Posted on 11/06/2009 1:41:29 AM PST by Gamecock
Pope Benedict must be left alone to decide on whether to promote a controversial Nazi-era pontiff toward sainthood...
Pope Pius XII has been accused by some Jews of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust during World War Two....
....Pius did not do enough to save Jews.
"(Jewish groups) told him loudly and clearly that if he did anything in favor of Pope (Pius), relations between the Catholic Church and Jews would be definitively and permanently compromised,"
Benedict's decision to readmit to the Church a bishop who denied the extent of the Holocaust in January also strained ties.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Did a search and couldn’t find this article posted.
The Vatican, citing news reports, said the Pope’s decision on whether to sign beatification decrees “is the exclusive competence of the Pope, who should be left completely free in his evaluations and decisions”.
“If the Pope thinks that study and reflection on Pius XII’s cause should be further extended, his position must be respected without interference or unjustified and inopportune declarations,” the Vatican’s press office said.
I think Pope Benedict should move the process along just to reaffirm this point.
Pope Pius XII saved 860,000 Jews from the gas chambers: dwarfing all other efforts including those of the Red Cross.
Those few, non-representative Jews who believe that he somehow collaborated with the Nazis should visit Yad Vashem and find out the truth.
A Jewish correspondent who was attacking the Catholic Church complained that it was insensitive to mention this.
That was sufficient, in my view, to show there was no way to have this public conversation without hatred and suspicion making judicious consideration unlikely. When it's "insensitive" to offer exculpatory evidence, then you can see the accusers have made up their mind and not only want no facts but will attack those who bring them to the conversation.
So why is the Pope agonizing over the decision?
If what you report is true, seems like a slam dunk.
Pope Pius XII's action in saving 860,000 Jews from the gas chambers is one of the better known stories of World War II. Not knowing about it is like not knowing about the War in Burma, or the Seige of Gibraltar.
The foremost Jewish Scholar of the Holocaust at its height in Hungary, Jeno Levai, insisted some years ago that it was a "particularly regrettable irony that the one person in all of occupied Europe who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others."
The Israeli diplomat and scholar Pinchas Lapide concluded his careful review of Pius XII’s wartime activities with the following words: "The Catholic Church under the pontificate of Pius XII was instrumental in saving lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands."
He went on to add that this "figure far exceeds those saved by all other Churches and rescue organizations combined." After recounting statements of appreciation from a variety of preeminent Jewish spokespersons, he noted. "No Pope in history has been thanked more heartily by Jews . . . .Several suggested in open letters that a Pope Pius XII forest of 860,000 trees be planted on the hills of Judea in order to fittingly honor the memory of the late Pontiff ("Three Popes and the Jews" pp. 214–215)."
Levai in his own book did not hesitate to argue that the attacks on the Pope’s wartime record are "demonstrably malicious and fabricated . . . . The archives of the Vatican of diocesan authorities of Ribbentrop’s foreign ministry, contain a whole series of protests—direct and indirect, diplomatic and public, secret and open. The nuncios and bishops of the Catholic Church intervened again and again on the instructions of the Pope," he wrote.
In "Hungarian Jews and the Papacy" the former chief rabbi of Rome during the German occupation, Emilio Zolli, concluded his firsthand account of wartime events thus: "Volumes could be written on the multiform works of Pius XII, and the countless priests, religious and laity who stood with him throughout the world during the war." "No hero," he said, "in all of history was more militant, more fought against, none more heroic, than Pius XII in pursuing the works of true charity . . . and thus on behalf of all the suffering children of God."
Zolli was so moved by Pius XII’s work that he became a Catholic after the war and took the Pope’s name
In "Before the Dawn" Lapide acknowledged that the Church "in an endless flood of sermons, allocutions, pastoral letters and encyclicals was a clear and unrelenting foe to all forms of racism at the time, and everyone knew it—Jews, Poles, Russians and most ominously the Nazi secret police." Their files mention recalcitrant Catholic clergy in this regard more than any other group.
The New York Times (!) in its Christmas editorials of 1941 and 1942 praised Pius XII for his moral leadership as a "lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent" and for, among other things, assailing "the violent occupation of territory, and the exile and persecution of human beings, for no other reason than race."
Golda Meir, Israel’s representative to the United Nations, was the first of the delegates to react to the news of Pope Pius XII’s death. She sent an eloquent message: "We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness, Pope Pius XII. In a generation afflicted by wars and discords he upheld the highest ideals of peace and compassion. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace."
Leonard Bernstein, on learning of Pope Pius XII’s death while conducting his orchestra in New York’s Carnegie Hall, tapped his baton for a moment of silence to pay tribute to the Pope who had saved the lives of so many people without distinction of race, nationality, or religion.
The great Jewish physicist, Albert Einstein, who himself barely escaped annihilation at Nazi hands, made the point well in 1944 when he said, "Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, but the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, but they, like the universities were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers . . . . they too were mute. Only the Church," Einstein concluded, "stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. . . . I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel great affection and admiration . . . . and am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly."
I hope these quotes will spur you to find out more about these monumental events for yourself, and to look carefully at how the left use revisionist history.
As for the beatification process: Popes always think extremely carefully about whom they promote towards beatification. Sainthood is about sanctity, not about numbers.
Well that just serves me right for posting in a hurry.
“or the Seige of Gibraltar.”. I of course mean Malta. D’oh!
Amen! If the Church wants to canonize him, then the views of non-Catholics is simply irrelevant.
Who cares? Jewish groups don't have a say in this. Jews need to look to their own flock instead of trying to run other people's churches.
Pope Pius XII is the victim of a liberal hatchet job similar to what they did to Sen. Joe McCarthy.
Truth is Pius XII loathed the Nazis and rescued hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. For proof of this obtain a copy of Rabbi David Dalin’s book, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope.
Who said he is?
I did.
If Pius saved 860,000 Jews, he should be a shoe in.
LOL
Figures.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.