Christianity's violent history

James Carroll's best-selling book Constantine's Sword has been made into a powerful film documentary with the same title. The book, published in 2001 to some controversy, had concentrated on the responsibility of the Catholic church for the long history of persecution of the Jews. The director of the film, Oren Jacoby, wants to raise the even broader question: "Where did anyone get the idea that it was all right to kill people in the name of God?"

A handsome, well-acted film that mingles scenes and characters of both past and present, the documentary opens with an expose of the attempt at the U.S. Air Force Academy, located in Colorado Springs, Colo., to turn its students into militant evangelical Christians. One Jewish cadet reports that they were urged to convert or "burn in the fires of hell." The academy's actions were explained as both Christian and patriotic by the Rev. Ted Haggard, pastor of the nearby 14,000-member evangelical parish who was later forced to leave in disgrace.

Though the incident occurred after Mr. Carroll's book was published, this sequence is used to underscore Mr. Carroll's theme that the relationship between Christianity and militarism exists even today. It triggers Mr. Carroll's travels to Europe in the film to review ancient documents and conduct personal interviews in the hope of understanding the intolerance that led to the Crusades and to the Holocaust. Mr. Carroll has called the film an "exercise in Christian self-criticism," a spur to Christians to examine how their tradition has contributed to suspicion, hatred and intolerance of others.

"Constantine's Sword" emphasizes Carroll's own life story, with a pious mother and an Irish-American father who became an Air Force general. We see him early with proud parents at an audience with Pope John XXIII, then later as a priest in Boston counseling conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War. His deeply emotional conflict with his father at this time, the substance of his earlier memoir, God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us, which won the 1996 National Book Award for nonfiction, is briefly suggested.

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In Rome, the deeply committed author discovers Constantine's role in turning the cross into a symbol of military might and making it the dominant symbol of Christianity. This emphasis is coupled with the prior conviction that the Gospel holds the Jews responsible for the crucifixion, explaining the long, terrible history of Christian anti-Semitism. The film then follows Mr. Carroll as he visits historic sites in Europe, filling in key stages of this persecution, including an interview with an Italian Jewish father and daughter, who almost make the history of the ghetto in Rome part of family history.

Director Jacoby, whose documentary "Sister Rose's Passion" won him a 2005 Academy nomination, does a fine job synchronizing the photography of its European backgrounds, the voices of established actors in small roles, and a score-that combines sacred and popular music, ending with Bob Dylan's "With God on Our Side." Unfortunately, the subject matter shifts so constantly that audiences will find it difficult to make some necessary connections. For example, reference is made to the concordat between the Vatican and Nazi Germany in 1933, but we don't stop long enough to establish the significance of the action. Later, the Nazi crackdown on the Jews in Rome is seen as taking place in the shadow of the Vatican, but we don't get enough background to decide if this was a case where the church was showing excessive institutional prudence or if it was an indication of something more sinister. These and other unexplained transitions make for confusing viewing.

Mr. Carroll, a former priest and now a successful novelist and journalist, still considers himself a Catholic (however questioning) and is a compelling protagonist for the film. Catholics should be especially encouraged to view "Constantine's Sword," if only for the sequence in which Edith Stein (voiced by Natasha Richardson), a Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism, speaks of writing a letter in 1933 to Pius XI warning him of the Nazis' murderous intentions. She never received a reply, she says without bitterness, and was one of Hitler's victims nine years later.

[Joseph Cunneen is NCR's movie reviewer and a longtime contributor.]

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