Constantine's Sword.

"At the heart of Oren Jacoby's screen adaptation of James Carroll's book [Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History] lies a question to which each person of faith must his find own answer," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "When your core beliefs conflict with church doctrine, how far should your loyalty to the church extend?... At once enthralling and troubling, the film... does about as good a job as you could hope of distilling a 750-page historical examination of religious zealotry and power into 95 swift minutes."

"In many ways [Carroll] makes an ideal guide to the subject, not just because of his several years as a Catholic priest, but also because of his unique positioning at the confluence of religion and war," notes Chris Barsanti at Filmcritic.com. "At the height of the Vietnam War, while Father Carroll was protesting at the Pentagon, his father, a hard-nosed conservative Catholic, was inside helping direct the conflict as first director of the Defense Intelligence Agency."

"But what exactly is this Holy Grail that Carroll is seeking?" asks Lauren Wissot at the House Next Door. "Nothing less than that exact moment in time when the Cross and the Sword became one - when the Emperor Constantine consolidated his authority by combining war and religion."

"Once the cross displaced life-giving emblems (shepherds, fish) as the symbol of Christianity, the religion made Christ's death its rallying point - providing a handy weapon against the fingered murderers, Europe's thriving Jews," notes Jim Ridley in the Voice.

"Far more valuable than simply as an indictment of Christian fundamentalism, Constantine's Sword records an intensely tortured moment in contemporary spiritual debate," writes Shahnaz Habib in the New York Press. "Carroll's quest to confront the violent history of Christianity is ultimately the challenge of resisting manipulation by what we love - by our faiths, by our countries, by our fathers."

For Erica Orden, writing in the New York Sun, "[W]hile the film offers a blistering indictment of papal practices from Hitler's era through the present day, it fails to resolve either of the major questions it asks: Where did anyone get the idea that killing in the name of God is all right? And what is the origin of the rise in evangelical Christianity in the United States Air Force Academy?"

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir has a good long talk with Carroll.

Posted by dwhudson at April 19, 2008 12:57 PM