Tarik Azziz just screwed up...Royally! [Wont Answer E-V-I-L Jew Questions Alert]

I wonder what the scumbag anti-war demonstrators think of themselves now that they realize they have been defending a bunch of hateful Nazis.

They're as antisemitic as Aziz. The folks at ANSWER refused to allow Michael Lerner, an ultra leftie who happens to be Jewish, to speak at one of the rallies this weekend--because he's Jewish.

I apologize, and figured if I was wrong I would be corrected. It was one of the "urban" legends which seem to be so prevalent (damn the internet). But I stand corrected. And I also think that is a commonly held belief with many people. I will bookmark this for later reference.

Time for the pope to STFU. Does he want to go down in history as another Pius XII?

See #97.

You can now no longer plead ignorance.

I don't think the Pope took Iraq's side. From the accounts I read the Pope was asking Iraq to abide by the UN resolutions to avoid war. Who knows, privately the Pope may have called on Aziz to repent and start acting like a Christian man.

But it is unfortunate that the Church hierarchy, including American Catholic leaders, seem to be aligning themselves with the "peace" movement. At a time when the Church is trying to defeat the charge it was complicit with the Nazis, the Church should not be allowing the perception it is aligning itself with the most notorious fascist regime now operating.

I have just done a quick Google on this...

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ct_churchandnazis.html

When that pope died in 1939 he was succeeded by Pope Pius XII, who had previously been Vatican Secretary of State. In that role he frequently spoke out against the Nazis, including one notable speech to 250,000 people at Lourdes in 1935 where he said that the Nazis

"are in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of social revolution, whether they are guided by a false concept of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult."

As Pope he secretly worked to save as many Jewish lives as possible from the Nazis. Jewish Rabbi Pinchas Lapide wrote that

"The final number of Jewish lives in whose rescue the Catholic Church had been the instrument is thus at least 700,000 souls, but in all probability it is much closer to ... 860,000." (Pinchas E. Lapide, 'Three Popes and the Jews', pp 227-228).
This is more than all other Jewish relief organizations in Europe, combined, were able to save.

But I stand corrected.

I appreciate that. The allegations make my blood boil, but I understand that many people are honestly mistaken, understandably, since the lies are repeated so often.

No, he's not a Christian.

He just says he is.

After you read #97, you might realise that being another Pope Pius XII is a good thing. Somehow, I don't think that's what you intended.

THAT I believe.

If the Vatican guy hosing the press conference had any testicular fortitude....

I can hardly imagine a bigger "IF"

But it is unfortunate that the Church hierarchy, including American Catholic leaders, seem to be aligning themselves with the "peace" movement.

Some of them really are "peaceniks." But the Church doesn't claim infallibility for individual bishops. The sure norm for Catholic teaching on a wide variety of issues is the Catechism.

Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

By Shira Schoenberg

The Early Years
Cries for Help
Papal Reasons and Responses
The Pope Protests
The Politics Behind the Policy
Recent Developments
Conclusion

Pope Pius XII's (1876-1958) actions during the Holocaust remain controversial. For much of the war, he maintained a public front of indifference and remained silent while German atrocities were committed. He refused pleas for help on the grounds of neutrality, while making statements condemning injustices in general. Privately, he sheltered a small number of Jews and spoke to a few select officials, encouraging them to help the Jews.

The Early Years

The Pope was born in 1876 in Rome as Eugenio Pacelli. He studied philosophy at the Gregorian University, learned theology at Sant Apollinare and was ordained in 1899. He entered the Secretariat of State for the Vatican in 1901, became a cardinal in 1929 and was appointed Secretary of State in 1930.

Pacelli lived in Germany from 1917, when he was appointed Papal Nuncio in Bavaria, until 1929. He knew what the Nazi party stood for, and was elected Pope in 1939 having never condemned any aspect of Adolf Hitler’s ideology.

Even as Cardinal, Pacelli's actions regarding Hitler were controversial. Hitler took power on January 30, 1933. On July 20 that same year, Pacelli and German diplomat Franz Von Papen signed a concordat that granted freedom of practice to the Roman Catholic Church. In return, the Church agreed to separate religion from politics. This diminished the influence of the Catholic Center Party and the Catholic Labor unions. The concordat was generally viewed as a diplomatic victory for Hitler.⁽¹⁾

Pacelli was elected Pope on March 2, 1939, and took the name Pius XII. As Pope, he had three official positions. He was head of his church and was in direct communication with bishops everywhere. He was chief of state of the Vatican, with his own diplomatic corps. He was also the Bishop of Rome. In theory, at least, his views could influence 400 million Catholics, including those in all the occupied eastern territories - the Poles, Baltics, Croatians, Slovaks and others.⁽²⁾

As soon as he was appointed Pope, Pacelli did speak out against the 1938 Italian racial laws that dealt with mixed marriages and children of mixed marriages.⁽³⁾ However, he issued no such condemnation of Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) which occurred in November 1938, and which recent evidence shows he was informed of by Berlin's papal nuncio. As the security of the Jewish population became more precarious, Pius XII did intervene the month he was elected Pope, March 1939, and obtained 3,000 visas to enter Brazil for European Jews who had been baptized and converted to Catholicism. Two-thirds of these were later revoked, however, because of "improper conduct," probably meaning that the Jews started practicing Judaism once in Brazil. At that time, the Pope did nothing to save practicing Jews.⁽⁴⁾

Cries for Help

Throughout the Holocaust, Pius XII was consistently besieged with pleas for help on behalf of the Jews.

In the spring of 1940, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione to intercede to keep Jews in Spain from being deported to Germany. He later made a similar request for Jews in Lithuania. The papacy did nothing.⁽⁵⁾

Within the Pope's own church, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna told Pius XII about Jewish deportations in 1941. In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires, a position under the supervision of the Pope, reported to Rome that Slovakian Jews were being systematically deported and sent to death camps.⁽⁶⁾

In October 1941, the Assistant Chief of the U.S. delegation to the Vatican, Harold Tittman, asked the Pope to condemn the atrocities. The response came that the Holy See wanted to remain "neutral," and that condemning the atrocities would have a negative influence on Catholics in German-held lands.⁽⁷⁾

In late August 1942, after more than 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had been killed, Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj wrote a long letter to the Pope, referring to the German government as a regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to "bear adversity with serene patience."⁽⁸⁾

On September 18, 1942, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, wrote, "The massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms."⁽⁹⁾ Yet, that same month when Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned the Pope that his silence was endangering his moral prestige, the Secretary of State responded on the Pope's behalf that it was impossible to verify rumors about crimes committed against the Jews.⁽¹⁰⁾

Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, appealed to the Pope in January 1943 to publicly denounce Nazi violence. Bishop Preysing of Berlin did the same, at least twice. Pius XII refused.⁽¹¹⁾

Papal Reasons and Responses

The Pope finally gave a reason for his consistent refusals to make a public statement in December 1942. The Allied governments issued a declaration, "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race," which stated that there would be retribution for the perpetrators of Jewish murders. When Tittman asked Secretary of State Maglione if the Pope could issue a similar proclamation, Maglione said the papacy was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities."⁽¹²⁾ One reason for this position was that the staunchly anti-communist Pope felt he could not denounce the Nazis without including the Communists; therefore, Pius XII would only condemn general atrocities.⁽¹³⁾

The Pope did speak generally against the extermination campaign. On January 18, 1940, after the death toll of Polish civilians was estimated at 15,000, the Pope said in a broadcast, "The horror and inexcusable excesses committed on a helpless and a homeless people have been established by the unimpeachable testimony of eye-witnesses."⁽¹⁴⁾ During his Christmas Eve radio broadcast in 1942, he referred to the "hundreds of thousands who through no fault of their own, and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction."⁽¹⁵⁾ The Pope never mentioned the Jews by name.

The Pope's indifference to the mistreatment of Jews was often clear. In 1941, for example, after being asked by French Marshal Henri Philippe Petain if the Vatican would object to anti-Jewish laws, Pius XII answered that the church condemned racism, but did not repudiate every rule against the Jews.⁽¹⁶⁾ When Petain's French puppet government introduced "Jewish statutes," the Vichy ambassador to the Holy See informed Petain that the Vatican did not consider the legislation in conflict with Catholic teachings, as long as they were carried out with "charity" and "justice."⁽¹⁷⁾

In a September 1940 broadcast, the Vatican called its policy "neutrality," but stated in the same broadcast that where morality was involved, no neutrality was possible.⁽¹⁸⁾ This could only imply that mass murder was not a moral issue.

