Why Christianity lacks a Holocaust literature

One additional possibility: Suffering and persecution are for Christians, to some extent,

expected

, and the absence (not the presence) is what would be newsworthy. As one Jewish convert to Catholicism put it, Christianity doesn't just

have

a theology of suffering, it

is

a theology of suffering. That the current rise in Christian persecution around the world doesn't seem to interest anyone is appalling but nothing new or unexpected.

I'm sorry, John, but if you can't work the letters "LGBT" into the problem, it's not a holocaust on these pages. Juana.

It seems that the measure of a good christian has always been the willingness to suffer as Christ suffered. From this column I think the conclusion can be made the Christianity is alive in the world.

First, I think you've got to get rid of the term "Holocaust literature," since for most people the Holocaust has one, and only one meaning. Though Stalin, and after him Mao, may well have been responsible for more non-combat deaths of the innocent than Hitler, we don't speak of a Soviet or a Chinese (or Cambodian, or anyplace else) Holocaust literature. "Gulag literature" might be OK for the USSR though it perhaps doesn't take in those who perished outside the camps. And no one uses the term Laogai literature for China.

Not that I have any good ideas about what to substitute. Persecution literature? Anti-Christian literature? Neither of those is very good.

That said, your reasons for the lack of such a literature make sense -- particularly your suggestion that if something doesn't happen in the US, it isn't real news.

I'd suggest also that there are large number of Americans for whom much of American foreign policy, particularly in the 21st century, is a source of shame, given our professed values, and makes us reluctant to go butting into other people's affairs. Not that the sense of shame holds Washington back, either in the form of the Bush or Obama White Houses, of course.

John Allen,s article is, as usual, excellent.
But
Holocaust means the assasination of the jews by Hitler.

Especially the US population is so facinated by the "realholocaust" that it supports only ISRAEL, or Arab supporters of Israel,
As the current upheaval in Egypt shows, the US_Israel construction is bound to crush down. Ideologically, the US must blind themselvesas long as they can.

As a result anybody can kill Catholics so long as no jews or no ACLU non-believers are being killed in the underdevelopedworld.
The ACLU or Amnesty internationmight protest killing homos but dont care about Catholics.
This is the more so since the "Vtican" has become ultra conservative i.e. obiously since 1990.

but what can we do?

A fine column. Though too little has been done, it is not nothing. In his 1994 Apostolic Letter TERTIO MILLENNIO ADVENIENTE Pope John Paul wrote: "The local churches should do everything possible to ensure that the memory of those who have suffered martyrdom should be safeguarded, gathering the necessary documentation.” The Catholic Church in Germany responded by producing in 1999 a meticulously documented "20th Century German Martyrology" in 2 volumes comprising 1385 pages entitled WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. It contains the stories of some 700 German Catholics of both sexes who, in the 20th century, suffered violent deaths out of hatred for the faith: under Nazism and Communism, in mission countries, and while resisting rape (“martyrs of purity”) or defending its victims.
The work is a monument to German industry. Publication would never have been possible without the oft criticized German Church tax. Collected by the state from all registered members of Germany’s major churches (people can opt out by formally “leaving the church”), the tax achieves two things impossible in a system of voluntary giving. The wealthy contribute in proportion to their means. And nominal church members (who in a voluntary system give little or nothing) pay the same proportion of their income as the committed.

I am lost as to what John Allen is saying. Since when did Jesus single out one group to be protected and be nice too? We have done so much harm as catholics sending out the message that we are to be protected and what does that say about us? Love your enemy is the most important command that Jesus gave us and we have yet to learn it. How sad it makes me feel that we are not in the forefront loving all those who are being deprived of liberty and freedom and love, not to say anything of food and protection from the elements. Mr. Allen, please report on the universality of the catholic message. Thank you.

Maybe our martyrology ... our litanies ... our "lives of the saints" ... and, most importantly, the Passion Narratives ... are our "Holocuast literature."

How many of the world's religions teach the redeeming value of suffering, following a leader who took up his cross to give us strength to do likewise? This can't justify persecution of Christians but is it an important factor in modulating the Christian response?

