Newsgroup: it.cultura.storia.moderato
Titolo: The Catholic Church and Antisemitism in Interwar Poland

Invio una review di un libro che sicuramente potra' interessare coloro che
in questo ng leggono (spero con interesse) i svariati thread dedicati alle
relazioni compromissorie tra Chiesa e Nazifascismo, Chiesa e antisemitismo.
Il seguente articolo si puo' considerare una segnalazione libraria anche
per chi vuole solo approfondire o estendere le sue conoscenza su quanto
ebbi a scrivere nel post "La Civilta' Cattolica e l'antisemitismo " ( link
da ricopiare su unica riga nel browser :
http://groups.google.it/groups?q=La+Civilta%27+Cattolica+e+l%27antisemitismo&hl=it&lr=&group=it.cultura.storia.moderato&selm=cog8bq%243nn%241%40news.newsland.it&rnum=1
 ) .
Da notare che all'interno di quel post sono indicati altri link a post in
cui si discuteva di argomenti simili.
saluti
sergio
------------------------------------------------------------------
Ronald E. Modras. The Catholic Church and Antisemitism: Poland, 1933-1939.
Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994. xvi + 429 pp. Notes
and index. $48.00 (cloth), ISBN 3-7186-5568-3.
Reviewed by Neal Pease, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Published by HABSBURG (May, 1996)
The Catholic Church and Antisemitism in Interwar Poland
This is a useful and stimulating contribution to scholarly discussion of
one of the more controversial topics of modern Central European history:
the extent and significance of antisemitism in Poland in the years
preceding the Second World War, and the particular role of that country's
Roman Catholic Church in shaping the attitudes of its Polish flock toward
the substantial Jewish minority that dwelt in its midst.
Much is at stake here. The "Jewish question" plays a role in the histories
of all lands of Central Europe, of course, but it gained particular
intensity in the Polish lands, where Jews comprised one-tenth of the
population and played a key role in economic and cultural life.
Furthermore, the matter of Polish attitudes toward Jews became something
of a litmus test in the vigorous discussions over jaka Polska?--"what sort
of Poland?"--that accompanied the rise of Polish nationalism, pitting the
vision of a modern reincarnation of the cosmopolitan and latitudinarian
Respublica of old against a more restrictively defined homeland for Poles
and Poles alone. Far more than any other issue, the charge of incorrigible
antisemitism casts a shadow over the historical reputation of Poland and
its culture and gives rise to the widespread belief that the Poles were at
least spiritually complicit in the Holocaust that later took place on
their soil. Through the years, this debate has been notorious for
generating more heat than light, marked by recrimination, defensiveness,
and liberal use of ad hominem argumentation. Despite a notable and welcome
recent improvement in the level and tone of discourse, this remains a
field in need of basic research and fair judgment, and only the brave are
advised to enter.
This monograph by Ronald Modras helps that process along by providing, for
the first time, an extended examination in English of the Polish Church
and antisemitism in the interwar decades. For the most part, commentary on
Catholicism and the "Jewish question" during the era of the independent
Second Republic has tended to fall into two polarized camps, either
attacking the Church as a blinkered, bigoted institution that actively
fostered hatred of Jews, or defending it after a fashion as a moderating
influence in an atmosphere of inflamed ethno-religious passions,
constrained by Christian doctrine and scruples to reject the violence and
racist extremism of the hard-core antisemitic right. Based on a survey of
the Polish Catholic press of the day, Modras's study sidesteps these
conventional pigeonholes and offers a balanced and thoughtful approach,
presenting evidence and argumentation that challenges scholars to take a
fresh, broader look at the subject.
His thesis, in sum, begins with the categorical statement that, yes, the
Polish Church must be held largely responsible for encouraging,
legitimating, or rationalizing hostility toward Jews during the runup to
World War II, that "the Catholic clergy...were not innocent bystanders or
passive observers of the wave of antisemitism that encompassed Poland in
the latter half of the 1930s" (p. 396). He bases this conclusion on a
persuasive mass of documentation drawn from Catholic newspapers and
periodicals, polemics as well as published authoritative pronouncements.
