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Like most popes, he was a kindly disposed person, and the jewish problem vexed him to tears, and into saving a handful here and there--but not enough to persuade him, for example, to condemn the holocaust until it was too late. Note, once again, that he bravely exercised his official moral duty toward the infirm, and stopped their murder--but apparently, I guess, had no such equivalent moral duty toward the jews in the same predicement.

I guess you were unaware that the Catholic Church condemned the Nazis in Holland the result was Catholics being added to the Holocaust. The Catholic Church has not had the military means to protect itself or enforce its opinions in centuries. Whenever I hear people criticizing Pious's supposed inaction, I have to laugh. Exactly what do you think he could have done differently?

I guess you were unaware that the Catholic Church condemned the Nazis in Holland the result was Catholics being added to the Holocaust.

And that is supposed to deter the Voice of Jesus?

The Catholic Church has not had the military means to protect itself or enforce its opinions in centuries.

Utterly irrelevant.

Whenever I hear people criticizing Pious's supposed inaction, I have to laugh. Exactly what do you think he could have done differently?

So, are you just paying no attention? He could have honored the previous Pope's interrupted encyclical against church expressions of anti-jewish sentiment. He could have deep-sixed the Accords, and spoken out with the official voice of jesus against the ovens, any time between 1939 and xmas, 1942. He could have ex-communicated anyone working on the "jewish problem". He could have ordered the churches birth and marriage records sent off to an Abbey in Timbucktoo, rather than neatly collated and turned over to the SS. He could have refused the german army his priests. He could have excommunicated the Slovokian church heirarchy...and the list goes on and on and on.

it is, in my humble opinion, not the Pope's job to work in secret for good, and that is the defense being offered here, and it is a shabby one. He is the Vicar of Christ and Voice of Jesus, whether He occupies the Holy See or an Abbey in Timbuctoo. The defense that he was a prisoner of the Reich is pitiful. The defense that his sheep were prisoners of the Reich is pitiful in the face of interventions for other groups. Practically any other group but the jews, apparently.

"I guess you were unaware that the Catholic Church condemned the Nazis in Holland the result was Catholics being added to the Holocaust."

I consider myself pretty well-read on the Holocaust, and I haven't got a clue about what you're referring to. "Catholics added to the Holocaust." I have a vague memory that the Nazis did respond to some protests in the Netherlands by imprisoning some priests *and* deporting several Jewish-born converts to Catholicism, but there was nothing like "Catholics added to the Holocaust." I was in the Netherlands last year--I visited Westerbork, a site whose importance you're no doubt familiar with--and there was nothign to back up what you've said.