Posted on 07/07/2010 7:24:30 AM PDT by Petrosius
Pope Pius XII, the controversial wartime pontiff, may have saved thousands of Jews by secretly securing visas so they could escape Nazi Germany, a historian has claimed.
Pope Pius, who was labelled “Hitler’s Pope” because of his silence during the Holocaust, may have arranged the exodus of about 200,000 Jews from Germany just three weeks after Kristallnacht, when thousands of Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I know its from a Jewish library too.
If the concordat was so objectionable, then why did the occupying forces after World War II, the Western German government until 1990, and then the united German government from 1990 until present, keep it in effect? It remains in place until this day.
The Pope will be blamed since he didn’t save everyone. How did God get off the hook?
Do not expect honesty and balance from the anti-Catholics. While they attempt to nibble around the edges of decency with historical innuendo and fabricated quotes and photos they will never address the root of German antisemitism within Luther and Calvin or the willing participation in the holocaust by the German Protestant Church who was rewarded with the Nazi Cabinet Level position of Reichbishop. Nor will they mention that the Nazi party polled 2-3 times higher among Protestants than Catholics in the German elections of the 1930s.
I used to have a book by the Chief Rabbi of Rome who converted after WW2. An amazing Biblical scholar, fascinating information about the meaning of Hebrew words.
Stop with the pesky facts. Bor-ring. Say cool stuff like “you don’t capitulate with evil’ then neglect to point out evil in the document in question. That’s “open discussion.”
Wow! Really that I do not know.
You wrote:
“The comparison is preposterous and non-nonsensical”
Actually the comparison is brilliant - if I do say so myself - since the actual existence of Catholics in Germany is the only reason why any concordat would be needed with Germany. That is simply irrefutable. That’s probably why you failed to make any counte-argument at all.
“however even if it were true I doubt the U.S. would trade the safety of Americans for the lives of 6 million Jews.”
1) Nice straw man attempt. The concordat was signed in what? 1933 or so? How many of the 6,000,000 were murdered at that point? Oh, right, ZERO.
2) FDR - as when he turned back shipbound Jews desperate to make port in the USA - was more than willing to allow Jews to suffer and die rather than cause himself or Americans discomfort. That continued in the war when we stood by and did NOTHING to help Jews. We knew it was more important to us to help our own troops. And FDR absoluely knew what was going on long before then end of the war.
If I remember correctly it was a Soviet/East German propoganda play that gave rise to the falsehood that the Pope was silent about the Jews during WWII. This was because the Church, which was seen as the greatest enemy of communism, had to have her credibility and moral authority destroyed so people would not listen to her about the evils of communism. Sound familiar?
You wrote:
“You don’t capitulate with evil.”
Pius never did. He hid Jews in his own home. He also saved 800,000 Jews at one time or another - according to the Jews themselves.
“The excuses given here for the church’s involvement with the Nazi’s are the same soft excuses given for its cover-up of sex abuse.”
What involement? You mean like how some Protestants actually formed a Nazi Church? Thank goodness so many Catholics resisted the Nazis, hid Jews and obeyed Pius XII when he quietly urged them to.
“The primary driver is and has always been the protection of the church above the protection of the innocent.”
The Church faithful are some of the truly innocent. While Protestant bigos just sit back and whine today, Catholics led the way in saving Jewish lives in WWII. Even many Jews have admitted that Pius XII saved many, man Jews.
The concordant was supposed to guarantee the rights of Catholics in Germany. It did not make the Catholics or the Pope subservient to Hitler. Hitler broke the Concordant. It was in no way an alliance.
If you get a chance study the voting demographics for those voting for and against Hitler. The majority of Catholics voted against him.
Oh perhaps you might want to find out about the “German Christian Movement.” Fortunately and to their eternal honor a minority of Protestant pastors formed the Confessing Church to resist and protest the adoption of Nazi ideology by the Protetant German Christian Movement.
Are YOU try out for Priesthood? having your head buried in the sand does not fix the problems of the catholic church. It seems that no matter how deep we dig we just keep finding more dirt about what the real inner working of the catholic church is made of. Read your history of Paul and the early church and see how much of it applies to the catholic church today.
Yes, it sounds very familiar. FReepers have posted the details several times. It's interesting that the sources used to attack Pope Pius tend to be atheists and Communists.
You wrote:
“Read your history of Paul and the early church and see how much of it applies to the catholic church today.”
I’ve read St. Paul and much written about him and it always confirms what we already knew: people are sinners, even people in the Church and even the leaders of the Church. Since all people are sinners the yardstick should be the great saints of all ages not today’s sinners. The fact that God still uses and has always used the Church - chock full of sinners as it always has been - to make and train great saints is proof the Church is great. The sinners only prove what we already knew - men are sinful.
"We Dig........Dirt"!
You are showing how objective your analysis?
What's your pure motive for this writing?
So your a dirt digger?
Ah, if only the Protestants in Germany had resisted voting for the Nazis..
Got Reichbishop? Research how much the German Protestant Church enthusiastically supported the 3rd Reich.
"Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. …The Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom."
-Albert Einstein in Time magazine, December 23, 1940"The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas... he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all... the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism... he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace."
-The New York Times Editorial, December 25, 1941"This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent... Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were lifeless things."
-The New York Times Editorial, December 25, 1942
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