Wellsprings of Scorn

By EUGENE L. POGANY

THE POPES AGAINST THE JEWS
The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism
By David I. Kertzer.
355 pages. Knopf. $27.95.

David I. Kertzer was surprised by a number of things in the course of writing and speaking about his new book, The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism.

The first surprise came during his research in the Vatican's heretofore-secret Inquisition archives. There he discovered that well into the twentieth century, authoritative Catholic clerics forcefully promoted the medieval blood libel against the Jews, namely that Jews were, in their presumed hatred of Christians, commanded by the Talmud to kill Christian children, drain and use their blood to make Passover matzah. During the Middle Ages, popes sometimes tried to limit the excesses of overzealous and murderously outraged Christian populations, but they never rejected the basic truthfulness of such claims, and even praised and blessed the efforts of those who publicly spread them. That such attitudes lasted into the twentieth century was a disheartening and shocking to Kertzer.

The Popes Against the Jews is an examination of the manner in which hardened, traditionally anti-Semitic attitudes, beliefs and actions of Roman Catholic popes during much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contributed to the hatred that made the Holocaust possible, as well as to the inadequate responsiveness of the Church to the plight of the Jews during those years. David Kertzer, an eminent Brown University historian, is author of The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, about the scandalous kidnapping of a secretly baptized Jewish boy in nineteenth century Italy and his subsequently being raised as a Catholic by Pope Pius IX himself, in the midst of furious, worldwide protests was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Kertzer's point of departure in his present book is the end of the Napoleonic era in 1814 when the exiled Pope Pius VII returned to retake possession of the Papal States, predecessors to modern Italy. Although a small number of forward looking members of the Roman curia knew that the Church could not ignore the coming of modernity and simply reinforce oppressive laws of segregation and degradation against the Jews, conservative elements won out. Throughout the Papal States, Jews were re-confined to dismal ghettos, prohibited from engaging in any form of commerce with Christians, subjected to forced sermons on the Christian Sabbath, degraded during Christian carnivals and festivals, and perhaps most insidiously, were taken from their homes and forced to lead Catholic lives if Christians had ever secretly or casually sprinkled water on their heads and recited the sacred baptismal incantation. Then, in 1840, a Capuchin monk disappeared from his home in Damascus and Jews were again suspected of murdering him and draining his blood for ritual purposes. Several Jews, including the rabbi of the community, were tortured into confessing. In spite of vocal protests from many quarters of Europe, the Vatican and Italian Catholic newspapers overseen by the pope and his secretariat held firmly to the belief in the Jews' guilt. The enthusiastic support of Pope Gregory XVI and subsequent popes for this cause was another shock to Kertzer.

In 1848, revolution rocked European nations, as well as the Papal States. Then reigning Pope Pius IX was driven into exile and papal rule was declared at an end. Whereas Pius had relaxed some of the Church strictures against the Jews prior to these revolutionary times, when, with the help of French and Austrian armies, he finally returned to Rome in 1850 as re-instituted head of the Church, he was a changed man and would set the course of church history for many decades to come. Pius, and eventually the Church itself, gave way to a siege mentality, becoming what he called a "prisoner in the Vatican," given to constant vigilance and rage at the Jewish "dogs"--the hidden enemy of Christianity, whom he suspected of planning a worldwide conspiracy. All of this occurred with the cracking of God's citadel in the Holy City in the midst of emerging nationalism, liberalism and modern industrialization in which the Jews, in other parts of Europe, were participating and from which small segments of them greatly benefited socially and financially. The major implication of Kertzer's book is that all of the recent controversy over the role of the Church in general and Pope Pius XII in particular during the Holocaust is beside the point. The Church and a number of closely affiliated and Vatican-controlled Catholic newspapers set the stage for the Holocaust by its intemperate, and--to my own way of thinking--nearly delusional anti-Semitic beliefs and support of anti-Semitic political parties, all in its efforts to retain its religious authority long after its temporal power had been eroded by modern life and politics. The Jews, liberated from their nineteenth century ghettos, were as if shot from a cannon--an intelligent and ambitious people on the ascendancy and at home in a modern world which only served to threaten the traditional authority of the Catholic Church. Pius XII eventually lived and functioned within that unbroken tradition of anti-modernity and high anxiety over the church's crumbling ecclesiastical dynasty on earth. According to Kertzer, the stage was set for the Holocaust long before Pius XII ascended to the seat of St. Peter in 1939.

Another unsettling surprise to David Kerzter was not only the shrill criticism and condemnation he has received from Catholic circles, (William F. Buckley, Jr., stated Kertzer, called for the excommunication of Catholic author, Gary Wills, who wrote a positive review of the book in the New York Times,) but also the dismissive attitude of some Jewish historians. Marc Saperstein, for example, wrote in the important Catholic journal, Commonweal, that some of Kertzer's otherwise sober analysis was flawed and polemical, especially in regard to his assertion that nineteenth century papal attitudes and Catholic periodicals were the wellsprings of the scorn that created the Holocaust.

As well, following the September 11th tragedy, an important panel discussion of The Popes Against the Jews, scheduled to be held at NYU's Bronfman Center for Jewish Studies, was canceled, apparently because of the Jewish community's hesitancy to gain greater visibility for Jews at such an untimely and grievous moment when the nation was in need of ecumenical unity. The panel discussion was held, nevertheless, at a more "neutral" venue. Kertzer felt the cancellation at NYU was a misguided attempt to foster a false sense of unity and only unnecessarily postpone an unavoidable and necessary historical discourse.

The early sensitivity of readers of David Kertzer's important book is perhaps understandable given the rawness of our collective emotions surrounding the events of September 11. However, The Pope Against the Jews is a book with which historians and scholars of the Church will eventually have to reckon. While admittedly untimely and provocative to Catholics and, to not a small degree, upsetting to Jews, this book broadens the historical frame of reference, the lens through which to view more clearly this magnificent bastion of hope and dignity for so many throughout history, one that has more recently suffered the challenges and pressures inevitably encountered by any and all persons, groups and institutions to accept change, admit fallibility and resist the temptation to blame its "enemies" for its misfortunes. Failure to meet these challenges inexorably sets into motion devastating consequences.