Principally Articles by Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J. (†1938), with Anonymous Chronicle Items from the College of Writers
La Civiltà Cattolica‘s adversus Judaeos line did not relent after 1919; it deepened and adapted to new circumstances. The Balfour Declaration of November 1917, which promised a Jewish national home in Palestine, was received by the journal as a geopolitical and theological catastrophe, intensifying the anti-Zionist arguments first laid down by Fr. Raffaele Ballerini, S.J., in 1897. The Russian Revolution of 1917, meanwhile, furnished a new and potent weapon: the identification of Judaism with Bolshevism. Throughout the 1920s the journal produced articles and chronicle items fusing the theological adversus Judaeos tradition with new socio-political anxieties. In the 1930s, with the rise of National Socialism, the journal’s writers navigated a distinction: condemning racial antisemitism as contrary to Christian principle while reaffirming the traditional theological and socio-economic anti-Judaism the journal had published for eight decades.
The dominant named contributor in this period was Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J. (1870–1938), editor from 1915 to 1931 and the journal’s most authoritative theological voice on public affairs in the interwar years. His obituary in the journal noted: “No exaggeration to say that Father Enrico Rosa remained for thirty years at the head of Italian Catholic journalism as interpreter and intrepid champion of the directives of the Holy See” (La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. IV, p. 485). All articles were reviewed and approved by the Secretariat of State of the Holy See before publication. Pope Pius XI wrote in 1924: “From the journal’s very beginning the authors set for themselves that sacred and immutable duty of defending the rights of the Apostolic See and the Catholic faith, and struggling against the poison that the doctrine of liberalism had injected into the very veins of States and societies” (La Civiltà Cattolica, 1924, vol. III, p. 291).
A note on sources and translation: The most important new source for this collection is the full verified English translation of Rosa’s October 1922 article, The World Revolution and the Jews, published at The Journal of American Reform (Substack): https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-world-revolution-and-the-Jews. This translation is linked directly to the HathiTrust digital scan of the original Italian: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924106819075?urlappend=%3Bseq=115%3Bownerid=13510798902467831-123. Italian-language passages from the 1934 Rosa reviews are preserved verbatim in Taradel and Raggi, La segregaZione amichevole (Editori Riuniti, Rome, 2000), cited in Treccani. Where passages are available only via English translations in secondary scholarship (Zuccotti 2000; Encyclopaedia Judaica), this is noted explicitly. All Italian passages are translated by the compilers of this document unless otherwise stated.
Part I: Jews, Bolshevism, and the Post-War “Jewish Danger” — 1920–1921
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], chronicle article on Jews and Bolshevism, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1920. Documented in Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000), pp. 3–23; cited in Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], chronicle items on Zionism and Palestine, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1920–1921. Documented in Ettore Caviglia, “Il sionismo e la Palestina negli articoli dell’Osservatore Romano e della Civiltà Cattolica (1919–1923),” Clio, 1 (1981), pp. 79–90; and Simon Levis Sullam, “Per una storia dell’antisemitismo cattolico in Italia,” Cristiani d’Italia (Treccani, 2011), at https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/per-una-storia-dell-antisemitismo-cattolico-in-italia_(Cristiani-d’Italia)/.
I. Jews as “the Filthy Element” — 1920
Jews [were] “the filthy element” who “were avid for money” and who wanted to “proclaim the communist republic tomorrow.”
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], chronicle article, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1920. English translation preserved in Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows (Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 3–23; cited in Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica. HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866.
II. The Anti-Zionist Theological Formula — Reprinted as Living Authority
The post-Balfour anti-Zionist position of the journal rested on the theological formula first stated by Ballerini in 1897, which La Civiltà Cattolica reprinted and cited as living authority throughout 1920–1922:
“Secondo le sacre pagine, il popolo giudaico deve sempre sussistere disperso e vagabondo fra gli altri popoli […]. Quanto poi al ricostruire una Gerusalemme che divenga centro di un risorto Regno Israelitico, va osservato come ciò sia contrario alla prediZione del medesimo Cristo.”
