Customer Reviews

Constantine's Sword

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I read James Carroll's book several years ago and felt it was well researched. The movie included much of this research and some more current ways the Christian Church continues to use the sword! It reminded me of what the Apostle Paul told the Corinthian Church: "If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." How many centuries will it take the church to learn it's better to be loving then right!! The film is worth seeing in this time when elements of two great world religious are at war/jihad with each other. Neither is innocent, both need to confess their sins. One down, one to go.

"Constantine's Sword," the movie version of John Carroll's book, is now available on DVD; it can also be watched on-line if you have Netflix.

There's a great deal of autobiography in the film. Carroll's father, Joseph Carroll was an important Air Force general; an FBI agent, Joseph Carroll was then sent to the new Air Force, commissioned a colonel, and within two years was a major general. He was the founding director of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, and then the founding director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; it was he who brought the photos of Russian missles in Cuba to Kennedy's attention.

The younger Carroll grew up on military bases, met John XXIII with his family as a teenager, and in the wake of the nuclear uncertainty of the Cold War, opted to pursue those things that would last. His first mass was celebrated at a chapel on an Air Force base; growing disillusioned with the war in Vietnam, and feeling called to follow the Prince of Peace, he slipped in just a tiny allusion in that first homily. He preached on Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones; he mentioned they had been burned by the sun. More than that, burned by napalm. Such a tiny rebellion-such a miniscule insult to the military-but enough to drive a wedge between James and Joseph.

Carroll was a priest from 1969-1974, increasingly active in opposing the war, which destroyed his faith in both governmental and churchly authority. In an interview from those days he notes the silence of the US Catholic hierarchy to the bombing of civilians in Vietnam and opines, "Were US bombers dropping contraceptives on the Vietnamese, the American Catholic hierarchy would have condemned it quickly; but we were dropping napalm, and they said nothing."

These personal stories are sketched throughout the movie, which begins at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and the issue of aggressive evangelization of non-Christians, especially Jewish students, by evangelical churches in the area and by evangelical faculty, staff and students of the Academy. He interviews Academy graduate Mikey Weinstein, who was shocked when one of his two sons then at the Academy told him of anti-Jewish slurs he had been subjected to, and of the aggressive promotion of "The Passion of the Christ" by the Academy.

Carroll uses this incident to launch into a discussion of two issues: the history of Christian hostility to Jews, and of the linkage of Christianity with military power. He visits Milvian Bridge outside Rome, and Constantine's vision of a cross with the motto, "In hoc signo vinces," becomes the guiding metaphor for the book-"Cross and sword become one. Christianity turns violent."

He surveys how this baptized violence spread across Europe, and became a means to unite feuding Christian kingdoms in a war against a common enemy, the Muslim "infidel"-and against closer enemies, against whom Christians had a long-standing grudge.

Carroll relates how he grew up in a typical Irish-Catholic family, trusting in a holy church with holy saints, priests and bishops. Now he saw those "holy" priests and bishops calling for bloody conquest, even leading pogroms against Jews in the name of Christ.

He travels to Spain, where Jews were first forced to convert to Christianity; then, when Christians became suspicious of the integrity of those they had forcibly converted, the Spanish Inquisition was created to investigate and to punish. When Jews were expelled from Spain, many were welcome in Rome, until 1555, when chief Roman inquisitor Giovanni Cardinal Caraffa became Pope Paul IV, who restricted Jewish intercourse with Christians and created a ghetto in which they must live.

Though recent popes, especially John Paul II, have taken great strides to repair relations with Jews, Carroll doesn't think they've gone far enough. John Paul denounced Nazi antisemitism, but blamed it on neo-paganism, refusing to acknowledge that another part of its foundation was the legacy of Christian anti-Judaism, of accusations of "Christ-killer" and the blood libel. Only this can explain the collusion of many Catholic prelates with Nazism. He goes to Trier, where one of the supposed relics brought back from the Holy Land by Helena, the Robe of Christ, has been kept since the time of Constantine. The Bishop of Trier supported the National Socialists in the election of 1933, and to celebrate their victory, arranged for the Robe to be displayed. Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen represented Hitler, and, with the bishop, sent a telegram to Hitler pledging their mutual cooperation. While it was on display, Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) signed the concordat with Hitler-protecting the institutional church while accepting Nazi rule. Pacelli might not have been "Hitler's Pope," says Carroll, but he was certainly "Hitler's Cardinal."

That same year Edith Stein wrote to the pope to warn of Nazi antisemitism and of the dark future that would face Europe's Jews; five years later, now known as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, she lamented in her diary that the pope had never bothered to respond ... and that all she had predicted had come true. This wasn't mentioned in her canonization in 1998; she was canonized as a martyr, despite the fact that she went to Auschwitz not because of her Catholic faith, but for her Jewish blood.

In Rome, the anti-Jewish legislation of Paul IV was rescinded when Italy unified and the pope was banished to the Vatican; it was revived by Mussolini, however, and when in 1943 Mussolini rounded up the Jews of Rome to deport to Auschwitz, the pope said nothing. A survivor says in the film, "If the pope had only taken the trouble to go outside the gate-and not say anything, just do as he did when Rome was bombed-just go outside the gate and stand in silence, with his arms raised in the form of a cross, there might never have been a deportation. Italians and German Catholics would not have gone along with it." But he never appeared.

Carroll affirms the strides taken forward by the Catholic Church in the latter part of the 20th century, especially the "change that mattered most" at Vatican 2, the decree, Nostra Aetate. But he wonders how much it has sunk in. He speaks with Fr. Stanislaw Obirek, a Polish Jesuit, suspended by his order because, Carroll says, he wanted a fuller accounting for the Catholic Church's role in Polish antisemitism.

