A History of Catholic Antisemitism : The Dark Side of the Church

The search for truth is imperative if Catholics and Jews are to be reconciled. This search requires us to remember the bitterest facts. Without memory, past evils will replicate themselves in new forms. Without memory, we cannot complete a healing process that requires us to understand the dark side of things we cherish. Without memory, there can be no solid foundation for a compassionate and productive relationship between Catholics and Jews, in which human similarities override human differences. As the Ba'al Shem Tov has indicated, without memory there can be no redemption. Catholic Antisemitism I t is almost impossible to find examples of antisemitism that are exclusively racial, economic, or political, and free of religious configuration. The infamous, secular, and "racial" Nuremberg Laws of 1935, for example, employed the religious affiliation of Jews in order to identify them for discrimination. What else could they do? There is no such thing as race and so there was no authentic scientific way to detect the racial nature of a Jew. 1 So the Nazis had to resort to using birth and baptismal records to establish who was a Jew, who was not. They checked seven records: four grandparents, two parents, and the person him or herself.Many lay Catholics and widely respected Catholic writers still hesitate to come to grips with the two millennia of Catholic antisemitism that not only prepared Catholics to perceive Jews in a negative way but also primed them to accept the anti-Jewish aspects of secular ideas-and to take action on them. "Catholic," as distinguished from "Orthodox" and "Protestant," refers to those Christians in communion with the Holy See of Rome, to the whole ecclesiastical structure of the Church, and to the popes at the top of an extensive episcopal hierarchy. 2 "Catholic antisemitism" refers to the anti-Jewish elements in the theology of the Church Fathers, both Latin and Greek, the pronouncements and actions of the papacy and Catholic orders, the teachings and actions of clerics, the content of canon law, the laws and behaviors of secular Catholic princes, as well as the works and behaviors of secular Catholic faithfuls, including writers and artists. This definition does not deny that some Catholics have thought positively of, and acted benificently toward, Jews-especially since Nostra Aetate in 1965 offered official sanction to such humane and philosemitic behaviors. Nor does it deny that official Church doctrine, based on St. Augustine, regarded the Jews as suffering witnesses, not to be murdered-though Catholics violated this restriction time and again. But until 1965, the Catholic Church's "dark side" in regard to the Jews, Jewishness, and Judaism was predominant.According to some authors, the Church's early hostility to Jews grew out of a Gentile antisemitism that converted pagans brought into the Church. 3 These writers do not take into account the positive pagan attitudes, pagan indifference toward Jews, or the qualitative differences between pagan and early Catholic antisemitism. Of the approximately 25 percent of pagan writers who disliked the Jews, almost all of them felt Jews were an annoying people who ate differently, wasted time on the Sabbath, believed in a ridiculous invisible God, and so forth. 4 But the earliest and strongest Catholic charge against the Jews was "Christ-killer" and the charge exploded beyond Jesus of Nazareth's generation of Jews when Catholics cited holy writ: "Let his blood be on our heads and the heads of our children" (Matt. 27:25).Other authors argue that Christianity taught contempt of Jews only during the medieval period and that modern antisemitism is essentially secular. Such writers find no definite connecting link or continuity between Christian antisemitism and Nazism. 5 Still other scholars dismiss the continuing power of Catholic antisemitism; instead, they believe that modern antisemitism originated in the "secular" Enlightenment period. 6 Robert Wistrich argued that if modern Catholics were antisemitic, then Jews would never have been granted any civil rights or other freedoms in modern Christian society. Wistrich assumed that Christian antisemitism was unambiguous and could not be hidden, disguised, or modified, and he ignored the fact that many Catholics based their behavior on St. Augustine's Witness-People dictum that all Jews were responsible for killing Christ but should be treated like Cain, that is, not murdered but made to suffer as living witnesses to their "crime." Wistrich also observed that Hitler's "either-or" policy of destruction of the Jews did not reflect the essential beliefs of Catholic orthodoxy but followed instead the path of Catholic heresy. 7 But Catholic anti-Jewishness has been the predominant position on the Jews, as this book will show, not the product of heterodoxy. Michael Marrus believes that the causes of the Holocaust have no roots earlier than the nineteenth century. In discussing Uriel Tal's analysis of nineteenth-century antisemitism, for example, Marrus misses Tal's point that even when racist antisemitism is theoretically anti-Catholic, it involves crucial elements of Catholic beliefs and of Catholic culture. Marrus mentions Peter Satan, whose goal is to murder Christ, "the light of the world." 