Title: Unscholarly,uncatholic
Product review: This unscholarly work, written by an angry ex-Catholic, has little to do with Judaism and Christianity. The "history" here is entirely truncated. Catholics who defended the Jews against persecution are ignored. Catholics who justified anti-Semitism are magnified as the norm. The history is much murkier here than ex-Father Carroll would have it. The greatest dishonesty here lies in the treatment of Pius XI and Pius XII. Pius XI's courageous encyclical against Nazism (in 1937) is ignored, although the pope ordered it to be read from every German pulpit and although it caused an intensified persecution of the Catholic Church by the Nazis (destruction of Catholic schools, show trials against clergy). The many efforts of Pius XII to save Jewish lives are dismissed. This anti-Catholic screed will win praise from the culture despisers of Catholicism. The lavish treatment of the book in the New York Times is all too predictable. But it has nothing to do with history or scholarship.
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