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

Connelly, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674057821 ISBN 13: 9780674057821

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2012

Synopsis

In 1965 the Second Vatican Council declared that God loves the Jews. Before that, the Church had taught for centuries that Jews were cursed by God and, in the 1940s, mostly kept silent as Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. How did an institution whose wisdom is said to be unchanging undertake one of the most enormous, yet undiscussed, ideological swings in modern history?

The radical shift of Vatican II grew out of a buried history, a theological struggle in Central Europe in the years just before the Holocaust, when a small group of Catholic converts (especially former Jew Johannes Oesterreicher and former Protestant Karl Thieme) fought to keep Nazi racism from entering their newfound church. Through decades of engagement, extending from debates in academic journals, to popular education, to lobbying in the corridors of the Vatican, this unlikely duo overcame the most problematic aspect of Catholic history. Their success came not through appeals to morality but rather from a rediscovery of neglected portions of scripture.

From Enemy to Brother illuminates the baffling silence of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, showing how the ancient teaching of deicide-according to which the Jews were condemned to suffer until they turned to Christ-constituted the Church's only language to talk about the Jews. As he explores the process of theological change, John Connelly moves from the speechless Vatican to those Catholics who endeavored to find a new language to speak to the Jews on the eve of, and in the shadow of, the Holocaust.

About this title

About the Author

John Connelly is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.

Review

A brilliantly original and an extremely important reconstruction of what motivated the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s to declare a new and positive appreciation of Jews and Judaism. (Susannah Heschel, author of The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany)

From Enemy to Brother is an astonishing achievement, one of the most significant books written on the history of twentieth-century Catholicism. (John T. McGreevy, University of Notre Dame)

An excellent resource for those studying the Holocaust, racism more generally, and the developments leading up to Vatican II's statement on Christianity's relation to the Jewish People. (John T. Pawlikowski, OSM, Catholic Theological Union)

This path-breaking book, based on extensive documentation, will be essential reading for all those interested in Christian-Jewish relations and the history of antisemitism. (Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

The extraordinary story told by Connelly reveals not only that Catholic magisterium is able to change its mind, but also that a doctrinal renewal of this kind may well begin as a small movement in the Church, frowned upon by the hierarchy, that gradually finds acceptance among Catholic and their theologians to be finally affirmed by the highest authority. In the present winter of the Catholic Church it is good to be reminded of the innovative power of Spirit-guided movements within Catholicism. (Gregory Baum The Ecumenist 2012-06-01)

[A] remarkable new book...It is one of the central lessons of Connelly's book that the bonds of empathy that made Nostra Aetate a historical possibility are far more fragile, and less expansive, than one might care to imagine. The detailed history of its genesis reveals a singular fact: most of the architects of the Catholic statement concerning the Jews in 1965 were themselves, either by descent or practice or public definition, Jews who had converted to Christianity...Connelly has written an important book, an extraordinary work of history. (Peter E. Gordon New Republic 2012-06-07)

Remarkable...Connelly...has mastered a vast and obscure literature, much of it hitherto unpublished and most of it in German, in order to establish the contours of what he aptly characterizes as a "revolution" in mid-20th-century Catholic thought...Connelly's book...hugely enriches its historical context. He shows that there were Catholics who held the Church to account while the Holocaust was taking place, demanded that it abandon the teaching of contempt, and eventually persuaded their coreligionists to adopt a new understanding of the Jewish role in history. Catholics and Jews alike should welcome such a scholarly reappraisal of the most painful chapter in the history of their relationship. (Daniel Johnson Jewish Ideas Daily 2012-06-18)

Excellent...Connelly's book is important because for the first time we have a comprehensive tale of the genesis of a new teaching. This is a book about workers in the vineyard who have largely been overlooked or bypassed in church history. But it is to these workers, who rose before dawn, that the church owes profound, if belated, respect. (Charles R. Gallagher America 2012-10-08)

Catholic theologians owe a debt of gratitude to John Connelly for retracing a painful but fruitful period of theological reflection. Anyone who draws close to Dietrich von Hildebrand, Karl Thieme, and Johannes Oesterreicher will be given fresh eyes for the sources of theology and a reverence for the mystery of Israel. (Nicholas J. Healy Jr. First Things 2013-01-01)

Connelly's book...is invaluable for its close tracking of the development of the Pauline argument for the continuing validity of the Jewish Covenant...This, as it stands, is a good book, and an important one. (Garry Wills New York Review of Books 2013-03-21)

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0674057821
• ISBN 13: 9780674057821
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384