James Carroll (born January 22, 1943) is an American author, historian, journalist, and former Catholic 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.
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 the Berkshire Theater Festival.
His other books include House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power, which won the first PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for non-fiction.
Mr. Carroll's other works include the novels 'Prince of Peace, Mortal Friends and Family Trade,' which were New York Times bestsellers.
His book of poems, Forbidden Disappointments, appearing in 1974, announced, according to the critic Allan Tate "a new, original talent."
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.
[11] In a 2019 cover article for The Atlantic, Carroll responded to the ongoing 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 memoir The Truth at the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul.