Language:
English
Year of publication:
2000
Titel der Quelle:
American Jewish History
Angaben zur Quelle:
88,3 (2000) 361-376
Keywords:
Luce, Clare Boothe,
;
Jews History 1945-
;
Jews
;
Judaism Relations
;
Christianity
;
Christianity and other religions Judaism
Abstract:
In the context of the clash between Catholics and Jews in the U.S. after 1945, a period which marked the passage of Catholics and of Jews into mainstream American discourse, discusses the views of Luce (1903-1987), the prominent writer, magazine editor, Congresswoman, and ambassador. Luce converted to Catholicism ca. 1945. Her aggressive Catholic faith elicited a public accusation of antisemitism. On the basis of her diaries, letters, and personal papers, rejects this view. Concludes that her Catholicism was cosmopolitan rather than fundamentalist (in contrast to her contemporary, Bishop Fulton Sheen) and was affected by important and ambiguous, but not hostile, relations with Jews. Though she agreed with the contemporary Catholic criticism of Freudianism, which was generally associated with Jews, she is shown to have rejected the sharp dichotomy between Catholics and Jews prevalent at that time. She sympathized with the suffering of Holocaust survivors and had pro-Zionist sympathies. Luce's writings do not convey antisemitism, but they do radiate Christian triumphalism.
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