Zusatztext "Whatever the solution, in the end, unsderstanding the conflict is half the battle. It's a battle Carroll wins in this historical tome." Boston Magazine "Carroll, whose love for the catholic church...is not only matched by a lovingly critical eye...but an urgent plea that Rome set another course." Boston Globe "A triumph, a tragic tale beautifully told. . .a welcome throwback to an age when history was a branch of literature. . ."--Charles R. Morris Atlantic Monthly "Fascinating, brave and sometimes infuriating." Time Magazine "This searingly honest book is Augustinian in the way Carroll searches his own soul. . ."--Garry Wills, author of Saint Augustine and Papal Sin "This book is a history written to change the way people live."--Talk "A deeply religious book."--Bishop Krister Stendahl, former Dean of Harvard Divinity School "For two thousand years Jews have been longing for a Christian who would understand their experience."--Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College "Sweeping. . . This magisterial work will satisfy Jewish and Christian readers alike, challenging both to a renewed conversation." Publishers Weekly, Starred Informationen zum Autor James Carroll was raised in Washington, D.C., and ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1969. He served as a chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974, then left the priesthood to become a writer. A distinguished scholar- in-residence at Suffolk University, he is a columnist for the Boston Globe and a regular contributor to the Daily Beast. His critically admired books include Practicing Catholic , the National Book Awardwinning An American Requiem , House of War , which won the first PEN/Galbraith Award, and the New York Times bestseller Constantine's Sword , now an acclaimed documentary. Klappentext "Carroll, whose love for the Catholic Church . . . is not only matched by a lovingly critical eye. . . but an urgent plea that Rome set another course." Boston Globe In this bold and moving book sure to spark heated debate, novelist, cultural critic, and National Book Award-winning author James Carroll maps the profoundly troubling two-thousand-year course of the Church's battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has provoked in his own life as a Catholic. More than a chronicle of religion, this dark history is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture. The Church's failure to protest the Holocaust the infamous silence of Pius XII is only part of the story: the death camps, Carroll shows, are the culmination of a long, entrenched tradition of anti-Judaism. From Gospel accounts of the death of Jesus on the cross, to Constantine's transformation of the cross into a sword, to the rise of blood libels, scapegoating, and modern anti-Semitism, Carroll reconstructs the dramatic story of the Church's conflict not only with Judaism but with itself. Yet in tracing the arc of this narrative, he implicitly affirms that it did not necessarily have to be so. There were roads not taken, heroes forgotten; new roads can be taken yet. Demanding that the Church finally face this past in full, Carroll calls for a fundamental rethinking of the deepest questions of Christian faith. Only then can Christians, Jews, and all who carry the burden of this history begin to forge a new future. Drawing on his well-known talents as a storyteller and memoirist, and weaving historical research through an intensely personal examination of conscience, Carroll has created a work of singular power and urgency. Constantine's Sword is a brave and affecting reckoning with difficult truths that will touch every reader. Leseprobe Sign of Folly The cross is made of stout beams, an intersection of rail...

Autorentext

James Carroll was raised in Washington, D.C., and ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1969. He served as a chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974, then left the priesthood to become a writer. A distinguished scholar-
in-residence at Suffolk University, he is a columnist for the Boston Globe and a
regular contributor to the Daily Beast.

His critically admired books include Practicing Catholic, the National Book Award–winning An American Requiem, House of War, which won the first PEN/Galbraith Award, and the New York Times bestseller Constantine’s Sword, now an acclaimed documentary.

Klappentext
"Carroll, whose love for the Catholic Church . . . is not only matched by a lovingly critical eye. . . but an urgent plea that Rome set another course." — Boston Globe

In this bold and moving book sure to spark heated debate, novelist, cultural critic, and National Book Award-winning author James Carroll maps the profoundly troubling two-thousand-year course of the Church’s battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has provoked in his own life as a Catholic. More than a chronicle of religion, this dark history is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture.

The Church’s failure to protest the Holocaust — the infamous “silence” of Pius XII — is only part of the story: the death camps, Carroll shows, are the culmination of a long, entrenched tradition of anti-Judaism. From Gospel accounts of the death of Jesus on the cross, to Constantine’s transformation of the cross into a sword, to the rise of blood libels, scapegoating, and modern anti-Semitism, Carroll reconstructs the dramatic story of the Church’s conflict not only with Judaism but with itself. Yet in tracing the arc of this narrative, he implicitly affirms that it did not necessarily have to be so. There were roads not taken, heroes forgotten; new roads can be taken yet. Demanding that the Church finally face this past in full, Carroll calls for a fundamental rethinking of the deepest questions of Christian faith. Only then can Christians, Jews, and all who carry the burden of this history begin to forge a new future.

Drawing on his well-known talents as a storyteller and memoirist, and weaving historical research through an intensely personal examination of conscience, Carroll has created a work of singular power and urgency. Constantine's Sword is a brave and affecting reckoning with difficult truths that will touch every reader.

Leseprobe
Sign of Folly

The cross is made of stout beams, an intersection of railroad ties. It stands in a field of weeds that slopes down from the road. The field is abutted on one side by the old theater, where gas canisters were stored, also looted gold; where, much later, Carmelite nuns accomplished cloistered works of expiation, sparking fury; and where, now, a municipal archive is housed. On another side, the field runs up against the brick wall, the eastern limit of the main camp.
At more than twenty feet, the cross nearly matches the height of the wall, although not the wall’s rusted thistle of barbed wire. Immediately beyond are the camp barracks, the peaked roofs visible against the gray morning sky. The nearest building, close enough to hit with a stone thrown from the foot of the cross, is Barracks 13, also known as the death bunker or the starvation bunker. In one of its cells the Franciscan priest Maximilian Kolbe was martyred. He is now a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. Kolbe is the reason for this cross.
In 1979, Karol Wojtyla came home to nearby Kraków as Pope John Paul II. He celebrated Mass in an open field for a million of his countrymen, and on the makeshift altar this same cross had been mounted - hence its size, large enough to prompt obeisance from the farthest member of the throng. Visiting the death camp, the pope prayed for and to Father Kolbe, who had voluntarily taken the place of a fellow inmate in the death bunker. The pope prayed for and to Edith Stein, the convert who had als…