Amazon Review - The Lost History of 1914: How the Great War Was Not Inevitable by Jack Beatty.

As always, please go here and give my review a "helpful" vote.

An entertaining and informative book for the history lover.


For the lover of history, history has an inherent "Gosh, wow!" factor. A lover of history wants to marvel at the things that have brought us to where we are today, and particularly wants to marvel at the things that were better, bigger and more amazing than we can see today. There is probably no more unmitigated "Gosh, wow!" moment for a lover of history than when he's taken behind the stage where he gets to see the inner workings of history and how the firm, secure, concrete workings of history as it is could have turned out so different if a minor adjustment was made in the plot or the staging.

Jack Beatty's "The Lost History of 1914: How the Great War Was Not Inevitable" is a book for the lover of history who wants to indulge in some "Gosh, wow!" moments. Beatty's thesis is that the First World War - which has been taught for nearly a century as something that was as inevitable as the next Ice Age - could have been avoided if only certain minor adjustments in timing had been made in that last fateful year before the mass slaughter that decapitated one era and launched a newer, nastier one.

Beatty looks at the major players of the First World War - Germany, France, Britain, the United States and Russia - and points to "lost" events, i.e., events that were important at the time but are now forgotten, in order to point out that if those events had turned out slightly different or had been timed differently, then the clock-work mechanics that seems to have launched the First World War would have broken down. In France, for example, if Mrs. Cailleaux hadn't gunned down the right-wing publisher of a newspaper that had been savaging her husband, he might have been in control of France's foreign policy with his pacifist ally in August of 1914, such that he could have negotiated a peace treaty with Germany as he did during the Moroccan crisis of 1911. Similarly, if the build-up to war had been just a few days quicker, England might have been engulfed in a Civil War in Northern Ireland over the issue of Home Rule for Ireland.

A thing I liked about Beatty's book is that it brought together a lot of "background" information I knew about - vaguely - and made them the center of attention. So, I got the details of the Moroccan Crisis of 1911, whereas before it had only been a bit of stage setting. Likewise, Beatty's discussion of America's involvement with Mexico and Pancho Villa made the Zimmerman Telegram - which had been presented to me in High School history as a bit of hysterical drama on the part of America - suddenly make sense as to why Americans would take seriously a German offer to let Mexico have a piece of the American southwest; not the least reason for which was that Mexico actually had several armies, any of which were manifestly larger thanthe 25,000 to 30,000 man army that America was fielding at that time.

Beatty's book is fun, and intended to be fun. My sense is that Beatty enjoys the "Gosh, wow!" bits of history, and enjoyed introducing his readers to the characters who made up the dramatis personae of the fin de siècle. At times, I thought some of his choices were dubious in that regard, such as having Trotsky describe Tsar Nicholas as vapid. After all, how much weight should we give that bit of information? What would we expect Trotsky to say? Likewise, quoting from various books of fiction written long after the fact by authors removed from the events - as in the case of quoting "The Old Gringo" (inasmuch as Carlos Fuentes was born in 1928 in Panama City) - as if they offered insight into the experience of the people suffering through the Mexican Revolution seemed odd. Another quirk I found disconcerting was Beatty's "vertiginous" style of narration. Beatty would often segue off on a tangent from one topic for pages before it became clear that he was discussing a possibly related topic, which was chronologically prior to the original topic. In the chapter on America's involvement in Mexico, it seems that the Dictator Huerta boarded the German cruiser Dresden for exile in Jamaica three or four times. Likewise, in the chapter on Germany, after reading for pages about the German Reichstag's loss of nerve in confronting the military about its usurpation of civilian rule in Alsace-Lorraine, I was brought up short by a reminder that the Reichstag had censured the military on that issue, and I had to go back to find where the censure had occurred to remind myself what had happened. This recursive style is apparently a design feature, according to Beatty's "Acknowledgments," and is intended to "provide recurring images" and show case "parallel dilemmas. " Nonetheless, it can be confusing, so forewarned is forearmed.

1914 is filled with a feast of historical factoids for the history lover. Although as a resident of the Central Valley of California, I have known about the Armenian Genocide my entire life, I did not know that the match that lit it was a Russian victory at the Battle of Sarakamish. I didn't know that there is a current view - based on information previously unavailable in the former Eastern Germany - that there never was a "Schlieffen Plan" or that the "Schlieffen Plan" during the war was in the custody of "Schlieffen's two elderly daughters." (p. 252.) I found it surprising - although I sort of knew this from High School history - that the French "Birth Dearth" is nothing new - it was a reality in the period prior to the First World War. I really hadn't known anything about Herbert Hoover's background or his humanitarian contribution to the starving in Europe. (Again, I had heard about that subject as a "one-off" sentence that usually introduced Hoover.)

Beatty's book can obviously be criticized, and argued about endlessly, with respect to his particular cases. Did they make that much of a difference? Would they have made that much of a difference? But, heck, that's the fun of "counterfactual history," aka "parallel history," aka "alternative history." That history didn't happen, so naturally the likelihood of that parallel history ever happening was - or seems to be - unlikely. On the other hand, he makes some observations worth pondering - for example, what was the effect of the First World War on a generation of German children deprived of their fathers? (p. 316 - 317.) Was Hitler a surrogate father-figure that they were programmed to respond to by their brutal experience? It's an interesting bit of speculation to ponder.

Another thing that struck me was that the fin de siècle is so perfectly modern. In France, a vituperative press gins up the feelings of a reader who goes out and shoots the vilified politician, and we think we have issues with "civility"! In Germany, a pompous twenty-year old refers to Alsatians with the derogatory slur "wackes" - from which I suspect we get our term "wacky" - and it turns into a national crisis, and writing this within a week of the soon to be forgotten Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke "slut" kerfuffle, I have to think, "déjà vu all over again."

Finally, Beatty is enjoyable to read. I like his "vertiginous" and "tenebrous" and "rodomontade." And anyone who can write about the "boche debauched" is having a good time with his subject matter. And sometimes it must have been hard to hold back, such as when Madame Caillaux is acquitted of the public murder of Gaston Calmette after she killed the man in broad daylight after purchasing the gun and engaging in target practice because the jury concluded that Calmette just happened to fall in the path of the bullet that she intended to shoot into the floor to scare him!

This is an entertaining read for the history lover, or simply the person who wants to see how it may be the case that history wasn't etched in stone.

Amazon Review - "Every act of historical understanding is an act of empathy."

John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century by Robert Louis Wilken.

As always, go please go here and give me a "helpful" vote.

The conventional wisdom is that St. John Chrysostom (aka the "Golden-mouthed") wrote Anti-Jewish polemics of surpassing ugliness, homilies that defined Christian anti-semitism, and poisoned subsequent Christian-Jewish relations. Robert Louis Wilken purpose is to place these diatribes into context, so that if Chrysostom's homilies aren't exactly redeemed, at least they can be defended from bearing the entire burden of the unfortunate relationship between Judaism and its daughter religion.

Wilken does this by edging up very slowly to the homilies themselves, taking the reader gradually into the world of Chrysostom so that the reader can find some empathy for the homilies by situating himself in Chrysostom's world.

Wilken initially introduces the reader to the city of Antioch, the city in which Chrysostom matured and delivered his homilies. Antioch was an old, thoroughly Hellenized city. The civic traditions and customs of Antioch were Hellenistic, which meant that they were thoroughly pagan. The culture to which the citizens aspired was a rhetorical culture, where much emphasis was given on learning the skills of rhetoric. Christians in Antioch were inculcated into this pagan culture, and themes and tropes of paganism were everywhere.

Wilken next describes the fractious and fractured Christian community of Antioch, which was divided between monks and city-folk, an Arian congregation led by an Arian bishop, and two orthodox communities. In this community, Chrysostom, who had been a monk, and then became a presbyter of one of the orthodox congregations, found that one of his main objectives was to defend the loyalty of his congregation from "poaching" by other Christians, pagans and Jews.

Wilken provides a fascinating discussion of the Jewish community in Antioch. At the time when Chrysostom lived the Jwish community had been in place for nearly a thousand years. The Jewish community was wealthy, powerful and well-established. Moreover, Judaism as a whole had been experiencing a revival for a couple of hundred years, recovering from the disaster of the Bar Kochba Revolt of 120 C.E. Judaism was a true rival to Christianity, even after Constantine. Judaism enjoyed the prestige of its antiquity, as well as the fact that it was the custodian of the very scriptures on which Christianity based its claims to authority. Moreover, Christians were attracted to Judaism because of their sense that Jewish rituals worked. the common Christian viewed oaths taken in the Synagogue as being more binding because of the awesomeness of Jewish rituals. Jewish magic, interestingly, was considered more puissant than ordinary magic. (The irony is that Jews had a converse attitude to the power of the name of Jesus, which was often invoked in their magic because of its perceived strength. See Peter Schafer, Jesus in the Talmud.)

So, Chrysostom perceived Judaism as a particular threat to his Christian flock, not the least because there were actual Christians who sufficiently attracted to Judaism to "judaize," i.e., to attend Jewish rituals, festivals and synagogue and to adopt Jewish practices. The dilemma that this presented to Chrysostom was that it seemed to argue very strongly to the rest of his flock that Judaism remained the true religion, since, after all, if Judaism was viable, how could Christianity be the true religion?

The strength of the Christian claim was historical. Christians could and did point to the fact that the Jewish Temple had been destroyed in 70 CE. The effect of this destruction was to powerfully vindicate Christ's prophecy about the destruction of the Temple as a foreshadowing of the eclipse of the old covenant in favor of the new covenant.

This historical argument was, however, contingent on history. The strength of the claim was that the Temple was destroyed and remained destroyed, but what if the Temple were to be restored? In approximately 360 CE this contingency appeared as if it were about to be actualized under the Emperor Julian the Apostate. Julian started to rebuild the Temple but his efforts were cut short by his death after reigning for 18 months. His aborted efforts were scarring the psyche of Christians in Antioch twenty years later when Chrysostom gave his sermon against the "Judaizing Christians."

A final key in understanding the homilies is the rhetorical culture of the Roman Empire in the "second great age of rhetoric." Sophists - not a term of derision at the time - and rhetoricians were the rock stars of the era. They were trained in the classic skills of public speaking. One of those skills involved giving a proper speech of derision and villification - the "psogos." The conventions of these speeches required over the top name-calling and extreme derision; there was no sense that "fairness" had any role in the "psogos."

Moreover, the audience knew and expected the rhetorician to live up to the conventions of the psogos. A good speech resulted in substantial audience interaction; a mediocre speech resulted in a cold audience.

According to Wilken, the focus of the time - on the part of both rhetorician and audience - was on style, not substance. Everyone knew that a game was being played with overstatements and conventions of villification which were stylistic rather than real. As Wilken points out, it is not the case that the over the top rhetoric unleashed over-excited mobs to destroy and wreck the villified; in fact, there seems to have been one such case, suggesting an exception and not the rule. (p. 123.)

Put this mix together and we have a better idea of what was going on in Chrysostom's polemics. Chrysostom was not an anti-semite as we understand the word. He was engaging in the conventional polemics of the time, and it would seem that everyone knew it and probably didn't take it seriously as a matter of substance. By the end of the book, we can achieve a certain measure of understanding because as Wilken observes, "Every act of historical understanding is an act of empathy." (p. 162.)

On the other hand, in cultural settings far removed from Antioch at the end of the Fourth Century, the conventions that informed Chrysostom's writings didn't apply, and in those circumstances, Chrysostom's polemics may have played a far more pernicious role. That history, however, is beyond the scope of Wilken's book.

On drawback I found in Wilken's book is that it didn't really deal with Chrysostom's homilies directly. By the final chapter we do get snippets of the homilies, but no extended quotations. This may be part of Wilken's strategy of building empathy toward historical understanding, premised on the notion that we moderns cannot read vast swathes of anti-semitic polemics without reacting to it in the way we have been culturally conditioned by our history to react viscerally against what we see as bigotry.

Wilken is a good writer. His story moves along at a good clip. I recommend this book along with other books on Jewish-Christian relationships of late antiquity, including Paula Fredriksen's Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism. Another excellent source for deriving the historical understanding and empathy for Chrysostom's world is Peter Schafer's Jesus in the Talmud which demonstrates that "over the top" rhetorical tropes were not limited to Hellenistic culture, as shown by Talmudic - albeit Babylonian Talmud - references to the mother of Jesus being a prostitute and adulteress and Jesus being condemned to an afterlife of being boiled forever in human excrement.

Another plea for assistance, particularly if you are a "Wop" or a "Pollack," or you belong to that church started by "Black Africans," or you think that making fun of a woman who has just seen the back of her head blown off by a sniper's bullet is somehow "wrong"...

...or you are just a fan of basic human decency.

Someone has posted a comment and given me an unfavorable vote on my review of "Why I Am Not a Catholic" by Dr. Peter S. Ruckman.

Here is my review:

I had expected this book to rehearse the typical anti-Catholic arguments, but I got it because I thought it might offer some new challenges to the usual arguments. What I did not expect, and what I warn readers of all faith traditions about, is the ancient bigotry that bubbles throughout this short pamphlet.