[According to the sacred pages, the Jewish people must always subsist dispersed and wandering among other peoples […]. As for rebuilding a Jerusalem that will become the centre of a revived Israelite Kingdom, it must be noted that this is contrary to the prediction of Christ himself.]
— Fr. Raffaele Ballerini, S.J., “La Dispersione d’Israello nel mondo moderno,” La Civiltà Cattolica, anno 48 (1897), Serie XVI, vol. 10, pp. 269–270; reprinted and cited as the active theological authority in all La Civiltà Cattolica anti-Zionist writing of 1920–1922. Italian text cited in Treccani, fn. 52, at https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/per-una-storia-dell-antisemitismo-cattolico-in-italia_(Cristiani-d’Italia)/; sourcing S. I. Minerbi, Il Vaticano, la Terra Santa, il Sionismo (Milan, 1988), p. 145.
III. Benedict XV’s June 1921 Allocution — The Pastoral Occasion for the Journal’s Anti-Zionist Coverage
The following is Pope Benedict XV’s own characterisation of British-mandate Palestine, which La Civiltà Cattolica amplified throughout 1921–1922:
“Infatti, nella Terra Santa la condiZione dei cristiani non solo non è migliorata, ma anzi è peggiorata a seguito delle nuove leggi e degli ordinamenti colà stabiliti, i quali mirano — non diciamo per volontà dei legislatori, ma certamente nei fatti — a scacciare la cristianità dalle posiZioni che ha finora occupate, per sostituirvi gli ebrei.”
[Indeed, in the Holy Land the condition of Christians has not only not improved, but has on the contrary worsened as a result of the new laws and arrangements established there, which aim — not, we say, by the will of the legislators, but certainly in effect — to drive Christianity from the positions it has hitherto occupied, in order to replace them with the Jews.]
— Pope Benedict XV, Allocution to the Secret Consistory, 13 June 1921, “Sulle sorti del Cattolicesimo in Palestina.” Full Italian text at https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xv/it/speeches/documents/hf_ben-xv_spe_19210613_cattolicesimo-palestina.html. Amplified in La Civiltà Cattolica‘s chronicle sections throughout 1921–1922; see Caviglia (1981) and Levis Sullam (2011).
Part II: Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “The World Revolution and the Jews” — 1922
Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., [Italian title: “La RivoluZione mondiale e gli Ebrei”], La Civiltà Cattolica, Roma, 12 ottobre 1922, LXXIII, vol. IV, quad. 1736, pp. 111–121. HathiTrust digital scan of the Italian original: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924106819075?urlappend=%3Bseq=115%3Bownerid=13510798902467831-123. Full verified English translation: https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-world-revolution-and-the-Jews.
This is the most extensive adversus Judaeos text produced by La Civiltà Cattolica in the 1920–1936 period. It is Fr. Rosa’s full-length doctrinal treatment of Judaism and Bolshevism, establishing the journal’s framework for the Judeo-Bolshevik theme that would define its coverage of the Jewish question throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. All passages below are from the verified English translation at The Journal of American Reform (Substack), checked against the HathiTrust scan of the Italian original.
I. The Sick World — Revolution, the Mob, and Jewish Orchestration
The world is sick. We are not the only ones saying it: today even the most reckless moralists repeat it; today even the most thoughtless people, frightened by the turbulent chaos in which they see every social order plummeting, have shaken themselves, have looked around wondering where and how such an access of madness came about. Everywhere peoples stirred by inexplicable convulsions: States consumed by public debt; nations famished by the scarcity of provisions; currencies more ruinous every day, and the price of gold ever more inflated; the economic-gold balance on the brink of collapse. The mob, as much in love with labor as it is avid for profits and unattainable pleasures, appears to transform itself into a tragic carnival of upheavals and strikes, expecting to proclaim the communist republic tomorrow, while the statesmen, the sages of nations, roam lost in pursuit of a peace that dissolves into endless illusion. Where are we going?
Here is the fearful question that one hears repeated from all sides: and in response to this, another question murmurs in the subconscious: Who is leading? because the multitudes are sheep and do not know where they are going, but they obey someone who guides them or drives them onward. Who drives this rabble of parties, of leagues, of lodges, who guides this movement of universal revolution that overturns human society from one end of the world to the other?
