First Things has posted two reviews of James Carroll's Constantine's Sword, a "documentary" based on the book of the same title. Both reviews are written by William Doino Jr., who writes for Inside the Vatican and who compiled a 80,000-word annotated bibliography on Pius XII published in The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII (Lexington Books, 2004).
The first review—"James Carroll’s Unholy Crusade: A Critique of the Film Constantine’s Sword"—published in the April 2008 issue of FT, is a lengthy, detailed refutation of the film's many errors and slanders. It also reveals a man whose tenuous grasp of basic facts about Catholicism is equaled by an unsettling irrationality:
If Constantine’s Sword teaches us little about history, it reveals a great deal about James Carroll. Anyone who has read his memoir, An American Requiem: God, my Father, and the War that Came Between Us, [86]
knows about his love-hate relationship with his father, Joe, an Air
Force lieutenant general who helped prosecute the Vietnam War. Critics
have drawn a connection between James’ paternal rebellion and his
revolt against the Church. [87] Freudian analysis aside, what strikes one most about this documentary is how much Carroll puts himself at its center. Constantine’s Sword
appears to have meaning only to the extent it illuminates James
Carroll’s own tormented life. Describing how he was misled into the
priesthood, he points to the sacred Catholic relics he was shown as a
child—only to learn that they were “fiction” and “pure invention” [88]—and
ultimately blames his parents: “My mother told me that she was the
Blessed Mother’s representative here on earth—that is to say, her name
was Mary; and she made me understand that she was associated with Mary.
Of course, I was aware my father’s name was Joseph; my initials were
J.C. I just came of age in a relationship with my mom and dad that very
much included God in the family circle.” Such religious doting,
combined with a special audience his family arranged with Pope John
XXIII, induced Carroll to enter the religious life. But when he did, he
says, he knew nothing about the violent history of his Church. “I
didn’t know any of it when I made the most important decision of my
life.” The problem, you see, was that Carroll bought into the Church’s
own propaganda: “I was a young Catholic brought into this perfect
Church—it was the place that human beings were entirely pure. We had
saints; we knew who they were; and our priests and our bishops and our
popes were holy, holy men. I hadn’t a clue about the failure.”
This narrative defies belief. Faithful Catholics believe that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ; as such
they hold that it is sinless, in its spiritual essence. But the Church
does not teach, and has never taught, that all its members are
perfect—quite the contrary. Original sin and human imperfection are
core elements of Catholic teachings; so pronounced are they that an
enormous body of literature exists, among disaffected Catholics,
accusing the Church of saddling them with feelings of “guilt” and
“shame.” Yet Carroll wants us to believe that the preconciliar Church
taught that all Catholics were sinless, holier than angels. Are
we to believe that Carroll never heard of the sacrament of penance
until he entered the priesthood? Perhaps he did but wasn’t aware that
popes and bishops attend to it as well. Even more incredible is the
idea that Carroll had no idea about Catholic history when he decided to
become a priest. Sixty years before Carroll was even born, Leo XIII had
opened the Vatican’s archives, asserting that the Church “has nothing
to fear from the truth.” [89] And when Carroll was growing up in the fifties and sixties, historians like Henri Daniel-Rops [90] and Hubert Jedin [91]
were publishing massive church histories, leaving no stone unturned
regarding the sins of Catholics, including high-ranking prelates. If
Carroll was unaware of these facts, at the moment he made “the most
important decision” of his life, that’s an indictment of his own
ignorance—and lack of preparation for the priesthood—not the fault of
the Church.
Doino's second review is an abridged version of the longer one, and it was posted today on the FT site.
When the documentary premiered last year, it was praised by some
critics—unfortunately, mostly the ones who had little knowledge about
the subject, a pattern that has been repeated since the film’s national
release. A puff piece in the Los Angeles referred to Carroll as
a “devout Catholic”—a curious designation given Carroll’s own
well-documented rebellion against the Church.
The documentary wastes no time getting to its bottom line:
Christianity is violent by nature and poses a threat to non-Christians,
especially Jews. Focusing on anti-Semitism as Christianity’s original
sin, Carroll speaks about his own upbringing—lamenting the anti-Jewish
stereotypes he was fed—and accuses the Catholic liturgy of fostering
anti-Semitism. The genesis of it all, we are told, is the New
Testament, presented in the movie version of Constantine’s Sword as a poisonous document and a warrant for genocide.
Brought on to support Carroll’s apprehensions is Elaine Pagels, a
highly controversial academic with no patience for orthodoxy. The
camera shows her calling the Passion narrative “an extraordinary twist”
on what actually happened, concluding: “It looks completely at odds
with what we know about history.”
Along the way, Carroll conveniently skips over the persecutions of
the early Christians; their sufferings do not interest him. What grips
his imagination is the story of Constantine’s conversion, which he sees
as catastrophic for the history of the Church. According to Carroll,
Constantine took the image of the cross and elevated it to a place
never previously held in Christianity; worse, the emperor used it as an
instrument of war, turning a religion of peace into a religion of
violence.
Of course, this requires Carroll to contradict himself—remember, he just finished claiming that hatred began
with the New Testament. But even on its own terms, the historical claim
is wrong. Surviving Christian art and symbols from A.D. 230—well before
Constantine—reveal that the cross is a prominent symbol in the
catacombs. The early Christians often made the sign of the cross just
to sabotage pagan ceremonies; and in doing so they were following the
teaching of St. Paul, who said, “We preach Christ crucified.”
• James Carroll's "documentary" indulges in one-sided, pseudo-scholarly sloppiness (April 18, 2008)
• Were the Crusades Anti-Semitic? | Vince Ryan | IgnatiusInsight.com
• The Crusades 101 | Jimmy Akin
• Crusade Myths | Thomas F. Madden
• The Inquisitions of History: The Mythology and the Reality | Reverend Brian Van Hove, S.J.