Ironically, this book is filled with traditional ethnic slurs, such that when I quoted them directly from the book, such that Amazon refused to publish my review, which sort of proves my point.

I'm going to try to bowdlerize the slurs so that it passes the filters.

I got as far as this gem when I decided to post this review:

"That isn't all. Our High Priest is a "Bishop" (1 Pet. 2:25), so we true priests are not overjoyed when some wine-headed W*p or Marxist P*lack goes around ordaining "archbishops" in his kingdom of death and hell (Isa. 28:15)."

Ruckman, Dr. Peter S. (2011-10-12). Why I Am Not A Catholic (Kindle Locations 288-290). BB Bookstore. Kindle Edition.

"Wine-headed W*p"? "Marxist P*lack"?

Then, how about this?

"When Jackie jumped out of the backseat of her limousine in downtown Dallas (1963) to avoid an assassin's bullet, after seeing her husband with the BACK of his head blown out, she didn't waste time to "Hail Mary" long enough for "Mary" to look up from her Westinghouse washing machine. "Mary" was not only helpless in the emergency, good ole' Catholic "Jackie" didn't think she was even worth praying to. Jackie screamed what all Catholic sinners scream when facing death: "OH MY GOD!" That is what Mahatma Gandhi cried out when he was "whacked": "OOOH RAMA!"

Ruckman, Dr. Peter S. (2011-10-12). Why I Am Not A Catholic (Kindle Locations 255-259). BB Bookstore. Kindle Edition.

Dr. Ruckman is certainly within his right not to like the Kennedys - and as an Irish-Catholic whose mother hails from Boston I am proud of the fact that I will not accept second-place to anyone in my feeling of antipathy for the entire Kennedy clan - but it is just hideous for any person claiming the title of "Christian" to exploit such a moment of personal tragedy to take some kind of excitement in the death of anyone.

Here is another example:

"(They ought to call Catholic birth control pills "St. Joseph's Aspirin." You should be able to buy them in a Monastery: that is a "home for unwed fathers.")"

Ruckman, Dr. Peter S. (2011-10-12). Why I Am Not A Catholic (Kindle Locations 232-233). BB Bookstore. Kindle Edition.

And that must be really have busted them up at Klan meetings.

Here's another one that must have had many a wise head nodding before they put on their hoods for a round of church burning:

"I do not feel at all uneasy about claiming to be more Biblical than ANY Catholic priest who ever donned the Black African (the Latin Church originated in Africa, not Rome) Halloween costume, for I wear the common, ordinary, everyday clothing of my age and time--exactly like Jesus Christ did."

Ruckman, Dr. Peter S. (2011-10-12). Why I Am Not A Catholic (Kindle Locations 321-323). BB Bookstore. Kindle Edition.

And this:

"What would Paul or Jesus Christ have in common with a wine-drinking, pot-bellied, international politician who was head of a State (The Vatican State) and sat on a throne, and has people carry him around in a palanquin on their shoulders?"

Ruckman, Dr. Peter S. (2011-10-12). Why I Am Not A Catholic (Kindle Locations 65-67). BB Bookstore. Kindle Edition.

Particularly if they were "w*ps" or "p*llacks."

And this:

"A brief roll call of the Roman Catholic Church would exhibit such an array of military dictators, hired killers, torturers, bootleggers, drug lords, assassins, cursing Catholic "hit men," extorting Catholic gangsters, and demon-possessed "saints" (Ligouri and Torquemada, for example) that it would make you sick to have to sit in the same auditorium with them if they were forty rows of pews away: Kennedy Sr. (bootlegger), Vito Genovese (professional killer), Lucky Luciano (head of the Cosa Nostra), Joe Bonanno (head of a Mafia family), "Chin" Gigante (Mafia capo), Salvatore Leggio (international drug lord), Dutch Schultz (gangster and bootlegger), Al Capone (Chicago gangster), Fidel Castro (Communist dictator), Tom Reina ("The Beast"), Pablo Escobar (drug lord), Albert Anastasia (head of Murder Incorporated), Joe Valachi (Mafia "wise guy"), John Gotti (Mafia capo), Sammy Granzano (Mafia "rat"), Paul Castellano (Mafia capo), Tony Arcardo (gangster), Vincent Spicuzza (hired killer), Bobby Kennedy (fornicator and kidnapper), Dion O' Banion (Chicago gangster), Vincent Drucci (gangster and killer), Giuseppe Masseria (Mafia capo), Carlo Gambino (Mafia drug lord), Sam Giancana (Mafia capo), Santo Trafficante (Tampa Mafia capo), Carlos Marcellow (New Orleans Mafia capo), Johnny Torrio (Chicago gangster), Salvatore Maranzano (Mafia capo), JFK (habitual fornicator, guilty of TREASON), Frank Costello (Mafia "advisor"), Big Jim Colismo (Chicago gangster), Pendergast (Kansas City gangster), Batista, Noreiga, and Marcos (Catholic Dictators)."

Ruckman, Dr. Peter S. (2011-10-12). Why I Am Not A Catholic (Kindle Locations 93-102). BB Bookstore. Kindle Edition.

Because, obviously, no one could come up with a similar list of Baptists or Lutherans.

Then there is this, which is unintentionally funny:

"What a membership roll for the "ONE, TRUE, HOLY," Apostolic Church that the "Good Shepherd" (John 10; Matt. 16) founded! What a remarkable, progressive "improvement" over a membership that began with Peter, James, John, Paul, Thomas, Barnabas, Timothy, Matthew, Jude, Mark, Silas, Stephen, James (the Lord's brother), and Apollos!"

Ruckman, Dr. Peter S. (2011-10-12). Why I Am Not A Catholic (Kindle Locations 107-110). BB Bookstore. Kindle Edition.

Hmm...is anyone missing from that list?

Hey, how about Judas Iscariot, i.e., 1/12 of the Apostles?

I don't know who Dr. Ruckman is. I assume that he was an elderly man who was deeply set in the prejudices of another age and may well have gone very down the path of senile dementia when he published this book in 1997. We should, therefore, pray for him in that he was a product of his culture. However, his prejudice was not entirely excusable in that this pamphlet was written in 1997 and he claims to have heard Pope John Paul II, so he should have known better than to engage in this Know-Nothing kind of vitriol that - we hope - had died out of the culture of the Bible Belt in the waning days of the 20th Century.

Apart from the bizarre and dated bigotry of this short pamphlet, Dr. Ruckman's arguments are cliche and he makes numerous mistakes of fact. Even if you are someone looking for arguments to use against Catholics, I would recommend that you give this pamphlet a pass; if you read it, you may find yourself unintentionally quoting Dr. Ruckman's claims, which will cause you to suffer embarrassment when his factual mistakes are uncovered.