I don't understand why John is saying there is no Christian Holocaust literature b/c there are several books I can come up with by doing a quick search; there are more but I don't feel like looking or copying all of them:

Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, by John Bierman
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, by Tadeusz Borowski
Divided Lives: The Untold Stories of Jewish-Christian Women in Nazi Germany by Cynthia A. Crane
Auschwitz and After, Charlotte Delbo
Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto: An Epitaph for the Unremembered by Peter F. Dembowski
Christian Responses to the Holocaust: Moral and Ethical Issues (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust) by Donald J. Dietrich
The Holocaust, Never to Be Forgotten: Reflections on the Holy See's Document We Remember (Stimulus Book) by Avery Dulles, Leon Klenicki, and Edward Idris Cassidy
Things We Couldn't Say: A dramatic account of Christian resistance in Holland during WWII by Diet Eman and James Schaap
In Hitler's Germany: Everyday Life in the Third Reich,by Bernt Engelmann (non-Jewish resistance worker who was imprisoned in Dachau)
Jesus, Judaism, and Christian Anti-Judaism: Reading the New Testament After the Holocaust by PAULA FREDRIKSEN and ADELE REINHART
The Other Victims: First-Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis, by Ina Friedman
Their Brothers' Keepers, by Philip Friedman
Assignment: Rescue by Varian Fry
The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust: A Christian Interpretation by David P. Gushee
When Courage Was Stronger Than Fear: Remarkable Stories of Christians and Muslims Who Saved Jews from the Holocaust by Peter Hellman
Schindler's List, by Thomas Keneally
Celebrating Holy Week in a Post-Holocaust World by Henry F. Knight
Facing the Catastrophe: Jews and Non-Jews in Europe during World War II (Occupation in Europe), Beate Kosmala, Georgi Verbeeck (to be published next month)
Learning from History: A Black Christian's Perspective on the Holocaust (Contributions to the Study of Religion) by Hubert G. Locke
Forgotten Survivors: Polish Christians Remember The Nazi Occupation (Modern War Studies) by Richard C. Lukas
Rescue: The Story of how Gentiles Saved Jews During the Holocaust by Milton Meltzer
In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke
The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust, edited by Carol Rittner, R.S.M. and Sondra Meyers
Humanity at the Limit: The Impact of the Holocaust Experience on Jews and Christians by Michael A. Signer
Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust by Kevin P. Spicer
The Holocaust and the Christian World: Reflections on the Past, Challenges for the Future by Carol Rittner, Stephen D. Smith, and Irena Steinfeldt
Good News After Auschwitz?: Christian Faith in a Post-Holocaust World by John K. Roth and Carol Rittner;
The Hiding Place [Deluxe Edition] [Paperback], John Sherrill, Elizabeth Sherrill, Elizabeth Sherrill, Corrie ten Boom
In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans (Modern War Studies) by James F. Tent

"It’s especially shocking that American Christians have not reacted more strongly to anti-Christian violence in Iraq, given the responsibility the United States bears for creating the conditions in which that insecurity could metastasize."

It was an American president, George W. Bush, who made the decision to invade Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction that didn't even exist. It was the same George W. Bush who used his Christianity as an appeal for votes. If a Christian president started this war that killed hundreds of thousands, mostly Muslims, then it is no surprise that Christians are not so popular in the Muslim world. If Christians want to be more popular in the non-Christian world then Christians need to stop invading their countries and proping up dictators who oppress them.

Thank you for this post. I believe that the time has come to bring this topic of persecution and perhaps martyrdom of Christians out into the open more. Historically, Christians have even misunderstood each other to the extent that they created heretics or some pretext for discovering witchcraft even as late as the 1670's or so in Salem, Massachusetts.
I think they created heretics out of people they didn't agree with and witches out of the vulnerable; has anything changed?
We have had missionaries killed elsewhere since then since the local government didn't care to hear the truth. Somehow trying to defend the innocent and the poor can get you into heaven but we don't know yet how to build community around this kind of experience nor to identify with it so that we understand that it might also happen to us. I am curious to know how Egyptian Christians are doing at this time? I hear that the poverty rates in Egypt are extremely high. I also don't understand what is fueling the anti- immigration sentiments in the USA at this time. When did we become such a hateful people?

What about the books and movies about Bonhoeffer? The books about Edith Stein? These are two that come to mind, and I'm sure there's more. So there clearly is a Christian literature on the Holocaust. Is that literature as large as we might like? I'm not sure.

perhaps one reason is that such talk would ineluctably lead to compassionate consideration for our Catholics now suffering continual, institutionalized persecution under by the foreign army now occupying Palestine, a meticulously unrelenting oppression of all our Catholics, from families to Franciscan Friars at our Holy Sites, including Bethlehem herself, forced to close even during our most holy days. Perhaps close consideration of this phenomenon of persecution by religions not our own would raise questions not to be considered out loud. Yet this may be the one spot on earth where persecution of the Catholic communities remains most brutal and pervasive without any end in sight.

