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A Moral Reckoning by Daniel Goldhagen
An assessment of the Catholic Church's culpability in the Jewish Holocaust and an attempt to understand what actions the Church needs to take to reapir the harm it did. The book was recently issued in paperback.
A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
Published: October 2002
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen lays out the full extent of the Catholic Church’s involvement in the Holocaust, transforming a narrow discussion fixated on Pope Pius XII into an 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.
But Goldhagen goes further. He develops a precise way to assess the Church and its clergy’s culpability, which was more extensive and varied than has been supposed. He then devotes the largest part of the book to proposing a new and fuller understanding of restitution, including moral restitution, and shows that the Church has, even according to its own doctrine, an unacknowledged duty of repair.
This book, like Goldhagen's previous one, has stirred up a tremendous amount of controversy.
About the Author
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is the author of Hitler's Willing Executioners which was awarded Germany's Democracy Prize. He currently is an affiliate at Harvard's Center for European Studies.
Online Resources
A review from The New York Times .
A Catholic writer and Professor at Boston College reviews it at Boston College website .
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