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In his book, Constantine's Sword, author James P. Carroll approvingly cites the Vatican II declaration Nostra Aetate, which states in part that Christ's death "cannot be charged against all the Jews without distinction then alive, nor against Jews of today," and that the Catholic Church "decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone." The declaration goes on to say that "Christ underwent His passion and death freely" and that it is "the burden of the Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all embracing love."

James P. Carroll at the Vatican

Although Carroll laments that Nostra Aetate is not better known in the Church today, the notion of proclaiming "the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-embracing love" is not one embraced by Carroll.

Constantine's Sword is also the title of a new documentary based on Carroll's book, and the film doesn't go quite as far as its source material in deconstructing the cross and the faith it represents. Subtitled The Church and the Jews—A History, Carroll's book effectively contends that "proclaiming the cross of Christ" and "God's all-embracing love" are mutually exclusive. The cross, Carroll writes, is "the symbol of all that Christians must repent in relation to the Jewish people."

In his book, Carroll, an ex-priest, offers a modest proposal for Christian "repentance": The Catholic Church must (a)convene VaticanIII, (b)flag and confess anti-Jewish distortions in the New Testament, (c)reject the Nicene Creed in favor of something more Unitarian, (d)dismantle the hierarchy and embrace "holy" democracy, and (e)to show that we really mean it and we're really sorry for the last 2000 years, dismantle the cross at Auschwitz—a proposed act that Carroll imagines in vivid, even ceremonial terms: "a removal of the horizontal beam, an uprooting of the vertical, a reversal of the instruction Constantine gave his soldiers." Such an act suggests much more than removing a single controverted monument; Carroll imagines it as a veritable "sacrament" embodying the deconstruction of traditional Christian faith.

The film, directed by Oren Jacoby (Sister Rose's Passion), is less explicit on these points than the book, notwithstanding shots of Carroll scowling darkly at the cross at Auschwitz. It also broadens its argument by throwing in Evangelical Protestantism, particularly in connection with the armed forces and the war in Iraq, with charges of institutional Evangelical proselytizing at the Colorado Springs Air Force Academy, interviews ranging from disgraced Evangelical leader Ted Haggard to Carroll's fellow Catholic Church critic Garry Wills (Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit) and footage of Evangelical worship services.

Like the book, the film also focuses a good deal on Carroll's life story: his Irish Catholic upbringing, his father's work in military intelligence, his ordination to the priesthood in 1969 and his subsequent departure in 1975. ("I couldn't be obedient after the war in Vietnam destroyed my faith in authority," he reflects.) In both the film and the book Carroll notes that his parents' names were Joseph and Mary, and his initials are J.C.; make of that what you will.

Despite lapses into introspective navel-gazing, the heart of the film, like the heart of the book, is concerned with the long and sordid history of Christian anti-Semitism, and there's a matrix of truth in the charges leveled here. The history of Catholic anti-Semitism rehearsed in the film is long and sordid: the 1096 massacres of Rhineland Jews at the outset of the First Crusade, the fevered medieval fantasies of Jewish malfeasance (kidnapping and killing Christian children, poisoning wells and so forth), the expulsion of Sephardic Jews from Spain in 1492 … the list goes on and on.

At the same time, like its source material, the film is riddled with historical distortions, at least some of which seem agenda-driven, perhaps even more or less deliberate.

During an interview with scholar Jan Willem Drijvers discussing Constantine and Helen, the film cuts to voiceover narration from Carroll, purportedly paraphrasing Drijvers, to the effect that prior to Constantine "the cross had never been an important Christian symbol." For "two and a half centuries," Carroll continues, "Christians had used symbols of life: the fish, the lamb, the shepherd. Now this image of execution is brought in to justify the empire under a single orthodox doctrine."

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