From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965

Among scholars of modern Jewish-Catholic relations, John Connelly's book From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965 has rightly gained wide attention. Connelly, professor of History at the University of California Berkeley, drew on bulletins, journals, and books issued from the thirties to the sixties and sources stored in ar-chives at Seton Hall University (John Oesterreicher’s papers) and in Munich (Karl Thieme’s papers), Vienna, and Washing-ton. The book explores, through a chronological approach, the shift that occurred in Catholic attitudes toward the Jews and the move away from a long tradition of Catholic anti-Judaism and antisemitism toward new, more positive views. Connelly reconstructs this fundamental change, tracing an in-ternational network of protagonists who contributed, before and during the Second Vatican Council, to ideas that shaped the Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate on non-Christian religions (particularly chapter 4, on the Jews). He mainly focused on groups of Catholics who, since the thirties and in opposition to Nazism, had developed new reflections on Christian-Jewish relations in Europe and the United States. Among them, Connelly devoted his attention particularly to converts to Catholicism from Judaism and Protestantism (primarily Johannes M. [John] Oesterreicher, but also Gregory Baum, Leo Rudloff, and Paul Démann).

Connelly's thesis is precisely that without the contribution of these converts, the Church could not have arrived at a reconsideration of its position in relation to the Jewish world.Although the phenomenon of conversions is being considered with growing interest by scholars (not only those studying the modern age), many focus on biographies, and the historical narrative of networks connecting the converts, clergy, and intellectuals is still limited. One of the most convincing parts of the book is the analysis of the major role some converts played in pushing to change Catholic teachings about Jews and Judaism. Following this process, Connelly compellingly illustrates their contributions. He defines them as “border-crossers”: “The great majority of Catholics who wrote on the race question [about whether Jews were a race and not able to become Catholics] were Jewish converts, and virtually every figure of note in the Catholic battle against antisemitism was a convert....the irony of conversion, of crossing a border supposedly with no return, is that one never entirely leaves the point of origin. And the scandal of racism was that those expecting security in the new Catholic homes were told that they remained alien, ‘in fact’ ra Jewish” (pp. 63-64). This connotation of the converts as people living along cultural and religious borders between communities is thoroughly examined in the book.

The book begins with a stunning survey of the racist views of prominent early twentieth-century Catholics, among them leading theologians, many denying that even baptism could fully make Jews into Catholics. The author then analyzes some Christian voicesagainst first racism and then against Nazi persecution of the Jews. In particular, Connelly describes a memorandum prepared by Thieme, Oesterreicher, and Waldemar Gurian in 1937, in an effort to obtain an official pronouncement by the Holy See against antisemitism and in favor of the Jews.Approaching the decade before the Second Vatican Council, Connelly highlights the personal "journey" accomplished by some of these converts in a process of rediscovery of the Jewish origins of the Church (p. 189). Thisspirit inspired the foundation by Oesterreicher of the Institute for Judeo-Christian studies at Seton Hall University in 1953, and especially the influential Apeldoorn initiative beginning in 1958 to rethink Christian theologies of Judaism (and Christian read-ings of Scripture) before the Council. In the last chapter of the book, Connelly sums up some of the main revisions of the conversionist attitude that for centuries had marked the behavior of Catholic institutions and congregations toward Jews. Starting from a mission intended to get Jews to convert to Catholicism, Oesterreicher, Thieme, and others moved the Church toward a mission of self-redefinition and ressourcement, with new attitudes toward the Jews and to the Church’s own Jewish roots.

-- Maria Chiara Rioli Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations.

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While not academically trained, I've read my fair share of books on Jewish-Christian relations and Catholic-Jewish dialogue over the decade. None of them come close to the achievement of Connelly's, which I imagine will be a resource for years to come. Though published in , I'm happy to have discovered and to have read it.

