What currently is the Roman Catholic Church’s self-understanding of its relationship to the Holocaust? A critical investigation of controversies surrounding the Holocaust (or Sho'ah) since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)

Jones, John Trevor (2019). What currently is the Roman Catholic Church’s self-understanding of its relationship to the Holocaust? A critical investigation of controversies surrounding the Holocaust (or Sho'ah) since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). University of Birmingham. M.A.

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Abstract

This dissertation examines the Roman Catholic Church’s understanding of its relationship to the Holocaust. First it examines two key documents: Vatican II’s declaration Nostra Aetate, note 4, which established the foundations on which subsequent texts built, and We Remember: The Shoah, to date the only specific document on the Holocaust published by the Roman Catholic Church. The dissertation then evaluates claims that the Roman Catholic Church seeks to ‘Christianize’ the Holocaust, with reference to its policy regarding canonizations, through which the Church makes a specific identification with the Holocaust (particularly those of Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein), and the controversy surrounding the establishment of a Carmel adjacent to Auschwitz, the negotiated relocation of which resulted in what has been called the War of the Crosses. The conclusion of the dissertation is one of limited optimism, namely that as the seventy-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz approaches, the Church has yet to definitively address in an unambiguous way how it fully faces the event of the Holocaust, but that there remains the possibility that it will continue to revisit this subject and consider it again, We Remember does not have to be the final word.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Masters by Research > M.A.)

Award Type:

Masters by Research > M.A.

Supervisor(s):