Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is best known as the author of Hitler's Willing Executioners, a book that purported to prove the existence of a species of "eliminationist antisemitism" unique to Germany. While Hitler's Willing Executioners is not without interest, most historians whose comments I have seen say that Goldhagen arbitrarily turned his sources on their heads. He cannot be accused of doing that in his long review-essay that appeared in The New Republic of January 21, 2002, entitled "What Would Jesus Have Done?" What seems to have happened is that someone dumped a boxful of anti-papalist polemics on his desk. For the most part, Catholic liberals who hope to reverse the policies of the pontificate of John Paul II during the next papacy write this literature. Whether through malice or stupidity, Goldhagen bought their arguments in their entirety. The result is a parody of bad historiography. Having read this essay, I would not trust Daniel Goldhagen to interpret a bus schedule.

The polemics in question deal in large part with what Pius XII did and failed to do to help the Jews of Europe, particularly of Italy, during the Nazi persecutions of the Second World War. It cannot be repeated too often that the question is wildly anachronistic. Neither the West nor the Nazi government thought at the time that Pius XII was silent on the subject. Similarly, the Church in Italy was profusely thanked after the war for the help given by Catholic institutions, largely at the instance of Pius XII, in hiding and supporting Jews persecuted by the Nazis. Goldhagen so prefers his thesis to fact that he says the survivors who offered these testimonials were deceived, or currying favor. Instead, he cites as the last word on the subject Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy. Written by Susan Zuccotti, the book seeks to debunk accounts of assistance to the Jews by noting that the underground did not keep documentation. Regarding the title of Zuccotti's book, it is the measure of Goldhagen that he is quite capable of condemning Pius XII for not making a public statement denouncing the deportation of Jews from Rome, without mentioning that Vatican officials did in fact get the collections stopped.

Things in this essay just made me scratch my head. Goldhagen notes that, in Denmark and in France, the Lutheran Church and the Catholic bishops respectively explicitly condemned the deportation of Jews, without reprisal to the prelates themselves. Could a professional historian really not know that the occupation of Denmark was so relaxed that regular elections continued to be held, and that Vichy France was technically a neutral? He also repeats the bizarre argument that the Concordat the Vatican made with the German government in 1933, when the future Pius XII was Vatican Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, "legitimized" the Nazi regime. The Nazi regime did not need legitimizing then; it was already the legitimate government of Germany. The Concordat was supposed to secure the Church's property and institutions in a situation where ordinary legal safeguards were no longer available. It didn't work, and the Vatican protested in the memorable encyclical "Mit Brennenden Sorge." Goldhagen condemns the protest for being chiefly concerned with German religious policy.

Midway through his essay, Goldhagen stops beating his straw-man Pius XII and gets to his real subject: the essentially antisemitic character of the Catholic Church. According to Goldhagen, antisemitism is now and has always been fundamental to Catholic theology, liturgy and practice. Antisemitism is in fact a "core" feature of Catholicism (and to some extent, of course, of Christianity in general). How could it be otherwise? In Catholic theology, the Gospel supersedes the Law. While it is helpful to the Church to have some Jews around to denigrate, the implication always exists that whoever follows the Law is eventually to be done away with, too. The very cross as the Christian symbol is a sign of evil. It focuses attention on the execution of Jesus, and so reminds people about the role of the Jews in the gospel versions of that event. Goldhagen's insistence that the Romans and the Romans alone were responsible for crucifixion seems based more on emotion than on historiography; it's asserted, not argued for.

If all this is true, then why wasn't I told about it? It is simply, crudely, glaringly false that antisemitism is central to Catholic theology and liturgy, even on the popular level. The gospels do admit of an antisemitic reading, but then so do the Prophets from whom they so heavily borrow. Antisemitic readings are misreadings. Even the crowd's self-condemnation in the passion narrative of Matthew 27:25, "His blood be on us, and on our children," is in fact an ironic request to be washed in the blood of the Lamb (cf John 11:49-53). The point is not obscure; Christian congregations become the crowd during Holy Week. On the other hand, it is true that anti-Judaic readings of parts of the gospels are essential. Catholicism is not Judaism. Get over it.