When discussing Catholic resistance to National Socialism and protection of the Jews, it is my impression that Catholics tend to get particularly defensive, focusing their attention on notable figures who distinguished themselves by speaking out in defense of, or actively protecting, the Jewish people. The antagonists in their scenario tend to be the Nazis, depicted as chiefly secular, atheist, pagan or anti-Christian (which they were to a large extent). Lost in this perspective, however, is a clear and deserved recognition of just how deeply entrenched antisemitism -- both of a racial and religious variety -- was among parishioners and clergy within the Catholic Church itself (to be clear, the Catholic Church in Europe is the focus here). Under such circumstances, it is not at all suprising that those few who struggled to come to arrive at better relations with the Jewish people were often met with ecclesiastical roadblocks and outright opposition from the clergy on multiple levels within the Church. Connelly's intensive historical research into this era of the Church under National Socialism is worth the price of the volume alone as a reference resource.

Connelly makes a notable observation that

“From the 1840s until 1965, virtually every activist and thinker who worked for Catholic-Jewish reconciliation was not originally Catholic. Most were born Jewish. Without converts, the Catholic Church would not have found a new language to speak to the Jews after the Holocaust.”

Catholics are probably acquainted to some degree (even nominally) with Jacques Maritain and Deitrich von Hildebrand (both recognized as early opponents to anti-semitism, howbeit moving on to other matters post-war). This book does an IMMENSE service in featuring the intellectual biographies of Johannes (later John) Oesterreicher, a Jewish convert and priest, and Karl Thieme, a convert from Luthernism, and the instrumental roles both played in countering antisemitism within the Church during National Socialism and later, in laying the theological groundwork for the drafting of Vatican II's Nostra Aetate.

Expectedly, Connelly arrives at the hope and conclusion that the Catholic Church -- in embracing its "elder brothers and sisters" -- ought to categorically forsake its mission to convert the Jews as a people. This was the ultimate conclusion of Karl Thieme, and to a degree Osterreicher as well in the last years of his life (who while never turning away individual requests for baptism, admittedly did not have any great success in his early efforts to convert Jews in the United States). One can't help but observe the irony in that if Jews like Osterreicher had never been permitted to convert in the first place, it would be questionable whether the Church would have arrived at the place it occupies now in its relations with the Jewish people.

Reviews and Discussion

• Review: From Enemy to Brother. The revolution in Catholic teaching on the Jews 1933-1965 by John S. Conway. Contemporary Church History Quarterly 19:4 (December 2013).
• Catholics and Jews: The Great Change, by Garry Wills. The New York Review
• Jacob and Esau, by Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. First Things January 2013. I concur with Healy's observation:

  Connelly argues that Oesterreicher “abandoned his missionary approach . . . for ecumenism,” that "his goal at the beginning was the opposite of what became the end point." The end point is "not one of Jews becoming Christians, or anything but Jews."

  The irony of Connelly’s narrative is that it is only because of the gifts of converts that the Catholic Church has renounced (he believes) the missionary hope that others will enter the Church. But the final irony is more paradoxical. Connelly is writing as a historian and, for the most part, he seeks to avoid direct engagement with theological debates. It is, however, impossible to reflect on the histori>cal setting and the significance of Nostra Aetate without touching on one of the thorniest questions confronting the Church. How can we hold together the universality of Christ’s saving work and God’s perduring election of the Jewish people?" [read the rest]

• Building on "Nostra Aetate" - 50 Years of Christian-Jewish Dialogue, by Cardinal Kurt Koch. Address delivered by Cardinal Koch at the Angelicum University in Rome under the auspices of the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue. (05/06/12).
• ‘What Our Church Has Inflicted on Judaism’: An Exchange on Catholic-Jewish Dialogue, Stephen Englund. (Part of Getting Past Supersessionism: An Exchange on Catholic-Jewish Dialogue).Commonweal 02/10/14.
• Selected Works of John M. Oesterreicher Seton Hall University. [Archive] / see also co-authored theological articles.
• To Evangelize, or Not to Evangelize? Against The Grain 03/21/05.

Shusaku Endo's "Silence"

The Film

• Some thoughts on Silence Opus Publicum 01/17/17:

  ... Silence is not a movie for the immature, nor is it a work that can be comprehended by modern sensibilities. The Tridentine Catholicism that not only animates the plot but supplies the movie’s richest symbolisms is thoroughly alien to an era shot through with religious indifferentism and cultural relativism. Protestants, no less than secularists, are apt to misunderstand the film’s fusion of sign and substance, particularly the torment that surrounds the mere possibility of trampling upon an image of Christ. Moreover, by quietly pointing to the kenotic Christ, that is, the Savior who suffers not just for us but with us, Silence taps into a rich tradition of authentically Catholic spirituality, one that is infused not just with the history of Japanese Catholicism, but Eastern Slavic piety as well.

