Free Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews by James Carroll Page B

condemns antisemitism, but in a private letter. Most Church elements, like the newspaper La Croix, are aligned with antisemitic forces as a way of reconnecting with the masses.
    1905 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document purporting to be records of a Zionist congress, appears in Russia.
    1917 The Code of Canon Law, centralizing authority in Rome, is adopted by the Church.
    1929 The Lateran Treaty between Mussolini and the Vatican assures the pope's autonomy in Vatican City. The Vatican agrees to the suppression of the Popular Party, a Catholic political party opposed to fascism.
    1933 Hitler comes to power. His first bilateral treaty is the concordat with the Vatican, negotiated by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli.
    1939 Pacelli becomes Pope Pius XII. He cancels Pius XI's in-progress encyclical condemning antisemitism.
    1942 Dutch bishops denounce the Nazi roundup of Jews. Edith Stein is arrested, and later dies in Auschwitz.
    1943 Madeleine Dreyfus Lévy dies in Auschwitz. When Jews are rounded up at the foot of Vatican Hill, Pius XII does not openly protest.
    1948 The state of Israel is established. Jesus et Israel is published by the Jewish historian Jules Isaac, linking contempt for Judaism to central Christian teaching. 1960 Pope John XXIII meets with Jules Isaac, calls for a change in the Church's relationship with Jews. He eliminates the words "perfidious Jews" from Catholic liturgy.
    1962 The Second Vatican Council convenes, an implicit Church response to the Holocaust.
    1965 Vatican II issues Nostra Aetate, deploring antisemitism, rejecting the idea that the Jews can be charged with the death of Jesus.
    1978 Karol Wojtyla becomes Pope John Paul II and immediately sets out to heal the breach between Catholics and Jews. He also begins a program of rolling back the reforming spirit of Vatican II.
    1979 John Paul II, at Auschwitz, calls the death camp the "Golgotha of the modern world."
    1993 The Vatican recognizes the state of Israel.
    1998 The Vatican issues "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah." Edith Stein is canonized, despite Jewish objections. Reports surface that, inside the Vatican, the "cause" of Pius XII is advancing toward sainthood.
    2000 John Paul II issues an apology for the historic sins of members of the Church. He visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Five months later Pius IX is beatified.

NOTES
    Epigraph
    Rahner, Theological Investigations, vol. l, 151–53.
    1. Sign of Folly
    1. John Paul II, "Homily at Auschwitz, June 7, 1979," in Spiritual Pilgrimage, 7.
    2. For a discussion of this convent, see Bartoszewski, Convent at Auschwitz.
    3. Ibid., 87.
    4. Ibid., 91.
    5. Ibid., 92.
    6. For a discussion of the varied Jewish responses to the Holocaust, see Katz, Post-Holocaust Dialogues.
    7. See, for example, Levinas, Totality and Infinity.
    8. Quoted by Helmut Peukert, "Unconditional Responsibility for the Other: The Holocaust and the Thinking of Emmanuel Levinas," in Milchman and Rosenberg, Postmodernism and the Holocaust, 155.
    9. Adorno, "Education after Auschwitz."
    10. Elie Wiesel, "Art and Culture after the Holocaust," in Fleischner, Auschwitz, 405.
    11. Quoted by Küng, Judaism, 585.
    12. For an example of a work of Christian theology that does this, see Moltmann, Crucified God.
    13. Elie Wiesel, "Talking and Writing and Keeping Silent," in Littell and Locke, German Church Struggle, 274.
    14. Melito of Sardis, On Parcha, cited in Küng, Judaism, 152.
    15. See Nostra Aetate, in Abbott, Documents of Vatican II, 660–68.
    16. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, 20. The "depth and persistence" of this charge against Jews is indicated by its having been repeated by a senior Vatican official, Father Peter Gumpel, S.J., the "relator" of the cause of the canonization of Pius XII. He said that "it is a fact that the Jews have killed Christ. This is an undeniable historical fact." Father Gumpel repeated this officially discredited charge in a CBC interview in March 2000, just days after Pope John Paul !I presided