headline: "Pope Broadcasts Five Peace Points – 9-10"
For those interested in the question of whether the Pope ever spoke specifically and publicly about Nazi atrocities against Jews or the Catholic clergy, this speech is a pretty good item in evidence.
I have no desire to get into Papal analysis or apologetics. I feel nether motivated nor qualified. Perhaps someone better qualified than I will step in and help out.
In the meantime, my thoughts are along these lines:
I have no idea as to why then and now the Vatican chooses to use such diplomatic wording in it's releases. To this day, should rampaging muslims in Nigeria torture and burn Catholic clergy and parishoners, the best the Vatican can seemingly do is issue a vague press release calling for peace and goodwill among all peoples.
Perhaps the Vatican makes statements applicable worldwide and leaves it up to regional and local clergy to address specifics. I don't know. In the case of Homer's NYT posts, we really need to know what the Vatican paper and radio were broadcasting and compare that with what the NYT chose to make mention of.
Never-the-less, in addition to the two releases in Homer's Nov 1941 threads I already posted two you here http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2820681/posts?page=11#11 there were additional posts in the month of Nov 1941 that Homer posted here: one by the Vatican and one by an American priest.
Nov 17, 1941 p9 Mgr. Sheen says Nazi Paganism Menaces World Christianity
Nov 18, 1941 p10 Bishops Condemn Nazis and Reds
We cannot condemn too strongly the inhumane treatment to which Jewish people have been subjected in many countries
Nov18 p11 Pronouncement of Catholic Bishops
Nov 18, 1941, p12 Pronouncement of Catholic Bishops (cont)
Nov 18, 1941, p13 Pronouncement of Catholic Bishops (cont)
Nov 22 1941, p5, "Warning on Nazi Gospel Attributed to Pope Pius"
Nov 30,1941 p5, Mercy killings Draw Vatican paper's Ire
I don't see any specifics in this speech -- neither Jews nor any other ethnic group are named, nor is there any general idea conveyed as to the horrors being perpetrated on tens and hundreds of thousands of innocents, not to mention millions of Soviet POWs.
I Of course there were reasons, and those might be debated, but that is not the same thing as claiming the Pope spoke out forcefully against the greatest mass murders in human history.
I've given you a number of articles posted by Homer just from the month of Nov 1941 in which the Vatican and other Catholics condemn the Nazis and explicitly condemn the Nazi treatment of Jews. That's just the month of Nov 1941. Then there are articles from Oct-41, Sept-41, Aug-41, 1940, 1939, 1938, 1937, 1936, 1935, 1934, 1933, etc. They are there... if you want to find them
If you read these links carefully, they actually tell a story which is not so apparent at first glance.
In the first article, American bishops denounce both communism and nazism as
The American bishops also interestingly mention Pope Leo XIII's traditional condemnation of disrespect for authority.
That is most curious, considering the extremities of persecutions of the Catholic clergy itself, and of whole ethnic or social groups under Nazi control.
Well! No more than four days later, Pope Pius XII sets the American bishops straight on that subject:
"If people arise and allege that they are the bearers of a new belief or a new gospel which is not Christ's gospel, and if they make the Holy Church and its head, the Pope, the target of unheard of attacks; if they attempt to create an artificial and unreal contradiction between loyalty to God and loyalty to the Fatherland -- then the hour has come when the bishops must raise their voices because of their vows."It is the duty of the bishops to repeat without fear the apostle's words: "We must obey God rather than men."
That sounds pretty clear: the Pope called on bishops to defend the Church against secular attacks on it.
That many did so, and were murdered as a result, speaks well for them and their Church.
It also speaks well that the Pope in 1939 and 1940 supported a German army plot to overthrow Hitler, and that he was later the object of a Nazi plot to kidnap and hold the Pope hostage.
But all of this is by way of reason and explanation for the Pope's public silence on the Holocaust.
No evidence has been produced yet that the Pope himself spoke out specifically and publicly against it.
By the way, I should mention: this is not a historically controversial point, and if anyone ever does produce such evidence, I suspect a lot of standard history books will need to be rewritten.