• Some thoughts on the movie Silence by Dr. Philip Blosser 01/29/17:

  ... I think that not only the temptations but the consequences of apostasy were shown by both novel and film in a faithful light: the temptations were beyond ingenious, with the voice of Jesus seeming to come from His image on the fumie itself ("Step on me.") as if Christ Himself were counseling the mercy of apostasy as the path to redemption; and both apostate priests ended their lives by faded into oblivion, morphing into gollum-like shadows of themselves; and the Japanese Catholics (not all, but many) who witnessed their apostasy were significantly demoralized by it.

  Remarkably, however, when Catholic priests returned to Japan after the Meiji Restoration of the mid-nineteenth century, they encountered Kakure Kurishitan (hidden Christians) who came out of hiding once again to present rosaries and crucifixes and statues of Maria Kanon that doubled as secret images of the Madonna, showing that the Faith had not been entirely wiped out. The price of persecution as well as apostasy was high. Only something like one tenth of 1% of Japanese people are Christians, and of these, half (about 509,000) are Catholic.

• Scorsese's 'Silence' is his most Catholic film, by Sr. Rose Pacatte. National Catholic Reporter 12/21/16:

  At the top of the thematic list are faith and doubt as partners in a dangerous dance from the moment the priests first find out about Ferriera's apostasy. They leave Portugal and Rome, their gaze focused on a land far away, bolstered by a faith yet untested. Rodrigues especially carries in his heart the image of Jesus so dear to him as a child and in the seminary. Once imprisoned it comes to him in the suffering of the people and in the night. It is this Jesus with whom he converses about his doubts, his questions and the choice he faces.

  The high-pitched whine of the highly intelligent and informed inquisitor Inoue, with his polite manners and saccharine but sinister smile, do not mask his intent to break the resolve of the Christians. He challenges Rodrigues, as does Ferriera when he and Rodrigues finally meet, saying that Christianity is too Western and cannot adapt to Japan. Rodrigues says that the church is the source of truth and is unable to move off the script he learned growing up in Catholic Portugal. His responses to Inoue are noble perhaps, but ineffective. The inculturation of the Gospel and adaptation, even today, remains a challenge to those who evangelize, at home or afar.

  Kichijiro, absolved again and again for his apostasy, is emblematic of sinners who are self-aware of their sin and just as cognizant of God's mercy. Kichijiro disgusts Rodrigues, and it takes the priest a long time to realize that he, too, is a weak human not so different from this dirty beggar of a sinner who cannot help himself.

The Novel

• Reading Silence for the first time, by Amy Welborn. Catholic World Report 12/14/16:

  ... Endo was inspired to write Silence, not only by his own life experience of living as a Japanese Catholic, but specifically by visiting the shrine to the Twenty-Six Martyrs in Nagasaki. This memorial commemorates men, women, and children killed in 1597, and includes an exhibit of fumi—the images of Christ, and sometimes of Mary, upon which Japanese Catholics were ordered to trample and spit, not only once, but annually, an obligation that persisted until the mid-19th century.

  Endo based his novel on historical documents, including a 17th-century diary written by a clerk in a residence in which apostate Catholics, including Giuseppe Chiara, lived. This is especially important for the final chapter of the novel. ...

  Endo is posing that question, in a way, to all Japanese Christians, and even all Japanese people, who live today in a culture shaped by martyrdom and apostasy, of oppressor and victim. What does it mean to contemplate the well-worn fumie in the museum and know that your faith in the present day exists, not only because of the seeds sown by the martyrs’ blood, but also because it was passed down by those who for years trampled and betrayed in public, while preserving what they could in private?

