Posted on 01/12/2010 4:05:13 PM PST by presidio9
Pope Benedict XVI should be welcomed when he visits Rome's main synagogue, but he should halt moves to beatify wartime pontiff Pius XII, criticized for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust, a former chief rabbi of Israel said Tuesday.
Israel Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor and now chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, said Benedict's synagogue visit Sunday would be ''appreciated and blessed.'' But in an interview with Italy's Sky TG24 television, he said he was ''surprised'' by Benedict's decision last month to move the controversial World War II-era pope closer to sainthood.
Benedict sparked outrage among some Jewish groups by signing a decree on Pius' heroic virtues, paving the way for him to be beatified once a miracle attributed to his intercession is confirmed.
Some Jews and historians have argued that Pius, pope from 1939-1958, was largely silent on the Holocaust and should have done more to prevent the deaths of 6 million Jews at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators.
The Vatican insists Pius used quiet diplomacy to try to save Jews and that speaking out more forcefully would have resulted in more deaths.
It said last month the decree on his heroic virtues wasn't so much a historical assessment of his pontificate as a confirmation that he had led a deeply Christian life.
In the past, Jewish leaders had asked the pope to put the beatification on hold until archives on Pius' pontificate are opened to outside scholars. The Vatican has said those archives won't be catalogued and ready until 2014 at the earliest.
In the interview broadcast Tuesday,
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
These accusations have not only been disproved, they have been shown to be disinformation instigated by the Soviets and the East Germans.
But the haters like the NYT and Jewish leaders who should know better keep the lie alive.
I think there is that (liberals hating Christians in general) and I think there is legitimate concern stemming from incomplete information that permits such rumors to exists.
The process of opening the archives that show what happened is in process; no time like the present to crack it open wide.
What did they want him to do, send the Swiss guard after the Germans?
The Vatican was surrounded, and if they haven’t noticed, it’s a nation smaller than some celebrity estates!
The guy did what he could with what he had.
If there’s no truth to it, then the Vatican should have gotten these archives catalogued and opened to outside scholars a long time ago. Instead they’re saying they just can’t possibly get it done until 2014 — 56 YEARS after Pius’ death. A heck of a lot of redacting and disappearing can be done in 56 years.
He was on the same level as Churchill, Roosevelt and yeah, Hitler. He had a world audience. He could have spoken louder and more frequently. Sorry, I'm a Catholic and greatly respect our current Pope. But I'm not enough of a sheep to buy everything the Vatican puts out. Not all our Popes were perfect. In this case, I believe much more info is needed. That doesn't make me a hater. It makes me a thinker.
We never hear these armchair quarterbacks lay out a realistic plan for what Pope Pius XII might have done differently. Instead they ignore the fact that Pius is credited with SAVING a million Jews. Or the fact that the top two Jewish minds from that period (Albery Einstein and Golda Meir) single him out for his work. The people who have a problem with Pius XII sound to me like they have deeper problems with Catholicism.
wasn’t it Stalin who asked “how many divisions does the Pope have?”
how can you compare the Vatican, surrounded as it was, militarily risible, to the almost infinite resources of England and the US???
YOurs are not the words of a conservative Catholic
The Vatican doesn't ever have to open its archives if it doesn't want to. It is subject to no earthly authority. The suggestion that the Catholic Church would Beatify a monster and hide the proof flies in the face of all that the Church has stood for. It remains the most important pro-God, pro-charity, pro-family, pro-life, and pro-virtue organization on the planet. And you don't have to be a Catholic, or even a Christian to understand that indisputable FACT. The Church gains nothing in Beatifying a Nazi collaborater, and only God can make a mortal a saint. So what you are essentially charging is that the Catholic Church is a corrupt and thoroughly evil organization. The facts at large, and the facts in this particular case fly in the face of your accusation. Even if I weren't Catholic, I would think to my self "God help the human race" if that were the case.
What a load of crap.
You’re a Catholic? Sorry, never seen you on any of the Catholic threads.
If you bothered to read up on this, you would certainly find it was a lie.
You want the Pope to have spoken out? Actually, he did, before Hitler was installed into power, in the encyclical Mit Brenende Sorge. But it would not have been helpful to have attacked Hitler directly. The Nazis were in Rome, and when some of the Bishops did speak out, Hitler merely responded by shipping more Catholics as well as Jews to the death camps.
It had to be done clandestinely. And the Pope did plenty. It’s not the real, religious Jews who keep bringing up this nonsense. It’s the leftist, self-hating Jews.
You need to go to confession.
And aren't I glad that you're not the judge of me! Please do tell me what a "conservative Catholic" is supposed to sound like. How's that whole Vatican II think workin' out for ya? You speak militarily, I speak morally.
< /sarcasm>
It’s none of their damn business what the Church does.
I asked the Jews not to vote for zer0, guess what they told me?
What I would especially like to point out to honestly interested parties is this:
Think of all the institutions in 1930's-40's Germany who could have exerted themselves to save Jews from the Hitler regime: Universities and other schools, churches, labor unions, business and professional organizations, the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups, etc.
According to Jewish historian and scholar Pinchas Lapide ("Three Popes and the Jews,") the Catholic Church, at Pope Pius XII's urging and with some Vatican coordination, saved 800,000 Jews by sheltering them in churches, convents, orphanages and other Catholic institutions, and by issuing fake Baptismal certificates and helping transport them out out zones of Nazi occupation. Both the Pope's summer residence at Castelgandalfo and the buildings of the Vatican itself were used as sanctuaries for hunted Jews.
Lapide, an Israeli who has researched extensively on this subject, says the Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives than all the other institutions in Europe put together.
Yet Pius XII's reputation has been relentlessly trashed since the 1962 debut of a work of theatrical fiction by East German Communist Rolf Hochhuth, "The Deputy," which portrayed Pius XII --- in a kind of ironic and horrible "blood Libel"---as a kind of crypto-Nazi at worst, or a coward at best.
I am grateful to all those historians, Catholic and Jewish and of any religious or secular persuasion, who have labored to set the record straight.
Hey Meir Lau go suck eggs. If you choose to believe and advance the false witness against this saintly man then you are not better than the rest of the yim yams serving as useful idiots for the lord of this world.
he should have at least excommunicated Hitler. No sainthood for Pius.
I don't get it.
An ill-informed one.
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