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 The million or so unpublished documents from the pontificate of Pius XII (1939–1958) according to the Vatican’s most recent estimate, will only be available in about four years’ time.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).
Thank you
Good post. Thanks.
Few people seem to remember that the Vatican was in Facist Italy in WWII. The majority of Americans have also such a poor education in history that they don’t know that Hitler occupied Italy after Mussolini was killed by his own people.
These historical illiterates also seem not to realize that Hitler was not above killing priest and I have no doubt that if Pius XII had made himself too much of a nuisance to Hitler, Hitler would have had few reservations in invading the Vatican and looting it of its treasures as he did much of the museums of Europe.
Pius’s Vatican was in far more danger from the Nazis than he was of Allied bombs and he knew it.
Perhaps Pius wanted to be heroic and speak out against the deportation of the Jews to concentration camps but it was not only his life that was in jeopardy if he did. He knew this also.
Early Roman Popes had been martyrs for their faith. Pius however would not have sacrificed his life alone as did the early Popes. All in side Vatican City would have been at risk.
Pius XII could not afford to be heroic.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
It says a lot about the author of this hit piece, and even more about someone who would post this on a conservative forum, that these attributes are considered a negative.
My advice to anyone who would post this is to take it, and their liberal inclinations, to a liberal forum where it belongs.
:-)
The same kind of people who get their WWII history from the bowels of the KGB.
We’ll decide for ourselves who our saints are.
Or should we, Obama-Holder style, go back throughout history and review the actions of those we already revere as saints?
If Judaism is so adamantly that “never again” be a reality, why not instead of presuming to insinuate themselves into Catholic proceedings, try to figure out why so many Jews voted for, and continue to support Obama.
“...his indirect complicity in the Nazi mass murder of Jews”
This is truly slanderous.
And now, in this time in history, an attempt is being made to smear and slander Pope Benedict XVI, accusing him of being complicit with the Nazis as a 14-year old forced into conscription.
It’s all of one piece.
And those of us who defend the Pope(s) are treated in the same way the left treats the Tea party crowd and the Joe Plumbers.
Frankly as a conservative if I wanted to further calumnious attacks against a saintly man I would still be embarrassed to use a piece awash with liberal spew to support my calumny. But then again I have never been inclined to be a Useful Idiot for the left or their fallen standard bearer.
Too cold to go outside today? Nothing to do other than post more calumnies?
But surely you know that Gamecock traffics in only the finest slanders...truly first rate!
Luckily all protties have to do is say a magic phrase and they are free to “sin boldly”.
Fixed that for you.
If you have nothing nice to say.....
“We’ll decide for ourselves who our saints are”
Absolutely.
Exactly! FDR knew what was happening and could have stopped this much sooner.FDR and his occultists wife and staff member Henry Wallace had more in common with Hitler due to their occult beliefs
Hmmmmm
Perhaps the RC’s/Vatican affiliates could give us lessons in
—thin skins
—hyper reactionary-ism
—hair trigger hostility and expression thereof
—lots of other institutionalized hogwash.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.