Was the Catholic Church Silent During the Holocaust?
Catholic Ping - please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
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Locked on 03/31/2005 8:32:43 AM PST by Admin Moderator, reason:
Too much Catholic bashing. |
Posted on 12/29/2004 7:23:24 AM PST by Ginifer
The Vatican secretly issued instructions to the Catholic church in France not to return Jewish children to their families after the second world war, it emerged on Tuesday.
The children were entrusted to the church's care to save them from the death camps. But if the parents survived the war and came forward to reclaim their sons or daughters, the children were only to be returned "provided [they] have not received baptism", the Vatican ordered.
The instructions, contained in a letter dated October 20 1946, were sent by the Holy Office, the Vatican department responsible for church discipline, to the future Pope John XXIII, Angelo Roncalli, who at that time was the Holy See's envoy in Paris. The letter was published yesterday by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
The letter ends with the words: "Please note that this decision has been approved by the Holy Father." This may well have been a warning to the then Monsignor Roncalli, who, in his previous job as the pope's nuncio, or ambassador, in Istanbul, was suspected by some in the Vatican of an excessively pro-Jewish outlook.
The letter deals a new and crushing blow to the reputation of the wartime pope, Pius XII.
Research for a film released two years ago by the documentary maker Aviva Slesin concluded that fewer than than 10% of the 1.5 million Jewish children living in Europe in 1939 survived the conflict. In a desperate attempt to save their sons and daughters, many parents made arrangements with Christian couples or left them in orphanages.
The Vatican's letter indicates that Pope Pius wanted both to obstruct and minimise the return of those children who had been put in the church's care. "Children who have been baptised may not be entrusted to institutions that are not in a position to guarantee them a Christian upbringing," it said. The position with regard to unbaptised Jewish children was more complicated.
The Vatican's officials ruled that those who had lost their parents ought not to be entrusted to "persons who have no rights over them". Only where the parents had re-emerged to claim their children was it permissible for them to be handed back, and even then only if they had not been christened.
The revelation represents a fresh setback for the cause of Pius XII's canonisation. The present Pope is known to have wanted to beatify his predecessor as a first step towards declaring him a saint.
But the process was halted by a host of articles, books and films questioning Pius XII's failure to speak out publicly against Nazism and, in particular, the Holocaust.
His record is still a matter of heated dispute and the controversy surrounding him is unlikely to be resolved until the Vatican opens its wartime archives.
btw, the novel "Michel, Michel", by Robert Lewis, is an excellent portrayal of this situation in post-war France--of a Jewish child entrusted to a (in this case loving) gentile family,
whose distant relatives try to reclaim him after the war.
Seems to be backwards when compared to Christian principles - it makes more sense to send the saved out among the unsaved so they have an opportunity to make a positive impact. Just goes to show the problem with a religion being devised by men, rather than just following the Word of God as laid out in the Bible.
We should wait for concurrence on this story before jumping offside. However, the practice does fit with Pius IX absconding with a Jewish boy and keeping him from his parents after the Pope discovered he had been baptized.
The question would be, did the Church advocate that Gypsies or baptized unbelievers also be kept from their parents after the war, or were Jews specifically targeted?
Was the Catholic Church Silent During the Holocaust?
Catholic Ping - please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
This is silly. The Church should not send children to unknown institutions, who are ethnically Jewish, after being baptized and brought up Christian. Many Jewish children were reclaimed by parents after the war, and those orphaned were brought up by the Church. This letter may or may not say what is reported here.
Italy, thank God, was not France!
They may have "saved" those children, but how would you feel if it was your child and was not returned to you?
The story has been covered by a number of papers and UPI. The letter and diary could still be fakes, not suggesting that either, but the story isn't a function of the source.
That's true, but in most of the western world refusing to return children to their parents, or even to family members, for any reason would be more referred to as kidnapping.
Hatred of Catholics - one of the still acceptable prejudices.
Sure is. We've had these debates on FR before on this topic. It eventually spills out. The Church saved many Jewish and other targeted people from the Nazis. They couldn't save them all. I have to automatically question the article because it contains the word "French". (aka heretical socialists, who embraced the Nazis during WWII)
I suppose the Catholic Church is not being destroyed from the inside by liberals fast enough for their liking.
How is the article, or the story contained therein, expressive of hatred of Catholics?
And if the church, afterwards, did indeed refuse to return children to their parents or next-of-kin, would that be okay with you?
Well, there you go.
It's better to be dead than Catholic. (sarcasm abounds)
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