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “The World Revolution and the Jews,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 12 October 1922, LXXIII, vol. IV, quad. 1736, p. 111. English translation at https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-world-revolution-and-the-Jews; Italian original at https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924106819075?urlappend=%3Bseq=115%3Bownerid=13510798902467831-123.
II. Accusing the Synagogue — The Talmud as a Precept of Harming Christians
Sinister voices rise up from multiple quarters to accuse the Synagogue. The wolf is always a wolf: ancient grudges give credit to new suspicions and rekindle a wound left to scar but never healed. A profane hand has also brought to light secrets that bear the mark of the ghetto. Documents or forgeries? It will be difficult, as always, to unravel the darkness in which Israel jealously wraps itself. The veil of the temple, which Yahweh had torn asunder, the sons of Judah have sewn back together with double thread; but what it seeks to cover is no longer the holy ark of the Lord: it is the strongbox of its usury and its selfishness. In any case, to its tenacity in hiding, we assert the right to rummage and bring to light what concerns us, what affects the public good of the Christian people, to whom, according to the Talmudists, harming is a precept of law and a merit of religion.
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “The World Revolution and the Jews,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 12 October 1922, p. 111. English translation at https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-world-revolution-and-the-Jews.
III. Jews in the “Ghetto’s Filth” — 447 of 545 Soviet Officials Jewish
Out of the five hundred and forty-five names of members of the State’s leading offices, citizens of Russian descent number no more than thirty: those of Jewish race are a full four hundred and forty-seven: the rest are dispersed among the Latvians, Finns, Germans, Armenians, Poles, and the other peoples who already composed the empire. On the other hand, the total population of the Russian Republic certainly numbers no less than ninety million nationals, compared to perhaps four million Jews who until yesterday swarmed in the ghetto’s filth, objects of common contempt. Yet this tiny minority has today invaded all the avenues of power and imposes its dictatorship on the nation. And what a dictatorship!
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “The World Revolution and the Jews,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 12 October 1922, p. 113. English translation at https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-world-revolution-and-the-Jews.
IV. Jewish Control of Every Soviet Ministry — “Hereditary Filth”
The Council of Commissars has a Jewish Finance Minister, Gonkovsky, and that goes without saying; it has another for Cults, or, as they say there, for Religions, Spitzberg, also a Jew, and that’s less clear; it has yet another Jew, Anvelt, for Social Hygiene, and that’s completely unclear, given the habits of hereditary filth in which the tribe has lived for centuries in those regions.
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “The World Revolution and the Jews,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 12 October 1922, p. 114. English translation at https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-world-revolution-and-the-Jews.
V. “This Race Has Seized the Throne” — The Instinct of Fallen Races
In short, from the sum of these details, one fact emerges clearly and manifestly: this race, which until yesterday lay in the dead ends, in the lowest depths of Russian life, has suddenly shaken itself and seized the throne: yesterday it was nothing; today it is everything and everywhere, and according to the instinct of fallen races, it hastens to vent the rage of its triumph, fearing that it will not last long.
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “The World Revolution and the Jews,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 12 October 1922, p. 115. English translation at https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-world-revolution-and-the-Jews.
VI. “Only the Perversion of a Semitic Fantasy” — Marxism as Racial Product
Only the perversion of a Semitic fantasy was capable of overturning all the traditions of humanity and creating a society whose fundamental statute is “the abolition of all property: wealth must not belong to individuals or to a class of citizens, but to the community.” The common sense of the Aryan race would never have invented a code in which the principle of social authority was replaced by a central statistical office…
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “The World Revolution and the Jews,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 12 October 1922, p. 118. English translation at https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-world-revolution-and-the-Jews.
VII. Russia as the Battlefield — Jews Preparing to “Conquer the Universe”
Russia is today the battlefield where the fate of tomorrow’s world is being decided. We have seen how they hold full control of this battlefield, how they strive to establish the most odious despotism in that wretched country and how they prepare to move from there to conquer the universe.
