A moral reckoning

Description

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen cuts through the historical and moral fog to lay out the full extent of the Catholic Church's involvement in the Holocaust, transforming a narrow discussion fixated on Pope Pius XII into the long overdue investigation of the Church throughout Europe. He shows that the Church's and the Pope's complicity in the persecution of the Jews was much deeper than has been understood. The Church's leaders were fully aware of the persecutions. They did not speak out and urge resistance. Instead, they supported many aspects of the persecution. Some clergy even took part in the mass murder. But Goldhagen goes further. He develops a new, precise way for assessing the Church and its clergy's culpability, which was more extensive and varied than has been supposed. He then shows that the Church has, even according to its own doctrine, an unacknowledged duty of repair. He explores it, analyzes the Church's tactics of evasion, and delineates all that the Church must do to repair the harm it inflicted on Jews, and to heal itself. Brilliantly researched and reasoned, A Moral Reckoning is a path-breaking book of profound, and potentially explosive, importance. - Publisher.

First Sentence

CHRISTIANITY IS A RELIGION of love that teaches its members the highest moral principles for acting well.

Excerpt

CHRISTIANITY IS A RELIGION of love that teaches its members the highest moral principles for acting well.

Description

"From the internationally renowned author of the best-selling Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust comes this penetrating moral inquiry into the Catholic Church's role in the Holocaust that goes beyond anything previously written on the subject." "Daniel Jonah Goldhagen cuts through the historical and moral fog to lay out the full extent of the Catholic Church's involvement in the Holocaust, transforming a narrow discussion fixated on Pope Pius XII into the long-overdue investigation of the Church throughout Europe. He shows that the Church's and the Pope's complicity in the persecution of the Jews goes much deeper than has been previously understood. The Church's leaders were fully aware of the persecution. They did not speak out and urge resistance. Instead, they supported many aspects of it. Some clergy even took part in the mass murder."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

Other Editions

• A moral reckoning: the role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its unfulfilled duty to repairAlfred A. Knopf2002-01-01
• Moral ReckoningLittle, Brown Book Group Limited2002-01-01
• A Moral ReckoningKnopf2002-10-29
• A Moral ReckoningHardcoverLittle, Brown2002-11-03
• A moral reckoningVintage Books2003-01-01
• Le devoir de moraleSeuil2003-01-01