Here is the comment by S. Wilder:

In reply to your post on Dec 3, 2011 12:28:57 AM PST

S. Wilder says:

All you've done was pick out some choice quotes from the booklet that offended you. Above the quote - "What would Paul or Jesus Christ have in common with a wine-drinking, pot-bellied, international politician who was head of a State (The Vatican State) and sat on a throne, and has people carry him around in a palanquin on their shoulders?" He said - "No Catholic 'pope' ever resembled Jesus Christ or Paul in any way, shape, creed, form, or practice since the word "Catholic" was coined by Ignatius in the second century. Jesus Christ and Paul were ministers to the Jews and Gentiles (Romans 15:8-16) according to the Holy Spirit. Paul never carried a bodyguard with him anywhere,and neither did Jesus Christ. Neither Paul nor the Lord Jesus had a permanent dwelling place in which to live, and neither one of them even had a burial plot after they were executed as criminals. The Vatican Billions (Avro Manhattan, 1983) and similar publications, you will find that the Pope and his ecclesiastical plenipotentiaries (bishops, cardinals, and archbishops) in charge of the Catholic churches finances have a nifty little income of over $4,000,000,000 a year. What of Christ's little flock (Luke 12:32)? What riches did Paul's local churches have? ( 1Cor.16:19)?" Didn't post that did you? And this...."I do not feel at all uneasy about claiming to be more Biblical than ANY Catholic priest who ever donned the Black African (the Latin Church originated in Africa, not Rome) Halloween costume, for I wear the common, ordinary, everyday clothing of my age and time--exactly like Jesus Christ did." So? what's wrong with that? Jesus Christ wore the common apparel that was for that day and time, not like the Pharisees : Mat 23:5 - "But all their works they do for to be seen of men:they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments". In that list of gangsters and dictators who were Catholic, he missed one - HITLER. "Prejudice" means to prejudge, without knowing all the facts. Anyone reading who would like the facts, go to www.chick.com and look at their material with well documented facts on the history of the Catholic church. Get the books and read them for yourself.

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1 of 2 people think this post adds to the discussion. Do you?

And here is my reply:

Dec 3, 2011 12:06:49 PM PST

Peter S. Bradley says:

S. Wilder,

Thank you for proving my thesis that this is a book for bigots.

I notice that you apparently don't have any problem with Ruckman's Archie Bunkeresque comments about "wine headed wops" and "communist pollacks."

Apparently you are also alright with making fun of a woman who just saw the back of her husband's head blown off.

And I like how you quote the bit about "Black African." Are seriously taking the position that the Catholic Church is an anathema to you because it was started by negroes?

Stay classy.

Your reference to chick.com - site of the Jack Chick, who is infamous for his anti-catholic bigotry - speaks volumes.

Readers, if you want to read puerile bigotry, then certainly buy the book and go that site. If you don't want want to avoid associating yourself with people who in another generation would have been wearing hoods and going to Klan meetings, don't.

Go here and give my review and comments a favorable vote, and let S. Wilder know what you think of his arguments and Jack Chick.

Now, is the time we do the dance of joy.

Amazon is releasing the entire Dumarest of Terra series  on Thursday - all 35 books of never-ending cliches involving the emotionless Cyclan, affinity twins and a stoic guy with amazing reflexes and a way with the ladies who just wants to find his lost birthplace, a planet shrouded in legend called Earth.

It's cheese-tastic!

Actually, it looks like Amazon is releasing a lot golden-oldies, such as the complete L. Sprague de Camp ouvre, including "Lest Darkness Fall," and the complete John Brunner collection.

"Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell.

Book review up at Amazon.

George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" is a 20th Century classic. It captures a snapshot of the mindset of the Left at a particular point in time when the world seemed poised between a Fascist future and a Communist future, and although ultimately, even for Orwell, it was hard to tell the difference in practice between the two, the allure of Marxism never dimmed.


Orwell's autobiographical story opens with his decision to abandon the neutrality of the journalistic sidelines and enter into a struggle that his class and cohort considered to be a titanic and defining moment of history. Orwell makes the leap by joining the militia of the P.O.U.M ("POUM") in Barcelona in December of 1936 not long after the Nationalist's coup had been suppressed by a coalition of leftist militias. POUM was the militia fielded by a Marxist-but-not-Communist political party/worker's movement. In the Barcelona of 1936, all of the leftist political movements, including the anarchists and the Communists had their own militias. POUM and the Anarchists of was to the "left" of the Communists among the parties supporting the Spanish Republic.

Orwell is enchanted by the Barcelona of December, 1936, which he fancies to be the one place on Earth where the working class is in control. He is charmed by the fact that everyone is wearing working class clothes and the traditional religious based greetings have been replaced by sturdy revolutionary slogans.

Orwell is soon on his way to the "front," which turns out to be a short stretch of trenches near Zaragoza. From that point, Orwell's account describes the mundane reality of static warfare, with long stretches of inactivity broken by the rare activity of desultory conflict. These accounts are fascinating in describing the unromantic nature of military action generally and of the period between the World Wars, particularly. Orwell's active involvement in front line warfare ended in early 1937 when he was struck in the throat by a bullet, which threatened to leave him mute for the rest of his life, although he did recover. Orwell was then subjected to the coarse ministrations of the Spanish medical service and returned to Barcelona in time for the suppression of the POUM by the Communists.

Orwell has two sections of his book where he describes the internecine conflict between the leftist parties. Orwell is frankly apologetic for these sections, which he describes as being distasteful and undoubtedly not of great interest to his reader. In this he is entirely wrong because they make up the most interesting and insightful parts of his book. Orwell describes the influence of the Russian NKVD over the Republic, and explains the Communist parties' crackdown on the leftist elements of the left as being to serve the interest of Russia, which did not want France distracted by a radical Spain at its back when Russia was interested in seeing a strong France focused on Germany. Orwell then describes the crackdown by the Communists and Republic that resulted in the rounding up of POUM officers and soldiers and their internment in Communist irregular jails. Orwell found himself having to sleep in the streets to avoid arrest and internment, a fate that many international volunteers found themselves in and from which they never emerged.

One of the most chilling things about these sections is Orwell's seeming acceptance of these actions by the Communists. Orwell clearly thinks that the liquidation of the POUM was a waste of effort and cruel, but he doesn't seem outraged by it in the same way that he feels outraged by the Fascists who were doing nothing essentially different. It is as if right thinking Leftists understood that totalitarianism was inevitable and so long as it had a "worker's" flavor, it was acceptable on some level. Orwell seems to have been more outraged by the Communist's reactionary policy that favored the bourgeoisie than by the fact that the Communists were totalitarian thugs. Obviously, Orwell's Catalonian experience eventually made him distrustful of Communists and condemnatory of the totalitarian mindset, as can be seen in his later works.