On September 8, 1943, the Nazis invaded Italy and, suddenly, the Vatican was the local authority. The Nazis gave the Jews 36 hours to come up with 50 kilograms of gold or else the Nazis would take 300 hostages. The Vatican was willing to loan 15 kilos, an offer that eventually proved unnecessary when the Jews obtained an extension for the delivery.⁽¹⁹⁾

Pius XII knew that Jewish deportations from Italy were impending. The Vatican even found out from SS First Lieutenant Kurt Gerstein the fate of those who were to be deported.⁽²⁰⁾ Publicly, the Pope stayed silent. Privately, Pius did instruct Catholic institutions to take in Jews. The Vatican itself hid 477 Jews and another 4,238 Jews were protected in Roman monasteries and convents.⁽²¹⁾

On October 16, the Nazis arrested 1,007 Roman Jews, the majority of whom were women and children. They were taken to Auschwitz, where 811 were gassed immediately. Of those sent to the concentration camp, 16 survived.⁽²²⁾

The Pope Protests

The Pope did act behind the scenes on occasion. During the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, he, along with the papal nuncio in Budapest, Angelo Rotta, advised the Hungarian government to be moderate in its plans concerning the treatment of the Jews. Pius XII protested against the deportation of Jews and, when his protests were not heeded, he cabled again and again.⁽²³⁾ The Pope's demands, combined with similar protests from the King of Sweden, the International Red Cross, Britain and the United States contributed to the decision by the Hungarian regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy, to cease deportations on July 8, 1944.⁽²⁴⁾

In the later stages of the war, Pius XII appealed to several Latin American governments to accept "emergency passports" that several thousand Jews had succeeded in obtaining. Due to the efforts of the Pope and the U.S. State Department, 13 Latin American countries decided to honor these documents, despite threats from the Germans to deport the passport holders.⁽²⁵⁾

The Church also answered a request to save 6,000 Jewish children in Bulgaria by helping to transfer them to Palestine. At the same time, however, Cardinal Maglione wrote to the apostolic delegate in Washington, A.G. Cicognani, saying this did not mean the Pope supported Zionism.⁽²⁶⁾

The Politics Behind the Policy

Historians point out that any support the Pope did give the Jews came after 1942, once U.S. officials told him that the allies wanted total victory, and it became likely that they would get it. Furthering the notion that any intervention by Pius XII was based on practical advantage rather than moral inclination is the fact that in late 1942, Pius XII began to advise the German and Hungarian bishops that it would be to their ultimate political advantage to go on record as speaking out against the massacre of the Jews. ⁽²⁷⁾

One of the only cases in which the Pope gave early support to the allies was in May 1940. He received information about a German plan, Operation Yellow, to lay mines to deter British naval support of Holland. Pius XII gave his permission to send coded radio messages warning papal nuncios in Brussels and The Hague of the plot. The German radio monitoring services decoded the broadcast and went ahead with the plan.⁽²⁸⁾ This papal intervention is surprising due to the Pope's persistent claim of neutrality, and his silence regarding almost all German atrocities.

Recent Developments

The International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission (ICJHC), a group comprised of three Jewish and three Catholic scholars, was appointed in 1999 by the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. In October of 2000, the group of scholars finished their review of the Vatican's archives, and submitted their preliminary findings to the Comission's then-President, Cardinal Edward I Cassidy. Their report, entitled "The Vatican and the Holocaust," laid to rest several of the conventional defenses of Pope Pius XII.

The often-espoused view that the Pontiff was unaware of the seriousness of the situation of European Jewry during the war was definitively found to be inaccurate. Numerous documents demonstrated that the Pope was well-informed about the full extent of the Nazi's anti-Semitic practices. A letter from Konrad von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin, that proved that the Pope was aware of the situation as early as January of 1941, particularly caught the attention of the commission. In that letter, Preysing confirms that "Your Holiness is certainly informed about the situation of the Jews in Germany and the neighboring countries. I wish to mention that I have been asked both from the Catholic and Protestant side if the Holy See could not do something on this subject...in favor of these unfortunates." The letter, which was a direct appeal to the Pope himself, without intermediaries, provoked no response. In 1942, an even more compelling eyewitness account of the mass-murder of Jews in Lwow was sent to the Pope by an archbishop; this, too, garnered no response.

The commission also revealed several documents that cast a negative light on the claim that the Vatican did all it could to facilitate emigration of the Jews out of Europe. Internal notes meant only for Vatican representatives revealed the opposition of Vatican officials to Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine. "The Holy See has never approved of the project of making Palestine a Jewish home...[because] Palestine is by now holier for Catholics than for Jews." Some Catholic higher-ups violated this position of the Vatican by helping Jews to immigrate when they were able to; most did not.

Similarly, the attempts of Jews to escape from Europe to South America were sometimes thwarted by the Vatican. Vatican representatives in Bolivia and Chile wrote to the pontiff regarding the "invasive" and "cynically exploitative" character of the Jewish immigrants, who were already engaged in "dishonest dealings, violence, immorality, and even disrespect for religion." The commission concluded that these accounts probably biased Pius against aiding more Jews in immigrating away from Nazi Europe.

