Avítt antijudaizmus és modern fajelmélet között. Katolikus szerzők zsidóellenes argumentációjának szürke zónája
Between “Obsolete” Anti-Judaism and Modern Racism. The Grey Zone of Anti-Jewish Argumentation of Catholic Authors

Summary/Abstract: This essay focuses on a rare topic: when the “Jewish question” emerged for the first time at the end of the 19th Century in the discussions of public and political life of the Austro–Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, the traditional Christian anti-Judaism based on religious reasoning was amplified not only by social and economic arguments in Catholic rhetoric, but a sort of “racial factor”. It is important to emphasize that the latter was not similar to the modern racial ideology, although Catholic discourses in relation to Jews contained from the 15th Century a contemptuous thinking about their unchanging nature inclined to evil and predisposed to perfidy. In certain representations, new converts were considered unassimilable people with negative characteristics. The article analyses the oeuvre of one of the most influential person in Hungarian Catholic Church between 1912–1939, a reputed jesuit, Béla Bangha, from the angle of this grey zone of anti-Jewish narrative scattered with “racial” prejudices. Not insignificant that Catholic teachings and the Church’s declarations condemned racial antisemitism, however they asserted the “justifiable” or “ethical” antisemitism like a “self-defense”. This essay outlines the history of anti-Judaism, addresses then its 20th century context with similar manifestations abroad and contrasts this with the minority opinion refusing antisemitism in the Catholic Church in France and Hungary.

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