  The dilemma of trampling on the fumie can be brought home in more universal terms, as Endo himself noted, and perhaps this is one reason why this novel about Catholic missionaries who lived and died centuries ago plants a persistent pebble in the shoe of so many readers’ consciences. As Fujimoro beautifully puts it,

  Endo saw fumi-e as emblems of a greater, universal impact. When in lectures he spoke of “having a personal fumi-e,” he was not speaking of a literal religious icon, but was acknowledging that each of us steps on and betrays the “face of ones that [we] love, even the ideals [we] cherish.” To step on one’s own fumi-e, in that sense, is to betray oneself out of desperation due to public or cultural pressure. … Silence is not a triumphant pilgrimage with clear outcomes, but a meandering pilgrimage of one wounded by life and confounded by faith, whose experience of faith has been punctuated by betrayals, his own and those of others. Endo notes repeatedly in his memoirs and through his characters that through his own struggles of faith God never let him go. Endo himself is like the fumi-e, a historical marker birthed of a traumatic time, finally worn smooth through many disappointments, failures, and betrayals, but whose surface reveals the indelible visage of a Savior.

History

• Kirishitan - Excellent site summarizing the history of Catholicism in Japan (HT: Amy Welborn).

• Italian priest imprisoned in 18th century may have been influential in Japan’s development :

  Historians say [Jesuit missionary Giovanni Battista] Sidotti helped shape Japan’s view of the Western world with his knowledge after he won over the nation’s leading scholar of the day. But he fell from grace after refusing to give up his faith and his final days and death have been shrouded in mystery. . .

  As part of his interrogations, Sidotti was questioned by Japan’s top Confucian scholar, who developed a deep respect for the Roman Catholic priest for his knowledge of geography, languages and global affairs, experts said.

  The scholar, the renowned Hakuseki Arai, is said to have tried to help Sidotti but the priest was later sent to the dungeon amid allegations he baptized the Japanese couple tending to his daily needs.

  The Italian died there, but it is not clear how, researchers said.

  Historical accounts, including those written by Japanese scholar Kotonobu Mamiya about a century later, however, mention that Sidotti was accorded a certain respect and treated far better than other prisoners — even in death.

  The buried remains of what archeologists believe to be those of Sidotti were recently discovered. Evidence indicates he was given a burial "in the Christian way" out of respect.

Charles Carroll -- America's Catholic Founding Father

Charles Carroll of Carrollton was a delegate to the Continental Congress and later United States Senator for Maryland. He was also the only Catholic to have signed the The Declaration of Independence. One of the wealthiest men in the colonies, it is reported that -- upon fixing his signature,

a member standing near observed, "There go a few millions," and all admitted that few risked as much, in a material sense, than the wealthy Marylander.

(The Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 1737-1832, by Kate Mason Rowland).

A new biography, American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll (Lives of the Founders) (ISI) will be published in February 2010. (Tip of the hat to Carl Olson). The author, Dr. Bradley J. Birzer, was recently interviewed by the Washington Times:

Q: Carroll was the last of the signers to die. What did he have to say about America at the end of his life?

A: He was so critical of what happened to the republic after the founding. He's very critical of the democratic element in the American republic - he's worried that self-interest and greed are replacing republican virtue. So from the late 1700s, Carroll starts being called "the hoary-headed aristocrat." He starts to be seen as a relic of an older age. But after Carroll dies, there's a resurgence of his reputation. All across the country, the headlines read, "The last of the Romans is dead."

And he was one of Alexis de Tocqueville's main informants. So there are moments in de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (Penguin Classics) when he is being critical of the democratic spirit, and it seems very clear to me that he is taking that from his interview with Carroll.

Q: What does history get wrong about Carroll?

A: I'm always amazed at how much our own history, especially [in] our textbooks, tends to portray the founders as merely enlightened figures. And there's no doubt they were. But the vast majority were Christian - Franklin and Jefferson being the exceptions that so many focus on. And the American people were intensely religious, mostly Protestant, at the time of the founding. I think it's dangerous that we secularize the founding so much. We need to know the context - we need to know what inspired them to fight for liberty.

Read the whole thing.

This would make the second book published recently about the Catholic founding father, the first being Scott McDermott's Charles Carroll of Carrollton: Faithful Revolutionary (Scepter Publications, 2001).

McDermott, a circulation librarian at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, writer and convert, began studying about Carroll after he came into the Church -- In 2005, Zenit News interviewed him about his biography and Carroll's influence on the founding fathers (Part I | Part II).

