Tonight I watched the compelling personal story of James Carroll that is very much a public and historical narrative that centers on Carroll's preoccupation with the nature of good and evil, in particular, how one institution, the Catholic Church, which he served for a brief time as an ordained Catholic priest (1969-1974) had and has become associated with violence, power, and persecuting Jews. The film is based on a long book that Carroll published in 2001, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews.

To make the film more current, Carroll adds two strands to his history: first, the campaign of the Christian evangelical church to recruit members at the U.S. Air Force school and base, in Colorado Springs; second, the link between political and religious, President Bush's characterization of the war on terror as a crusade. This latter point in the film is not developed, since there is simply not enough time for it, and it moves past the framework of the film (as well as the original theme of Carroll's, the relation of Christians and Jews). Carroll sees proselytizing of evangelicals in the U.S. Air Force Academy and Bush's use of biblical allusions to describe the war on terror as signs and symptoms of the fact that the bloody past of Christianity, it's use as a state religion to be used to fight wars and to persecute non-Christians, Jews and Muslims, remains unknown to most Christians. Though some efforts have been made by the pope and Catholic Church to acknowledge evils committed by the church in the name of good, they have not been quite inadequate.

The starting point for Carroll's film is the symbol of the cross. As a boy, Carroll liked the cross, but then, as an adult, he began to see the shadow its cast. The good he associated with the Catholic Church also came to be associated with evil. Where did the symbol come from? It came from Constantine, a Roman general, in the 3rd century; he claimed to have had a vision of a cross during battle, and he believed it was sign that helped him win the battle. Later, the cross was adopted as a symbol in battle. When Constantine became a Roman emperor he made the cross a key Christian symbol. Thus, a symbol of grisly Roman style execution was chosen as a symbol of a religion that became a state religion, and one used as battle standard. The cross, Christian faith, would be enforced on pagans and non-Christians by the sword. The cross was quite different from other Christian symbols at the time--the fish, the lamb.

Carroll asks, what sort of man was Constantine? We learn Constantine was a ruthless and violent man, who even went so far as to have his son and one of his wives murdered. One account from Constantine's time, ironically observes that Constantine was a man with so many sins that only the Christian religion was willing to accept him. Thus, when one asks whether Constantine accepted Christianity out of personal conviction, or as a means to an end, to consolidate state power and use religion, the symbol of the cross, as a means to inspire soldiers in battle, the answer seems clear.

For Carroll, the cross, which is brought to others by sword, military force and violence--this is the starting point for Christian crusades against the infidel, its anti-Semitism and its use as a battle standard against pagans and Muslims. Since Constantine made Christianity a state religion in the twilight years of the Roman Empire--it frayed apart and collapsed in the next hundred years--there was no much time to put this militant religion into practice. However, eventually, when the medieval states that espoused Christianity became stronger in the 10th century, the crusades were launched--the imposition of the cross with the sword on non-Christians. The first to suffer were the Jews who lived along the Rhine River; they were attacked and killed by crusaders on their way to "liberate" Jerusalem and attack Muslims. Carroll goes to visit the archives, which hold books from the time, which have accounts of these atrocities. He visits Trier, for instance, and the archivist there finds a book with a description of a murder. Carroll also goes to visit the grave sites that still remain of victims.

Carroll asks, why didn't he learn about this dark past of the Catholic Church? He had even been a resident of Germany as a boy, since his father was an air force general stationed in Germany during the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, as Carroll observes in retrospect, he lived in an artificial world of moral purity and goodness. His father served the forces of good--first, the FBI, then the armed services of U.S. His parents were devout Catholics. Carroll himself harbored two dreams: either become an air force pilot or a priest, and he chose the latter. In his studies in the seminary and then in his years working as an ordained priest who was committed to the peace movement to end U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, Carroll began to investigate how state power and Catholicism were involved and implicated in evil. This investigation led him to quit the priesthood and to become a writer and journalist. In time, the result of Carroll's personal odyssey led to the publication of long, 751-page book published in 2001, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews; the movie based on the book, was released this year.