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “The World Revolution and the Jews,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 12 October 1922, p. 121. English translation at https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-world-revolution-and-the-Jews.
Part III: Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “The Jewish Danger and the Friends of Israel” — 1928
Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “Il pericolo giudaico e gli ‘amici d’Israele'” (The Jewish Danger and the “Friends of Israel“), La Civiltà Cattolica, 1928. Identified in: Simon Levis Sullam, “Per una storia dell’antisemitismo cattolico in Italia,” Cristiani d’Italia (Treccani, 2011), fn. 33, citing G. Miccoli, “Santa Sede, questione ebraica e antisemitismo,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali 11 (Einaudi, Turin, 1997), pp. 1566–1567. Contextualised also in Wikipedia, “Pope Pius XI and Judaism,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XI_and_Judaism.
The Amici di Israele (Friends of Israel) was a Catholic association founded in 1926 which requested reform of the Good Friday liturgy — specifically the removal of the phrase pro perfidis Judaeis (“for the perfidious Jews“). On 25 March 1928, Pius XI ordered its suppression. Cardinal Secretary of State Rafael Merry del Val declared that behind the initiative there was “la mano e l’ispiraZione degli ebrei” [“the hand and inspiration of the Jews“]. Fr. Rosa’s article in La Civiltà Cattolica provided the theological rationale, drawing the distinction the journal would maintain throughout the 1930s: condemning racial antisemitism while reaffirming the traditional Catholic anti-Judaism as not merely permissible but necessary.
I. The “Healthy Perception of Danger” — Legitimate Catholic Anti-Judaism
[The article drew] a distinction between race-based anti-Semitism, which it condemned, and the need for Catholics to maintain a “healthy perception of danger coming from the Jews” through their influence on politics and religion as well as their association with revolution since 1789.
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “Il pericolo giudaico e gli ‘amici d’Israele’,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1928. Characterised in Wikipedia, “Pope Pius XI and Judaism,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XI_and_Judaism; cross-referenced in Levis Sullam (2011), fn. 33, sourcing Miccoli, Santa Sede, pp. 1566–1567.
II. The Suppression Decree — Theological Anti-Judaism Left Intact
The suppression decree, approved by Pius XI, did not condemn antisemitism in all its forms, only in its racial form. Levis Sullam records:
“Nella stesura finale del decreto sulla questione non venne inserita una condanna di ‘qualsiasi forma di antisemitismo’, ma solo dell’antisemitismo inteso in senso razziale, mentre l’antiebraismo teologico venne implicitamente considerato legittimo.”
[In the final drafting of the decree on the question, a condemnation of ‘any form of antisemitism’ was not inserted, but only of antisemitism understood in a racial sense, while theological anti-Judaism was implicitly considered legitimate.]
— Simon Levis Sullam, “Per una storia dell’antisemitismo cattolico in Italia,” Cristiani d’Italia (Treccani, 2011). Full text at https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/per-una-storia-dell-antisemitismo-cattolico-in-italia_(Cristiani-d’Italia)/. Documented in Hubert Wolf, Il Papa e il diavolo (Rome, 2008), pp. 115–118.
Part IV: Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., Reviews of the Handbuch der Judenfrage — 1934
Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “La questione giudaica e l’antisemitismo naZionalsocialista” (The Jewish Question and National-Socialist Antisemitism), La Civiltà Cattolica, 1934 (two reviews). Identified in: Taradel and Raggi, La segregaZione amichevole (2000), p. 70, cited in Levis Sullam (2011), fn. 38, at https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/per-una-storia-dell-antisemitismo-cattolico-in-italia_(Cristiani-d’Italia)/; also Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows (Yale UP, 2000), cited in Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
Theodor Fritsch’s Handbuch der Judenfrage, by 1934 in its thirty-fifth edition as republished by the National Socialist Party, was the standard reference work of German political antisemitism. Fr. Rosa reviewed it in two articles. Rather than condemning it outright, he affirmed much of its content as having a basis in Catholic tradition, particularly its treatment of the Talmud, Kabbalah, and ritual murder. These are among the most directly documented passages from the journal’s 1920–1936 corpus, preserved verbatim in Italian in Taradel-Raggi and cited in Treccani.
I. “A Basis of Truth” — The Talmud, Kabbalah, and Ritual Murder
[In this and similar texts there was] “un fondo di verità” [a basis of truth] regarding “della ‘dottrina giudaica’, riguardante il Talmud, la cabala giudaica, l’omicidio rituale e simili altre questioni.”
[“…a basis of truth regarding the ‘Jewish doctrine,’ concerning the Talmud, Jewish Kabbalah, ritual murder and similar other questions.”]
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “La questione giudaica e l’antisemitismo naZionalsocialista,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1934. Italian text in Taradel and Raggi, La segregaZione amichevole (2000), p. 70; cited in Levis Sullam (2011), fn. 38. Translation from Italian by the compilers of this document.
II. “The Existence and Gravity of the Jewish Danger” Confirmed
[The information provided in the Handbuch der Judenfrage and similar texts] confermavano “certamente l’esistenza e la gravità del pericolo ebraico.”
[confirmed] “certainly the existence and gravity of the Jewish danger.”
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “La questione giudaica e l’antisemitismo naZionalsocialista,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1934. Italian text in Taradel and Raggi (2000), p. 70; cited in Levis Sullam (2011), fn. 38. Translation from Italian by the compilers of this document.
III. Jews as “Relentless, Irreconcilable Enemies of Christ and of Christianity”
[Rosa applauded the authors of the Handbuch for equating Jews with Freemasons, and] describing Jews as the “relentless irreconcilable enemies of Christ and of Christianity, particularly of integral and pure Christianity, the Catholicism of the Roman Church.”
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “La questione giudaica e l’antisemitismo naZionalsocialista,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1934. English translation preserved in Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows (Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 3–23; cited in Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
Part V: “Masters of the World” — The 1936 Articles
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], series of articles on the Jewish question, La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 87 (1936). Documented in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry, reproduced at the Jewish Virtual Library: https://www.Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/la-civilt-cattolica; and in Zuccotti (2000), cited in Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
Three years after the Nazi seizure of power, La Civiltà Cattolica — far from moderating its treatment of the Jewish question — published what Hannah Arendt described as the content of “the most outspokenly antisemitic” magazine in the world. The 1936 series set out the full Catholic anti-Jewish argument in explicit competition with Nazi propaganda, insisting on the difference between its religious framework and Nazi biological racism, while arriving at comparably severe conclusions about Jewish power and danger.
I. “Masters of the World”
The Jews “have become the masters of the world.”
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 87 (1936), nos. 37–38. English translation in Encyclopaedia Judaica, “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry, at https://www.Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/la-civilt-cattolica.
II. “Their Prototype Is the Banker”
“Their prototype is the banker, and their supreme ideal to turn the world into an incorporated joint-stock company.”
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 87 (1936), nos. 39–40. English translation in Encyclopaedia Judaica, “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry, at https://www.Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/la-civilt-cattolica.
III. Anti-Zionism — Would Jews “Give Up Their Messianic Aspiration to World Domination”?
Would the Jews, asked the writer, once they had realized the Zionist state, “give up their messianic aspiration to world domination and preponderance, both capitalistic and revolutionary? Besides, what would be the attitude of the Christians when they saw the Holy Places in Jewish hands?”
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 88 (1937), no. 2, pp. 418–431. English translation in Encyclopaedia Judaica, “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry, at https://www.Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/la-civilt-cattolica.
IV. A Grave and Permanent Danger
“If not all, still not a few Jews constitute a grave and permanent danger to society” because of their economic and political influence.
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 87 (1936). English translation preserved in Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows (Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 3–23; cited in Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
V. “Uniquely Endowed with the Qualities of Parasites”
[An article] quoted a fellow Jesuit to prove that Jews were “uniquely endowed with the qualities of parasites.”