John,

Excellent, excellent article.

Yes, the disappointment for this Catholic is acute. But then we don't control the media so what to do, but I pray for persecuted Christians every day.

I agree with your thesis that persecution of Christians around the world does not generate a lot of public outcry from US Catholics of balanced views, and I think you have put your finger on a lot of the likely causes.
One possible exception is the growing voices about how many Christians have left Israel, which it seems many leaders are belatedly speaking out about. When I was on a study tour of Israel in 1975 we saw the vibrant Christian community at Nazareth, where they had visibility and pride. Now most of them are gone, squeezed out by economic conditions they face as a minority that is not affluent and by pressures coming from their neighbors of both Muslim and Jewish faith. Christians are a small group amid Israelis, often marginalized and considered unimportant. We also saw them on the Palm Sunday procession toward Jerusalem, people there since the time of Jesus but not well-dressed and mostly ignored, while Israelis gladly welcome Christian pilgrims, spending marketing money around the world to lure these religious tourists. It is a truly tragic situation, and thank God an international group of Christian leaders is finally speaking out against it.
I am not a member of the "fringe" groups you mention, rather I belong to the large group of aware US Catholics who are very much for recognizing the truth found in all major religions. I'm an officer of the Interfaith Council in Kansas City. But I have to agree that if these distressed minority Christians were Muslim or Jewish, there would be a worldwide outcry and it would be very loud in the United States. Perhaps it's because of the shame felt by Catholics about pedophile priests (a very small minority among men who have devoted their lives to keeping the faith relevant) or about the Church abuses in former centuries against freedom of conscience by members of other religions (like the persecutions in Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella and the Inquisition or the antisemitism in Europe for many centuries).
One thing that many in interfaith work have found over the last decades is that in order to truly dialog with those of other faiths, you have to deepen your knowledge of and dedication to your own faith. Otherwise you have nothing to bring to the party and you are quickly embarrassed. Being proud of one's faith group, while admitting its failings, is the mark of a mature member of any faith. Speaking with force, respect for others, appreciation of the situations or even landmines around you, especially the sensation-loving media in America, is not easy. It takes courage, study, and much prudence and humility. But it's not something to be ashamed of, and our brothers and sisters of other faiths do it and expect it from Christians too.
US bishops as a body have often spoken very well about social or religious issues in their letters and statements, and taking a leadership position on pointing out anti-Christian abuses around the world is something we should expect from them. Their staff people in Washington are usually very capable and would be ready to advise and assist. I would think that their new president, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, could take the lead in New York and in Washington. The way he's handled other potentially delicate issues in the media capital of NYC shows it can be done, and his Irish political sense born in St. Louis and nurtured during his education in Rome has stood him in good stead. As the Italians say, corragio!

I thought the content of your article was quite good, and thought provoking, but the title troubled me;
couldn't you have entitled it with reference to our Martyrology<
(surely part of our Catholic Tradition)
rather than use the word "Holocaust"? I somehow feel that the
H. word is too sacred to be separated from the reality of Nazi
Germany.

Two points: 1. The quotes of Bishop Paprocki and the statement that he appeared to support racial profiling at airports: the paragraph seems to imply that Paprocki believes the Iraqi Muslims are Arabs. If Paprocki believes this, he is mistaken. Iraqis, whether Muslim or not, are not Arabs.
That J. Allen makes no reference to this fact makes me wonder whether he thinks Iraqis are Arabs.
2. I find the last four paragraphs of this article to be nothing but preaching, and condescending and even bomabstic preaching at that. J. Allen tells us what is "no excuse." He tells us that "no matter what the causes, it is appalling that. . .", He tells what is "especially shocking" about American Christians behavior. He tells Catholics that their "Disappointment ought to be particularly acute. . . ."
I find his article - an attempt to answer his own leading question - to be a quite superficial "explanation." I wonder what warrant he finds to lecture the rest of us, Christians and Catholics, about what ought to be our reaction to the situation he poses at the beginning.

You are right to call into question the apparent indifference of the western world to the persecution of Christians but co-opting the term holocaust is deeply offensive. Yes it was a singular event and followed so many centuries of persecution of Jews within Christian countries that it must be remembered as singular. So why deliberately use that language? Benedict has called attention eloquently to these persecutions; Christians don't hear much elsewhere about them. Simple news and information would be a good first step, so journalists cannot pass this task on to poets, directors and fiction writers.

HOMILY FOR CHRISTMAS MIDNIGHT MASS
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
Springfield, Illinois December 25, 2010
Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki Bishop of Springfield in Illinois
S.S.P.: Christmas light comes in the darkness of the night to set our hearts on fire with Christ’s love.
My dear brothers and Sisters in Christ:
Walking through the Vatican Museum on the way up to the Sistine
Chapel, one passes through a room with a huge mural of the nineteenth century painting by Polish artist Jan Matejko depicting the Polish King John Sobieski III leading the troops to victory over the Turks, who had invaded Vienna in 1683 with hopes of capturing Austria and conquering all of Europe. The battle marked the turning point in the 300-year struggle between the Christian forces of the Central European kingdoms and the Muslim armies of the Ottoman Empire. After the battle, Sobieski paraphrased Julius Caesar's famous quote by saying, “Veni, vidi, Deus vicit” – “I came, I saw, God conquered.” Following his victories over the Ottoman Empire, King Sobieski was hailed by the Pope as the savior of European Christendom. The commander of the defeated Ottoman army,
Kara Mustafa Pasha, was executed in Belgrade on December 25, 1683. Merry Christmas! I’m talking about the Battle of Vienna tonight because we are sadly mistaken or at least naïve if we think that this centuries-long onslaught of Muslims against Christians ended on that battlefield three hundred and twenty-seven years ago. From its beginnings in the seventh century, the Muslim community spread through the Middle East through conquest, and the resulting growth of the Muslim state provided the ground in which Islam could take root and flourish. In their book published in 2003, Islam at War: A History, George F. Nafziger and Mark W. Walton wrote that the “real victor in the conquests was not the Arab warlords, but Islam itself... Simply put, Islam may have sped the conquests, but it also showed much greater staying power. It is useful to realize that the power of Islam was separate from much and more permanent than that of the armies with which it rode.”1 These onslaughts continue today into the twenty-first century. TheState Journal-Register reported two days ago that Christian churches in Iraq had cancelled their Christmas celebrations. There would be no Christmas Christmas Midnight Mass, decorations, no Midnight Mass. “Even an appearance by Santa Claus has been nixed after Iraq’s Christian leaders called off Christmas celebrations amid new al-Quaida threats on their tiny community still terrified from a bloody siege on a Baghdad church” this past October 31st. “Christians across Iraq have been living in fear since the assault on Our Lady of Salvation Church as its Catholic congregation was celebrating Sunday Mass. Sixty-eight people were killed [including two priests, one of whom was shot while presiding at the Mass and the other priest was killed while he was hearing confessions]. Days later Islamic insurgents bombed Christian homes and neighborhoods across the capital. . . . “Since the church attack, some 1,000 families have fled to Iraq’s safer Kurdish-ruled north, according to the United Nations, which recently warned of a steady exodus of Iraqi Christians.”2 Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako in Kirkuk said, “Nobody can ignore the threats of al-Quaida against Iraq Christians. We cannot find a single source of joy that makes us celebrate. The situation of the Christians is bleak.”3 Archbishop Amel Shamon Nona, who leads the Chaldean Diocese of Mosul, said in a recent interview, “These are the worst and most perilous times” for Christians.4
As we gather for this Midnight Mass at the Cathedral of the
Immaculate Conception in Springfield, Illinois, we should count our
blessings that we enjoy the freedom to do this in relative safety. But we should not forget our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world that are not so fortunate and for whom Christmas is not so joyful. Nor should we be so complacent or naïve as to think that only people in the Middle East or other parts of the world need to be concerned about attacks by Islamist extremists against Christians. We need only recall the terrorist attacks of 9-11-2001 right here on American soil. Next September will mark the tenth anniversary of those attacks, but the passage of ten years should not lull us into thinking that the threat has passed. So what should we do? For one, I believe that we need to live our Catholic faith and practice our Christian beliefs much more fervently. Radical Islamist extremists take their faith very seriously, even though they are mistaken in thinking that those beliefs call for them to kill non- Muslims. If we are lukewarm about our Christianity, the Islamists won’t need to invade with armies like they marched into Vienna in 1683, but they could simply continue to move in peacefully and legally as they are already
doing in Western Europe and even here in the United States until they reach a majority and impose Islamist values and sharia law with little or no resistance.
It doesn’t help when our country plays politically correct games such
as the security operations at our nation’s airports. You can’t fight a war if you can’t identify the enemy, and if 83-year old great-grandmothers have to be treated the same way as Muslim Arabs from the Middle East with body scans and “enhanced pat-downs,” then we’re wasting a lot of time and money for nothing. True, not every Muslim is a terrorist, but most terrorists these days are Muslims, and we ignore that fact at our peril. Perhaps this was not the warm and fuzzy message that you were hoping for at Midnight Mass. But I have a hard time feeling content while our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world are suffering this Christmas night. Moreover, we should not leave here feeling satisfied
that we have experienced the joy of another Christmas and that should be sufficient for another year or at least until Easter.
Christmas light comes in the darkness of the night to set our hearts
on fire with Christ’s love. That should enflame us to greater depths of
prayer and devotion, and energize us to greater heights of putting
Christian charity into action. Our Christmas liturgies are not nostalgic
recollections of the past or mere memorials of historical events, but the birth of the Christ-child and the incarnation of God-made-man marks the dawn of the future for all humanity. That is the true Christmas gift. It is up to us whether we will open that gift and use it, or put it on a shelf never to be touched again.
That is the message delivered by the great Saint Augustine centuries
ago as a bishop in northern Africa, when he called mankind to awake to the reality that God became man for our sake. He also told them in no uncertain terms what it would have meant if Christ had not been born: “You would have suffered eternal death, had He not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy. You would never have returned to life, if He had not shared your death. You would have been lost, if He had not hastened to your aid. You would have perished, had He not come. “Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the festive day on which He who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our short day of time. . . . “Let us then rejoice in this grace, so that our glorying may bear witness to our good conscience by which we glory, not in ourselves, but in the Lord.”5 Let us thank God for this grace. Amen.
1
NOTES
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/earlyrise_1.shtml.
2 Yasha Barzanji and Sameer N. Yacoub, “Iraqi churches cancel Christmas festivities,” State Journal-Register, December
23, 2010, p. 6.
3 Ibid.
4 Sam Dagher, “For Iraq Christians, Silent Night,” THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, December 24, 2010, p. A11.
5 St. Augustine, Sermo 185, PL 38, 997-999, quoted in the Office for Readings for December 24, Liturgy of the Hours, Vol.
IV (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1975), pp. 379-381.

