Rating: 
Summary: a blood libel
Review: James Carroll is a former Catholic priest, a novelist and the author of a prize winning, but quite awful, memoir An American Requiem, which told the story of the differences between him and his Father, a chief of Military Intelligence, during the Vietnam War. Here he's after even bigger game than his Dad and the military-industrial establishment, as he takes on the Catholic Church and Christianity itself. His essential argument is that Christianity has been defined throughout its history by its anti-Judaism, that the resulting anti-Semitism led directly to the Holocaust, and that the failure to recognize and come to terms with these facts results in a continued, though perhaps unintentional, anti-Semitic aspect of modern Christianity. Auschwitz is the climax of the story that begins at Golgotha. Just as the climax of Oedipus Rex--the king sees that he is the killer--reveals that the hubris that drove the play's action was itself the flaw that shaped the king's character, so we can already say that Auschwitz, when seen in the links of causality, reveals that the hatred of Jews has been no incidental anomaly but a central action of Christian character. Jew hatred's perversion of the Gospel message launched a history, in other words, that achieved its climax in the Holocaust, an epiphany presented so starkly it can no longer be denied. We shall see how defenders of the Church take pains to distinguish between "anti-Judaism" and "antisemitism"; between Christian Jew-hatred as a "necessary but sufficient" cause of the Holocaust; between the "sins of the children" and the sinlessness of the Church as such. These distinctions become meaningless before the core truth of this history : Because the hatred of Jews had been made holy, it became lethal. The most sacred "thinking and acting" of the Church as such must at last be called into question. Let me not dither about this : James Carroll is entitled to his opposition to the Catholic Church but the views he expresses in this book are deranged. ...
Rating:
Summary: Primary sources
Review: The work does not meet the minimal requirements for a serious work of history: use of primary sources, fair citation of texts, attention to counter-evidence. Carroll points out (rightly) that some Catholics in the past engaged in violent anti-Semitic activities. The massacres perpetrated by a small group of Crusaders is a valid case in point. But he never proves his point that these people did such violence because of Church teaching. In fact, the Church (starting with the popes) frequently and solemnly condemned such violence. Here, for example, is what Pope Gregory IX said in 1255: "Certain of the clergy, and princes, nobles and great lords of your cities and dioceses have falsely devised certain godless plans against the Jews, unjustly depriving them by force of their property and approrpiating it themselves....In their malice they ascribe every murder, wherever it happens, to the Jews....They oppress the Jews by starvation, by imprisonment, and by every kind of torture. They afflict them with every kind of punishment, even resorting to the death penalty. As a result, the Jews, although living under Christian princes, are in a worse plight than were their ancestors in the land of the Pharaohs....We order you to behanve toward them in a friendly and sympathetic manner. Wherever any unjust attacks are pereptrated against them, redress their injuries. Do not permit them to suffer such persecutions in the future." A noble denunciation of anti-Semitism by the papacy, but don't look for it in Carroll.
Rating:
Summary: Unreliable
Review: This biased history of the Church's attitude toward Judaism is completely unreliable. It is really astonishing how any reader could take this unscholarly piece of anti-Catholicism by an ex-priest seriously. For some excellent reviews of the book, see Eugene Fisher in America and Robert Wilken in Commonweal.
Rating:
Summary: Turgid
Review: What is this book? Much of it is Carroll's endless account of his fight with his father over the Vietnam War. He then leaps from this family quarrel to assert that the relationship of Judaism and Christianity is just like his own stormy relationship with his father. The endless book then cuts historical evidence down to suit this bizarre analogy. And then there's the end, which has nothing to do with Israel. It's his little plan for Vatican III, that will give us a dreary, trendy little church right out of the editorial pages of the National Catholic Reporter. How can anyone take this silliness seriously?
Rating: 
Summary: Readers' Denial Perpetuates Problem
Review: What is extraordinary to me is that some reviewers perpetuate the problem of denial of this history of Christian anti semitism. Christian defensiveness must give way to an honest and heartfelt recognition of what has happened. Otherwise the "sin" continues! Some readers use the term "New Age" as a way to whip James Carroll...so very odd a response to such compelling material...more reflective of their biaises than of his positions.
Rating:
Summary: Anti-Jewish
Review: As professional historians (like Robert Wilken) have argued, this sad, angry book is not serious history. Many reviewers have rightly condemned the book for its obvious anti-Catholic bias. But I was surprised and disturbed by the anti-Jewish polemic engaged in by the author. If we take him seriously, we would have to get rid of the idea of God's chosen people, of redemption, of the inspired nature of the Torah. By the end of this overheated book, the author seems to be arguing that Jews, Christians, and Moslems can survive, as long as they give up any claim to exclusive truth. But there is no Judaism, Christianity, and Islam without such claims.
Rating:
Summary: Tedious
Review: There is a serious problem of anti-Semitism in Christian history. But this book is so dishonest in its use of sources, so bitter in its polemic, and so focused on the author's bizarre fight with his father that is useless as an exploration of this issue. For a much more honest study of Catholic attitudes toward Judaism, read Edward Flannery's The Anguish of the Jews.
Rating:
Summary: Thumbs down
Review: Sorry, Jim, but the antidote to anti-Semitism is not anti-Catholicism, especially the smug, tony anti-Catholicism triumphant in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Paging Pius XII
Review: To understand the purpose of the book, you should start with the last chapters. Carroll makes clear what his purpose is: the destruction of the Catholic Church's position on doctrine and ethics. We're beyond the tired debate on birth control and celibacy here. He throws out Christ as redeemer and throws out any idea of divine revelation in Judaism or Christianity. What's left is New Age anti-Catholicism: Cher with footnotes.
Rating: 
Summary: Important Discussion What isChrisitanity in night of Shoah?
Review: Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History by James Carroll In this complex, personal and yet deeply thought attempt to respond to the core of Anti-Semitism which is NT anti-Judaism within the long night of Shoah, Carroll struggles with the complexity of history and identity and the need to deeply repent (without consolations of redemptive suffering) the profound injustice of Christianity that asserts its own reason for being in the rejections of Judaism. It is odd how people find the discomfort this book attempts to address so threatening that some reviewer's think that some jingoistic appeals to various Bishop's condemnations to pogroms throughout the Churches history cannot address the deeper core of how Christianity (as well as Judaism and Islam) needs to deeply reconsider normative visions of their respective faiths and identity to approach the Unity of the God to which they all turn to worship. Carroll attempts to address these issues well. His insights are often too editorializing but given the need to invent more sophisticated harmless and non-antagonistic religious messages within that do not hurt humanity that is not within and is without any of their saving message, this work moves in the right direction by considering these issues. Conservatives within Catholicism may not understand that ignoring the wider non-Christian world is no longer a luxury they can afford without seriously compromising the truth of their Faith. At least Carroll has made an attempt to move the discussion along.
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