79 In John's Gospel, the Pharisees, scribes, and priests of the Synoptic Gospels have now become "the Jews," all of whom seem to be enemies of Christ, indeed, veritable Antichrists. 80 Two later professions of faith, written specifically for Jewish converts to Christianity, contain a mention of the Antichrist as well: "Above all I renounce Antichrist whom all the Jews await." 81 The early second-century Apostolic Father, St. Polycarp of Smyrna, wrote to the church at Phillipi that "[t]o deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is to be Antichrist [,] to be of the devil." 82 Early Catholic Creeds and Liturgy To fight off pagan opponents and heretics, the Church claimed to revere Jewish Scriptures and traditions, which it replicated in such Catholic practices as the priesthood, church discipline, fasting, and the keeping of the Sabbath (Lord's Day). 83 But once Christianity was ensconced as the official religion of the Roman Empire, in the fourth century, the Church openly claimed the inheritance of God's promises, which were initially promised to the Jews, and carried out a full-blown theological and political attack on the Jews. The existence of Judaizing Catholics and the flourishing of Jewish civilization helped convince the Church to create anti-Jewish creeds and liturgy as essential to the faith. 84 The rites that converted pagans into Catholics were replete with anti-Jewish invective. The early Apostles' Creed emphasized that the true Messiah was Jesus Christ, whom the Jews had rejected and murdered. As St. Cyril of Jerusalem explained, the Creed was directed not at pagans, who did not believe in the coming of any Messiah, but at the Jews. 85 A sermon St. Augustine preached to converts being trained in Catholic doctrine (catechumens) is typical of sermons based on the Creed. St. Augustine believed it important to set the catechumens straight about the Jews from the beginning. He began by focusing on the importance of the catechism itself: "Receive, my Children, the Rule of Faith. . . . Write it in your heart, and say it to yourselves daily; even before you go to sleep, before you go out, arm yourself in your Creed." 86 He then described Christ's Passion in a dramatically anti-Jewish fashion: "The end of the Lord has come. It was the Jews who held him; the Jews who insulted him; the Jews who bound him; the Jews who crowned him with thorns; who soiled him with their spit; who whipped him; who ridiculed him; who hung him on the cross; who stabbed his body with their spears." 87 Jules Isaac has commented, "What a text! What an exegesis! It is a vivid model for the Christian literature, art, and teaching to come." 88 Isaac might have Pagans and Early Catholics 17 Pagans and Early Catholics 21 CHAPTER 2 Value Inversion and Vilification Don't you realize, if the Jewish rites are holy and venerable, our way of life must be false.St. John Chrysostom, Adversus Judaeos M ost ancient peoples, both Jews and Gentiles, regarded crucifixion as demeaning. But the followers of Christ converted the "scandal of the Cross" into an act of metaphysical and escatological importance. An apparently meaningless execution in the political life of the Roman Empire and Judean politics became, for Christians, the most meaningful act in history, because Jesus's death would lead to his resurrection and potentially to eternal life for all the faithful. 1 The Jews claimed to have discovered a spiritual God who they believed created all humanity, and with whom they had entered into a covenant. In it, they agreed to fulfill moral and ritual obligations in return for which God would make them the Chosen People, with the males marked by the holy ritual of circumcision. Their covenant with God carried with it the obligation for Jews to act as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6), whose purpose was to set an example by their lives to help human beings toward righteousness. Thus Jews saw themselves as living witnesses to God's moral purpose for mankind, even if, as God's servants, they had to suffer and die for it. All this was recorded in the Jewish Scriptures, which the Jews considered sacred, besides being the historical record of their covenant with God and their history as a people. But Catholic theologians resorted to valueinversion to destroy Judaism's credibility. They turned Judaism on its head. They reinterpreted, modified, and adopted the traits and ideas most identified as Jewish (the covenant, monotheism, synagogue, kosher rules, circumcision, chosenness, the Promised Land, Jerusalem, and Temple) to fit the requirements of the Catholic self-image. The theology of glory, Martin Luther wrote, "calls evil good and good evil . . . everything has been completely turned up-side-down." 2In the patristic mind, the Jews were God-murderers-that is, people who first rejected and then slew God, incarnated in the form of Jesus Christ. Replaced