And they will continue to be "dragged out" as long as you continue to discuss "Pius the Silent" (which he, by the way, properly earned, according to you). As it is painfully obvious to most people, it is impossible to label Pius "silent" when there are so many contemporary accounts (not "after dinner testimonials) relating exactly what he said. The two are mutually exclusive.
Of course PIUS helped the jews
We'll see if that is still "operational" later in the thread.
--that does not mean he and his church aren't guilty of contributed mightily to getting them in the nazi gunsites in the first place.
That's a monstrously stupid thing to say. Pius, even before he was Pope, denounced Nazism in the fiercest terms:
In the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (1937) whose final form Pius XI attributed to then-Cardinal Pacelli, made the statement:
You have to jam your fingers pretty deep into your ears (and close your eyes very tightly) in order for Pius to be "silent".
Well, that, or you might note all the things PIUS didn't do, that puzzled his contemporaries. Like: a) failing to excommunicate all those engaged in the "jewish solution". b) failing to remove the archbishop of slovokia. c) failing to halt the use of church records to help the SS ferret out jews, as opposed to doing so for jewish converts to christianity. d) architecting an accord with Hitler in which he specifically abstains the church from having a public opinion on "political" questions--such as, murdering millions of jews, for example.
And what is the defense I am about to hear? "Oh, if he had spoken up more would have died." So which is it? Was he silent on one side of his defender's mouth and loud on the other? Apparently, the theory is that he was silent, unless he wasn't. His silence may have been laudable, though I doubt it, looking the eugenics case, but it was definitely silence. You can't have your cake and eat it to.
PIUS helped many jews. What he did not do, what he was incapable of doing, was repudiating his churches inability to see them as having the same moral worth as ,say, lame, handicapped christians. If he can speak with the Voice of Jesus for the lame, why can't he do it for the jews? Why, in fact, did he architect a document in which he explicitly committed his church to "plugging it's ears" as you say.
"we are all Semites spiritually" and ought to hold the Jewish people in high regard accordingly. Rabbi Lapide relates that shortly after his election, Pius reaffirmed: "It is impossible for a Catholic to be an anti-Semite; spiritually all of us are Semites."
Yes, the catholic church and it's august officers have always kissy-faced the jews, for all of the last 1400 years of the churches oppressive laws and rabble-rousing propaganda against the jews. Much as any officer of the inquisition would have sincerely said he tortured the bodies of the apostates for love of their souls.
"In 1941 when asked about proposed anti-Jewish laws in Vichy France, Pius XII answered that the church condemned racism, but did not repudiate every rule against the Jews."
I've no doubt PIUS was a good man who saved lots of jews out of heartfelt need. I equally have no doubt, and the churches current and ancient documents, leave no room for doubt, that jews are not worthy, for fundamental doctrinal reasons, of the same moral regard as christians, and that PIUS XII was an accurate reflection of that fundamental, deeply incalcated and fatally expressed moral error in catholic doctrine that deeply contributed to the Holocaust.