One would hope (but realistically?)that the reason we Christians don't protest more when persecuted is because we took Jesus at his word:

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad,...

John Allen's article focuses on the Holocaust in which many Christians are suffering at the hands of non-Christians. How about focusing on the holocaust of millions of innocent, monogamous women in Sub-Saharan who over the past two + decades have been infected by their HIV-positive spouses/partners and ultimately died or will die of AIDS because of the hardline of the Vatican against the use of condoms by discordant couples. The Vatican's non-pastoral opposition to the use condoms in those situations merely reinforces those men in their refusal to use condoms when they insist on sexual relations with their spouses/partners. The Vatican is most certainly complicit in that holocaust of avoidable suffering and deaths.

"no one means to minimize the absolute singularity of the Holocaust against the Jews during the Second World War, and the moral imperative of keeping that memory alive."
Then why do it? It sounds like "It's not about the money, but . . ." Christians have been silent about the persecutions of Christians in non-Christian countries but they have their own language in which to express outrage, one that won't mute the impact of a metaphor that recalls centuries of persecution of Jews by Christians. In this country the persecutions have received little media or journalistic attention. People don't know these victims as people knew their neighbors in Germany, aren't reading about it, aren't hearing it in the pews. I don't know if this ignorance is equivalent to the blindness of Christians during the holocaust I do think better coverage is needed. Perhaps your point is that poetry and narrative are needed to bring people to a passion. Journalism and information are first steps. The small minorities in the persecuting countries may, like many in Latin America, lack the power to voice their stories to the west with the eloquence of an Elie Wiesel. I'd opt for better journalism, a recovery of the language of witness and martyrdom, and a greater sensitivity to the singularity of holocaust literature.

