Posted on 03/30/2007 5:13:01 AM PDT by Bahbah
Pius XII, the wartime pontiff often condemned as "Hitler's Pope", was actually considered an enemy by the Third Reich, according to newly discovered documents.
Several letters and memos unearthed at a depot used by the Stasi, the East-German secret police, show that Nazi spies within the Vatican were concerned at Pius's efforts to help displaced Poles and Jews.
In one, the head of Berlin's police force tells Joachim von Ribbentropp, the Third Reich's foreign minister, that the Catholic Church was providing assistance to Jews "both in terms of people and financially".
A report from a spy at work in the Vatican states: "Our source was told to his face by Father Robert Leibner [one of Pius's secretaries] that the greatest hope of the Church is that the Nazi system would be obliterated by the war."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
There's no "debate" except in the minds of virulent anti-Catholic leftists who invented the entire "Hitler's Pope" mythology out of whole cloth in the mid-1960's -- two decades after the events in question, and years after the man himself was dead (and thus unable to defend himself).
Golda Meir wanted a forest of 860,000 trees to be planted on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in symbolic tribute to every Jewish life saved by Pope Pius XII during World War II.
'Nuff said.
Regards, OP (a credentialed and demonstrably Anti-Papist calvinist protestant)
Posted to "BlackElk" in the spirit of charity. There's always some things we can agree on.
I agree. I wish I would have worded that differently, but it's early.
Best, OP
Thanks for the post, Bahbah.
You didn't say anything wrong. Some people are emotionally hard of hearing on some topics. This will continue for as long as the left continues to make false claims that national socialism as right wing. Or that Democrats can't be bigots.
After listening to the clip that Rosie O'Donnell spewed yesterday, we have to remember that above all else, we just can't fix stupid.
as=was
LOL
Caffeine deprivation
I didn't take OP's post as a rebuke, but I really do wish I had said something else like, for example, maybe this will help put the decades long smear against this good man and the Catholic Church to rest.
But it's hard for me to think at any time, much less this early in the morning :)
"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."
by: William J. H. Boetcker (1873-1962)
German-born Presbyterian clergyman
Date: 1916
(often falsely attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
I am indebted to Mormon FReeper "restornu" for the correct attribution of this delightful Presbyterian quotation. I thought it was very admirable of her to seek to give credit where it due, despite the theological controversies we have had (and still have).
Even the NY Times praised the pope during the war.
"Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks...
Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.
Albert Einstein
Time Magazine, 12/23/40**************************************
The charity and work of Pope Pius XII during World War II so impressed the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, that in 1944 he was open to the grace of God which led him into the Catholic faith. As his baptismal name, he took the same one Pius had, Eugenio, as his own. Later Israel Eugenio Zolli wrote a book entitled, Why I Became a Catholic.
**************************************
"The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas... he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all... the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism... he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace."
The New York Times editorial
12/25/41 (Late Day edition, p. 24)**************************************
"This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent... Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were lifeless things."
The New York Times editorial
12/25/42 (Late Day edition, p. 16)
:-) Fair enough.
I can't tell you how sorry I am that I worded it that way.
No harm, no foul. I'll give your Article another "bump" and raise a toast (of morning coffee) to your sentiments: "maybe this will help put the decades-long smear against this good man and the Catholic Church to rest."
Raising my morning coffee back at you :)
"When the jews needed a friend pius was there"Golda Meir on the death of Pius
pius
Pingout tomorrow.
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