Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about the violent and tragic history of the Jews in a developing Christian Europe. This is a monumental work with an epiphany in every chapter. It is an outstanding scholarly effort and I thank and applaud Mr. Carroll for the years of effort he devoted to bringing it to us. The book is long and it is both an historical account and a personal quest for truth and meaning. As a child, the author was raised by a very devout Irish Catholic mother, who imbued him with a deep love of the Church and its teachings. Ultimately he became a Catholic priest. However, as he learned more history and, in particular, as he studied the events that led up to the slaughter of almost 6,000,000 European Jews under the leadership of Nazi Germany, with barely a word of opposition by the Catholic Church, he came to question many of his fundamental understandings about the Church. How could it happen? What can the past tell us? What should we do for the future? In this great work, Mr. Carroll takes us from the life and death of Christ through the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the development of ghettos throughout Europe, the Nazi destruction, the healing efforts of Pope John XXIII, and down to his hope for a Vatican III conference that will, perhaps, take positive steps to eliminate some of the root causes of Christian-Jewish strife. The book is not an easy read. It starts as an essay on the Carmelite Cross at Auschwitz and then goes into his personal story. Then it turns into an interesting, though scholarly, footnoted historical study. He includes his personal observations and opinions on many historical points, which help to give meaning and context to the events described. However, it is necessary for the reader to be analytical and evaluative, separating fact from opinion, and history from personal quest. I had no trouble doing this, and in fact I gained a sense of Carroll's anguish over his efforts to reconcile his early faith with his more mature knowledge of the real world. On the other hand, if he wishes to gain greater readership, and perhaps have his book used as a college text, I would recommend that Mr. Carroll give us an edited and abridged version, perhaps with less emphasis on his personal quest. Still, for a person who is interested in the subject, the book is definitely worth reading. As I write this, I note that there are almost 300 reviews of this book. Of these, about 200 are extremely positive and almost 100 are extremely negative. I think this is a reflection of the passion that this subject arouses in many people. The most negative criticism is that the author has selectively included or excluded data to make his points. I urge you not to be put off by these negative comments. Any person who attempts to write a scholarly history must sift through a huge amount of data and decide what to include and what to emphasize. For his part, Carroll attempts to note and explain conflicting statements in some of the key Church pronouncements regarding the Jews. Other people, with other views, may choose different things to include and different points of emphasis. One must always read history (including, perhaps, the Bible) with a critical eye.

"Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History" by James Carroll is a deeply insightful and thought-provoking examination of the complex relationship between the Catholic Church and Judaism throughout history. Carroll meticulously traces this relationship from its origins in the early Church to its profound impacts on religious and social dynamics today. What makes Carroll's work compelling is his ability to blend historical scholarship with personal narrative and moral inquiry. He confronts uncomfortable truths about anti-Semitism within Christian history while also highlighting moments of dialogue and reconciliation. This nuanced approach challenges readers to reflect on the broader implications of religious intolerance and the quest for understanding across faith traditions. The book's strength lies in Carroll's engaging writing style and his commitment to uncovering lesser-known aspects of Church history. From the Council of Nicaea to the Vatican II reforms, each chapter offers a deep dive into pivotal moments that shaped Christian-Jewish relations. For anyone interested in the intersection of religion, history, and ethics, "Constantine's Sword" is an essential and enlightening read that leaves a lasting impression. Highly recommended.

First the "flaw": other reviewers have noted that interjecting his own personal religious journey is off-putting and I agree that it frequently is, but not always. I have always liked James Carroll's works and have read a lot of them. He and I share, in limited part, a similar background: my parents were "old school" Irish Catholics, and, while I enjoyed the company of the fair sex too much to consider the seminary, I was educated in high school and college by the Jesuits, for which I have always been very, very grateful. It was a superb process for those who wanted to study. Like him, I began to question the validity of the religion in which I had been raised, but a lawyer's lot does not often permit in depth study of subjects other than the law, so my questions remained that until health matters forced retirement about three years ago. Then books like De Rosa's "Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy", Morris' "American Catholic", "Unholy Trinity" by Aarons & Loftus, "Papal Sin" by Wills and "Hitler's Pope" by Cornwell led me to the understanding that there was a deep and established evil in Catholicism, especially in its "heirarchy". I was conflicted by the profound goodness of the Christian message to love one another in the context of a corrupt messenger - the Church. I had started Carroll's book, but set it aside to pursue Middle Eastern study in the light of September 11. So it slipped from mind for a while until I returned to it after the pederast priest scandal re-kindled my anger at the hypocrisy of Church politics.I was both pleased and surprised to find my questions concerning the Christian message vs Catholic corruption answered in the context of historical analysis. Yes, this books is concerned with determining why Catholicism (and other Christian faiths) have demonstrated consistent anti-semitism over the centuries, but for me, the satisfaction was derived from understanding how an essentially medieval institution got to be that way, and why it refuses to change. I was able to see how this medieval mind set was responsible, through the 4th Lateran Council (1215 CE), for the establishment of doctrine which the Church still clings to today, in the face of clear and known error in its bases, and how that docrine led to such truly monstrous events as the Crusades and the Inquisition. Carroll is informed and lucid in showing how fears for the survival of an institution based on beliefs premised on medieval concepts in the light of scientific, philosophical and political change caused a frightened Pope Pius IX to promulgate the concept of papal infallibility. And he, at least, has a vision of a changed Church coming into harmony with modern times, although I am far less sanguine about the possibilty of meaningful change in an institution whose well established power base is cemented into middle ages philosophical concepts. I do agree wholeheartedly with his conclusion that Christ's purpose was revelation of God's message to love one another, rather than salvation. This is no book for "pray, pay and obey" Catholics, but for those who, like Carroll and me, have become disenchanted by that "old time religion", it provides accurate, although deeply troubling answers to questions about why things are as they are. I did not mind sharing Carroll's own quest, because it provided some help as to how he internalized what he learned, but a little less of this distraction from the historical analysis would have been better for this reader. This is a well researched and well written book, and further illustrates the frequently upsetting rightness of the concept that "the truth shall set you free".

Given the very different directions we come from - James Carroll is an Irish-American baby boomer, a former priest and practicing Catholic; I'm a Jewish atheist from Israel, born after Carroll's departure from the clergy - it is hardly surprising that I disagree with him somewhat. More interesting is the nature of my disagreements with the arguments of "Constantine's Sword", Carroll's brilliant, personal, wide-scoped travelogue through 2 thousand years of Jewish-Christian relations: I find myself considerably less critical of the Catholic Church than Carroll is. I think the difference is that Carroll, the Christian, sees the Church as the "mystical body of Christ", a religion whose purpose is to be true to the teaching of Love that he believes Jesus had preached. When the Church fails to reach Carroll's high standards, he condemns it. On the other hand, as a secularist, I see the Catholic Church as a thoroughly human institution, to be judged not against the absolute standard of the Prince of Peace, but against comparable, contemporary institutions. In perspective, throughout history, the Catholic Church had been a protector of Judaism and of Jewish people; its treatment of the Jews had been -relatively- benign. Only with the rise of the Enlightment, and with the widespread acceptance of the Rights of Man, can we see in the Church an oppressor of the Jews. Its failure to the Jews - so spectacularly presented in the Silence of Pius XII during the Holocaust - was caused not so much by anti-Semitism as by anti-Modernism. Until recently, the Church had been "on the wrong side of history" - together with the reactionary forces and against the Enlightment-era liberal ideas and groups it had denounced as "Americanism". Carroll's history goes, from Jesus Christ to the Cross in Auschwitz. He focuses on places where "the past might have gone another way" (p. 63). The first of these is the split between Judaism and Christianity, symbolized by the sealing of the New Testament and of the Jewish Mishnah. "The siblings [Judaism and Christianity] moved from mere rivalry to open hostility - a fight over the vision that... could have united them" (p. 148). Thus Judaism and Jesus movement should never have parted ways. I disagree. There is no, and never has been, place for Jesus within the confines of Judaism, no more than there was a place in Christianity for Joseph Smith. Any religion, after its foundation stage, is closed to further Revelation. Within Judaism, Jesus could never have been more than an obscure Rabbi. As a major prophet, let alone as God incarnated, Jesus had to be the center of a new religion. The second "decisive turn" of the history is the Christianization of the Roman Empire by Constantine. With Christianity in power, its triumphant supersessionist instinct - seeing itself as the real Israel, and the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies - became dominant, and forever after governed the treatment of Jews in Christendom - they were allowed to live, but not to prosper. (pp. 217-219). But as Carroll acknowledges, there is another side to this story. As the Augustinian approach to the Jews triumphed over extreme views promoted by the likes of John Chrysostom and Ambrose, the Jews received a part, though secondary, in the Christian scheme of things. Given the politics of the time, a more tolerant approach is unthinkable. The entire logic of the religious unification of the Roman Empire was to create a homogenous state. For that, religion pluralism would have been anathema. But it is not beyond the realms of possibility to imagine a unifier Emperor who was a follower of Mithra, rather then of Christ. Had Mithraism become the dominant religion of the Western World, Judaism would not have survived. Like the Pagans, Jews would have been persecuted and forced to convert. Only under Christianity, with its roots in Judaism, could Jews hope to find a niche for themselves. Fast forward a thousand years or so, and we have the Crusades, Blood Libels, and the Inquisition. Carroll sees the Church's fault in all of these; particularly, he laments the acceptance of Anselm's theology of God-becoming-man, making a universal claim for Christianity and focusing on Jesus' death; here the untaken road is the one advocated by Peter Abelard, who preached a Gospel of Love and believed that Jews were also saved (p. 295). We'll return to the question of exclusivity, but for now let us notice that although the Church had initiated the Crusades, it opposed the attacks on the Jews carried out by the Crusaders. The Catholic Church initiated neither the Inquisition, the Deportation of the Jews, nor rounding them up in Ghettos (It did use these methods at times, but only after other European Kingdoms). Christian Anti-Judaism probably had something to do with these prosecutions, but the dismal record of mankind suggests, alas, that even without religious motives, people are quite capable of atrocities. I fully support Carroll's accusations of the Church during the Modern Era, though; The Catholic Church had never dismantled the Roman Ghetto, long after Ghettos were dismantled throughout Europe. In France, Catholics were a major force behind the attacks on Captain Dreyfus. And during the Second World War, Pius XII's silence simply cannot be excused. Carroll ends with a further turning point: A future one. His "Call for a Vatican III", a Congress of all the Catholic Bishops, like the ones from the 1870s and the 1960s, to focus on Catholic-Jewish Relations. Carroll desires two major changes in the Church: the Renunciation of the dogma of Papal Infallibility, and the rejection of the Church's claims of exclusivity. Carroll correctly notices that exclusivity is inherently intolerant. The Church's view of itself as the "Absolute religion" (p.591) is assuming its superiority over other points of view, whether Jewish, Protestant or Atheist. Carroll wants the Church to renounce these "Universalist" claims, and follow the pluralistic theology of the likes of Abelard and Nicholaus of Cusa (p. 593). But there is a reason for the Church's rejection of Nicholaus and Abelard's teaching, and it involves a word that is hard to find in the 600 odd pages of Constantine's Sword: Mission. The Church's instinct, from the very moment Paul started preaching, are to tell the Gospel, literary the "Good News". If there is no advantage to Christianity over other religions, what possible justification can the Church have for its missionary effort? If Catholicism is not, in some sense, "better", "truer" or "more complete" then other religions, why would anyone seek to join it, and how can the Church be dedicated to the task of convincing others, in the Zero Sum game of religious identity, to join in? The Missionary instinct is at the very core of Christian values: The Church could not possibly deny it. Carroll's treatment is also blind to the realpolitiks of the Church itself. The majority of its constitution is considerably less liberal then Carroll. Consider that a sizable group of Catholics left the Church following the mild reforms of Vatican II. Imagine the reaction to the Church's acceptance that it has a "flawed Gospel" (p. 567), that some of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels were actually put there by flawed, anti-Semitic first and second century Church fathers! That is not to say that there is nothing the Church could do to ameliorate its relations to the Jews and to repent for its conduct. The Church could stop the Canonization process of Pius XII, who was not "Hitler's Pope", but was no saint, either. It could excommunicate Hitler, 60 odd years after the fact, but better late then never*. And it could, and should, dismantle the Cross in Auschwitz, where it is certainly inappropriate. In writing these reviews, I often find myself frustrated at Amazon's rating system. Regularly, what I wish to communicate about a work is in the text of the review, not in the number of stars I give to it. This is an exception - what I'd like the reader to learn from this review is not my opinions on it, but that Carroll has written a thoughtful, compelling, fascinating, human book. *22 June 2009 Update: One of the learned commentators has pointed out that, according to Catholic teachings, only the living can be excomunicated. He has also cited the Catholic Encyclopaedia to that effect.

Constantine became emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire partly through marriage; he attacked the Western half and killed all other possible heirs to any part of the Empire, including a boy. It was a time when Jewish-Christian sects had splintered into many divisive factions over the course of 300 years. Also, barbarian hordes rimmed the Empire, some blending partial new-sect ideas into their pagan ones. Their main heritage pagan symbol was a stylized cross probably more prevalent among them in the East as icon than it was among the Jewish-Christians in the West. Constantine claimed he saw a vision of a stylized cross that held meaning for both these enlarging populations in southern Europe that he needed to tame. He called the Council of Nicea to meld all Jewish-Christian sects into one. Some invitees never showed up, resisting him. It took 4 no-doubt raucous meetings for the majority to separate themselves further from Judaism, which had given the Roman Empire more trouble than any other people or ideology (cf Hadrian's Holocaust). Nicea 4 retained most of the Hebrew Bible, against the wishes of the Marcionites. They separated Easter from Passover, proclaimed Sunday the Sabbath rather than Saturday (named after the sun, which Constantine worshipped), proscribed Jews as secondary citizens to Christians, may have declared Jewish-Christian synagogues churches, or the change had begun earlier and he solidified it. Constantine himself never became a practicing Christian, although his mother was a Jewish-Christian of possible semi-Pauline leaning that the Ebionites, among others, contested. James Carroll, an ex-priest, explores these landmark anti-Semitic events that increased over the ages as de-Judaizing indoctrination. He omits the bitter effect the Roman-Jewish wars had on Rome, Roman cultural cruelty and Hadrian's Holocaust. He focuses on Constantinian deJudaizing and how it insidiously grew into indoctrinated hate thy neighbor, then ghettoes and then Hitlerian rant and mass murder. This book is the most informative and panoramic of a progressive movement among Christian clergy to exercise free inquiry and opinion about the Church and its relations with the Jews (which have improved enormously from just such criticism). For that, and its patient and civil presentation, this book deserves 5 stars. It is a book of conscience. --As for Eusebius, cited by one reviewer, he was Constantine's Goebbels, a propagandist more than a real historian. The known facts of Nicea and its aftermath speak for themselves. --Al Sundel

I read samples of many books like this which containe one narrative or another. What they don't contain are citations to authority which actual facts. They are not better than reading a good novel. This books, on the other hand, was meticulously researched and contains literally hundreds if not over a thousand citations to supporting documentation. Consequently, this book speaks actual truth to the antisemitism of the Catholic Church which exists to this day with the pronouncements of Pope Francis against Israel. This seems strange since Argentina is home to many Jews who live peacefully with the rest of the population.

