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My personal favorite is how anti-Pius sites use the fact that he didn't protest the murder of Jews in LITHUANIA as evidence against him! Lithuania! Where they had just made any religious weddings illegal! Where all Church land was being transferred to the State!

Where he did not protest, was in Germany, where they were being gassed, until near the end of the war, just as he promised to do in the accords he signed with Hitler.

But Pius didn't flick a lightning bolt from the Holy See and stop the murder of Jews in a country where Catholicism for almost all intents and purposes was outlawed!

"all intents and purposes, eh"? That would be a good trick if it were true, since about half of the German army, like the German population, would have been catholic. I'll say this one more time, for those with apparent ADD--Pius protested the gassing of infirm old catholics and protestants, and it stopped dead in it's tracks. He did not protest the gassing of ALL jews, and it did not stop dead in it's tracks.

Let me just point out that the Pope is not primarily some lame italian prince who is supposed to read Machiavelli, and defend the holy see at all costs (in this case, probably virtually no cost). He is supposed to be the Shepard of the Lord and the Voice of Jesus. He is supposed to raise his voice to protest vast moral iniquities--like he did for the infirm in Germany. Why are the infirm worthy of such high moral concern, and the jews are not?

The answer is pretty obvious, unless you are just determined to ram your head into the sand as hard as you can by considering anything other than the relevant facts. Lithuania, indeed. Dinner testimonials indeed.

The Communists always march to the beat of the Vatican's drum, we all know that.

Uh, huh. That must be why Pius the silent excommunicated them all.

He should have sent more protests to the Lithuanian government over the poor treatment of Jews! The fact that he didn't proves he didn't care!

It's so sad, it really is. The Communist propaganda tactics are obvious for anyone who cares to see it.

It's so sad, the hysterical irrelevancies Pius's defenders manage to dredge up.

Pope Pius ping

It's so sad, the hysterical irrelevancies Pius's defenders manage to dredge up

You dismiss the documentation provided of the Pope being responsible for the saving of hundreds of thousands of lives as irrelevant

You dismiss the universal praise by Jewish leaders around the world as irrelevant

You dismiss the Nazi's own record of hating the man as a great enemy irrelevant

You dismiss the conversion of the Grand Rabbi of Rome as irrelevant

To you, the fact that throughout the war, Pius was universally recognized in the press as being an anti-Hitler beacon, despite the fact that he had no secular authority or military might, and was entirely within truly hostile territory is irrelevant

It seems to me that the only hysterical person on this thread is you

Pius protested the gassing of infirm old catholics and protestants, and it stopped dead in it's tracks

Except that it didn't. It went on throughout the entire war. Oh, they covered it up more effectively, but it still happened.

Your entire screed is based on historical falsehoods like this.

"Where he did not protest, was in Germany, where they were being gassed, until near the end of the war, just as he promised to do in the accords he signed with Hitler."

"Following the publication of the pastoral letter by the German Catholic bishops who met at their annual conference in Fulda in 1939, “which was one of the sharpest attacks ever made by Catholics against Nazis”, Nazis seized Catholic presses and closed printing facilities used in production and distribution of the pastoral letter. (N.Y. Times, January 14, 1939, p. 5, 3)

Perhaps there's a difference between "silent" and "silenced".

Here's a list of what he did BEFORE the war (next time before you do a rebuttal you might actually want to read the link provided to you, so you don't make an ass of yourself):

"Of the forty-four speeches Pacelli gave in Germany as Papal Nuncio between 1917 and 1929, forty denounced some aspect of the emerging Nazi ideology."

"In March 1935, he wrote an open letter to the Bishop of Cologne calling the Nazis “false prophets with the pride of Lucifer.”

"In 1935, he assailed ideologies “possessed by the superstition of race and blood” to an enormous crowd of pilgrims at Lourdes."

"In 1937, at Notre Dame in Paris, he named Germany “that noble and powerful nation whom bad shepherds would lead astray into an ideology of race.”"

"The Nazis were “diabolical,” he told friends privately. Hitler “is completely obsessed,” he said to his long-time secretary, Sister Pascalina. “All that is not of use to him, he destroys; this man is capable of trampling on corpses.” Meeting in 1935 with the heroic anti-Nazi Dietrich von Hildebrand, he declared, “There can be no possible reconciliation” between Christianity and Nazi racism; they were like “fire and water.”..."