Orwell's descriptions of Spain and his off-hand description of the anti-Catholicism of the Leftist is also interesting. Orwell constantly belittles the Spanish for their "manana" attitude and their disorganization. He also notes how every Catholic church he sees in Republican territory has been burned, vandalized and/or turned into a latrine. This last observation seems to leave him with no concerns for the civil rights of Catholics, but, rather, it seems that his latent British prejudice against Catholicism and Spain combine to make the desecration of churches appear almost appropriate.

Orwell's description of his military service at times seems to be a cliché from either World War II military movies showing Brits keeping a "stiff upper lip" or Monty Python. He describes ducking from a bullet in his first action and the experience of being shot in such a way that he seems amazed that he was human - imagine ducking from a bullet! How unBritish! This effect was heightened by the audiobook version I was listening to, where the narrator's voice seemed perfect to play the "British twit" role in a Monty Python skit. The reading, however, was clear and interesting.

"Homage to Catalonia" is a fascinating window into a slice of the Spanish Civil War and the mindset of people on the Left prior to the World War II.

Request for support.

It looks like I've got a crank on my review of "The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany)"

If you've got an interest in revisionist history - particularly, revisionist history that takes on the conventional wisdom of people like John Cornwell and Christopher Hitchens who want to blame National Socialism on conservative Catholicism/Christianity, go to my review, give me a "helpful" vote and mix things up with Mr. Burress.

Here is the comment left by "Proctor S. Burress, Jr.":

sir:


Your statements, notably your 5th paragraph, are BS of the first order. You do not seem to be even slightly cognizant of what Pius XII was about. "Radically reconstruct Christian theology in favor of a currently popular academic theory" is utter baloney! Informed readers will surely see you have introduced such a ill-suited "waste basket" term as 'theology.' Please do not rty to fog such serious scholarly issues above your conceptual position!

 Here is my response:

Mr. Burress's comment is not helpful in one sense, but in another sense offers an insight into why reading history is important.


It is clear that Mr. Burress is deeply invested in some position that my review apparently threatens. What that position is, however, is not explained by Mr. Burress, and he doesn't offer any support for his assertions that my "statements" are "BS" and that I'm trying to "fog such serious scholarly issues above [my] conceptual position," whatever these statements are intended to mean. All that we know from Mr. Burress that he is angry at my review.

It would have been helpful to me and the reader for him to spell out what he means and to offer support for his claims. It's obvious that I have spelled out my reading of the relevant texts, and that I have offered support for my positions in the various books that I have cited. Anyone interested in detemining if my review is "BS" or "fog" can read the books I've reviewed here and elsewhere and reach their own conclusion. In that sense, my position is supported and transparent, although anyone is free to disagree with it.

I think that Mr. Burress' comment is helpful, however, in demonstrating how strongly invested some people are in a view of Pius XII, a view that is not based on actual history, such as the kind contained in the books I have reviewed. Such people have a stereotype of Pius XII, and, often, Catholicism, which they will not suffer dissent from, even if that stereotype is based on prejudice and myth, and not on the facts.

Let me point out, again, that the Nazi approach to "positive Christianity" was to take an idea - Christ was an anti-semite - and then sieve all of Christian doctrines through that idea. As a result positive Christianity sought to eliminate the Old Testament and other "Jewish influences" from Christianity. Such an approach is "liberal Christianity" in that it denies the authority of tradition in favor of a new - often "scientific" - understanding.

Likewise, in German Catholicism, there was a split between ultramontane Catholics, who viewed their primary loyalty as being to the Church, and German Catholics, who viewed their primary loyalty as being to the German nation. It was the latter, not the former, who became sympathizers or members of the National Socialist Party. As noted by Derek Hastings, the Catholics who became Nazi leaders also became apostate Catholics. In contrast, Protestants who became Nazi leaders remained committed Protestants. Likewise, as documented by Richard Steigman-Gall, Hitler and the Nazis reached the conclusion that to be a "good German" one had to be a "good Protestant," and vice versa.

Obviously, insofar as Catholicism stressed an allegiance to an institution that transcended national boundaries, Catholicism was at odds with nationalism. The Nazis realized this, and this understanding fit into their different approach to the different denominations, as strongly evidenced in Steigman-Gall's "The Holy Reich." This difference - the fact that Catholicism seems to be at odds with nationalism, and, therefore, liberalism, as well in the 19th Century understanding of liberalism - informed the goals of the Kulturkampf: Catholicism was different, womanly, superstitious, i.e., thoroughly un-German, in the eyes of the liberals whose goal was to exterminate Catholicism in Germany.

In sum, when we look at the actual history, we do not see that conservative Catholics - i.e., those who were ultramontane and placed their principle self-identity in Catholicism - were the natural allies of the Nazis. Rather, the natural allies of the Nazis were liberal - i.e., the opponents of ultramontane and "political" Catholicism - who placed their identity in their "Germanness" and who would willingly jettison their Christianity in favor of Nazism.

This may offend people who have an investment in slamming a papacy-centered Catholicism, such as Cornwell, or in wrongly slandering Pius XII, but too bad; that's the way that history worked out.

And here is my review.

"Pope and Devil" by Hubert Wolf.

For anyone interested in the Pius Wars – the argument that Pius XII was somehow complicit with the Holocaust by virtue of his alleged silence or other actions – or for anyone who has read the execrable John Cornwell’s “Hitler’s Pope” – “Pope and Devil” by Hubert Wolf is an essential resource for arriving at a balanced assessment of the issues. Wolf’s book largely refutes Cornwell’s specious arguments by meticulous attention to archival material released in 2003.

Not all of the relevant material have been released, but in 2003, the papacy of Pope John Paul II, released files relating to the nunciature – the diplomatic representatives of the Vatican – in Munich and Berlin during the period 1922 – 1939, as well as files relating to the Vatican’s interaction with these nunciatures. This information was not available to Cornwell, and essentially disproves Cornwell’s thesis that Pius XII, as Secretary of State Pacelli, pulled the strings that resulted in the Catholic Center Party supporting the Nazi Enabling Act. The proof is established by correspondence between Pacelli and the nunciatures indicating Pacelli’s opposition to the Center Party’s decision to dissolve itself.