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], La Civiltà Cattolica, 1936. Cited in Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
Supplementary: The Four Adversus Judaeos Pillars of La Civiltà Cattolica, 1920–1936
A. Anti-Zionism on Theological Grounds
The dispersal of the Jews remained throughout 1920–1936 the journal’s central theological argument against Zionism. The establishment of a Jewish national home — condemned on Ballerini’s 1897 grounds as “contrary to the prediction of Christ himself” — became, after the Balfour Declaration, a live political crisis to be resisted. The formal argument reprinted in every subsequent anti-Zionist article was: (1) the dispersion of Israel is providential, decreed by God as punishment for the Crucifixion; (2) the conversion of the Jews must precede any change in their collective status; (3) the Holy Places cannot be placed under Jewish administration. The journal’s anti-Zionism was also articulated politically. Luigi Sturzo, the founder of the Italian People’s Party, reflecting the position maintained in La Civiltà Cattolica, declared at the party congress of 1923: “Noi non permetteremo mai come cristiani né la speculaZione inglese né la profanaZione giudaica” [“We will never permit, as Christians, either the English speculation or the Jewish profanation”] — cited in Levis Sullam (2011), fn. 55.
B. Deicide, Supersessionism, and the Curse of Dispersion
The charge of deicide — that the Jewish people collectively incurred guilt for the Crucifixion through the words of Matthew 27:25 (sanguis eius super nos et super filios nostros) — continued throughout this period as the bedrock of the theological treatment. Supersessionism made the existence of a Jewish state not merely politically inconvenient but theologically incoherent. The Bishop of Udine’s 1925 Lenten letter, reflecting La Civiltà Cattolica‘s position, called the Zionist movement “anticristiano” and directed at “smentire la responsabilità collettiva ereditaria di un orrendo delitto” [“denying the collective hereditary responsibility for a horrific crime”] — namely, deicide. Cited in Levis Sullam (2011), fn. 56, sourcing R. Perin, “L’atteggiamento della Chiesa cattolica verso gli ebrei nella stampa diocesana (1920–1945),” Ventunesimo secolo, 7 (2008), p. 85.
C. The Talmud, Bolshevism, and Ritual Murder
Rosa’s 1922 article established the Judeo-Bolshevik framework, rooting it in the Talmudic precept — as Rosa stated it — that harming Christians “is a precept of law and a merit of religion.” This governed the journal’s treatment of Communism throughout the 1920s. Rosa’s 1934 reviews of the Handbuch der Judenfrage confirmed that the journal still maintained the blood libel/ritual murder accusation as having “a basis of truth” in “Jewish doctrine.” Der Stürmer printed a special edition on “Jewish ritual murder” which included extensive quotations from La Civiltà Cattolica — documented in Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
D. Judaism and World Domination — Financial and Revolutionary
The journal’s 1920–1936 corpus consistently argued that Jews sought world domination by two complementary routes: financial capitalism (the banker as prototype) and revolutionary Communism. Rosa’s 1922 article showed them “preparing to conquer the universe” from the Russian base; the 1936 articles showed them as having already “become the masters of the world” through finance. The equation of Judaism with Freemasonry remained active: Rosa’s 1934 applause for the Handbuch‘s equation of Jews and Freemasons as “relentless irreconcilable enemies of Christ and of Christianity” shows the nineteenth-century framework surviving intact into the Fascist era. Farinacci’s fascist newspaper Il Regime Fascista concluded in 1938: “Both for Italy and Germany there is still much to learn from the disciples of Jesus, and we must admit that both in its planning and in its execution, Fascism is still far from the excessive severity of the people of Civiltà Cattolica” — documented at https://www.assemblea.emr.it/cittadinanza/per-approfondire/formaZione-pdc/viaggio-visivo/lideologia-nazista-e-il-razzismo-fascista/il-razzismo-fascista/le-leggi-razziali/approfondimenti/la-chiesa-e-gli-ebrei-di-roberto-farinacci.
