ARTICLES

New film shows personal journey of anti-Semitism

By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON — A new documentary on the history of Christian anti-Semitism, “Constantine’s Sword,” shows the personal journey made by an ex-priest to embrace the fight against anti-Semitism and to rally others to the cause. It is a journey that started when he was a seminarian.

“It became an issue in my life in the early 1960s when I was a student in a Catholic seminary,” said James Carroll, the ex-priest, who since leaving the priesthood has done more work as a novelist and newspaper columnist than as a documentarian.

The movie is based on Carroll’s book, “Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews — A History.”

Like the book, the movie “deepened in a profound way my own Catholic faith,” he said.

“I came away with a much richer sense of what the good news is. I feel quite at home in this church of imperfect people.”

But one nun who has spent much of her academic career in the field of Christian-Jewish relations who has seen the film suggested the story told in “Constantine’s Sword” is “skewed by the fact that it’s so tied personally to James Carroll.”

Holy Names Sister Mary Boys, a professor of practical theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, told Catholic News Service that the film, like the 2001 book, “pays insufficient attention to the many generations of people who have worked for justice for the Jews in the church, and (for) a corrected self-understanding in our own (faith) tradition.”

Asked if she thought the movie portrayed Carroll as fighting anti-Semitism virtually by himself as a Catholic, Sister Mary replied, “Almost. ... There have been many conferences and dialogues, and many people have devoted their lives to it. That doesn’t come across in the film and it doesn’t come across in the book. It centers so much on him.”

Sister Mary’s assessment is shared at least in part by the U.S. bishops’ Office for Film & Broadcasting.

“Inextricably interwoven with Carroll’s view of church history are seminal episodes from his life story,” said a joint review by the office’s director, Harry Forbes, and staff critic John Mulderig.

“As history and theology, the film is considerably flawed with a pervasive anti-institutional-church bias and a pattern of reducing complex realities to caricature,” they added.

They classified the film L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling — for its mature religious themes, one use of the f-word and occasional crude and crass language.

Oren Jacoby, who directed “Constantine’s Sword,” said of Carroll, with whom he wrote the screenplay: “I think he bravely acknowledges that his tradition needs to acknowledge its sins.”

Jacoby added, “In the year 2000 Pope John Paul II apologized to the world for the sins of the church. What our film does is simply lay out what those sins were.”

In March 2000 the pope issued an unprecedented jubilee-year apology for the sins of members of the church, committed at times in the name of the church.

“The film reckons with many tragic mistakes that have been made by Christians,” Carroll said. “I have tried to make explicit what Pope John Paul II apologized for implicitly.”

“Pope John Paul was not a Catholic basher, and neither was anyone associated with the film,” Jacoby said.

Jacoby said there was no hidden motive in opening the film — which waited a year to find a distributor — in New York City April 18, the day Pope Benedict XVI arrived on the second leg of his April 15-20 U.S. visit. The pope was in Washington April 15-17.

“It’s hardly an ideal date,” Jacoby acknowledged about the opening. Interviewed some days before the film opened, he noted that “the second night of our opening weekend” would be “the first night of Passover, so a lot of people who celebrate Passover” wouldn’t be able to attend.

Carroll said the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on relations with non-Christians, “Nostra Aetate,” which established the foundation for dialogue between Christians and Jews, was approved during his seminary days, and it made him wonder how “the church could so misunderstand its relationship to the people of Israel.”

He added that he fears “Nostra Aetate” is “too little (known) in the Catholic world. I’m afraid we are in danger of losing that commitment.”

Sister Mary said that “one of my struggles as an educator is specifically... how do we help Catholics grasp this largely tragic history between our tradition and Jews, and work to make things different — not to simply be paralyzed by guilt or go on the defensive?”

And, despite her disagreements over missing elements in “Constantine’s Sword,” Sister Mary said she would “probably” use it in her academic work.

back to top