Reading "Warburg in Rome" a recent novel by James Carroll. James Carroll is author
of, among other things, "Constantine's Sword," an account of the historic
swerve toward anti-Semitism by the Roman Empire, under Constantine, in league
with the Papacy. Carroll remains a Catholic. I don't know he manages that, nor
do I know how anyone remains any sort of professing true believer, though I
know many who aspire or pretend to.
Carroll's Catholicism is exquisitely self-aware,
self-conscious, and self-critical.
The novel is set in the precincts of Rome, near the end of World
War II. Some priests and nuns have hidden away and helped save Jews. But the
war isn't over. Italy has been
liberated by American troops. But Jew-murder goes on high-speed up north. And
the main characters know it.
Carroll writes so well and so knowingly about this terrain
and this situation, that I am absorbed. This is a suspenseful book, a
page-turner.
I do have a question, though: it seems the saving of Jews
is, in this novel, the test-case of being Catholic. You save a Jew, your faith
is therefore justified.
Speaking as Jew, I find that formulation troubling.
Are Jews no more than the tokens of Catholic worth?
Save a Jew don't go to hell?
As I say, it's a suspenseful book. Maybe i'm jumping the gun. I'll keep
reading.
I have a friend from college days. He became a priest and worked many years in the Vatican Library among the medieval documents. I have imagined him being on the inside of many things that make me curious. But I have never bothered to ask him, figuring that he would never tell.
ReplyDeletefred, you might like this. i'll report further on it.
ReplyDelete