But that was before the great 20th century interruption. The narrative of the death of Jesus can no longer be read, heard, or reenacted with such innocence. The wicked irony of Holy Week must now be acknowledged: Intended to transform suffering, these observances became, down through the ages, a transcendent source of suffering. The drama of God’s love became an immorality tale of hate.
Since then, Christians have sought to renounce the religious anti-Judaism that spawned the racial anti-Semitism that reached its climax in the Holocaust. Most notably, the igniting “Christ-killer” slander was repudiated by the Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council.
Because the post-World War II reconciliation of Jews and Christians has been so momentous, and so authentic, many people assume the problem of Holy Week anti-Jewishness is no longer urgent. How often are Jewish children harassed as Christ-killers any more?
Yet, tossing the barest glance at headlines today, who would claim that the moral software of Western culture has been fully and finally debugged?
The misremembering of Jesus Christ did not cause all the world’s ills, any more than Christian anti-Judaism alone caused Hitler. But to read and hear the texts of Holy Week, with their relentless scapegoating of “the Jews,” is inevitably to confront the way in which a movement full of good intentions can go wrong. Wanting to alleviate suffering, the Jesus people compounded it. To reckon with that mystery is to confront a deeper one — that every human project can be complicit with the inflicting of hurt. If there is to be redemption, it begins in facing that.
James Carroll writes regularly for the Globe.
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