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To: Titanites; xzins; blue-duncan; wmfights; Quix; Gamecock; Alex Murphy; ConservativeMind; ...
I guess it all comes down to whom are we to believe? Some Vatican flunky or a Roman Catholic author who hoped to write a flattering book on Pacelli; an author who had already written a book Rome loved.

Remember while your flunky is now telling us the files only went up to 1922, the Vatican and the flunky and Cornwell were operating under the assumption Cornwell's book would shed positive light on Pacielli's life.

I doubt the Vatican denied Cornwell much of anything. But he certainly got more than he expected.

Read the book for yourself. It's all there.

And in comparison to the other two books I mentioned written by Jewish historians, Cornwell's book is tame.

For anyone interested, those books are "The Popes Against the Jews: the Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism" by David I. Kertzer, historian and professor of anthropology and Italian studies at Brown University; and "A Moral Reckoning: the Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair" by Daniel Goldhagen, Harvard professor of European Studies and recipient of Germany's Democracy Prize for his earlier book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners."

Both books are available new or used on Amazon.

631 posted on 03/15/2008 11:09:35 PM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg ("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
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To: Dr. Eckleburg; Petronski; Campion; vladimir998; sandyeggo
You are clinging to a fraud.
    He [Rychlak] cites abundant evidence contradicting Cornwell's claim that his original intention was to defend Pius XII against calumny (the Black Legend), but that "previously unseen material" which Cornwell studied "for months on end" in the secret Vatican archives reduced him to the "state of moral shock" which produced Hitler's Pope. In reality, Cornwell's research in the Vatican archives extended for three weeks only, during which his visits were not daily. None of the material he cites was "previously unseen."

    A letter written in 1919 by Pacelli when he was nuncio in Munich, which Cornwell calls "a ticking time bomb" and proof of anti-Semitism, appeared in print several years before Cornwell started his research. The letter reports an attack on the Munich nunciature by a band of communist thugs led by "a young Russian Jew: pale, dirty, with vacant eyes, hoarse voice, vulgar, repulsive, with a face that is both intelligent and sly." This description is by an aide not by Pacelli (who did not witness the incident). Though this language has been criminalized by today's language police, it was hardly remarkable eighty years ago. Moreover it correctly states the facts. It no more proves Pacelli's lifelong anti-Semitism than incidents from his early schooling, which Rychlak shows that Cornwell has either misunderstood or misinterpreted.

    Rychlak also demonstrates that Cornwell misrepresents Pacelli's role (as papal Secretary of State) and motives in negotiating the Holy See's Concordat with Hitler in July 1933. Cornwell's source is the German Protestant Klaus Scholder, whose work is available in English translation, and whom Cornwell calls "unchallenged in German scholarship." In fact, Scholder's work has been decisively refuted by two German Catholic historians whose works remain untranslated: the late Ludwig Volk SJ and Konrad Repgen. (Cornwell appears to have used no German sources at all.)

    The initiative for the Concordat came not from Rome (as Cornwell, following Scholder, claims) but from Hitler. Far from weakening the resistance of German Catholics to Hitler, as Cornwell contends, the treaty contained protections for the church, eagerly desired at the time by the German bishops. Moreover, Pacelli was more realistic about the value of Hitler's promises than most political leaders, telling the British Minister to the Holy See that while he expected Hitler to violate some of the Concordat's provisions, he probably would not violate all of them at the same time. Cornwell makes much of Pius XII's supposed indifference to the roundup of Roman Jews by the Nazis on October 16, 1943, shown (Cornwell contends) by the Pope's failure to mention this in a conversation with the American official Harold Tittmann the very next day. Though Tittmann's published report is dated October 17, this is clearly erroneous. The Vatican records show that the conversation took place October 14. Rychlak writes: "The Pope did not mention the roundup of Jews because it had not yet happened." In fact, thousands of Roman Jews were saved by the Pope. When Robert Katz (another star witness for Cornwell) claimed the contrary after Pius XII's death, his niece won an action for libel from the Italian Supreme Court. Cornwell falsely claims that the verdict was "inconclusive."


648 posted on 03/16/2008 8:16:36 AM PDT by Titanites
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To: Dr. Eckleburg
I guess it all comes down to whom are we to believe? Some Vatican flunky or a Roman Catholic author who hoped to write a flattering book on Pacelli; an author who had already written a book Rome loved.

You repeat Cornwell's lies. No surprise.

652 posted on 03/16/2008 8:37:43 AM PDT by Petronski (Nice job, Hillary. Now go home and get your shine box.)
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