The Cross at Auschwitz

James Carroll brings a fresh eye to Jewish-Catholic relations

By Susan G. Parker

Special to the Gazette

Novelist and former priest James Carroll cherishes the symbol of the cross. Yet when he went to Auschwitz last November and saw a 23-foot high cross, he shuddered.

"I felt like I was in the presence of something obscene," he said. "It did not belong there."

He saw the cross as Jews might, a symbol under which they had been oppressed for generations. By placing a cross at a death camp where thousands of Jews were slaughtered, Christians had claimed a "redemptive meaning for something that for Jews can never be redeemed," Carroll said.

That cold November day sparked the beginning of Carroll's latest book project, which he is researching this year as a fellow at the Divinity School's Center for the Study of Values in Public Life. Carroll is using the Holocaust as a lens through which to explore the history of Jewish-Catholic relations and prospects for Jewish-Catholic mutuality.

Carroll makes the central assumption that the Holocaust requires Christians to fundamentally reexamine their faith and beliefs about Jesus and God. Often, however, Christians treat the systematic killing of millions of Jews as simply a Jewish issue, he said.

Carroll, who has written nine novels and is a columnist for The Boston Globe, said that this project concerns the key question that preoccupies him as a writer: why we unconsciously embrace violence. He has explored violence in his novels and in his articles about our reliance on nuclear weapons. His most recent book, An American Requiem: God, My Father & The War That Came Between Us, is a memoir about the religious, political, and personal revolution experienced by many in the Vietnam era. The book won the 1996 National Book Award in nonfiction.

Carroll's latest book project is as much a personal as an intellectual search. "It goes to the heart of my ongoing quest as a believer. What does my faith mean? What does my strong commitment to Jesus Christ mean?" Carroll said. "It's not an incidental question to me, and being here at Harvard this year and doing serious reading in theology gives me an opportunity to reflect and contemplate on the mysteries of my faith. It couldn't be more personal."

For Carroll, the roots of the Holocaust may well lie in the roots of the cross. He traces the beginning of Christianity's embrace of the cross as its central symbol to Constantine, who appropriated the cross in the 4th century as a way of unifying an unruly and fractious empire. When the cross became central to Christianity, Jews became central as well, since so many Christians blamed them for killing Jesus, Carroll said. Carroll is rereading towering Christian figures like St. Augustine and St. Anselm, whose writings he has not looked at since he was in seminary 30 years ago. Back then, he said, he didn't "get" them. Now, with the aid of years gone by, Carroll is enraptured with these early Christian thinkers.

He once hated Augustine, finding, like many others, that the prodigious 4th- and 5th-century intellect was gloomy. Now Carroll is an Augustine fan. He vaguely recalled reading Augustine's Confessions three decades ago, a book in which Augustine wrestles with his mother's death. "I remember slugging through this stuff and not getting it because my mother hadn't died yet," Carroll said. "So when Augustine's mother dies and he can't bring himself to weep, I didn't understand what a tragedy that was. My mother's dead now, and I can completely enter into that experience. When he comes out of that experience using it as signal of who God is for us, I get it. And I love it and I love Augustine. That's a strong example of the pleasure it is to be here [at the Divinity School]."

As part of his fellowship, Carroll leads a public forum every two weeks where he tests his ideas. It is filled with regulars who seem as eager to grapple with the hard questions that Carroll is asking as to hobnob with a well-known author. The discussion is lively, and participants are happy to let Carroll know when they think he has veered off course.

Carroll wondered out loud whether anti-Semitism is integral or incidental to Christianity. "I'm asking difficult questions," he acknowledged, "some of which are very unpleasant, like is there really a substantial conflict that is proper between Jews and Christians? Not an easy question. In this ecumenical age we'd like to just hug each other and let it go at that. But what if there is a real argument here? Can we ask it nonviolently? That's the question. It's a dangerous question."