Sources
Primary Sources — La Civiltà Cattolica (with scans and translations)
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], chronicle article, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1920. [Italian text; verified English paraphrase in Zuccotti (2000).] HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], chronicle items on Zionism and Palestine, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1920–1922. [Italian text; documented in Caviglia (1981) and Catalan (2011).] Internet Archive scan (University of Toronto, Kelly Library, 1922 volume): https://archive.org/details/s73laciviltcatto03romeuoft. HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., [Italian title: “La Rivoluzione mondiale e gli Ebrei”], La Civiltà Cattolica, Roma, 12 ottobre 1922, LXXIII, vol. IV, quad. 1736, pp. 111–121. HathiTrust digital scan of Italian original: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924106819075?urlappend=%3Bseq=115%3Bownerid=13510798902467831-123. Full verified English translation: https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-world-revolution-and-the-jews
Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “Il pericolo giudaico e gli ‘amici d’Israele’,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1928. Documented in Miccoli (1997), pp. 1566–1567, and Wolf (2008), pp. 115–118. HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “La questione giudaica e l’antisemitismo nazionalsocialista,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1934 (two reviews). Italian text in Taradel and Raggi (2000), p. 70. English paraphrase in Zuccotti (2000). HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], articles on the Jewish question, La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 87 (1936), nos. 37–40; vol. 88 (1937), no. 2, pp. 418–431. English translations in Encyclopaedia Judaica / Jewish Virtual Library and in Zuccotti (2000). HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Pope Benedict XV, Allocution to the Secret Consistory, “Sulle sorti del Cattolicesimo in Palestina,” 13 June 1921. Vatican archive: https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xv/it/speeches/documents/hf_ben-xv_spe_19210613_cattolicesimo-palestina.html
Secondary Sources
Ruggero Taradel and Barbara Raggi, La segregazione amichevole: “La Civiltà Cattolica” e la questione ebraica 1850–1945, prefazione di Riccardo Di Segni (Editori Riuniti, Rome, 2000). The indispensable monograph. Italian quotations from the 1934 Rosa articles at p. 70.
Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000). Winner of the 2002 Sybil Halpern Milton Prize. Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/underhisverywind0000zucc
Simon Levis Sullam, “Per una storia dell’antisemitismo cattolico in Italia,” Cristiani d’Italia (Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2011). Full text: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/per-una-storia-dell-antisemitismo-cattolico-in-italia_(Cristiani-d’Italia)/
Giovanni Miccoli, “Santa Sede, questione ebraica e antisemitismo fra Otto e Novecento,” in Corrado Vivanti (ed.), Storia d’Italia, Annali 11: Gli ebrei in Italia, vol. II (Einaudi, Turin, 1997), pp. 1369–1574.
Tullia Catalan, “La ricezione del sionismo nella stampa cattolica italiana (1897–1917),” Storicamente (University of Trieste, 2011): https://storicamente.org/catalan
Ettore Caviglia, “Il sionismo e la Palestina negli articoli dell’Osservatore Romano e della Civiltà Cattolica (1919–1923),” Clio, 1 (1981), pp. 79–90.
Renato Moro, “Le premesse all’atteggiamento cattolico di fronte alla legislazione razziale fascista,” Storia contemporanea, 19 (1988), pp. 1044–1118.
Hubert Wolf, Il Papa e il diavolo. Il Vaticano e il Terzo Reich (Rome, 2008), pp. 115–118.
Encyclopaedia Judaica / Jewish Virtual Library, “La Civiltà Cattolica“: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/la-civilt-cattolica
Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica“: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica
Wikipedia, “Pope Pius XI and Judaism”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XI_and_Judaism
Pinchas Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews (Hawthorne Books, New York, 1967).
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt, New York, 1951). Describes La Civiltà Cattolica as “for decades the most outspokenly antisemitic” magazine in the world.
D. Mondrone, S.J., obituary notice for Fr. Enrico Rosa, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. IV, p. 485.
The Journal of American Reform (Substack), full verified English translation of Rosa 1922: https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-world-revolution-and-the-jews
See also the companion collection: Selections from La Civiltà Cattolica on the Jewish Question — The 1900–1919 Articles, at https://christtheking.info/catholic-resources-on-the-jewish-question/selections-from-la-civilta-cattolica-on-the-jewish-question-the-1900-1919-articles/