In the section of his book called Catholics and History, Coren comments on a number of historical epochs; the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust among them. He’s willing to admit that there have been evils done in the name of Christ and the Church, and that the Church has sometimes shared the limited perspectives of its historical period, but he questions the competence and integrity of most of the historically based criticism. It has been said that those who don’t read newspapers are uninformed, and those who do are misinformed. The same, apparently, can be said of those who do and do not read history.
As Coren suggests, history is far more complex than is generally appreciated. The Crusades, for example, happened over a period of a couple of centuries (1096 – 1272) but were really part of an extended period of resistance to Muslim expansion in the Middle East and Europe that had been going on for centuries and continued well into the 1500s. They were not a simple matter of the kings of Europe, at the request of the Pope, descending on the Holy Land to attack peaceful, unsuspecting Muslims for not being Christians, and to loot, plunder, rape and kill, in search of the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper. Coren admits that “They were not the proudest moment of Christian history...” and that “Most Catholics feel shame for what happened and apologize for wrongs that occurred,...”.
The Inquisition, often referred to as the Spanish Inquisition, is likewise complex according to Coren; neither local enough to be Spanish, nor unified enough to be seen as an organized campaign. Here again he has a point. Both more and less was going on than we often imagine. Fewer people died than we are sometimes led to believe, and most were executed by secular authorities rather than the Church.
Though there is a useful corrective here, it seems to me that much of what Coren is on about is beside the point. From a modern perspective, the Church had become too caught up in nation building and the controlling of people’s lives. It was wielding military power and directing affairs of state, and the concern expressed in the anti-Catholic rhetoric is that the Church has not really learned the lessons of history and, so, is apt to repeat them if given half a chance. And Coren’s defence of the church in these matters only gives credence to these concerns. In the matter of the Holocaust, however, we find a deliciously ironic twist. The Church is condemned, not so much for its involvement, but for its supposed failure to become involved.
Here Coren mounts a vigorous defence of the Church, and particularly of Pope Pius XII. It is a section well worth reading, particularly for those who have become convinced of Papal and Church complicity in, or indifference to the Holocaust. Coren builds a solid case for the Church’s steadfast opposition to Nazism beginning well before 1939, and its active involvement in sheltering Jews from persecution throughout the war. Many thousands, he claims, were sheltered in convents and monasteries throughout German occupied territories, between 4,000 and 7,000 in the Vatican itself, and about 3,000 in the Pope’s summer residence. It can be argued, of course, that there were times when the Church should have spoke out more forcefully and publicly, or should have done more, but this is hardly a picture of complicity or indifference.
Coren’s problem is that, as a loyal Catholic, he finds it very difficult to simply admit that the Church has been wrong at many points throughout its 2,000 year history. For him the Church is a divine institution, somehow situated above the fray. Catholic people, organizations, even Popes, may sin, but not the Church.
At this point I’m glad to be a Baptist and part of a Church that has no association with infallibility at any point. The “Mystical Body” (the Church in the abstract) may be somehow whole and unsullied, but, as a human institution, it is flawed like all things human. It’s better than its enemies claim, worse than it imagines itself to be, and the best we can hope is that it will keep on trying to get it right. And that, I suppose, is love; just forgiving, being forgiven, and trying to do as well, or better in future.
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