Traditional Catholics will detest "Constantine's Sword". It challenges the Roman Catholic Church's traditional views of Jews going back to the early Fathers of the Church, and it suggests that the Church's attitude towards Jews is morally bankrupt. I cannot vouch for the author's scholarship, but his arguments are cogent, compelling, and have the ring of truth to them. For Catholics, and by extension, the Church itself, to treat Mr. Carroll as an apostate and a renagade does the Church no service. The Church must deal with its history, and no amount of 'spin' will change the fact that it was the primary instigator for the sorry history that European Jews endured for the past two millenia. Like Russia and the United States dealing with toxic nuclear waste left over from the Cold War, now that Communism has evaporated as a political and social threat, the Roman Catholic Church will have to deal with the toxic effects of its own response to threats to its position, whether doctrinal, material, or spiritual. The time has long since passed when the Church was the organizing principle around which Western Civilization coalesced. The Church's former monopoly on learning evaporated, as has its ability to influence government action within the industrialized world. Now that Communism is dead in Eastern Europe, issues that diminished the status of the Church in the United States and in Western Europe, including a refusal to adhere to Church teachings (viz, contraception and abortion) will likely propel the Church down the same road as before. Make no mistake, the Holocaust is the signal event of the Twentieth Century, and nobody escapes responsibility for what happened at Auschwitz and elsewhere. The Church has implicitly invoked the 'Big Tobacco' defense to shift responsibility away from itself, by arguing that individual Christians were to blame, and by highlighting its minimal efforts to respond to the tragedy that was unfolding under its nose. Like O.J. Simpson proclaiming his innocence on TV talk shows, this will get the Church nowhere. Mr. Carroll's book reads like a Grand Jury indictment, and in doing so, he shatters what remaining moral authority the Church has left. For defenders of the Church to argue what Pius XII did or did not do ignores the central thesis that Mr. Carroll makes, that the history of the Church, and attitudes prevailing among Churchmen made the Holocaust not only possible, but inevitable when a government came along that was intent on acting on those attitudes. On the other hand, Mr. Carroll goes out on a limb when he posits a new council which he refers to as Vatican III. Such a council is no more likely to occur than a new Contitutional Convention here in the United States. Mr. Carroll's agenda items would in fact create an entirely new church from the one he now belongs to. Certainly the Church is not going to abandon discipline and habits of mind that go back to the end of the Roman Empire, merely because as a factual matter, its doctrines are historically inaccurate, and in some respects, morally repugnant to non-Catholics. Only the Church can decide whether regaining its self-respect is worth the pain and uncertainty of change, and to that extent Mr. Carroll makes a most valuable contribution to the discussion.

This book is one man's attempt to reconcile his deeply felt Catholic beliefs with what he knows to be true about the Chursh's history of persecution of the Jews. The book is brave and (for the most part) well written. Carroll provides detailed evidence of the history of the relations between the Roman church and the Jews. He looks at most aspects of this relationship unflinchingly. The book is full of detailed, and supported, narratives of theological arguments within the Church, as well as with personal reminiscences which show how the attitudes of the Chursh played out in one person's life. However, I still find the book troubling. As one of the negative reviews of this book points out, the author frequently uses the phrase "If only...". Carroll recounts several "theological turning points" where the losing side was supporting a theology which would have moved the Catholic Church in a different direction regarding its dogma on the topic of Jews. He seems to be saying that had the Church made a different choice at any one of these points, it could have simultaneously been the same Church he loves so much and ALSO have avoided much of its tainted relationship with Jews and Judaism. I disagree. Some of these "if only..." moments are such a radical departure from the path that history actually followed that it is impossible to believe that a different choice would have left Catholic dogma unchanged-except-for-this-one-little-thing. Carroll is in the difficult position of loving a religion which he can see clearly has persecuted and destroyed many innocent people. He is unwilling to reject the religion, and this book grows out of his desire to somehow reconcile a clear-eyed view of the past with a deep and abiding love for most parts of the present-day Church. As a result, he fails to fully grasp why the current's Pope's statements on the Jews and the Holocasut have not fully satisfied many outsiders. Moreover, he suggests adjustments to the present-day liturgy which will eliminate the anti-Jewish content, without adeqautely confronting how these changes will fundamentally alter the underlying narrative on which the beliefs of the Roman Catholic chursh are based. From my perspective (as a non-Catholic), this book looks like a thorough indictment of some of the most crucial dogmas of the Church, followed by a prescription for change which does not adeqautely account for the effects of such change. A Church which changed itself in the ways Carroll recommends would be radically different than the Church that exists today. Whether that's a good thing or not, I do not know. But I do know that what he proposes is a deeper change than he seems able to recognize.