The fact that a Vatican affiliate/Papal submissive hereon wrote that . . . is
HILLARIOUS
TO THE MAX!
Posted on 01/03/2010 11:00:10 AM PST by Gamecock
Ten years ago, on a cold winter morning in New York City, the Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission, established to investigate Pope Pius XII’s response to the Holocaust, met for the first time to discuss its future work. I was the only Israeli historian among the six scholars (three Catholics and three Jews) designated by the Vatican and leading Jewish organizations to study this hotly contested issue.
A little under two years later, the project was abandoned as a result of the Holy See’s unwillingness to release materials from its own archives that could help clarify issues that our team of scholars raised in our provisional report. Already at that time, in the last years of Pope John Paul’s pontificate, there were moves afoot to place Pius XII on the fast track to sainthood, but they were probably slowed down by Israeli and Jewish protests and a desire by church authorities to prevent a serious rupture in Catholic-Jewish relations.
At issue was the silence of Pius XII during the Holocaust and his indirect complicity in the Nazi mass murder of Jews. These allegations, which first emerged around 1964, had prompted the Vatican to publish 11 volumes of its own documents (edited by four trusted Jesuit scholars), most of them appearing in the 1970s. It was these documents in Italian, German, French, Latin and English that we were originally asked to review. The million or so unpublished documents from the pontificate of Pius XII (1939–1958) according to the Vatican’s most recent estimate, will only be available in about four years’ time.
It is in this context that we need to see the recent decree on the “heroic virtues” of Pius XII, just signed by Pope Benedict XVI. Most Jews have interpreted this act as yet another signal that the Vatican is determined to beatify the controversial wartime pope — whom some even consider to have been anti-Semitic — regardless of what the historical evidence may indicate.
The sharp response of Jewish leaders to Benedict’s decree prompted the Vatican’s press office director, Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., to release a conciliatory note distinguishing between the historical judgment of Pius XII’s actions (still an open question) and the saintly Christian life he apparently led. In particular, Father Lombardi was concerned to disclaim any notion that this decree was “a hostile act towards the Jewish people,” or an obstacle to Catholic-Jewish dialogue.
Nevertheless, the decree on Pius XII still raises concern not only about the continuing drive to beatify the wartime pontiff but also about the present pope and the state of relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people.
Regarding Pius XII, I personally have never seen him either as “Hitler’s pope” (the theory of British historian John Cornwell — a “lapsed” Catholic), or as the “righteous gentile” evoked by Rabbi David Dalin. My own provisional conclusion drawn from the study of thousands of documents is that the mass murder of Jews was fairly low on his list of priorities. Of course, much the same could be said of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, but they did not claim to be the “Vicar of Christ,” or to represent the Christian conscience.
Pius XII strikes me as a polished diplomat far more worried about the Allied bombing of Rome than about the thousand Roman Jews who were being deported by the Germans to their deaths in Auschwitz, virtually under the windows of the Holy See. True, other Roman Jews were discreetly given sanctuary in ecclesiastical establishments in and around Rome after October 1943, but it remains unclear if this was the result of a direct papal instruction.
In some instances we know that Pius XII did try to intervene against Nazi or racist anti-Semitic legislation, but in general this was almost always on behalf of baptized Jews since they were protected by the church as Catholics. Pius’s rare references to the mass murder of the Jews were invariably veiled and very abstract, as if he found it difficult to utter the word itself. Was it fear of further German reprisals? A latent anti-Semitism? Was it his visceral anti-Communism which also led him to hope for a Nazi victory in the East? Or perhaps the desire to spare German Catholics a conflict of conscience between their loyalty to Hitler, the fatherland, or their church? Whatever the reasons, this was hardly heroic conduct.
So why has Benedict XVI chosen to take this step now? Why risk unnecessary damage to Catholic-Jewish relations? My own inclination is to think that the present pope regards Pius XII as a soulmate — both theologically and politically. He shares with the wartime pontiff an authoritarian centralist world-view and a deep distrust of liberalism, modernity, and the ravages of moral relativism. He was 31 years old when Pius XII died in 1958, and already then regarded him as a venerated role model.
Moreover, the German-born Joseph Ratzinger (today Benedict XVI) certainly knew that Pius XII (an aristocratic Roman) was also a passionate Germanophile, surrounded by German aides during and after the war, fluent in the German language, and a great admirer of the German Catholic Church. Not only that, but Ratzinger probably also knows that Pius XII personally intervened after 1945 to commute the sentences of convicted German war criminals. This solicitude for Nazi criminals contrasts sharply with Pius XII ignoring all entreaties to make a public statement against anti-Semitism even after the full horrors of the death camps had been revealed in 1945.
In this context it is profoundly unsettling to think that the ultraconservative Benedict XVI and his entourage can identify so completely with Pius XII as a man of “heroic virtue.” The present pope, no doubt, deplores anti-Semitism, though his statements on the subject have been noticeably less robust than those of his predecessor, John Paul II.
At Yad Vashem last summer he expressed no personal regret as a German for the unspeakable horrors of the Shoah, even though he had once been a member of the Hitler Youth. True, he had little choice in the matter. However, he was disturbingly vague about the truly monstrous German role in the Holocaust. Earlier in 2009, Benedict also showed remarkably poor judgment (to put it charitably) in reinstating an unrepentant Holocaust-denying British bishop into the mainstream Catholic Church, an action he only retracted after worldwide Jewish and Catholic protests.
These mistakes appear to follow a pattern and may even indicate a regression from the real progress in Catholic-Jewish relations under Benedict’s predecessor. One can only hope they are not irreversible since the stakes are high and no sane person can be interested in undermining the bridges across the abyss that have been so painstakingly constructed.
