A moral beckoning : the role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its unfulfilled duty of repair

Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-342) and index.

A penetrating moral inquiry into the Catholic Church's role in the Holocaust. Goldhagen cuts through the historical and moral fog to lay out the full extent of the Catholic Church's involvement in the Holocaust, transforming a narrow discussion fixated on Pope Pius XII into the long-overdue investigation of the church throughout Europe. He shows that the Church's and the Pope's complicity in the persecution of the Jews goes much deeper than has been previously understood. He develops a precise way to assess the Church and its clergy's culpability, which was more extensive and varied than has been supposed. He then devotes the largest part of the book to proposing a new and fuller understanding of restitution, incuding moral restituion, and shows that the Chuch has, even according to its own doctrine, an unacknowledged duty of repair.