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.

This book examines how, following Vatican policy, Polish church leaders resisted separation of church and state in the name of Catholic culture. In that struggle, every assimilated Jew served as both a symbol and a potential agent of security.

A rare book that combines searing passion with a subject that has affected all of our lives. "Chicago Tribune" Novelist, cultural critic, and former priest James Carroll marries history with memoir as he maps the two-thousand-year course of the Church s battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has sparked in his own life. Fascinating, brave, and sometimes infuriating ("Time"), this dark history is more than a chronicle of religion. It is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture to create a deeply felt work ("San Francisco Chronicle") as Carroll wrangles with centuries of strife and tragedy to reach a courageous and affecting reckoning with difficult truths."

The most prominent story of nineteenth-century German and French Jewry has focused on Jewish adoption of liberal middle-class values. The Modernity of Others points to an equally powerful but largely unexplored aspect of modern Jewish history: the extent to which German and French Jews sought to become modern by criticizing the anti-modern positions of the Catholic Church. Drawing attention to the pervasiveness of anti-Catholic anticlericalism among Jewish thinkers and activists from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, the book turns the master narrative of Western and Central European Jewish history on its head. From the moment in which Jews began to enter the fray of modern European politics, they found that Catholicism served as a convenient foil that helped them define what it meant to be a good citizen, to practice a respectable religion, and to have a healthy family life. Throughout the long nineteenth century, myriad Jewish intellectuals, politicians, and activists employed anti-Catholic tropes wherever questions of political and national belonging were at stake: in theoretical treatises, parliamentary speeches, newspaper debates, the founding moments of the Reform movement, and campaigns against antisemitism.

In this meticulously researched, unflinching, and reasoned study, National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer presents shocking revelations about the role played by the Vatican in the development of modern anti-Semitism. Working in long-sealed Vatican archives, Kertzer unearths startling evidence to undermine the Church’s argument that it played no direct role in the spread of modern anti-Semitism. In doing so, he challenges the Vatican’s recent official statement on the subject, We Remember. Kertzer tells an unsettling story that has stirred up controversy around the world and sheds a much-needed light on the past.

In 1965 the Second Vatican Council declared that God loves the Jews. Yet the Church had taught for centuries that Jews were cursed by God, and had mostly kept silent as Jews were slaughtered by Nazis. How did an institution whose wisdom is said to be unchanging undertake one of the largest, yet most undiscussed, ideological swings in modern history?

This book reveals in considerable detail the two millennial history of the virulent anti-Semitism of the Roman Catholic Church. It demonstrates that the Church's persistent barrage of invective and derogatory allegations led to wholesale slaughters of Jewish men, women and children. Furthermore, under canon law the Jew had scarcely the right of existence, and could only survive under conditions of virtual slavery. Consequently, Catholics 'plundered and persecuted the chosen race until their lives became a curse.' This Catholic hatred of the Jew, the longest hatred in human history, peaked during the Nazi Holocaust. The book clearly discloses that the Church, at all levels, facilitated the ascent of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party, and enabled the 'Final Solution to the Jewish Question'. It veri'es that most of the major participants in the planning, implementation, and butchering of the Holocaust were born and bred Catholics. Signi'cantly, the book also reveals that, over the centuries, the Catholic Church has itself been responsible for the deaths of at least as many Jews as were killed by the Nazis. Yet the Church has never admitted, nor apologised, nor made reparation, nor been punished for its fundamental role in these diabolical sins. In conclusion, the book con'rms that this proclaimed holy institution continues to deny its unholy history.

As we all know and as many of our well-established textbooks have argued for decades, the Inquisition was one of the most frightening and bloody chapters in Western history; Pope Pius XII was anti-Semitic and rightfully called “Hitler’s Pope,” the Dark Ages were stunting the progress of knowledge to be redeemed only by the secular spirit of the Enlightenment. The religious Crusades were an early example of the rapacious Western thirst for riches and power. But what if these long held beliefs were all wrong? In this stunning, powerful, and ultimately persuasive book, Rodney Stark, one of the most highly regarded sociologists of religion and bestselling author of The Rise of Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco 1997), argues that some of our most firmly held ideas about history, ideas that paint the Catholic Church in the least favorable light are, in fact, fiction. Why have we held these wrongheaded ideas so firmly and for so long? And if our beliefs are wrong, what is the truth? In each chapter, Stark takes on a well-established anti-Catholic myth, gives a fascinating history of how each myth became conventional wisdom and presents a startling picture of the real truth. For example, instead of the Spanish Inquisition being an anomaly of torture and murder of innocent people persecuted for “imaginary” crimes such as witchcraft and blasphemy, Stark argues that not only did the Spanish Inquisition spill very little blood, but it was a major force in support of moderation and justice. Stark dispels the myth of Pope Pius XII being apathetic or even helpful to the Nazi movement, such as to merit the title “Hitler’s Pope,” and instead shows that the campaign to link Pope Pius XII to Hitler was initiated by the Soviet Union, presumably in hopes of neutralizing the Vatican in post-World War II affairs. Many praised Pope Pius XIIs vigorous and devoted efforts to saving Jewish lives during the war. Instead of understanding the Dark Ages as a millennium of ignorance and backwardness inspired by the Catholic Church’s power, Stark argues that the whole notion of the “Dark Ages” was an act of pride perpetuated by anti-religious intellectuals who were determined to claim that theirs was the era of “Enlightenment.” In the end, readers of Bearing False Witness will have a more accurate history of the Catholic Church and will also understand why it became unfairly maligned for so long. Bearing False Witness is a compelling and sobering account of how egotism and ideology often work together to give us a false truth.

With his first book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen dramatically revised our understanding of the role ordinary Germans played in the Holocaust. Now he brings his formidable powers of research and argument to bear on the Catholic Church and its complicity in the destruction of European Jewry. What emerges is a work that goes far beyond the familiar inquiries—most of which focus solely on Pope Pius XII—to address an entire history of hatred and persecution that culminated, in some cases, in an active participation in mass-murder. More than a chronicle, A Moral Reckoning is also an assessment of culpability and a bold attempt at defining what actions the Church must take to repair the harm it did to Jews—and to repair itself. Impressive in its scholarship, rigorous in its ethical focus, the result is a book of lasting importance.

Set within the context of the political and ideological developments of the time, History vs. Apologetics examines the role played by the Catholic Church in the rise and consolidation of the Third Reich and in particular with regard to the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Distanced in the beginning, the Catholic Church and the Nazi party drew closer as Hitler's popularity increased. At the ratification of the Concordat in Rome, a commitment not to interfere with the Nazis' 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish Question' was traded for a verbal promise from Berlin to exclude the baptized converts. While the Nazi government violated the Concordat at every turn, the Church kept zealously its promise. Pope Pius XII never mentioned the persecuted Jews by name and denied any knowledge of the annihilation of the Jews. Even after the war, Pius XII refused to condemn anti-Semitism and Germany's role in the Holocaust. Instead, the Vatican engaged in the protection of genocide perpetrators and assisted in their mass escape. David Cymet's comprehensive critical analysis of the polemical literature on the topic makes it possible to separate legitimate history from apologetic allegations and misrepresentations, bringing to light key elements of Church policy that is intentionally misinterpreted by apologists. By surveying the Church's policy from just before the rise of Nazism to the present, Cymet demonstrates how the Nazis were able to turn the Catholic Church into their ally in their war against the Jews.