Posted on 04/14/2002 9:09:55 PM PDT by LarryLied
MILLERSVILLE, Pa. (AP) - A historian said at a conference on Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust that the pope believed the elimination of the Jews would help preserve the strength of the Catholic church.
Historian and author Richard Rubenstein said Sunday the pope did not want to stand up to Nazi Germany and felt threatened by the growing freedom and influence of Jews in an increasingly secular European society.
``The question is, whatever he did, did he regard the elimination of the Jews as a benefit, and the answer to that, I think, is yes,'' said Rubenstein, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Bridgeport, and author of books including ``After Auschwitz.''
Defenders have said Pius XII did all he could to help Jews and other victims of the Holocaust. The Vatican maintains Pius XII tried to help Jews behind the scenes, saving hundreds of thousands.
The debate intensified with plans to beatify Pope Pius XII, putting him on the path to sainthood.
A panel appointed by the Vatican and a Jewish group said in a preliminary report in October 2000 that Pius pursued fruitless diplomacy as the Vatican learned of atrocities. The panel suspended activities in July, saying it was stymied by the Vatican's refusal to release all its wartime archives.
In August, as the Vatican denounced what it termed a ``slanderous campaign'' by the Jewish historians on the panel, Millersville University professor Jack Fischel began lining up speakers for the conference, the 22nd annual Holocaust conference at the university.
The Vatican has said it will release documents from 1939 to 1945 that show ``great works of charity and assistance undertaken by Pius XII with respect to the numerous prisoners and other victims of the war, of any nation, religion and race.''
Rubenstein said his belief was based on ``available evidence,'' and criticized the Vatican for delaying the release of the archival materials.
The Rev. John T. Pawlikowski, a professor of social ethics at the University of Chicago's Catholic Theological Union also spoke at the conference, and said the church did not want Jews to die.
``Historically, the church wishes to make the Jews marginal and miserable but not eliminate them,'' said Pawlikowski. ``I think `curtailment' or some word like that would be much more accurate.''
Pawlikowski said Pius wanted to protect the church from Communism and social changes he considered threatening.
``Fearful of threats from the outside, the pope dared not confront the Nazis or the Italian fascists directly,'' he said.
“During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people went through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and commiserate with the victims.”
Golda Meir1
Growing freedom and influence of Jews under Hitler?
What kind of industry is Rubenstein representative of?
Milking?
I hope nobody messes up the thread and that occurs. It is important to see the total assault the church is under. There is no other international institution of its size which is standing up to the UN and the hundreds of NGOS which are trying to undermine our national sovereignty. I am not Catholic but I want the church around for my own selfish reasons. It has a history of fighting communism.
Alarms should be sounding right off the bat.
It's a strange misconception on the part of many -- Jews in particular -- that Jews enjoy increased freedom, influence or long lives in direct proportion to the secularism of a civilization or nation.
To wit ... their persecution by militant atheist communists, socialists, fascists and only the most radicalized and heretical of fanatic "religious" types.
It is amazing. No one benefits. A group may think they can avoid the ill effects by staying tight but their kids drift off. The biggest threat to any person who wants their child to follow their religion is not conversion to another faith, it is conversion to nothingness, to secularism.
I'll try not to get this pulled ;-).
There is a worse menace on communism on the planet at the moment and at any point it could engulf more of the church than it already has. If I lived in Rome I would be very afraid.
I do think the pope in question did a lot to help the Jews. I'm primarily disappointed that he didn't seem to have any foresight about just how evil Hitler and Mussolini were. I don't mean that so much as criticism as concern for the future. The church backs (or appears to "diaglogue" with) some pretty frightening characters at times and I'm really concerned what this bodes for the future. This present crisis could pale by comparison.
As always, you have a left and right in the church. Some in the Vatican were helping the Jews and others were helping the culprits evade justice via the Vatican ratlines. Surely the left hand knew what the right hand was doing.
I'm not asking that this be yanked, mind you. I like a chance to rip it apart and defend the Church. She lost a good 4 million or so Catholics herself but -- given the numbers game these days where 1 Jewish life equals 4 American lives (not that 1 Palestinian life would ever likewise be considered equal to 40 American lives but rather a rodent or some other vermin, perhaps) ... it's possible folks would have some way of obfuscating those facts as well.
Maybe accuse the Church of sacrificing some of her own to help cover with Catholic victims her teaming up with Hitler to exterminate the Jews or some such horrifying fantasy.
After all ... it's open season on the Catholic Church. With any luck, by the time the sexual scandal and the banging of the drum on Pius during the current consciousness-raising surrouding the ME crisis is over, she'll have zero credibility and the one institution on the planet consistently defending human life at the global level will be banished once and for all from the Public Square.
Certainly not the Jews themselves whose practicing faithful are likewise marginalized, obliterated and ameliorated in the threshing machine of secularism destroying souls daily with the "saving graces of materialism".
In his encyclical Humanum Genus - Promulgated on April 20, 1884 - Pope Leo XIII had a lot to say about the state schools too:
Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called realism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been .... some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring.
... With the greatest unanimity [they] also endeavor to take to [themselves] the education of youth. They think that they can easily mold to their opinions that soft and pliant age, and bend it whither they will; and that nothing can be more fitted than this to enable them to bring up the youth of the State after their own plan. Therefore, in the education and instruction of children they allow no share, either of teaching or of discipline, to the ministers of the Church; and in many places they have procured that the education of youth shall he exclusively in the hands of laymen, and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals.
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