From Enemy to Brother

Reviews / Votes

Connelly's book...is invaluable for its close tracking of the development of the Pauline argument for the continuing validity of the Jewish Covenant... This, as it stands, is a good book, and an important one. -- Garry Wills * New York Review of Books * [A] remarkable new book... It is one of the central lessons of Connelly's book that the bonds of empathy that made Nostra Aetate a historical possibility are far more fragile, and less expansive, than one might care to imagine. The detailed history of its genesis reveals a singular fact: most of the architects of the Catholic statement concerning the Jews in 1965 were themselves, either by descent or practice or public definition, Jews who had converted to Christianity... Connelly has written an important book, an extraordinary work of history. -- Peter E. Gordon * New Republic * Excellent... Connelly's book is important because for the first time we have a comprehensive tale of the genesis of a new teaching. This is a book about workers in the vineyard who have largely been overlooked or bypassed in church history. But it is to these workers, who rose before dawn, that the church owes profound, if belated, respect. -- Charles R. Gallagher * America * The extraordinary story told by Connelly reveals not only that Catholic magisterium is able to change its mind, but also that a doctrinal renewal of this kind may well begin as a small movement in the Church, frowned upon by the hierarchy, that gradually finds acceptance among Catholic and their theologians to be finally affirmed by the highest authority. In the present winter of the Catholic Church it is good to be reminded of the innovative power of Spirit-guided movements within Catholicism. -- Gregory Baum * The Ecumenist * Catholic theologians owe a debt of gratitude to John Connelly for retracing a painful but fruitful period of theological reflection. Anyone who draws close to Dietrich von Hildebrand, Karl Thieme, and Johannes Oesterreicher will be given fresh eyes for the sources of theology and a reverence for the mystery of Israel. -- Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. * First Things * Remarkable... Connelly...has mastered a vast and obscure literature, much of it hitherto unpublished and most of it in German, in order to establish the contours of what he aptly characterizes as a 'revolution' in mid-20th-century Catholic thought... Connelly's book...hugely enriches its historical context. He shows that there were Catholics who held the Church to account while the Holocaust was taking place, demanded that it abandon the teaching of contempt, and eventually persuaded their coreligionists to adopt a new understanding of the Jewish role in history. Catholics and Jews alike should welcome such a scholarly reappraisal of the most painful chapter in the history of their relationship. -- Daniel Johnson * Jewish Ideas Daily * A brilliantly original and an extremely important reconstruction of what motivated the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s to declare a new and positive appreciation of Jews and Judaism. -- Susannah Heschel, author of <i>The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany</i> From Enemy to Brother is an astonishing achievement, one of the most significant books written on the history of twentieth-century Catholicism. -- John T. McGreevy, University of Notre Dame An excellent resource for those studying the Holocaust, racism more generally, and the developments leading up to Vatican II's statement on Christianity's relation to the Jewish People. -- John T. Pawlikowski, OSM, Catholic Theological Union This pathbreaking book, based on extensive documentation, will be essential reading for all those interested in Christian-Jewish relations and the history of antisemitism. -- Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum