A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair

By Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 18, 2007
• ISBN: 9780307424440

Reviews for A Moral Reckoning

[owengriffiths · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Slightly mad attempt to blame the holocaust on the Catholic Church OR a valuable investigation of the broad consent required for true evil to take place.I have yet to decide which. It is important not to blame Hitler for all the evils of the first half of the century. It is tempting to create some sort of evil monster, who bent an unwilling Europe to his wicked will. Harder to stomach is the reality that for evil to triumph millions of good men had to do nothing, or actively take part. Hitler was not a monster, he was another man just like me or you, and many more men, and women, just like us, gave their consent to his programme.

[ablueidol · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Explores the tensions inherent in a faith based on I am ok, you are not ok to use a TA term and one that does not face the historical fallout of the destructions of the temple on the direction of the early Christians and the breaks with Judaic traditions this entails as well as the rivalry of spreading within the roman empire. Also raises the uncomfortable fact that the Nazis views of Jews and of eugenics were more mainstream then we in the post war era like to think. See the moral panic of Imperial Britain as the 1890’s education acts brought to official attention the children with leaning difficulties resulting in the 1913 asylum act and compulsory sterilization. “Simple” women having “bastards” were being compulsory incarcerated as late as 1959 under these Acts