Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

298 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:297
instead, however, he has chosen to engage in a largely polemical battle with
their viewpoints, vitiating the overall value of his book.
With regard to Kertzer, Lawler argues that his volume is full of questionable
uses of sources, though he regards him as somewhat better than
John Cornwell. On this point I am certainly in agreement with Lawler. He
also critiques those in the Catholic scholarly community, such as Dr.
Eugene Fisher and me, for what he claims were blanket endorsements of the
Kertzer volume when it first appeared. In this context, an example of
Lawler’s own selective reading of materials can be seen. Neither Eugene
Fisher nor I canonized the Kertzer volume. We did feel his arguments provided
a challenge for Christians that deserves a thoughtful analysis. If
Lawler had provided such an analysis, he would have had my praise. I
would say that there is the making of such a constructive critique in sections
of his analysis, but the highly charged language in which he presents his
arguments undermine their ultimate value.
Several years ago, at a conference at Pacific Lutheran University in
Tacoma, Washington, a conference co-sponsored by the Church Relations
Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, I took on
Kertzer publicly for some of his unwarranted assertions and his overly negative
interpretation of certain statement by Dr. Fisher in his capacity as
secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Catholic-Jewish Relations,
together with Kertzer’s negative comments of the Vatican document on the
Holocaust, “We Remember.”
So I have always maintained a critical posture toward Kertzer’s interpretations—as
have most, if not all, of the circle of scholars with whom I
have partnered over the years. We have tried, of course, to retain balance in
our response to Kertzer, including praise for his surfacing of the repeated
anti-Jewish outlook found in the Vatican’s semi-official La Civiltà Cattolica
(http://www.laciviltacattolica.it/it/).
Beyond his critique of Kertzer, Lawler’s major target is John Connelly.
The polemical style of his analysis is once again in full view here.
Knowing Connelly, I see him as a somewhat gentle and very serious, competent
scholar who would have welcomed a constructive exchange on central
issues in the ongoing debate about papal attitudes toward the Jews. But
this is the type of exchange in which Lawler seems disinclined to engage.
There are two other troubling examples of totally less than nuanced
interpretations in Lawler’s book. The first is a somewhat cynical dismissal
of the letter signed by nineteen prominent Catholic scholars, including some
of the most distinguished American Catholic historians, to Pope Benedict
XVI, urging the pope to withhold beatification/canonization for Pius XII
until scholars have the opportunity to undertake further research into yet
unexamined materials. Their argument in part was that it would prove far