A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair » (Reprint)

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen was awarded Germany’s Democracy Prize for Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Until deciding to devote himself full-time to writing, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen taught political science and social studies for many years at Harvard University.

With his first book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen dramatically revised our understanding of the role ordinary Germans played in the Holocaust. Now he brings his formidable powers of research and argument to bear on the Catholic Church and its complicity in the destruction of European Jewry. What emerges is a work that goes far beyond the familiar inquiries—most of which focus solely on Pope Pius XII—to address an entire history of hatred and persecution that culminated, in some cases, in an active participation in mass-murder.

More than a chronicle, A Moral Reckoning is also an assessment of culpability and a bold attempt at defining what actions the Church must take to repair the harm it did to Jews—and to repair itself. Impressive in its scholarship, rigorous in its ethical focus, the result is a book of lasting importance.

Publishers Weekly

Harvard scholar Goldhagen, author of the bestselling and controversial Hitler's Willing Executioners, turns to a question left unanswered in his earlier work: to what extent are Catholics and the Catholic Church morally culpable for the Holocaust? As in his earlier book, Goldhagen pulls no punches. In the second paragraph he writes, "Christianity is a religion that consecrated... a megatherian hatred of one group of people: the Jews." The story of this hatred, which Goldhagen views as a betrayal of Christianity's own moral principles, has been told many times and, most recently, in the works of Susan Zuccotti and Michael Phayer. In contrast to these accounts, Goldhagen offers not an objective history of the Church's role in the Holocaust but, as the title promises, a moral examination. Goldhagen makes no apology for engaging in a sustained ethical inquiry and rendering judgment. (In fact, much of the book is either a direct or indirect defense of his much-criticized first work.) Goldhagen demands material, political and moral restitution but ends questioning whether the Catholic Church can "muster the will" to undertake these actions. There is little new information here; a definitive history of this dark chapter must await the opening of the Vatican archives. Readers should not skip the extensive and detailed endnotes, which contain a wealth of fascinating material. 25 b&w photos. Agent, Esther Newberg. (Nov. 3) Forecast: This ground has been prepared for Goldhagen by Zuccotti and Phayer, as well as John Cornwell, James Carroll and Garry Wills. Still, as with Hitler's Willing Executioners, Goldhagen's passion will generate controversy and sales as Knopf clearly expects, with a 75,000 first printing. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.