* * *

I concur with the observation that the religiousity of many of our founding fathers is sadly overlooked and much neglected. Michael Novak made an important contribution to restoring a proper recognition to the religious roots of America's founding with his On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding (2001), followed by Washington's God, a study of the religious faith of the pre-eminent 'Father of our Country'.

Pope Benedict XVI and John Paul II on America's founding

From the dawn of the Republic, America’s quest for freedom has been guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God the Creator. The framers of this nation’s founding documents drew upon this conviction when they proclaimed the “self-evident truth” that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights grounded in the laws of nature and of nature’s God. The course of American history demonstrates the difficulties, the struggles, and the great intellectual and moral resolve which were demanded to shape a society which faithfully embodied these noble principles. In that process, which forged the soul of the nation, religious beliefs were a constant inspiration and driving force, as for example in the struggle against slavery and in the civil rights movement. In our time too, particularly in moments of crisis, Americans continue to find their strength in a commitment to this patrimony of shared ideals and aspirations. ...

Historically, not only Catholics, but all believers have found here the freedom to worship God in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, while at the same time being accepted as part of a commonwealth in which each individual and group can make its voice heard. As the nation faces the increasingly complex political and ethical issues of our time, I am confident that the American people will find in their religious beliefs a precious source of insight and an inspiration to pursue reasoned, responsible and respectful dialogue in the effort to build a more humane and free society.

Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience – almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad. The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one’s deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate. In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good (cf. Spe Salvi, 24). Few have understood this as clearly as the late Pope John Paul II. In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in eastern Europe, he reminded us that history shows, time and again, that “in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation”, and a democracy without values can lose its very soul (cf. Centesimus Annus, 46). Those prophetic words in some sense echo the conviction of President Washington, expressed in his Farewell Address, that religion and morality represent “indispensable supports” of political prosperity.

Excerpts from the White House Welcoming Ceremony Pope Benedict XVI (Apostolic visit to the United States April 16, 2008).

* * *

You represent a nation that plays a crucial role in world events today. The United States carries a weighty and far-reaching responsibility, not only for the well-being of its own people, but for the development and destiny of peoples throughout the world. With a deep sense of participation in the joys and hopes, the sorrows, anxieties, and aspirations of the entire human family, the Holy See is a willing partner in every effort to build a world of genuine peace and justice for all. ...

The Founding Fathers of the United States asserted their claim to freedom and independence on the basis of certain "self-evident" truths about the human person: truths which could be discerned in human nature, built into it by "nature’s God." Thus they meant to bring into being, not just an independent territory, but a great experiment in what George Washington called "ordered liberty": an experiment in which men and women would enjoy equality of rights and opportunities in the pursuit of happiness and in service to the common good. Reading the founding documents of the United States, one has to be impressed by the concept of freedom they enshrine: a freedom designed to enable people to fulfill their duties and responsibilities toward the family and toward the common good of the community. Their authors clearly understood that there could be no true freedom without moral responsibility and accountability, and no happiness without respect and support for the natural units or groupings through which people exist, develop, and seek the higher purposes of life in concert with others.

The American democratic experiment has been successful in many ways. Millions of people around the world look to the United States as a model in their search for freedom, dignity, and prosperity. But the continuing success of American democracy depends on the degree to which each new generation, native-born and immigrant, makes its own the moral truths on which the Founding Fathers staked the future of your Republic. Their commitment to build a free society with liberty and justice for all must be constantly renewed if the United States is to fulfill the destiny to which the Founders pledged their "lives . . . fortunes . . . and sacred honor."

Respect for religious conviction played no small part in the birth and early development of the United States. Thus John Dickinson, Chairman of the Committee for the Declaration of Independence, said in 1776: "Our liberties do not come from charters; for these are only the declaration of preexisting rights. They do not depend on parchments or seals; but come from the King of Kings and the Lord of all the earth." Indeed it may be asked whether the American democratic experiment would have been possible, or how well it will succeed in the future, without a deeply rooted vision of divine providence over the individual and over the fate of nations.

John Paul II on the American Experiment - excerpts from Pope John Paul II's words to the Honorable Lindy Boggs as Ambassador to the Holy See on December 16, 1997.