There weren't too many people taking up the cause of the Jews being killed in the Nazi concentration camps during the years of World War II. There seemed to be very little empathy towards the plight of the Jews who found it difficult to find asylum during and after the war. It was after the fact, after the war that most of the Holocaust literature was written, and those who wrote about it were Holocaust survivors writing so that we should never forget. Elie Wiesel is still one of the few who continues to speak out wherever genocides, hate crimes and violence is done to those who are targeted or scapegoated for all sorts of unjust reasons. I'm sure the same case can be made for genocides that happened before and since the Holocaust, like the genocide of the Armenians or the killing of various African peoples. And if you care to back further in our own country, the killing of the native American Indians. Perhaps it is our own complicity that keeps us from speaking out.

Thank you John for an excellent article. From the murder of 1.5 million Armenian Christians by the Turks in 1917 through the bombing of the Coptic church on New Years, the silence of western Christians to the persecution and murder of their brothers and sisters has been appalling.

I give up. I've tried twice but can't post though I have filled in the starred areas. Perhaps it is because I am not a subscriber but that requirement is not clear.

Since 70% of Catholics don't go to church on Sundays on a regular basis, it's obvious that religion isn't that important to them. So if Catholics are being persecuted, they can't be bothered when there's an important game on.

Well, you know, there is the Roman Martyrology - maybe not 20th Century, but certainly a literature of persecution...

Not to sound like a media-hater, but part of the problem, I think, is that mainstream media simply does not cover anti-Christian violence with the same energy and enthusiasm with which they cover other anti-religious violence. It just isn't as "sexy" and titillating and, in some cases, it is in itself a sort of passive-aggressive violence against Christians.

A movie that was missed is Louis Malle's "Au Revoir les Infants" -- the AUTObiographical last movie of his experience in a French Catholic boys school during the Occupation by Germany -- Everytime I see it I start crying AT THE BEGINNING because their names are listed in the front!

Part of the reason that attacks on Christians in the Middle East is that said Christians are often of the Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox variety, and thus are viewed as similar to Catholics in their beliefs and practices (which they are), and some of the Protestant right-wing in this country tend to view Catholics as, at best, political allies, rather than as fellow Christians, so they are not overly disturbed by reports of attacks and violence against these types of Churches, as much as they would, say, be disturbed by the same happening to an evangelical mission group.

John Allen has a good point. Part of the answer is the lack, so far, of a Catholic writer of the brilliance of Elie Wiesel. The reality of Catholic suffering under Hitler is there, particulary, but not exclusively in Poland. Pope John Paul II commented more than once that the Nazis murdered the Jews first, but would then have committed genocide on the Poles and other Slavs. Adding to his voice, over the years, was Cardinal William Keeler, not coincidentally the Episcopal Moderator for Catholic-Jewish Relations for the the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who in speech after speech would raise this issue with Jewish as well as Catholic audiences. I am currently editing Cardinal Keeler's texts and addresses for publication by Paulist Press, which I hope will help spread the message. The Jewish audiences, by the way, have always been quite receptive to this reminder of the suffering of Polish Catholics under Hitler, and, indeed, Jewish agencies have helped bring it to their constituents.
Dr. Eugene J. Fisher
Distinguished Professor of Catholic=Jewish Studies
Saint Leo University

John:
Good article. Poor choice of Title. Can't win 'em all.

Arguably, the first genocide of the modern era was the extermination of 600,000 people in the Vendee because of their opposition to the anti-Catholic program of the French Revolution. One can see why apologists for the so-called Enlightenment keep quiet about that. And one might also argue that it has been Western intervention in the name of the 'Enlightenment' from Napoleon onwards that has destabilised the Middle East.

Oh, please. I consider this an extraordinarily insensitive (and historically ignorant) question. The reason is simple-- and by the way, I speak this as a Catholic Christian. There has been NO attempt to systematically exterminate all Christians even remotely comparable to the Shoah. You really do need to learn some very basic church history. In virtually every historical period, the primary killers of Christians have been other Christians. There is an extraordinary difference between the local, primarily culture-driven internecine warfare that has generated some Christian deaths, and the decision made by the formal administrative structure of an entire country (Germany) to industrialize mass killings in the name of 'racial purity'. (And to be clear, Jews are not a 'race'.)

The Holocaust is unique. Using the word to describe other killings -- even small scale mass murders -- trivializes the horror of what the Nazis did.

John, you conclude: "Perhaps what the Christian world needs is precisely the call to conscience that a thoughtful, evocative Holocaust literature would elicit. May its moment come, and that right soon." I doubt there is a real "need" for any such thing and I doubt it will happen. Christians are leaving the Middle East by the tens of thousands. Moving to the US or Canada or the EU, and helping them do so, seems a lot more helpful than writing "poor us" books.