The claim that the Vatican needed to remain neutral in the war has also been refuted in recent months. In January of 2001, a document recently declassified by the U.S. National Archives was discovered by the World Jewish Congress. The document was a report in which Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, Pope Pius XII's secretary of state, detailed and denounced several abuses committed by the Soviet Army against German inhabitants of the Soviet Union. The report was widely viewed as demonstrating that the Vatican had no compunctions about speaking out against atrocities, even when doing so would violate neutrality.

The preliminary report released by the IJCHC also asked the Vatican for access to non-published archival documents to more fully investigate the Pope's role in the Holocaust. This request was refused by the Vatican, which allowed them access only to documents from before 1923. As a result, the Commission suspended its study in July 2001, without issuing a final report. Dr. Michael Marrus, one of the three Jewish panelists and a professor of history at the University of Toronto, expained that the commission "ran up against a brick wall.... It would have been really halpful to have had support from the Holy See on this issue."⁽²⁹⁾

Conclusion

The Pope's reaction to the Holocaust was complex and inconsistent. At times, he tried to help the Jews and was successful. But these successes only highlight the amount of influence he might have had, if he not chosen to remain silent on so many other occasions. No one knows for sure the motives behind Pius XII's actions, or lack thereof, since the Vatican archives have only been fully opened to select researchers. Historians offer many reasons why Pope Pius XII was not a stronger public advocate for the Jews: A fear of Nazi reprisals, a feeling that public speech would have no effect and might harm the Jews, the idea that private intervention could accomplish more, the anxiety that acting against the German government could provoke a schism among German Catholics, the church's traditional role of being politically neutral and the fear of the growth of communism were the Nazis to be defeated.⁽³⁰⁾ Whatever his motivation, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Pope, like so many others in positions of power and influence, could have done more to save the Jews.

Bibliography

Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1993.

Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War. NY: Henry Holt And Co., 1987.

Gilbert, Martin. The Second World War: A Complete History. NY: Henry Holt And Co., 1992.

Gutman, Israel. ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Vol. 3. NY: Macmillan, 1995.

Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. NY: Holmes & Meier, 1985.

Hilberg, Raul. Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945. NY: Harper Perennial Library, 1993.

Holocaust. Israel Pocket Library. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1974.

International Jewish Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission. The Vatican and the Holocaust: A Preliminary Report. Submitted to The Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with Jews. October, 2000.

Perl, William R. The Holocaust Conspiracy: An International Policy of Genocide. NY: Shapolsky Publishers, 1989.

Reuters. "WJC Says it Has New Evidence Against Pius XII." By Joan Gralla. 1/11/01.

Notes

1. Berenbaum, Michael, The World Must Know, p. 40.

2. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 197.

3. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1136.

4. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1136.

5. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1136.

6. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.

7. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 206.

8. Hilberg, Raul, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders, p. 267.

9. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.

10. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 133; Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.

11. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 134.

12. Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 315.

13. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137; Hilberg, Raul, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders, p. 264.

14. Gilbert, Martin, The Second World War, p. 40.

15. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.

16. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.

17. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 200.

18. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 200.

19. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 133.

20. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 202.

21. Gilbert, Martin, The Holocaust, p. 623.

22. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 201.

23. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1138.

24. Gilbert, Martin, The Holocaust, p. 701.

25. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 176.

26. Gutman, Israel. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1138.

27. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 136.

28. Gilbert, Martin. The Second World War, p. 59.

29. The Jerusalem Post. "Vatican Blocks Panel's Access to Holocaust Archives." By Melissa Radler. 7/24/01

30. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1139.

ARGGHHH! What am I supposed to do, some say one thing, some say another. Lots of reading for me.

Well, CBS Radio just caved. Mentioned the press conference and played some quote but NOTHING about the slight of the Isreali reporter.

If anything happens to you, you know we'll be there for her....er, you.

I think the Pope would be doing a good thing by giving Aziz something other than his ring to kiss.

Determine which sources represent people who know what they're talking about, and which represent people with an axe to grind.

ARGGHHH! What am I supposed to do, some say one thing, some say another.

Consider the source, grounds for bias and proximity to actual events.

I know. That's why I said lots of reading...

But the Church doesn't claim infallibility for individual bishops. The sure norm for Catholic teaching on a wide variety of issues is the Catechism.

True, but the press and much of the laity don't get that. Like many others, the peacenik bishops are being used by people whose purpose isn't peace but the propping up of a stalinist regime.