Wolf also brings balance and depth that is missing from Cornwell’s Manichean good- liberal versus evil- conservative story. Thus, Wolf describes the case of the Amici Israel, which was an association of Catholic priests, including bishops and cardinals, that in the late 1920’s was committed to eradicating anti-semitism within the Catholic Church. Part of the agenda of Amici Israel was to eliminate the Good Friday prayer’s reference to “perfidious Jews.” This project was unsuccessful, and Amici Israel was suppressed, not because of anti-semitism, but because of a party of anti-liberal, conservative irredentists within the curia, led by Cardinal Merry De Val, who opposed anything that smacked of “modernism.” The point of the story is that the Catholic Church, and particularly its bureaucracy, has not ever been monolithic. There were parties within the church with their own agenda, entirely unrelated to the agendas that people like Cornwell want to find. Hence, the blanket accusation by Cornwell, Goldhagen and Carroll that the Church, pope and curia have all been anti-semitic is simply wrong.

Moreover, irony is a constant of history. One of the results of the Amici Israel affair was that the papal was that the decree of dissolution of Amici Israel in March of 1928 contained a clear condemnation of racial anti-semitism long before Kristalnacht. (p. 120.)

Wolf’s chapters generally are as follows:

Chapter 1 – Neutralizing Evil? Vatican Prescriptions for Germany (1917 – 1929).

Between 1917 and 1929. Wolf points out that the Vatican’s decision to reach out to Nazi Germany was not unusual or unexpected; it had reached out on three separate occasions to conclude a concordat with Stalinist Russia. (p. 9.) No one views those efforts as recognizing the legitimacy of the Soviet Union.

What was particularly interesting in this chapter was the fact that the up until the Weimar Republic, German states – including Protestant German states – were directly involved in selecting Catholic bishops. In Berlin, the Protestant state was able to choose which candidates would be put to the local church from which it could choose a bishop. Even though Weimar Germany, saw many German states give up their control over the Catholic Church, this movement was not entirely complete, and the concordat process was intended to cement the separation of church and state.

Not surprisingly, the bishops that were selected under the prior arrangement tended to be more conciliatory to the state, including the Nazi state, than the bishops selected by Rome after the concordat was signed. Galen and Von Preysing were both bishops who became known for being anti-Nazi stalwarts who would not have been chosen under the prior system.

Not surprisingly, this fact completely escapes Cornwell’s potted history.

Chapter 2 – Perfidious Jews? The battle in the Vatican over Anti-Semitism.

This chapter covers the interesting, relatively unknown and important Amici Israel affair.

Chapter 3 – The Pact with the Devil? The Reichskonkordat (1930 – 1933.)

This chapter covers the circumstances leading to the execution of the concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican.

Contrary to Cornwell’s unsubstantiated claims that the perfidious Pacelli single-mindedly engineered the Nazi police state, Wolf’s scrutiny of the dispatches between Pacelli and the nunciatures show that Pacelli was outside the loop, and that the Center Party and German Catholic bishops were running their own shows.

Chapter 4 – Molto Delicato? The Roman Curia and the Persecution of the Jews.

This chapter addresses the many petitions to Pius XI to speak out and condemn Nazi persecutions of the Jews. Wolf describes how both Pius XI and Pius XII desired to speak out against anti-semitism, and encouraged others to speak out, but believed that because of their position as leader of the worldwide church were required to maintain a position of public neutrality.

Chapter 5 – Dogma or Diplomacy? The Catholic Worldview and Nazi Ideologies (1933 – 1939).

In this chapter, Wolf looks at the compatibility of Catholic and Nazi ideological claims and concludes that those claims were not compatible. In reaching this conclusion, Wolf outlines the various occasions when the Catholic Church condemned core Nazi doctrines as being incompatible with Christianity.

Wolf also tackles a “talking point” advanced by Christopher Hitchens that since the Church didn’t put “Mein Kampf” on the Index of Forbidden Books, it must in some sense have endorsed Nazism. Wolf points out that although Mein Kampf was not placed on the Index, Alfred Rosenberg’s “The Myth of the Twentieth Century,” which was viewed as the key ideological treatise on Nazism was put on the Index. Wolf concludes that the reason Mein Kampf was not indexed was due to the curia placing diplomacy ahead of doctrine, particularly with respect to a book “written by a head of state who had come to power through legal means and with whom the Vatican had just signed an agreement binding under international law.” (p. 264.) On the other hand, “the dangerous opinions to be found Mein Kampf [were] refuted in the syllabus of the Congregation of Studies and contrasted to the true Catholic doctrine in the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge.” [p. 270.] In other words, the Church compromised short of placing Mein Kampf on the Index, but it was clear to all that the noxious teachings of Mein Kampf were condemned.

Finally, similar constraints prevented the excommunication of Hitler – which in 1938 Mussolini, of all people, was advocating. [p. 270.] As Wolf concludes the book, “Pronouncing a Reich chancellor and head of state anathema was simply out of the question. Hitler remained a member of the Catholic Church until the day he died. Like the pope, even the devil could be Catholic.”

All in all, this is a readable and balanced book that examines the real world nuances facing real people in real history, which is a far cry from the comic book version of history that is currently so popular.

"Reader" Feedback.

Charles Freeman, the author of "A.D. 381" has responded to my review of his book.

It's a very courteous and productive response:

I am grateful for Peter Bradley's thoughtful analysis of my book and I am glad he feels able to recommend to others. Naturally I feel that he rather overstates the case for there being a popular proto-orthodoxy to which the emperor Theodosius was responding by enforcing the Nicene alternative.. My point was rather that there could never have been a consensus on the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit as there was no proper axiomatic foundations on which one could buuld a coherent theology. I argue that Theodosius did face a great deal of popular unrest over his decision to enforce Nicene orthodoxy which is why he reconsidered in 383 when he called a more more broadly representative `council', He also used the law and tax exemptions for orthodox clergy to embed orthodoxy as the state religion. I also argue that there is a clear link between Nicene believers and the higher level of the administration- who presumably felt Nicaea offered a more favourable theology than the alternatives.


My book was on AD 381, which I feel to be the turning point, not the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The emperor Marcian would have loved to have enforced Chalcedon orthodoxy but the nature of the issue (on the divinity/humanity of Christ) was so impossible to resolve , no formula would have gained universal acceptance and the Chalcedon formula only got as far as it did by glossing over the fundamental issues. Nevertheless I take the point that debate on this issue did continue despite attempts to close it down (or fudge a solution, in the case of the emperor Justinian.a century later).

I have made a broader, but necessarily more concise, overview of these developments in my A New History of Early Christianity.

I know Wilken's work but I feel he glosses over the fundamental differences between the factions of Christianity in the fourth century. One gets the feeling from his work that Christianity drifted smoothly towards the only possible theological conclusions. Lovely benign church fathers having to deal with some irritating heretics! (And why did he not actually include the text of John Chrysostom's crude sermons against the Jews in his largely apologetic study of them- odd for someone who is ,in general, so keen on the original sources?) As you will know from reading my book, I think scripture was rather on the side of the subordinationists. but any formula that attempted to sum up the breadth of the scriptures is likely to be inadequate and,of course, most doctrines are supported by selective readings.

I think we are on the edge of a complete rethinking of early Christian history. Wilken has recently dismissed my New History of Christianity on the grounds that it talked of `diversity' in the opening paragraphs, but I cannot understand how anyone can read the early sources without `diversity' being the word that first comes to mind. That diversity is one of the main reasons why the history of early Christianity is so intrinsically interesting. If you are biassed towards believing that there have to be `right' theological answers, you miss much of this.

Thank you for taking this interest - when I get so many kneejerk reactions from supporters and opponents (e.g. David Bentley Hart's inaccurate summary of Closing in his recent Atheist Delusions) I always appreciate someone who has actually read what i have written even if they disagree with me. That way lies intellectual progress! Charles Freeman.

P/S. I was of the generation that was actually set Gibbon ( selected parts of!) at school as holiday reading to improve style! Alas I have got nowhere near but I do like to think that I have developed my ideas independently of this great historian.

File this under "One of those things that could never have happened before the Internet existed."

A.D. 381 - A well-written but fundamentally biased look at the formation of Christendom.

An Amazon book review.

Charles Freeman’s “A.D.381” is an interesting and engaging historical examination of the relatively over-looked period during which Christianity consolidated its hold over the Roman Empire. It is unfortunately marked by an ideological debt to Gibbons’ thesis that the Fall of Rome was the triumph of barbarism and Christianity.


“A.D. 381” is quite excellent in looking at the players and events that often remain obscure in most histories of the late Roman Empire, namely, how Christianity went from a tolerated religion under Constantine to the only lawful religion within a century. Most people with a basic familiarity of the subject can identify Constantine, the Council of Nicea and 325, but probably don’t know that Council of Nicea under Constantine was only the beginning of Christian influence over the Roman Empire. But it was not until the last decades of the Fourth Century that both paganism and heretical – i.e., non-Nicene Christianity – were outlawed and one form of Christianity, which defined the persons of the Trinity as being “consubstantial,” emerged as the only legal religion in the Empire. Hence, the date 381 marks the date of the Council of Constantinople which was called by the Emperor Theodosius to confirm the Nicene Creed and put an end to the dispute between followers of the Nicene Creed and those Christians who viewed Jesus Christ as a lesser, created, divinity, including the Arians and other “adoptionists.”

Freeman’s valid thesis – which he proves in detail – is that theological developments can not be removed from the brute social facts in which the theology developed. So, as he remarks in the close of “381,” while some theologians want to treat the development of Christian doctrine as the bloodless, intellectual development of conclusions from core Christian premises, the historical fact is that the development of Christian doctrine involved politicking, trickery, bullying and just plain chance.

A key example of chance is found in the life of Theodosius himself. Prior to Theodosius, Roman Emperors had been generally content not to take a too pious view of their jobs as Christian emperors and to hold off on baptism, which might require that they become pious carrying out their duties as Christian emperors, until they were facing death itself, the “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” clause being the ultimate “get out of jail” card. Theodosius seemed to be following this script until 38 AD, when after being baptized in the face of a life-threatening illness, something messed up the script – he lived. At that point, he had a problem; he was a baptized Roman emperor who could not turn a pragmatically blind eye to the problem of heresy.

Because of this historical accident, Nicene Christianity became hegemonic as Theodosius outlawed paganism and called the Council of Constantinople in 381 to ratify the Nicene Creed. Once the Nicene Creed was ratified by the Council, Theodosius then put an end to the long Nicene-Arian controversy that had divided Christianity in the Roman Empire by removing Arian bishops from the seats of power.

What followed, according to Freeman, was the “closing of the Western Mind,” which is the title of Freeman’s better-known, earlier book. This was the result, according to Freeman, of the repudiation of the ancient Greek ideal of free speech, something which Freeman drops in periodically as a chorale note throughout the book, at which point, presumably, the reader is supposed to nod his head in agreement, knowing that Christianity was a victory for the forces of “faith” against that of “reason.”

Unfortunately, those Gibbons-like notes are where Freeman’s book went off track for me. I had to wonder where the discussion of the ascendancy of the Arian emperors during the period between 325 and 381 was to be found. I wondered what Freeman’s explanation was for Theodosius’ ability to so thoroughly win the day for the Nicene Creeds, when earlier emperors were not able to put their Arian Creed into a hegemonic position in Christianity. I also wondered what Freeman’s explanation would be for the inability of Imperial power to deal with the Monophysite schism in the same way that it had dealt with the Arian schism.

In short, I formed the impression that Freeman was cherry-picking his facts and arguments to favor his thesis that Christian theology was dictated and enforced from the top down. It seems to me that this other perspective on history suggests that the “grass roots” did have a lot of influence over how history played out. For example, in his discussion of Augustine, Freeman reveals the thesis of his book as the proposition that the Nicene doctrine became orthodox only because it was enforced by the state. But in order to prove that thesis, then a discussion of why the Arian emperors were unable to impose Arianism, or the Chalcedonian emperors were unable to Chalcedonianism on the Monophysite areas of the Empire seems required. Freeman doesn’t discuss these counter-examples, which seem to allow the conclusion that the Nicene doctrine may have been successfully enforced by the state because it was orthodox.

In short, it seemed that Freeman was adopting a strategy I see in a good number of books where someone has an antipathy for history as it turned out – they don’t deal with inconvenient counter-facts. When an author fails to deal with such counter-examples, it leaves the impression that he is engaged in polemics and propaganda aimed at taking advantage of readers who don’t already know all the facts.

Likewise, although I’m sure that Freeman has developed the theme of how the “Western Mind” became “closed” in his prior book, I have to wonder what he meant by that term in the context of this book. He quotes pagan panegyrics to emperors which had spoken out in favor of free speech as an example of how there was a tradition of free speech and free debate in the ancient world. However, does he really expect us to believe that there were not some issues that were off limits in the ancient world, such as whether emperors were really divine, or whether emperors were really the font of all grace and wisdom? One rather doubts it.

Also, are we supposed to believe that free speech and debate came to a complete close after the Council of Constantinople decided in re-affirmed the Nicene position? If so, why were there all those controversies in the following centuries over Monophystism, Nestorianism, Monergism, etc., etc.? Did those controversies not involve a high order of logic and reason?

But Freeman doesn’t discuss those issues from that perspective, choosing instead to leave the reader to believe a caricature of the intellectual life of late antiquity that could have been picked out of a book on the war of religion against science. Again, that approach does the reader a disservice.

My sense was that by emphasizing the facts of politics and personalities, Freeman was able to play up the discontinuity and contingency of history. However, while Freeman was very good with the details of the politics and personalities – albeit with a generally hostile interpretation of historical characters such as Ambrose and Augustine – he ignored his own prescription that the actual facts of history be examined in their historical context. Among those facts are certainly the principles and logic that the historical characters believed that they were applying to the theological disputes that they were involved with. Freeman rarely discussed why the historical figures that he analyzed believed what they believed. By ignoring the elements of the theological principles and logic, Freeman seems to have inappropriately underemphasized the element of theological continuity and the deep roots of the theological doctrines at issue in the theological disputes of late antiquity.

I do recommend “381.” It is an engaging read and does provide the reader with an excellent overview of, and insight into, a bit of history that we often overlook and may not understand as well as we should. For example, I knew about the story of Ambrose's confrontation with Theodosius over the slaughter of citizens of Thessalonica, but Freeman's book is the first time I ever learned about the details surrounding that historical event, even if Freeman manages to "tee up" this historic moment when a Roman Emperor was forced to acknowledge a power greater than himself as an example of Ambrose's megalomania.

I would, however, recommend Robert Louis Wilken’s “The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God” to see the elements of continuity and reason that informed early Christian theology.

Book Review - Pedophiles and Priests by Philip Jenkins.

Excellent social history - as informative in 2010 as it was in 1996.

Philip Jenkins "Pedophiles and Priests" is the classic resource for anyone interested in obtaining an even-handed review of the contemporary clerical abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church in America. Jenkins has often been only sober voice in media discussions on the so-called pedophile priest scandal, such as when he points out that the rate of sexual misconduct is no higher for Catholic priests than it is for other clergy and occupations.


Jenkins is a historian, and in many ways, his book is a historical retrospective of the causes and players in the creation of the public perception that there is a unique problem with "pedophile priests." Jenkins' book was that it was published in 1996, so that it traces the history of the scandal from the early 80s through to around 1993. Of course, we know that after 2000 - and particularly when the Boston Globe began reporting on the scandal in the Boston diocese in the early 2000s - the scandal really took off in the public mind. The surprising things about Jenkins' books are (a) how much was going on before the 2000 and (b) how the memes and tropes established in the 80s and 90s continued to play themselves out after 2000.

Jenkins develops his book around the idea that the "priest pedophile" scandal is a matter of "social construction." As he points out, it is one thing to have objective facts, another to construct those objective facts into a public perception that the objective facts hang together in a particular way that has particular meaning worthy of attention. The way that such a "social construction" is created is by "framing" the objective facts in a particular way that attracts attention, fits the presumptions of the public and invests the objective facts with meaning.

Since it is objective facts that are being framed, the question is "who did the framing"? In answer to that question, Jenkins looks at the players who were able to frame individual scandals involving Catholic priests, invariably homosexual, and boys in their mid to late teens, in order to frame the image of the "pedophile priest" as somehow being the norm of Catholic priests. The players included victim groups, lawyers, dissident Catholics, therapists and the news media.

Jenkins does a fantastic job of explaining how these players managed to frame a "pedophile priest" scandal as a matter of established fact in the public mind, notwithstanding the fact that the individual cases did not usually involve pedophilia - which is an attraction to prepubescent child - but homosexual ephobophilia - which is an attraction to post-pubescent males - and did not involve more than around 2% of all priests (approximately .03% being pedophiled and 1.7% being ephobophiles) based on a review of records of the Diocese of Chicago (and largely confirmed in subsequent studies.)

Jenkins does a great job of explaining how this scandal emerged in large part because of changing value systems, including a change in the perception of the seriousness of sexual misconduct with minors. For those reading this in 2010, the Roman Polanski case offers an interesting proof to Jenkins' argument about changing attitudes. Namely, in 1977, Polanski was sentenced by a prosecutor to no time in jail and a 90 day psychiatric assessment for sodomizing a 13 year old girl. By standards of 2010, that now seems to show incredible insensitivity on the part of the prosecutor, but as Jenkins notes, by the therapeutic standards of the `60s and `70s, the psychiatric approach was normal, and it is potentially misleading to judge the motivations behind decisions made 30 years ago by standards held by people living today. That, however, is something endemic in Catholic priest scandal cases, where the bulk of such cases involve decisions in the `90s and `00s for decisions made in the `60s and `70s.

Another sea change in American life was the fact that in the `70s and `80s, the media stopped showing religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular the deference it had traditionally shown. Thus, scandals that would not have seen the light of day in 1965 were front page news in 1995. Undoubtedly, the Catholic Church and its members have had their welfare improved by this development, albeit the constant focus of news stories on the Catholic Church exclusively makes media coverage something of a wash.

Jenkins is quite good when he points out that the Catholic Church became a particular target for lawsuits because of its centralization - thereby offering "deep pockets" to pay judgments - and its bureaucratization, which included maintaining records that lawyers could obtain in discovery for the purpose of securing new defendants and plaintiffs. So, while there has been a tendency to make the Catholic Church's problem a matter of its theology or practice, the fact is that the Catholic Church is simply a much more attractive target for lawyers for the same reason that bank robbers rob banks - because that is where the money is. Also, as a practicing plaintiff's trial attorney, I have to hand it to Jenkins for being the first person I have read to make the connection between the rise of liability insurance and the development of novel legal theories of liability. The layman probably isn't aware of the fact that law often develops in one area because lawyers are attracted to that area because the possibility of obtaining a recovery is guaranteed by an insurance policy.

Jenkins is also quite good in his observation that Catholic internal politics played a key role in making the scandal a particularly Catholic scandal. He points out that the scandal arose at a time when the American Catholic Church was transforming itself from a "sect" into a "religion." As a sect, Catholicism had high internal cohesion and high conflict with society. After Vatican II, it appeared that American Catholicism was becoming a "religion, with low internal cohesion and low conflict with society, by essentially transforming itself into something like a mainstream Protestant denomination. However, this process of transformation fell short some time after the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978, resulting in liberal Catholics with an axe to grind against the hierarchy, and against the practice of celibacy for priests, as well as other traditional doctrines and practices, and a Catholic membership that would not circle the wagons the same way that they would have back when they belonged to a "sect." This then permitted Catholic voices - such as the liberal National Catholic Register - to engage in internal Catholic polemics that were then picked up by the mainstream media that otherwise might have been accused of anti-Catholicism but for the fact that it was parroting things said by Catholics. The conservative Catholics likewise played into the "framing" of the "pedophile priest" scandal because of their agenda in undermining what they perceived to be non-orthodox homosexual activist priests.

I heartily recommend Jenkins' book as a primary source for anyone who wants an objective, outsider's perspective on how the subject. Although it was written in 1996, the analysis seems to remain pertinent to the situation of the Catholic Church after 15 years.