Contesting Zion: The Vatican, American Catholics, and the Partition of Palestine (McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion, 103) (Volume 103) - Softcover

Ciani, Adrian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0228024617 ISBN 13: 9780228024613

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025

Synopsis

The modern relationship between the Vatican and the State of Israel is rooted in a long history of hostility between Judaism and Roman Catholicism. Through the centuries, popes and theologians marginalized the Jewish people, assigning them collective guilt for the death of Jesus Christ and claiming that the sacred territory of Palestine was the true patrimony of the Roman Catholic Church. With the advent of political Zionism in the nineteenth century, Catholic fears of a Jewish-dominated Palestine were renewed.

Contesting Zion examines the relationship between the Vatican and the Zionist movement from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to the first decade of Israeli statehood. Adrian Ciani considers the transnational nature of Catholic responses to Zionism and the creation of Israel, with a focus on the Catholic Church in the United States. From the 1920s through the 1950s, American Catholic leaders became crucial intermediaries between Washington and the Vatican. Speaking as both loyal American citizens and devout Catholics, they were uniquely positioned to articulate the Vatican’s policy objectives to the American government, including on the future of Palestine. American Catholics were also instrumental in advocating the church’s Palestine policy at the United Nations, playing a central role in the Holy See’s attempts to shape the twentieth-century international order.

From the 1920s through the 1960s, Contesting Zion argues convincingly, American Catholics were at the forefront of the Vatican’s efforts to sway the fate of Palestine and to influence the future of the wider region.

About this title

About the Author

Adrian Ciani is a faculty member at St. Augustine’s Seminary in the Toronto School of Theology and professor in the School of English and Liberal Studies at Seneca Polytechnic.

From the Back Cover

Volumes in this series have been supported by the Jackman Foundation of Toronto.

Series One: G.A. Rawlyk, Editor

Series Two In memory of George Rawlyk
Donald Harman Akenson, Editor

This series, founded in 1988 by the late George Rawlyk with the advice of Fr. Edward Jackman and the generous support of the Jackman Foundation, presents front-edge material on all aspects of religious history. It is limited to work done by profesionally trained historians and does not publish devotional or apologetic studies.

Roughly one-half of the books published thus far have dealt with some aspects of Canadian religious history (the works of Canadian Methodism are particularly significant), but the series is not limited to Canadian topics. There have been volumes on such diverse topics as the history of the Oral Torah, women in the church in seventeenth-century France, and German Anabaptism.

The long-term goal of the series is to help the history of religion escape from two ghettos that held it in thrall in the past: one of these was the definition of the field as dealing only with the more exotic religious foliage of the Ancient Near East. In contrast, we focus mostly on modern topics. We also wish to hasten the escape from the period when religious history of more modern times was mostly confessional: Catholic history was being written by Catholics, Jewish history by Jews, Protestant history by Protestants. Our belief is that the history of religion is too important not to be shared as part of our society's cultural commons.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0228024617
• ISBN 13: 9780228024613
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 342