James Carroll's "Constantine's Sword: A Study of the Church's Role in Perpetuating Anti-Semitism"

JC: As other reviews say, a book for everyone. Top-class writing that pulls you in for the whole ride.

Germany on Aug 14, 2022

Robert: This is the best book I have read on the relation of Christianity to the Holocaust and its conclusions have much wider application. It is carefully argued and very well written.

Canada on Oct 26, 2021

吉岡信雄: 現代のキリスト教がどのように人々の公的・私的生活と心理に働いているかを克明に回想・記述している名著だ。

Japan on Sep 05, 2018

Amazon Customer: I have not finished it yet. What I have read is very interesting.

Australia on May 31, 2016

Jacques Goldberg: Satisfaction totale pour l'achat et la livraison excellents, mais infiniment plus encore pour le contenu exceptionnel.
La direction d'Amazon ferait bien de lire ce livre et méditer le bon sens qu'il y a ou pas à participer à la diffusion de Mein Kampf (entre autres).

Tous les antisémites devraient lire çà d'urgence.
Leurs victimes aussi.
Il faut être grand et généreux, en plus d'être instruit et intelligent, pour écrire un tel livre en étant aussi profondément catholique.

Lire çà rend la Terre vivable.

France on Jul 03, 2013

Poppa Michael: I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about the violent and tragic history of the Jews in a developing Christian Europe. This is a monumental work with an epiphany in every chapter. It is an outstanding scholarly effort and I thank and applaud Mr. Carroll for the years of effort he devoted to bringing it to us.

The book is long and it is both an historical account and a personal quest for truth and meaning. As a child, the author was raised by a very devout Irish Catholic mother, who imbued him with a deep love of the Church and its teachings. Ultimately he became a Catholic priest. However, as he learned more history and, in particular, as he studied the events that led up to the slaughter of almost 6,000,000 European Jews under the leadership of Nazi Germany, with barely a word of opposition by the Catholic Church, he came to question many of his fundamental understandings about the Church. How could it happen? What can the past tell us? What should we do for the future?

In this great work, Mr. Carroll takes us from the life and death of Christ through the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the development of ghettos...

United States on Sep 06, 2012

Omer Belsky: Given the very different directions we come from - James Carroll is an Irish-American baby boomer, a former priest and practicing Catholic; I'm a Jewish atheist from Israel, born after Carroll's departure from the clergy - it is hardly surprising that I disagree with him somewhat. More interesting is the nature of my disagreements with the arguments of "Constantine's Sword", Carroll's brilliant, personal, wide-scoped travelogue through 2 thousand years of Jewish-Christian relations: I find myself considerably less critical of the Catholic Church than Carroll is.

I think the difference is that Carroll, the Christian, sees the Church as the "mystical body of Christ", a religion whose purpose is to be true to the teaching of Love that he believes Jesus had preached. When the Church fails to reach Carroll's high standards, he condemns it. On the other hand, as a secularist, I see the Catholic Church as a thoroughly human institution, to be judged not against the absolute standard of the Prince of Peace, but against comparable, contemporary institutions. In perspective, throughout history, the Catholic Church had been a protector of Judaism and of Jewish people; its treatment of...

United States on Dec 23, 2005