by the "newly and truly chosen" Christians, Jews became hated by "God the Father." According to St. Augustine, the Jews were no longer witnesses to their positive relationship to God's existence and goodness. Instead, like Cain, Jews were to suffer throughout history so that all human beings would realize the penalty for deicide and other religious crimes. This dogma became the predominant position of the Church. The Jews' circumcision no longer marked their covenant with God, instead, it became the mark of the devil or of Cain the murderer. Fathers of the Church held that the Jews were taught circumcision by God to soften their hardness of heart, or to identify them so that the Romans would exclude them from Jerusalem. The fourthcentury theologian Ephraem of Syria called the Jews circumcised dogs; for St. John Chrysostom, they were marked by circumcision like beasts. 3 Judaism and Jews served four negative functions and one positive function for churchmen of the patristic period and of the Middle Ages. First, the Church utilized the Judaism of the past to supply Christianity with an unimpeachable history and with the prestige the new Church otherwise would not have possessed. Catholic history was allegedly older than Jewish history, having begun not with Abraham or Moses, but at the beginning of time. The early Church claimed all the Jewish Scriptures as their own birthright, with the "Old" Testament patriarchs treated like the first Catholics. The Church co-opted all the Jewish saints and true believers in God all the way back to Adam as Catholics: Abraham was "father of the faithful"; Abel was progenitor of the Church. 4 Cain was progenitor of the Jews.A second goal of Catholic theologians was to render the persistent Jews hateful so that the faithful would not be attracted to Judaism. 5 The Church Fathers falsified the whole of Jewish moral history. They announced that the Jews were, are, and will always be evil. No evil was too great for the Jews not to have reveled in; no crime too appalling for the Jews not to have rejoiced in. Whatever good the ancient Jews apparently did was in reality Catholic; only their evil deeds were Jewish. Besides the most atrocious sin of deicide, the Jews were collectively guilty of all the sins of their fathers, "sins" they repeated over and over again each year. By the time of the Middle Ages, this charge included that of ritual murder of an innocent Catholic child during Holy Week. The Jews were no longer pictured as the Chosen People, heroes of holiness and moral living; they were instead the very models of radical evil, "the earthly representatives of the power of Darkness." 6 For these crimes, Jews had to suffer continual punishment on earth and eternal damnation, unless they sought salvation through the one true faith, Christianity. And even some Index In Recent Years, The Catholic Church Has Come Under Censure For Its Inaction During The Holocaust And For Its Similar Passivity In The Face Of Contemporary Antisemitism. However, As Robert Michael Shows In This Comprehensive Study, The Church's Involvement In The History Of Antisemitism Goes Back To Its Founding And To The Essence Of The Christian Scriptures. Moving From The Church's Origins Through The Roman Era, Middle Ages, And Reformation To The Present, Michael Provides A Definitive History Of Catholic Antisemitism.--book Jacket. Introduction: The Catholic Church And The Jews -- Pagans And Early Catholics -- Value Inversion And Vilification -- Roman Law -- Medieval Deterioration -- Crusades And Defamations -- Papal Policy -- Germany And Austria-hungary -- France -- Poland -- Modern Papal Policy -- Postscript: Catholic Racism. Robert Michael. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [205]-265) And Index. Cover 1 A History of Catholic Antisemitism The Dark Side of the Church 3 Contents 6 Preface 7 INTRODUCTION The Catholic Church and the Jews 8 CHAPTER 1 Pagans and Early Catholics 16 CHAPTER 2 Value Inversion and Vilification 29 CHAPTER 3 Roman Law 38 CHAPTER 4 Medieval Deterioration 43 CHAPTER 5 Crusades and Defamations 71 CHAPTER 6 Papal Policy 78 CHAPTER 7 Germany and Austria-Hungary 103 CHAPTER 8 France 121 CHAPTER 9 Poland 147 CHAPTER 10 Modern Papal Policy 165 POSTSCRIPT Catholic Racism 195 Notes 207 Index 268 Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-8 Pagans and Early Catholics....Pages 9-21 Value Inversion and Vilification....Pages 23-31 Roman Law....Pages 33-37 Medieval Deterioration....Pages 39-66 Crusades and Defamations....Pages 67-73 Papal Policy....Pages 75-99 Germany and Austria-Hungary....Pages 101-118 France....Pages 119-144 Poland....Pages 145-162 Modern Papal Policy....Pages 163-192 Postscript....Pages 193-204 Back Matter....Pages 205-282 Moving from the Catholic Church_s pagan origins, through the Roman era, middle ages, and Reformation to the present, Robert Michael here provides a definitive history of Catholic antisemitism. Moving from the Catholic Church's pagan origins, through the Roman era, middle ages, and Reformation to the present, Robert Michael here provides a definitive history of Catholic antisemitism