With few exceptions, the best that can be said of the Polish Catholic
spokesmen and hierarchs of that time is that they bestirred themselves to
disapprove only the vilest excesses of anti-Jewish thuggery in painfully
qualified language while explicitly sanctioning more respectable forms of
discrimination, such as economic boycotts, and routinely stigmatizing Jews
as spiritual and political enemies. While recognizing that sensibilities
have changed over time, and that this approach could pass for moderation
in the context of the thirties, Modras makes plain his conviction that
this does not amount to much of a defense. Again, that is the best that
can be said; at worst, Catholic publicists dished out crude, sometimes
vicious antisemitic invective that makes the reader squirm six decades
after the fact. As for the ultimate, excruciating question--what did this
have to do with the Holocaust?--the author rightly states that "Christian
antisemitism" bore no direct tie to the neopagan Nazi racism that reached
fulfillment in the Shoah. But he adds his verdict that it acted as a
tragic precursor, a conditio sine qua non.
At the same time, he continues, although Polish Catholicism was indeed
antisemitic in any meaningful sense of the term, this was by no means a
peculiarly Polish defect, but one common to the entire Church of the era
before Nostra Aetate. He notes that the staple themes of Catholic
antisemitic broadsides--economic parasitism, the purported Jewish link
with communism, above all the obsessive belief in a Jewish alliance with
Freemasonry to advance the assault of secular liberalism against the
Church and all it held dear--were essentially no different in Poland than
anywhere else, exhibiting few native characteristics that would have been
unrecognizable to Catholics in, say, England or Italy. In other words, he
might say, the distinctive thing about Catholic antisemitism in Poland was
not so much that it was Polish as that it was Catholic. Along the way,
Modras displays a perceptive sensitivity to the complexities and paradoxes
of Polish civilization, an environment that could produce Catholic
antisemites who nonetheless risked their lives to rescue Jews during the
Nazi occupation, as well as St. Maksymilian Kolbe, the noble soul who died
in another prisoner's place in Auschwitz but whose "Knights of the
Immaculata" publishing house had churned out some of Poland's nastiest
Jewbaiting rags in peacetime.
This worthy book is not without blemishes, so let us get these out of the
way before giving Professor Modras his deserved commendations at the end.
In the first place, the author, a theologian at St. Louis University,
readily admits that he is not a specialist in Polish matters, and it shows
to some extent. Aside from the good deal he has learned of Polish-Jewish
relations, his grasp of the history of the Second Republic seems wooden
and a trifle unsteady. For instance, the occasional name is misspelled,
and the Pilsudski coup d'état, the watershed of interwar Polish politics,
is repeatedly misdated. While the years 1936-1939 were no bargain in many
ways, to describe them as "among the darkest in modern Polish history" (p.
34) seems curious, especially in light of what was to come immediately
afterward. One also might ask why Modras chose to focus on the years
1933-1939, a somewhat artificial periodization that corresponds with the
era of prewar Nazi rule in Germany, to be sure, but that has no particular
bearing on the Polish case, because the advent of Hitler did not much
alter the terms of debate over the "Jewish question" in Poland, inside or
out of Catholic circles. He might have done better to follow the example
of other scholars and select 1935 as his starting point, the year of the
death of Marshal Pilsudski and the subsequent revived dynamism of the
Polish right, or to cover the entire interwar epoch.
On one occasion, the author seems to overstrain to push his
point--otherwise well taken--that Polish Catholicism was little, if any,
more disposed to antisemitism than the Catholic world as a whole; for he
minimizes the significance of the celebrated 1938 statement of Pope Pius
XI (formerly the nuncio to Poland, by the way) that Christians were
"spiritual semites" and thereby forbidden to hate Jews, seizing on the
technical ground that it was an off-the-cuff, unofficial remark. Even so,
the facts remain that the pope said these words, that he took pains to
make known that he had said them, and that they became the most famous he
ever uttered, as Modras acknowledges. Does it really matter that much that
they did not appear in any Vatican publication of record? Finally in this
litany, we might wish that Modras had not limited himself to an
examination of the press and had made wider use of other sources, even
while admitting the validity of his claim that this method permits an
accurate insight into Polish Catholic opinion. A more serious question is
whether his findings might be skewed slightly--in tone, more than
substance--by his heavy reliance on examples drawn from Maly Dziennik and
Rycerz Niepokolanej. These mass market papers of Father Kolbe were noted
for vociferous anti-Jewish diatribes, but were without influence on
educated or elite circles.
These are all small things that might have been done better. Far more
weighty, in my view, are the several big things that Modras does very
well. Moreover, his theological background permits him to highlight
nuances of Catholic thought and discourse that have eluded some others.