Returning to the US, Carroll listens to the rhetoric of George Bush's "war on terror"-language of "crusade," "good vs. evil," "God is not neutral"-and hears echoes of past attempts to fuse cross and sword That's what frightens him about what he saw happening at the Air Force Academy; it appears to be a case of religion and military power coming together, with young evangelicals in the military inspired by their religious zeal to fight Middle East enemies. This isn't the spirit of Jesus, but the spirit of Constantine, which is still alive after 1700 years.

The movie can be faulted for its disparagement of Scripture (Carroll accepts uncritically whatever Elaine Pagels tells him), but it remains a powerful testimony to the experiences of those who have been cut by Constantine's sword.

Jim Carrol presents a scholarly and truthful presentation of Christianity and its roll in the world since Emperor Constantine at about 320. He also explores Christianity's effect on Jews for the past 1700 years, in a most honest and open way.
Carrol deserves a humanitarian prize for his scholarly work.

In his scholarly work, James Carroll, a former Catholic priest, becomes a modern-day Indiana Jones. His quest is to understand the role of Christianity in the persecution of Jews in ancient times as well as today. Not only is Carroll courageous and honest in his evaluation, but he exposes how other priests who wish to expose similar findings are systematically sidelined or silenced. Carroll should win a prize for his excellent documentary.

I will keep this short and sweet. It is a selective account covering well know points relating to Judiasm and the Catholic Church in large part. It does an excellent job of showing the ambiguity and outright denials..by both commission and omission.
What we need to do is take a look at what kinds of roles we want religion to hold in your public life? Should Chaplains be in the military? What limitations should be placed on them? How are chaplains chosen?
We need to strongly look at the place religion holds in our judicial and social network system. One of the darkest histories of state supported religious brothels (called Orphanages) was in Newfoundland in Canada. The Brothers of Ireland had full sway over kids that resulted in both brutal violence and sexual abuse. The police and other chose to ignore or downplay any reports.
I said I will keep it short. What will you allow religious groups to influence in your society? Will you take your part in the public debate?

James Carroll's documentary, Constantine's Sword", beautifully complements his important 2001 book of the same title. Narrator Carroll shows how anti-Semitism developed within Christianity after it became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the early 4th century, how it became lethal from then until the Holocaust, how the Nazis did not invent anti-Semitism but simply built on that toxic history, and how Church leaders did little to undo the damage until Pope John XXIII. Carroll also explores the mindset of the likes of fundamentalist leaders like Rev. Ted Haggard as they sought/seek to make the US Air Force Academy their mission field. This important film, which has unfortunately had far too little theater distribution, merits the widest possible circulation.
-- Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

It's a testimony to James Carroll's brilliance that in the course of a 90-minute documentary he manages to weave together three distinct themes, showing how the personal and the political are related, and how the stories we tell can change everything - including our most fundamental beliefs.

The documentary's first thread is personal. Carroll's father was an important general during the Cold War. Vietnam divided father and son. Carroll wrote about this in "An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us," which won a 1996 National Book Award. Carroll became a priest rather than following his father into the Air Force. The key moment of this story is Carroll's first Mass, on a military base, his father in attendance. The young Carroll preached from Ezekiel of the Old Testament, who wrote about bones from the slaughter of war, burned by the sun... and napalm, Carroll added. His father never forgave him, he says.

The second thread, public but also personal for Carroll, now an ex-priest, is the shadow cast by the cross - a symbol for Christianity only since the fourth century, when Roman Emperor Constantine conquered in its sign. Carroll wrote an award-winning book about this as well - the 2001 "Constantine's Sword, The Church and the Jews - A History." Whereas before Constantine Christianity's symbols referenced life, the cross is all about the tortured death of God, caused by... the Jews. Carroll interviews Elaine Pagels, who speaks to the unlikelihood of that actually being the truth - but (for historical reasons not covered in this film, i.e., the early Church's need to separate itself from the Jews, and, by the turn of the second century, the deep discouragement over not being successful in converting the Jews) that's the story that made it into the Gospels. The film covers 1700 years of anti-Semitism in European history by means of a few well chosen clips and events, ending, of course, with the Holocaust and Edith Stein, the Jewish philosopher who became a Carmelite nun and died in a concentration camp.

The third thread is public, the danger of religion insinuating itself into government power, corrupting both, as happened in Europe during those centuries, and which seemed to be happening during the W years. Perhaps it still is happening. Carroll went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs to tell the story of the evangelical proselytizing taking place there. He interviews Academy graduate Mikey Weinstein and Weinstein's son, a cadet who had been subjected to aggressive proselytizing. Ted Haggard, with a maniacal, rictus grin, explains to Carroll that such behavior is part of the beauty of America, not a problem, and that the Weinsteins really want religion out of the Academy altogether. "We are not an atheistic society," Haggard proclaims. As if that means our government should be in bed with the evangelicals.

It's a brilliant, thought-provoking film, and especially troubling in its epilogue, showing that we don't seem to be learning from these past lessons that seem so obvious. It's also inspiring in that Carroll, despite it all, speaks so clearly about his Christian (not Christianist) faith.

I believe this movie, more than any other I may have seen, may actually help us wage peace on Earth. Many thanks.

History and religion are rarely black and white, and occasionally in this documentary James Carroll seems to forget that fact. Still, this is a devastating look at the ways the Christian religion too often contributed to and cooperated with anti-Semitism, a virus conceived long before Christianity was born.

This is a documentary adaptation of Carroll's enormous book. It was excellent, but unfortunately more of a distillation than I'd hoped for. I guess my expectations were too high.

However, the adaptation was beautifully done as far as it went, and still shattering even though I knew what was coming.