To: jscd3
As noted previously, you are ignoring and not answering what you don't want to see. Did you read a single one of the very detailed and exhaustive listings in the replies above for anything other than a line to copy for your non-response responses? Has anyone answered my original, rather specific as to detail, points? Has anyone denied that Pius signed the accords? That priests blessed with holy sacrament the butchers of the SS? That the church handed over records? That the church could have excommunicated participants in the holocaust, but chose not to? Is there some historian that denies any of this, or even thinks it's obscure?
Why am I obligated to wrestle with the usual piles of flack that are thrown up around Pius the XII, when no one feels obligated to wrestle with the essential issue: that, whatever the good works and motive of Pius XII, 1400 years of official doctrine prevented him from seeing that he could do just as well for the jews, as, say, for the converts, or the cripples, in hauntingly similar circumstances.
Boldly saving a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand, out of 6 million might impress you and the Rabbi of Rome, once the door's been open and the wolf let in, but it doesn't absolve you of helping to hold the door open for 1400 years previously. Or, being more specific, of being the current embodiment of that failure during xmas of 1942. The first time, loquacious intimations to the contrary offered here notwithstanding, that the Pope (the signer of the accords which first lent Hitler the legitimacy of sanction by another state, I'll remind you) was willing to seriously throw the formal weight of Jesus behind his condemnations of Hitler--long after the wolf had eaten most of the sheep.
I am, by the way, quite used to dealing with boatloads of flack on the subject of Pius doing good works for jews, when I try to bring this up. Pius was a good man, and he helped some jews. He was not calloused, cowardly or hypocritical or an anti-semite, but he was an accurate embodiment of his churches very long standing overt dotrinal inability, which I have detailed here, to see jews as worthy of the same moral regard as christians. Which is why, for whatever worthy acts he might have performed, he chose to be a firefighter, instead of a fire inspection warden to prevent the fires in the first place.
60 posted on
11/03/2003 3:48:55 PM PST by
donh
(1)
To: donh
We have indeed adressed those issues.
We -have- pointed out repeatedly is that there is no other leader in Europe that condemned Hitler in 1941-1942. Pius was the only one who -wasn't- silent. You simply ignore this as irrelevant.
But since you are such a -fair- individual, then I would like to see you going around various websites and condemn the International Red Cross as well.
"The drama faced by the International Committee of the Red Cross, with its seat likewise in Geneva, is perhaps even more striking. The Committee is officially charged by international agreement with supervising the application of the Red Cross Conventions on Prisoners of War. But the needs of civilian internees (read, Jews) increasingly alarmed the members of the committee. The Red Cross had no real knowledge of the extermination camps at this time (in the autumn of 1942) but the harshness of German procedures, and even more so the sinister disappearance of so many thousands into the maw of deportation, suggested the necessity of an open and public protest on the part of the Committee. With profound regret, the Geneva Red Cross decided that a public protest, a) would have no effect, b) would compromise what real good the Committee was already doing for the internees, without benefit of public declarations. And indeed in the following war years, the International Committee of the Red Cross was able to achieve a great deal in its efforts at alleviating suffering."
Just as the Church did. No Jews condemned the Red Cross. All Jews alive at the time recognized the absolute need for pro-Jewish voices to not speak publically against Hitler for fear of compromising their ability to aid Jews privately. The Pope was the ONLY agency in Europe to speak openly against Hitler for several years -anyway-, as noted by Albert Einstein.
Tell me, if you were hiding half a dozen Jews in your basement during the War, would you have gone out into the street and railed at injustices of Hitler? You'd be a nominee for the Darwin Award, and there'd be 6 more dead Jews.
"He should have spoken out more!" So should everyone else. He spoke out more than anyone else. Why is the one guy who did more than anyone else the one who gets the most blame?
"He could have done more!" Well, yes. This is an irrefutable charge that can be made against anyone in any situation that manages to survive. Why are you reading this thread instead of helping the homeless? Hmmm. It seems you are indifferent to the plight of the homeless. I don't care if you go out and help the homeless 3 times a week and twice on Sundays, you are not there now so you could be doing more. Therefore, you are callous and indifferent.
This is the way all good propaganda works. Anyone could -always- do more. How else do you condemn a genuine hero?
Qwinn
62 posted on
11/03/2003 4:07:14 PM PST by
Qwinn
To: donh
He was not calloused, cowardly or hypocritical or an anti-semite, but he was an accurate embodiment of his churches very long standing overt dotrinal inability, which I have detailed here, to see jews as worthy of the same moral regard as christians. If the church has a "doctrinal inability" to see Jews as worthy as Christians, then be assured that it is a human failing on the part of some Christians, and not a teaching that has been given from Christ.
I am an evangelical, and it would be hard to overstate the level of devotion that my brethren have for Jews and Israel. We want to witness to them and help ISrael when we can, mostly because we recognize Jesus as a Jewish Messiah, and Christianity as a distinctly Jewish faith.
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