Pope Pius XI: “Abraham is called our patriarch, our ancestor. Anti-Semitism is not compatible with the reality of this text; it is a movement which Christians cannot share. No, it is not possible for Christians to take part in anti-Semitism. We are Semites spiritually.” - The New York Times published these words for all to read (December 12, 1938, p. 1, 1). The document Pius XI was reading from was drafted by Pacelli, his closest adviser and the future Pius XII (the "silent" one). Pius XI battled against the Italian government’s implementation of laws against the Jews, (N.Y. Times, December 25, 1938, p. 1, 1) , and condemned the violence against the Church wherever Nazi influence held sway.

It was also Pacelli who drafted Pius XI’s encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, With Burning Concern, a condemnation of Germany among the harshest ever issued by the Holy See. Indeed, throughout the 1930s, Pacelli was widely lampooned in the Nazi press as Pius XI’s “Jew-loving” Cardinal, because of the more than fifty-five protests he sent the Germans as the Vatican Secretary of State."

That's all WAY before the beginning of the war, much less the end. Nice try.

Am I done? No. Let's move on to newspaper records from the first few years of the war:

“We record the Jewish people’s deep appreciation of the stand taken by the Vatican against the advance of resurgent paganism which challenges all traditional values of religion as well as inalienable human rights upon which alone enduring civilization can be found. The Congress salutes the Supreme Pontiff, symbol of the spiritual forces which under many names are fighting for the re-establishment of the rule of moral law in human society.”
- from the Jewish Congress, meeting in Geneva in January, 1939. The chairman, Dr. Nahum Goldman and the committee adopted resolutions concerning the Jewish people of Europe, one of which stated the above, as reported by the New York Times, January 17, 1939, p. 1:3) .

NY Times headline, October 28, 1939: “Pope Condemns Dictators, Treaty Violators, Racism.” at the issuance of first encyclical as Pope. Thousands of copies of this encyclical were dropped over Nazi Germany by the Allies in an effort to spur Anti-Nazi sentiment. Despite the fact that according to donh, all Nazis -were- Catholics, this effort proved unsuccessful.

New York Times editorial on December 25, 1941 (Late Day edition, p. 24): "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 London Times of October 1, 1942, explicitly praises him for his condemnation of Nazism and his public support for the Jewish victims of Nazi terror. "A study of the words which Pope Pius XII has addressed since his accession," noted the Times, "leaves no room for doubt. He condemns the worship of force and its concrete manifestations in the suppression of national liberties and in the persecution of the Jewish race."

New York Times editorial on December 25, 1942 (Late Day edition, p. 16) states: "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."

Enough? I would freaking hope so.

"would be a good trick if it were true, since about half of the German army, like the German population, would have been catholic."

Aaaah I see, so now the agitprop is Catholics -were- Nazis. Uh huh. Hitler too! Reciting the novena over and over as they gassed Jews, they were. No evidence actually required on that one. I see the picture of Hitler praying posted all over anti-Pius sites to prove it... the source of the picture? Why, Hitler's own photo-op propaganda, of course! The most reliable source of all! Never mind that as Papal protests and actions against Hitler grew, by the end of the war Hitler was publically railing against the Pope, and making plans to disguise the 8th S.S. infantry as Italians and murder everyone in the Vatican, with SPECIFIC citation of the Church's protests in defense of Jews as the cause.

As for how sincere Nazi "Christianity" was, check out the following:

"Shortly after taking power, Hitler explained to some of his closest collaborators in the Reich Chancellery that, like Mussolini, he would make a formal peace with the churches:

"Why not? That will not prevent me from totally uprooting Christianity in Germany and eliminating it lock, stock and barrel. It is, however, decisive for our people whether they have the Judeo-Christian faith and it's flabby morality of sympathy, or a strong, heroic faith in god in nature, in god in one's own people, in god in one's own fate, in one's own blood.... One is either a Christian or a German. One can't be both."

- Hermann Rauschnig, "Conversations with Hitler (Zurick: Europa-Verlag, 988), 50.

You site no sources for your claims. I cite Albert Einstein, Israeli Prime Ministers, Time Magazine, the New York Times, the London Times, the United Nations archives, and various non-Catholic scholars... who's making the stronger case here?

Qwinn