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 ...
Has he spoken out against the Democrat beatification of FDR?
Well, let me put it another way. If he didn’t even excommunicate Hitler from the Catholic Church and Hitler is still Catholic then his alleged sainthood is slightly tainted by just doing nothing. Heck, he lived THROUGH what Hitler did to millions and no excommunication.
This is one of the lies that people who are insecure about their own religious convictions spread about Hitler and attempt of damage the Catholic Church. You need to get your facts straight. Adolph Hitler's Catholic mother had him baptized, like every other child in Catholic Austria. According to eyewitness accounts Hitler rebelled against Catholicism at a very young age, refusing Communion, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. When he left home he ended all involvement with the Church and never retured. He was never a willing paricipant. If he could have ever been considered a member of the Catholic Church, he had excommunicated himself as a teenager. If he had portrayed himself in later life as a Catholic for political purposes, perhaps there would have been a need to officially excommunicate him. But he was't a Catholic, so what would be the point? He was a stated athiest who persecuted the Church in Germany and Eastern Europe.
That's my new short-answer to this one. I thought about making it my tagline.
Presidio, the fact that Hitler was baptized a Catholic means he died a Catholic. Unless he converted to another religion, mere un-participation in his faith made him no less a Catholic than any other cradle Catholic. (I am not using this to sway the discussion about whether he should have been excommunicated or not).
It irks me to no end that whenever we have this discussion, those of us who think Pius could have done more are called not conservative Catholics. Just as with the Presidency, I respect the office, but not always the man who sits there. Not all our Popes have been saintly.
I did a lot of research on this topic a number of years ago (pre-internet, fact checked, non-fiction reference books), and decided, based upon MY research, that Pius could have done more. That is not to say that he shouldn’t be made a saint, we all know that is an earthly distinction which the Big Guy has the final say on.
I must say it is highly insulting to be told I’m not Catholic enough if I disagree-which I am not attributing specifically to you. It is so insulting, I’m thinking of breaking out my tr-cornered metal ruler and going after some hands! How’s that for Catholic for you? (again, not you specifically.) I am not at all insecure about my Catholic convictions, I am quite comfortable with them. So comfortable, in fact, that I can handle criticism of the Church without resorting to name calling and faith questioning.
Judge not, lest ye be judged.
Actually, I read on FR here recently that the German Catholic bishops actually excommunicated the leadership of the Nazi party in 1931. That would include Hitler.
I don't have a link or anything. Perhaps another poster reading can come up with an appropriate source.
In any event, having already been excommunicated long before the beginning of WWII or the Holocaust, what was Pope Pius XII to do with Hitler? Excommunicate him twice?
Is that like someone being executed twice because he murdered more than one person?
I wonder how that works.
sitetest
I'm guessing that this is why other people on this thread are calling you out when you present yourself as a Catholic. You are confused about a few things. Catholicism is not a race or ethnicity. Anyone can stop being a Catholic at any time.
In order to be a member of the Catholic Church, you must be baptized. Hitler was. You must be Confirmed. There are conflicting accounts here, but let's say he was. He began adulthood as a Catholic. However, Catholics are required to attend Mass at least weekly and on Holy Days. At that Mass, they will confess their sins, profess their faith, and receive the Sacrament of Communion. Hitler obviously did not do this, and chose not to do this. He therefore ceased to be in Communion with the Catholic faith. That is the same thing as excommunication. Yes, an individual can do that on his own. Catholics are also obligated to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation regularly, which he also did not do. Finally, the Church stresses a Catholic's obligation to respect the sanctity life. We know how he did with that one. It is a convention of the liberal media that a person who is baptized is Catholic for life. It is convenient to use this construction when describing "Catholic" politicians who fight for more abortions, even though the Church has made it very clear that you can't be Catholic and pro-choice. "Membership" into the Catholic faith represents a communion with the Church, which can't exist unless that faith is being practiced on a daily basis. Hitler wasn't the slightest bit Catholic. Period. He wasn't even pretending to be, because he had rejected that faith at an early age. Don't argue this one further. You are 100% wrong.
The only thing excommunication really means is that you are no longer eligible to receive the sacraments. There are people who have been excommunicated who continue to go to Church every day.
Read the whole thread. Hitler was not still a Catholic.
I know how excommunication works.
When I said, “I wonder how that works.” I was referring to the fact that Hitler was, along with all the other Nazi leaders, excommunicated in 1931.
Thus, how exactly would Pope Pius XII, who became pope in 1939, excommunicate him again?
Then I made a joke, which obviously fell flat - is that like executing someone twice because he committed more than one murder?
Tough room. ;-)
sitetest
They rushed through a lot of documents concerning Pius XII - it didn't make any difference.
Too many people are way too invested in sliming the Church and Pius XII.
And the idea that a bureaucracy as convoluted as the Vatican could 'disappear' a bunch of documents is nonsense. If you've never worked for a large corporate office or a government department in records, you may not understand how glaring a redaction or a gap appears. Any lawyer worth his salt (I was a trial lawyer and did regular document productions and inspections for 20 years) could immediately discern if documents had been destroyed.
"Mit brennender Sorge" wasn't loud enough - authored by then-Cardinal Pacelli and read from the pulpit of every German church on Palm Sunday, 1937? His radio addresses condemning Hitler weren't enough? His 1941 and 1942 Christmas addresses, translated and published in the New York Times, weren't enough?
Even the New York Times praised Pius XII: "This Christmas [1942] more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent..."
Albert Einstein said:
Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks...Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.
And Pius XII didn't just talk - he acted to save hundreds of thousands of Jews. He even melted down sacramental vessels for gold to bribe the local Nazi authorities with.
Have you read any of the many books (there are five or six) which are based on original documents and set the record straight?
Have you read what Sir Martin Gilbert, a leading historian of WWII (and a Jew) has to say about this whole manufactured controversy? Or the nasty words he had for John Cornwell, a lapsed Catholic and anti-Catholic crusader (and author of the slanderous Hitler's Pope)?
If not, that doesn't make you a 'thinker' as you claim. You have to have some material to work with, otherwise you're just casually repeating slander and maligning a good man.
Am I off track presidio9? If so, bring me back on track and tell me where I've strayed. I'll read, listen and learn.
If you haven't read up on this controversy (which has been percolating around since Cornwell's book was published in 1999) then you can't be a very engaged Catholic. It made a lot more noise than that silly Dan Brown book. It made so much noise that it attracted my attention, and I was a flippin' Episcopalian at the time. I researched the issue thoroughly, and it was one of the factors in my conversion.
If you want to be taken seriously as a "conservative Catholic", you need to do some reading.
Not only that, he created his own "German Church" that was mostly Nordic paganism. He was a believer in the occult and all sorts of Satanic nonsense.
He was no more Catholic than my cat.
Hitler wasn't a Catholic (he was baptized by his parents, and they made him be an altar boy, but there's no record of him ever being confirmed and he quit going to Mass as a teenager), but he would fall under that excommunication even if he still had been one at the time.
The world is gone crazy a hundred times over!
I notice that Fundamentalist Protestants, however philo-Semitic they are, don't insist on imposing themselves on Orthodox Jewish congregations in any capacity other than as quiet guests.
Thanks.
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