti- Semitism, but actively, knowingly, purposely contributed to it, lending it authority and respectability while honoring its most active purveyors inside the church and outside.
That conclusion, and the wealth of documentation that Mr. Kertzer has found to give it substance, make "The Popes Against the Jews" a seminal document, and one bound to be carefully scrutinized by both supporters of the thesis and skeptics. It is important to note in this sense some of the conclusions that Mr. Kertzer does not come to. The Roman Catholic Church, he states at the outset, was certainly not the only force for anti-Semitism in the world of Christianity, and it is certainly not alone responsible for the Holocaust. Racial purity was never part of church doctrine, Mr. Kertzer writes, nor was "belief in extermination as the proper solution to the `Jewish Question' " — indeed that belief, which produced the Holocaust, "went against basic Church doctrine."
Still, Mr. Kertzer's book consists of a scrupulously footnoted enumeration of the many ways in which the church tolerated, condoned, encouraged or itself expressed the full panoply of anti-Jewish prejudices that tarnish 19th- and 20th-century history. This panoply even included the persistent slander that the Jews murdered Christian children so they could use their blood for the Passover feast. It includes as well the beliefs that the Jews plotted secretly to control the world, that they were evil conspirators against the public good, that they maliciously controlled the banks and the press and that they were behind political movements like Bolshevism, seen by the church as evil.
"The church played an important role in promulgating every one of these ideas that are central to modern anti-Semitism," Mr. Kertzer writes. "Every one of them had the support of the highest church authorities, including the popes."
Mr. Kertzer begins in the early 19th century with Pius VII, who returned from exile in the wake of Napoleon's defeat in 1814 and immediately revoked the civil rights that Napoleon had granted the Jews in the Papal States, the only territories directly ruled by the church. Among the practices sanctioned by Pius VII was what amounted to the kidnapping of Jewish children — usually because somebody reported having baptized them without their parents' knowledge. Mr. Kertzer's previous book, "The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara," was about just such a case, in Bologna in 1858.
"The Popes Against the Jews" includes extraordinary passages showing papal nuncios, with the approval of the pope, working to enhance the power of the leading anti-Semitic politicians of France, Austria and Poland in the years leading up to and just after World War I. The chapter on Austria during the time of Pope Pius IX in the late 19th century makes for grimly fascinating reading. It shows the papal nuncio, Msgr. Antonio Agliardi, enthusiastically giving his support to the aggressively anti-Semitic Karl Lueger, head of the nationalist Christian Socialist party, even though the Austrian church hierarchy itself was alarmed by Lueger's extremist hate-mongering.
In another riveting piece of historical detective work, Mr. Kertzer follows the career of Msgr. Achille Ratti, the Vatican librarian dispatched to Poland by Pope Benedict XV in 1918 to report on the domestic situation there in the wake of World War I. A typical statement from Ratti's reports: "One of the most evil and strongest influences that is felt here, perhaps the strongest and the most evil, is that of the Jews."
In 1921, because of his work in Warsaw, Ratti was named archbishop of Milan, and just seven months after that, he was elected pope, becoming Pius XI, the very pope who met with the French priest Ernest Jouin and commended him for his work in combating "our mortal enemy," namely the Jews.
September 19, 2001
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
THE POPES AGAINST THE JEWS
The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism.
By David I. Kertzer.
355 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the 1920's a French priest named Ernest Jouin emerged as one of the more prominent of that European species, the professional anti- Semitic ideologue. This charming person was the first in his country to publish the classic forgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which had been concocted by the Russian police two decades earlier to blame the Jews for the Czar's problems. Earlier, he founded a publication called International Review of Secret Societies that issued steady warnings about the supposed Jewish-Masonic conspiracy to dominate the world. "From the triple viewpoint of race, of nationality, and of religion, the Jew has become the enemy of humanity," was one of many statements made by Father Jouin in his long career of Jew hatred.
It is also the kind of statement that the Vatican, according to its own examination of the historical record, is supposed to have disapproved. In 1998, a commission created by Pope John Paul II to investigate possible Vatican responsibility for the slaughter of the Jews in World War II, announced its main finding. It was that the church had made mistakes over the centuries in fomenting religious anti-Semitism but that it had always condemned anti-Semitism based on racist ideologies or political demagogy.
But the Brown University historian David I. Kertzer, given privileged access to the Vatican archives, found no such condemnation in the case of the troubling Father Jouin, or of many others who spoke of the Jews in demagogic and racial terms. On the contrary, as Mr. Kertzer reports in his new book, "The Popes Against the Jews," Pope Benedict XV seemed to go out of his way to praise Father Jouin. "We know that you have conducted your sacred ministry in an exemplary manner," he wrote to Father Jouin in 1918, six years after the founding of his secret societies journal. Later, at a time when his publication of the "Protocols" was bringing him great attention, the new pope, Pius XI, honored him with a private audience. "Continue your review," the Pope told him (according to Father Jouin's own published account of this meeting), for "you are combating our mortal enemy."
There are scores of similar episodes in Mr. Kertzer's important new book, which consists of a sober and well-documented accumulation of evidence supporting his main conclusion: that for the better part of a century and a half, from the fall of Napoleon to the rise of Hitler, the church not only failed to combat anti- Semitism, but actively, knowingly, purposely contributed to it, lending it authority and respectability while honoring its most active purveyors inside the church and outside.
That conclusion, and the wealth of documentation that Mr. Kertzer has found to give it substance, make "The Popes Against the Jews" a seminal document, and one bound to be carefully scrutinized by both supporters of the thesis and skeptics. It is important to note in this sense some of the conclusions that Mr. Kertzer does not come to. The Roman Catholic Church, he states at the outset, was certainly not the only force for anti-Semitism in the world of Christianity, and it is certainly not alone responsible for the Holocaust. Racial purity was never part of church doctrine, Mr. Kertzer writes, nor was "belief in extermination as the proper solution to the `Jewish Question' " — indeed that belief, which produced the Holocaust, "went against basic Church doctrine."
Still, Mr. Kertzer's book consists of a scrupulously footnoted enumeration of the many ways in which the church tolerated, condoned, encouraged or itself expressed the full panoply of anti-Jewish prejudices that tarnish 19th- and 20th-century history. This panoply even included the persistent slander that the Jews murdered Christian children so they could use their blood for the Passover feast. It includes as well the beliefs that the Jews plotted secretly to control the world, that they were evil conspirators against the public good, that they maliciously controlled the banks and the press and that they were behind political movements like Bolshevism, seen by the church as evil.
"The church played an important role in promulgating every one of these ideas that are central to modern anti-Semitism," Mr. Kertzer writes. "Every one of them had the support of the highest church authorities, including the popes."
Mr. Kertzer begins in the early 19th century with Pius VII, who returned from exile in the wake of Napoleon's defeat in 1814 and immediately revoked the civil rights that Napoleon had granted the Jews in the Papal States, the only territories directly ruled by the church. Among the practices sanctioned by Pius VII was what amounted to the kidnapping of Jewish children — usually because somebody reported having baptized them without their parents' knowledge. Mr. Kertzer's previous book, "The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara," was about just such a case, in Bologna in 1858.
"The Popes Against the Jews" includes extraordinary passages showing papal nuncios, with the approval of the pope, working to enhance the power of the leading anti-Semitic politicians of France, Austria and Poland in the years leading up to and just after World War I. The chapter on Austria during the time of Pope Pius IX in the late 19th century makes for grimly fascinating reading. It shows the papal nuncio, Msgr. Antonio Agliardi, enthusiastically giving his support to the aggressively anti-Semitic Karl Lueger, head of the nationalist Christian Socialist party, even though the Austrian church hierarchy itself was alarmed by Lueger's extremist hate-mongering.
In another riveting piece of historical detective work, Mr. Kertzer follows the career of Msgr. Achille Ratti, the Vatican librarian dispatched to Poland by Pope Benedict XV in 1918 to report on the domestic situation there in the wake of World War I. A typical statement from Ratti's reports: "One of the most evil and strongest influences that is felt here, perhaps the strongest and the most evil, is that of the Jews."
In 1921, because of his work in Warsaw, Ratti was named archbishop of Milan, and just seven months after that, he was elected pope, becoming Pius XI, the very pope who met with the French priest Ernest Jouin and commended him for his work in combating "our mortal enemy," namely the Jews.