PS: See the nearby NCR account of over 200 nuns and 200 priests being murdered in Africa in recent years, often in armed robberies. But they aren't victims of a holocaust, are they? They weren't killed because they were Christian. Nor were 99% killed by Islamicists. This is just one problem of many of trying to set up a coherent holocaust cult among Catholics.

Would that the Jewish Community speak out against the Anti Christian violence today, as they wanted Pius XII to speak out against the anti Jewish violence of Nazi Germany.

One thing to add is that Christian's are not supposed to answer violence with violence. So there is a fundamental belief at work that minimizes an angry violent response, which sets Christianity apart from other religions to begin with.

I would like to add that today there is also persecution of Christians in other places in the world - often by other Christians. Note the witness of a few bishops in Perú (Daniel Turley), Guatemala (Alvaro Ramazzini), and here in Honduras (Bishop Luis Alfonso Santos) whose lives have been threatened, mostly for their opposition to mining interests.

The monks murdered in Algeria in 2006 were Cistercians rather than Trappists. And I agree that "Of Gods and Men" deserves a wide audience--though I'm not sure if its emphatic focus on the brotherhood of all people (and of Christians and Muslims) lends itself to an interpretation that would bolster a "Christian holocaust" thesis.

Christians have been "unpopular" in the Muslim world for centuries, long before the "Iraq war", and long before the establishment of the state of Israel following WWII.

Christianity became unpopular in the Middle East mostly because of the so-called "Crusades" perpetrated by European monarchs with the active encouragement of the Roman church.

John wrote:
"Bishop Thomas Paprocki called the recent attacks on Iraqi Christians the latest chapter in a 'centuries-long onslaught of Muslims against Christians.' The Bishop was correct in identifying a problem, but as too often the pronouncement by a Bishop is Church-centric and from a position of knowledge, and thus not packaged for understanding on the street. To be very precise, 'a radical Muslim minority is continuing an onslaught' ...
If we look at current events, we see persecution of Christians in Iraq by Muslims, and in India by Hindus.Churches have been burned, nuns abused, priests and nuns and parishioners murdered. Personal tragedy is always involved, and at least in Iraq many in the Christian community have been terrorized into leaving that country. It is not so easy for those persecuted in Indian to leave.
I am glad that John has called attention to the lack of notoriety about these matters. Something needs to be artfully done, so that the West does not appear to be whining, or exaggerating. Surely 90% of Iraqis and Indians would not support what's being done to Christians, and a way needs to be devised to be effective without causing those to feel unjustly accused.

The question of why the world seems unconcerned with anti-Christian violence (generally speaking) is a good one. To tie it to a comparison with the Holocaust is not very persuasive or apt. The Holocaust happened quickly and intensely provoking an intense reaction in all spheres, political as well as literary (and the other arts as well). There has been no anti-Christian movement to compare to the scope and ferocity of the Holocaust. Hence, no comparable literature. However, as other commentators have pointed out, as a matter of fact, we do see a chronicling of anti-Christian persecution.

Just in terms of the European stance IMO/ FWIW:
Christendom basically was the go-to empire for centuries. And many injustices and cruelties were perpetrated under its aegis, as some atheists love to point out. So it makes crying victim in this day and age seem just a little hard to take. I don't say this is a justified reaction. I merely describe it.

the mythology persists that Christians are more likely to be the oppressors than the oppressed?
How quickly Christians forget the Spanish Inquisition (The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Spanish: Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition (Inquisición española), was a tribunal established, quite unexpectedly, in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval Inquisition which was under Papal control. The Inquisition was originally intended in large part to ensure the orthodoxy of those who converted from Judaism and Islam. This regulation of the faith of the newly converted was intensified after the royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1501 ordering Jews and Muslims to convert or leave. Wikipeda, or the Medieval Inquisition, Pogroms against Jews instigated by countries and Christians, the removal of Native American Children from their homes by Roman Catholic priests and sisters (stripped these children of their families, language, and spirituality), and replacement of religious beliefs and pictures with Catholic icons in countries around the world.
The problem is that many remember the insults created by Christians on non-Christians. Too many insults, too much pain. Instead of "poor me" perhaps Christians should accept they may have brought these "atrocities" upon themselves.