“I have been encountering strangers all over the country who have taken up the issues of the book.” So says James Carroll, author of “Constantine’s Sword: the Church and the Jews: a History.” This work has recently climbed to number ten on the leading list of best sellers, an indication that Carroll is not overstating the level of interest it has stirred.
Though the author is a longtime friend and I cannot be expected to take a neutral stance toward his work, I rate “Constantine’s Sword” among the most stimulating books I have ever read. Almost every page features findings and insights that forced me to think more deeply. And, at the same time, the author’s polished style makes the book a pleasure to read despite the demands that the often complex material makes on readers.
Carroll himself makes the story he tells very personal as he weaves into his narrative events from his own earlier life and that of the family in which he grew up. In this way he shows how he himself, like other Catholics of his time and place, took in misconceptions about Christian history and developed attitudes prejudicial toward Jewish people.
Rather than trying to summarize a book of unusually wide scope and one full of details culled from a 2000-year history, I will instead focus on what the work means to the author and also to me, two friends who share something of the same experience.
For James Carroll the book represents a new venture and an ambitious one indeed. In embarking on a work of history, he was moving into a literary genre different from the ones in which he has made his considerable reputation as a writer. Earlier he had written nine novels plus a memoir “An American Requiem” that won a National Book Award in 1996.
“Constantine’s Sword” required a great deal of research, as hundreds of footnotes attest. With the help of two research assistants, Carroll read and consulted an astoundingly wide range of books and periodicals. For a person without long experience in this kind of scholarship, this study represents a considerable achievement.
Undoubtedly, Carroll knew that he would face criticism from professional historians. These academics could be counted on for negative appraisals about at least some of his work; some would probably resent a writer outside the field doing history at all.
In fact, criticism from that source has already appeared: “Commonweal” carried a long review written by a University of Virginia historian who blasted the book and called it “an effort not to understand but to use history to advance a tendentious agenda.”
Carroll also knew that some leaders in his own church would probably brand the book as contrary to official teaching, if not downright heretical. At the least, they would not be ready to accept widespread criticism of the popes and other office holders. The author also knew that he would not be writing a perfect book, one free from mistakes or erroneous interpretations of theology, history, and scripture.
Nonetheless Carroll moved bravely ahead in crafting this work of conscience and he remained convinced that writing it would help advance the cause of justice, understanding, and peace. Some would call him “anti-Catholic” but he had confidence that ultimately he was doing the church an important service.
What must have been most difficult of all was the subtle threat to his own religious stance. My friend acknowledges that writing this book did indeed lead him into a personal crisis of faith. Detailing the awful record of his church’s treatment of the Jews deeply troubled his confidence in the religious tradition in which he grew up and, in his first career, functioned as a priest. As he writes in the Epilogue, “My faith is forever shaken, and I will always tremble.”
In a lesser way, I too have felt shaken by the history that my friend Jim recounts so dramatically. Reading about hatred of Jews as perpetrated by both officials in the Church and ordinary members I found deeply disturbing. Often I felt ashamed of what was done in the name of religion to humiliate people on the basis of their religious or ethnic heritage.
Granted that I personally was not involved in events that happened centuries before my birth, still I am part of an institution responsible for a large share of it. Like the book’s author, I too served as a priest: both of us worked in campus ministry during the same era. We were thus official representatives of a community of faith that has a record shockingly flawed.
And, yet, I recognize that this community is made up of human beings. Like my friend Jim, I see us as loved by God who recognizes what it means to be human rather than divine, imperfect not absolute. Ultimately, I feel myself part of a community capable of both heroic acts of virtue and also of troubling ignorance and horrendous betrayal of ideals.
Richard Griffin