Pius XII and the Holocaust - A Reader
A Catholic League Publication
Reprinted with permission from Fishnet/OSC
Copyright © 1996 Catholic Information Network (CIN)
September 1, 1996
Mr. Goldhagen, a former Harvard professor and author of a controversial 1996 book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners." "Anti-Semitism has been integral to the Catholic Church.
Thanks for the excellent reference materials.
I cannot help but be a bit uncomfortable with this whole debate, particularly when considering the purely religious aspect of the argument. This will sound more controversial than it should, if people really understood the nature of religion and the Catholic Church, but, in a sense, purely on religious terms what is sometimes inaccurately termed "anti-semitism" is indeed "integral to the Catholic Church," as Goldhagen argues. He is perhaps unintentionally more right than many here give him credit for. There is a fundamental incompatability between everything the Catholic Church has been for two thousand years and the Jewish religion, as there is between the Roman Church and the protestant sects. The Roman Catholic Church is anti-Protestant as well, while recognizing that the individual following these false religions is indeed one of God's creatures and thus as such entitled to the same love and respect as co-religionists.
But what I think is happening here is that two completely different arguments have been merged into one, by those with different agendas to push, with the result being a dangerous muddle of both of them. "Conservative" Catholics fully embrace the nearly heretical ecumenism of JPII's Church, shockingly turning their back on the history and traditions of their own faith and agreeing to the modernist fabrication that false religions are just "another way" to salvation. These people are violently angry with Goldhagen's argument because they don't think it is fair for him to be so mean when they have been bending over backward apologizing to and being ecumenical with the Jews. Radical and I suspect non-religious Jews also have an agenda, which is to undermine both religions and, perhaps more importantly, replace the Jewish religion with a new materialistic "religion" of Jewish victimology. This threatens the Jewish faith.
From a traditional Roman Catholic perspective, as stated above, Goldhagen's arguments have an unintentionally valid ring to them. The Church is indeed incompatible on religious terms with the Jewish faith, though by no means are the people of one faith permitted to act upon the people of the other in a violent manner. Indeed, a traditional Catholic like myself can find many appealing things in the Jewish faith and in Jewish culture while at the same time maintaining the necessary spiritual distance.
Only when the Roman Church's necessary anti-Jewishness can be seperated from the idea anti-Semitism, which the Church rightly views as unacceptable, can this debate really begin. Radical anti-religious Jews and their conservative Catholic enablers are not helping matters. I am not holding my breath.