Cushing, Spellman, O'Connor—The Surprising Story of How Three American Cardinals Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations

This old-fashioned book by Rabbi James Rudin recounts the history of Catholic anti-Judaism, and offers glowing biographies of three American Catholic cardinals the author feels were responsible for ending it: Richard Cushing, Francis Spellman, and John O'Connor. The first third of the book is a brief historical account of how early Christian hostility to Jews evolved into massive persecution encouraged and often organized by the Roman Catholic Church. It explains those traditions shifted in the US in response to American ideals of religious freedom, and to the rise of an American bigotry that lumped Catholics together with Jews as ethnic and religious undesirables. (The author notes that all three cardinals were descendants of Irish immigrants). The book leaps directly to biographies of the three men and explanations of how their actions in office transformed the formal relationship of Catholics to Jews. The author clearly belongs to the Great Men tradition of history; complexity or criticism of any part of the cardinals' lives or work is not on his agenda. The book's goal is to show how the actions of single heroic individuals can alter the course of history. The book represents an early 20th century tradition of history-writing, and is created to inspire Catholic and Jewish general readers with warmth, fellowship, and gratitude. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)