Robert S. Wistrich is director of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House, January 2010).
Concerning the issues of this thread, I submit that the views of non-Catholics should not be of a concern to Catholics with reference to Pius XII being given the honor of sainthood or indeed anything else in the domain of Catholic belief.
Or to put it another way, why should the Catholic Church seek approval of others when God has said that approval will not be forthcoming?
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before [it hated] you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. - John 15:18-19
Thanks for your wonderful and unassailable Spirit=led wisdom, as usual.
Sigh.
Methinks thou dost protest too much
Though . . .
it has LONG been the norm . . . in all contexts . . .
for The Lord to use me as a vivid object lesson in a diversity of ways.
That conflicts a bit with a rule of the Rel Forum.
Nevertheless, it’s not an easy mine field to walk between those two . . . mandates, parameters.
The fact that a Vatican affiliate/Papal submissive hereon wrote that . . . is
Concerning your other point, I exhort you to remember that God is the Potter and we are the clay - the challenges we face, the spiritual gifts we receive to meet them are all according to God's will for each and every individual one of us. Truly, nothing can happen in the life of a Christian unless either God did it or permitted it.
So no matter what it is, lean on Him and count it all joy.
It seems kind of odd, to be called thin-skinned in a debate like this. I've always understood thin-skinned to refer to those who overreact about things that aren't terribly important. The charge against Pius is that he was at least negligent and very possibly complicit in the holocaust. How when someone brings facts to the table to refute the accusation, are they "thin-skinned?" Can this mean anything other than that those leveling and defending the accusation imagine holocaust complicity isn't really a big enough deal that anyone who has facts to the contrary would even bother to ask others to look at them?
TRUE TRUE.
INDEED.
Still a growing edge for me, obviously.
However, I CAN count it all joy much more of the time, now.
And laugh healthily and robusly about it, with no guile residue.
PRAISE GOD for THAT!
LOL.
It’s been funny for a long tiem . . . that if some folks realized what a spiritual blessing their mean-spirited attacks ended up being for me/to me, they’s come near to never typing again. LOL.
“God is not fooled. Neither is anyone else.”
I’m not trying to be oblique in the least. I’m quite firm in my labeling.
Pentecostal UFO Cultism is alive on FR.
I think anyone who purports to know the mind of God as intimately and through self-interpretation of the Scriptures to fit an EndTimes version known as UFO/Demon Deception and declares that version to be the ONLY Truth according to self-interpretation, well, the contrast with Catholicism could not be more clear.
I believe everyone should be cognizant of your views as you continue to slander the Catholic faith and the faithful.
The Vatican edifice has no need of anyone “slandering” it.
It does a grand and relentlessly expansive job of that, itself.
. . . as do all large and old RELIGIOUS organizations and most not so large and not so old.
Interesting that the Vatican Affiliates/Papal submissives hereon seem to act and write as though
THEY and THEIR PRINCELY INSTITUTION
are soooooooooooooooooo unfairly . . . . and soooooooooooo uniquely and unfittingly maligned.
What a farce that notion is.
I would guesstimate that Prottys and Protty groups and ideals take a fierce and often even mean-spirited attack something on the order of 15 or 20:1 . . . or more lopsided even than that.
Imagine hating the Catholic Church and Her faithful so much as to be unwilling even to call them by name.
Pathetic.
“What a farce that notion is.
I would guesstimate that Prottys and Protty groups and ideals take a fierce and often even mean-spirited attack something on the order of 15 or 20:1 . . . or more lopsided even than that.”
The only farcical notion around here is the one that believes defending the Faith and disagreeing with a UFO Aficionado is somehow mean-spirited.
“Imagine hating the Catholic Church and Her faithful so much as to be unwilling even to call them by name.”
If they had even one shred of understanding about the Communion of the Saints, they would blush for shame.
that "OUT-GROUP" others not of their "IN-GROUP" use words that for the others are a sin to use in such ways, a heresy, a lie.
INCREDIBLE cheek to the max at a minimum!
Hatred so blinding, so burning hot, it would make Lucifer himself blush and golfclap.
But hey, UFOs? COMPLETELY reasonable.
Wheat and tares, Quix. Wheat and tares. God will sort it all out.
UFO Aficionado is somehow mean-spirited.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,
The truth of the very personal assault is outted again . . . by their own words.
THANKS THANKS THANKS.
The truth always lets light in. Perhaps some will even see enough to grow a little.
BTW, defense of even a thoroughly evil group [which I personally do NOT consider all of the Vatican to be.] could be VERY kosher and NOT AT ALL mean-spirited. That has nothing at all to do with defending per se.
THE MEAN SPIRITED ISSUE is demonstrated by ATTITUDE, TONE.
I realize a clique of Vatican affiliates/Papal submissives seem to be blind and deaf about attitude and tone . . . but that's not, per se, Protty's problem.
ABSOLUTELY.
However, eternal souls are at stake.
Truth and righteousness are worthy SOME fierce assertions on their side of the issues.
“that “OUT-GROUP” others not of their “IN-GROUP” use words that for the others are a sin to use in such ways, a heresy, a lie.”
I don’t care for your heresies and will call it for what it is.
You don’t have to believe what Catholic Christians believe. You can continue in your etherzone and your sola-zone until eternity. That’s your problem.
But do not think that Catholics are going to ignore every single slander without commenting.
“However, eternal souls are at stake.”
Don’t you DARE judge another soul. My relationship with God is on a one-to-One basis, and while I, as a Catholic Christian will not ever, ever have the hubris and sinfulness of judging the state of a soul since that belongs to God and God alone, I can judge my own relationship with God.
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