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James Carroll (born January 22, 1943) is an American author, historian, journalist, and formerCatholic priest.^[1] He has written extensively about the contemporary effort to reform the Catholic Church, and has published not only novels, but also books on religion and history. He has received nine honorary doctorates, and is a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Carroll was born in Chicago, the second of five sons of lateU.S. Air Force GeneralJoseph F. Carroll, and his wife Mary. At the time, his father was a Special Agent of theFBI, which he remained until being seconded to, and later commissioned by, the U.S. Air Force as the firstcommander of the U.S.Air Force Office of Special Investigations in 1948.^[2] After this, Carroll was raised in theWashington, D.C., area and inGermany. He was educated at Washington's Priory School (nowSt. Anselm's Abbey School) and at an American high school (H.H. Arnold), inWiesbaden, Germany.^[3] He attendedGeorgetown University before enteringSt. Paul's College, thePaulist Fathers'seminary, where he received his B.A. and M.A. degrees.

He was ordained to the priesthood in 1969. Carroll served as Catholic chaplain atBoston University from 1969 to 1974. During that time, he studied poetry withGeorge Starbuck and published books on religious subjects and a book of poems. He was also a columnist for theNational Catholic Reporter (1972–1975) and was named Best Columnist by theCatholic Press Association. For his writing against the Vietnam War, he received the first Thomas Merton Award fromPittsburgh'sThomas Merton Center in 1972. Carroll left the priesthood and the Paulist Fathers in 1974 to become a writer, and, in the same year, was a playwright-in-residence at theBerkshire Theater Festival.

Carroll's plays have been produced at the Berkshire Theater Festival and atBoston's Next Move Theater. In 1976 he published his first novel,Madonna Red, which was followed by ten others. He has written for numerous publications, includingThe New Yorkerand The Atlantic. His op-ed column appeared weekly inThe Boston Globe for twenty-three years (1992-2015). He won the 1996National Book Award for Nonfiction forAn American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us,^[4] a memoir about the Vietnam War and his relationships with his father, the American military, and the Catholic Church.

His other books includeHouse of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power, which won the firstPEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for non-fiction. Mr. Carroll's other works include the novels 'Prince of Peace,Mortal Friends andFamily Trade,' which were New York Times bestsellers. His novelsTheCityBelow andSecretFather were NYT Notable Books. His book of poems,Forbidden Disappointments, appearing in 1974, announced, according to the critic Allan Tate "a new, original talent." His writing against the Iraq war,Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War, (2004) was greeted by Jonathan Schell as "a journalist page of glory."

Carroll has been a Shorenstein Fellow atHarvard Kennedy School atHarvard University and a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at theHarvard Divinity School. He was a trustee of theBoston Public Library, a member of the Advisory Board of the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life atBrandeis University, and a member of the Dean's Council at the Harvard Divinity School. Carroll is a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was a member of the Academy's Committee on International Security Studies. He worked on his 2006 history ofthe Pentagon,House of War, as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Academy. He is an Associate of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. Carroll was the Richman Visiting Professor at Brandeis University, the MacDonald Family Visiting Professor at Emory University, Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence atSuffolk University in Boston, and Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University, where he wrote his most recent novelTheCloister (2017).

Carroll wrote ahistory of Christianity, specificallyRoman Catholicism,anti-Semitism, and treatment of Jews, titledConstantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews (2001). In this book, he recounts—beginning with the Gospels—the long history of anti-Jewish contempt and argues that Christian anti-Judaism spawned racial anti-Semitism, eventually underwriting white supremacy and playing a key role in the coming of the Holocaust.

Constantine'sSword, aNewYorkTimes bestseller, is considered by some Jewish outlets to be a classic study of Christian anti-Semitism: It won the National Jewish Book Award, the Melcher Award, and the James Parks Morton Interfaith Award.

Others, mostly Catholic outlets, have criticized the book, including Eamon Duffy in theNew York Review of Books,^[5] Daniel Maloney in theNational Review,^[6] Eugene Fisher inAmerica,^[7] Thomas F.X. Noble inFirstThings,^[8] John Silber inBostonia,^[9] and Ronald J. Rychlak in theWashingtonPost.^[10]

Carroll co-wrote and presented the 2007 documentaryConstantine's Sword with filmmakerOren Jacoby. It was named a Critics' Pick by theNew York Times.^[11]

In a 2019 cover article forTheAtlantic, Carroll responded to theongoing scandal of Roman Catholic priestly sex abuse by advocating the abolition of the priesthood in order to “return the Church to the people.” Carroll carries this argument further in his 2021 memoirThe Truth at the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul.^[12][13]

Carroll married the novelist Alexandra Marshall in 1977. They have two grown children.

This list isincomplete; you can help byadding missing items.(October 2014)

• Forbidden Disappointments (1974) (poems)
• The Winter Name of God (1975)
• Madonna Red (1976) (novel)
• Mortal Friends: A Novel (1978)
• Fault Lines (1980) (novel)
• Family Trade (1982) (novel)
• Prince of Peace (1984) (novel)
• Supply of Heroes (1986) (novel)
• Firebird (1989) (novel)
• Memorial Bridge (1991) (novel)
• The City Below (1994) (novel)
• An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us (1996)
• Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews – A History (2001).ISBN 978-0-395-77927-9
• Toward a New Catholic Church: The Promise of Reform (2002).ISBN 978-0-618-31337-2
• Secret Father: A Novel (2003).ISBN 978-0-618-15284-1
• Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War (2004).ISBN 978-0-8050-7843-5
• House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power (2006).ISBN 978-0-618-18780-5
• Practicing Catholic (2009).ISBN 978-0-618-67018-5
• Jerusalem, Jerusalem (2011).ISBN 978-0-547-54905-7
• Warburg in Rome (2014), {(ISBN) 978-0-547-73800-1)}
• Christ Actually (2014).ISBN 978-0-670-78603-9
• The Cloister (2018). (novel)ISBN 978-0-385-54127-5
• The Truth at the Heart of the Lie (2021)

• Carroll, James (December 23–30, 2013)."Profiles: Who am I to Judge?".The New Yorker. Vol. 89, no. 42. pp. 81–91. RetrievedOctober 14, 2014.

• Baruch Plan

• James Carroll's website
• Website for the film,Constantine's Sword
• Voices on Antisemitism Interview with James Carroll from theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• 'Present and Past'^[usurped], review ofToward a New Catholic Church in theOxonian Review
• Houghton Mifflin's Biography
• Ploughshare's Biography
• PEN's Biography

• 1943 births
• Living people
• American male journalists
• American expatriates in Germany
• Anti-Catholicism in the United States
• Critics of the Catholic Church
• Georgetown University alumni
• Harvard Kennedy School people
• Laicized Roman Catholic priests
• National Book Award winners
• American Roman Catholic writers
• The Boston Globe people
• The New Yorker people
• Writers from Chicago
• 20th-century American writers
• 20th-century American journalists
• 21st-century American writers
• 21st-century American journalists

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