For starters, he convincingly demonstrates, should anyone require
convincing, that prejudice against Jews was indeed deeply embedded in the
Polish Catholic culture of the early twentieth century. While it may have
been more prevalent elsewhere, or more virulent, this was not thanks to
the leadership of the Polish Church. Not many Catholics raised their
voices against the spread of antisemitism. Those who did represented
elements that, like as not, were out of step with the hierarchy, embodying
trends in Polish Catholicism that would not come into their own until
after the war, such as the Odrodzenie (Renaissance) group. In this respect
at least, says Modras--with deliberate provocation, but no little
justice--Polish Catholics were less "Christian" than their enemies of the
secular left.
Second, he is correct to stress the degree to which Catholic antisemitism
of the day formed but one component of a profoundly defensive mentality
that conceived of the Church as a beleaguered rampart under fire of the
combined onslaught of liberalism, communism, Freemasonry, and Jewry, foes
whose identities tended to blur and merge in the smoke of battle. This is
a point that is vital for an understanding of the outlook of interwar
European Catholicism and its political activity. It is too often
overlooked or dismissed as mere rhetoric rather than the conviction it
was. It in no way excuses or minimizes the antisemitism of Polish
Catholics to say that it derived most of its energy from the notion of a
desperate war to preserve "Christian culture" against the inimical forces
of modern life, including but by no means limited to Jews.
Not least, Modras's book teaches a valuable lesson in its insistence on
treating the Polish Church as an integral part of an international,
avowedly universal institution, and in his finding that the attitudes of
Polish Catholicism toward Jewish questions fell solidly within the
Catholic mainstream of those times. Not only is he right on both counts, I
think, but this approach has applicability beyond this particular work.
All students of Polish church history should bear this in mind. It
provides a needed corrective to the all-too-frequent tendency to regard
Polish Catholicism as an isolated phenomenon, unique and eccentric, so
decisively formed (or deformed, according to some) by national issues,
traits, and phobias as to constitute a great exception. In fact, this is
not at all the case. Of course, Modras does not hold that Catholicism in
Poland is no different than in other lands, or that antisemitism was
exactly the same in all Catholic lands, but simply stresses that the
similarities were more compelling than the differences, that as regards
the sprawa zydowska the Polish acorn did not fall far from the Catholic
oak. This argument is well defended, as are the others that make up the
heart of this book. Those virtues, as well as the author's rare blend of
judgment, balance, and humane spirit, should secure his book a durable
position on the lists of recommended works on the history of Polish-Jewish
relations, the Polish Church, and modern antisemitism alike.
-- 
togli le VVV per scrivermi
questo articolo e` stato inviato via web dal servizio gratuito 
http://www.newsland.it/news
 segnala gli abusi ad 
ab...@newsland.it

 Invio una review di un libro che sicuramente potra' interessare coloro che
Yawn, quanto sei noioso con questa fissa che ti sei preso.
Otterresti più successo a costruire qualche geometria non euclidea.
A proposito di matematici e geometrici...leggi questo, va', e una volta
tanto cerca di ragionare davvero.( almeno sforzati)
http://www.corriere.it/speciali/2005/Cronache/PioXII/index18.shtml
Ilpunto di vista è è molto critico verso la Chiesa e molte affermazioni sono
ovviamente discutibilissime.
Eppure non può fare a meno di sottolineare con la dovuta importanza un
punto:
"Chi scrive è qui perché suo padre fu nascosto a San Giovanni in Laterano, e
non fu il solo"
Evidentemente, la Verità ha a sua forza.
(aggiungo Nenni, che *rifugiato in Laterano* giocava a briscola con i
seminaristi, e qualcuno più bonario di altri se lo ricorda moccolare)
E.L.

 ovviamente discutibilissime.
La cosa piů ridicola č continuare a parlare del documento di Melloni come se
corrispondesse ad una direttiva vaticana, giorni e giorni dopo che si č
rivelato una bufala. E costruirvi un pezzo giornalistico. E continuare ad
astenersi dalla pubblicazione della direttiva autentica.
Rivoltante.

 tanto cerca di ragionare davvero.( almeno sforzati)
come puoi chiedermi di ragionare se stando ai tuoi colti e interessanti 
reply ( per grazia ricevuta ?) in questo nostro piccolo
mondo ne sei capace solo tu?
Sergio