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 The million or so unpublished documents from the pontificate of Pius XII (1939–1958) according to the Vatican’s most recent estimate, will only be available in about four years’ time.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).
You state the obvious. I’m thinking Algore Jr.
Thanks for the hypocritical derisive personal assault.
Now, now.
trying to get the
Capitol of history revisionism
to tune into TRUE HISTORICAL FACTS ABOUT HISTORY
COULD
be construed to be a case of
SERIOUSLY DELUSIONAL THINKING.
However, in your case, I know better. I kind of like the interesting travels and riccochets your mind takes.
LOL.
Interesting - I find this interesting as well.
Names are a useful shorthand.
One who will not settle upon a useful label that accurately identifies, (a name) is seemingly unwilling to define the most basic of terms so that discourse may progress.
Perhaps that is the point.
Names are a useful shorthand.
One who will not settle upon a useful label that accurately identifies, (a name) is seemingly unwilling to define the most basic of terms so that discourse may progress.
Perhaps that is the point
###########
INDEED.
In my experience, those
Vatican Affiliates, Papal Submissives
in my life, who have been most rabidly emotional about such details
TENDED
to ABSOLUTELY DEMAND
that EVERYONE for miles around
KOWTOW—ABJECTLY KOWTOW
TO THEIR CONSTRUCTION ON REALITY 100%
Talk about arrogance! Sheesh.
We see demonstrations of the same mentality hereon daily.
LOTS of things about
Vatican Affiliate, Papal Submissives and their routine theological assertions are ghastly to many of us Prottys. We find a lot of such not only heretical but horrifically blasphemous and plenty horrifically insulting—ROUTINELY.
Yet, I don’t know of a single Protty hereon who insists virtually every post or every other post or every 3rd or 5th post
TO DEMAND KOWTOWING SUBMISSIVE GROVELING COMPLIANCE
on the part of every Vatican Affiliate, Papal Submissive, with that PROTTY’S construction on reality.
We don’t bother. We are more interested in discussing those things that MIGHT HAVE A CHANCE of being fruitful—that might be possible to have a genuine dialogue about.
We recognize that we are extremely unlikely to change the theology of Vatican Affiliates/Papal Submissives.
We are still believing sufficiently in miracles to imagine that with some, at least, we just might have a fruitful, if not interesting . . . or interesting if not fruitful dialogue about those things we can engage one another about.
However, there’s about a dozen or so Vatican Affiliates/Papal Submissives hereon who are soooooooooo
IDENTIFIED, SO ABSOLUTELY THOROUGHLY
WITH THE INSTITUTION
that one wonders if they don’t have special shipments of Vatican plaster monthly to apply to their faces every morning with their makeup or shaving. It appears that they have no capacity to perceive themselves as the least bit different from the stones and mortor of the INSTITUTION.
How any of them imagine that any Protty could have the faintest hint of a useful dialogue with any of them
is beyond me.
I see that I’m the first addressee on your list; however your post is conveniently framed in third party reference.
So just for the record:
I do believe I was born after 1850; I don’t need to know why you chose that timeline.
I do not have an “idolatrous focus, addiction.....”
Any “failure to see...stark evidence of idolatrous attitude” is just the unsupportable claim of the one making the accusation.
Of course you’ll use “whatever strikes you as fitting at the time”. At least you are honest enough to call it labeling and allude to the fact that you are the one who is doing the labeling.
No one is “demanding that Prottys submit their vocabularies to heretical arrogance”. That’s a fabrication (to put it in polite words).
At the end, you refer to “Good Christians”
Is this post of yours evidence of “Good Christian” ways of communicating?
I think not.
I think it’s just blowing off steam.
I may not be the only one who thinks that.
Boy oh boy, you'd bloody well think so, wouldn't you?
Alas, 'tis not the case.
Seems to be one of those "fallen nature" things.
INDEED.
Fallen nature thing, indeed.
You nailed it yet again, Bro.
LUB
Is this post of yours evidence of “Good Christian” ways of communicating?
########
ABSOLUTELY.
It was certainly as full of
THE TRUTH IN LOVE
as I knew how to make it.
However, if folks were expecting the sort of love that only uses 12 inches of very soft foam and 3 layers of rabbit fur, it was not that type.
However, I did earnestly work to be as gentle as the content of truth would allow.
How often do you think I receive the results such an earnest from the dozen or so FIERCELY INSTITUTIONALIZED Vatican Affiliates/Papal Submissives hereon?
Those 'allegations', were in the form of a stage play, called, IIRC, "The Deputy" that was extremely negative toward the Catholic Church in general and Pope Pius XII in particular.
These Jewish scholars need only go to the archives of the New York Times, which published several editorials during WWII mentioning Pius XII as the ONLY European leader willing to speak out against the Nazis and for the Jews.
It's interesting that the type of Jews who are heading this smear of Pope Pius XII are the same ones who support abortion and homosexual marriage, and are trying to discredit the Church in order to remove her as an opponent of their causes. They started on Pope Benedict XVI the moment he was elevated, calling him God's Rottweiler and claiming that he willing joined the Hitler Youth as a young man.
Whether Pope Pius XII’s actions achieved the best possible result in the situation is impossible to tell at this point (or at any point after the fact). In my opinion, it’s a waste of time even to worry about it, certainly for today’s Jewish residents in Europe or Israel. If they think the late Pope has any influence over modern Moslems, why ... they’re recognizing him as a powerful intercessor, at the very least!
As I keep saying (somebody buy me a Land Shark and take me to Anguilla, that will shut me up), this has nothing to do with the question of his sanctity. The Church’s official definition of “saint” does not include, “always made the very best possible choice among alternative actions, as viewed in hindsight.” It doesn’t even mean the person didn’t sin: everyone sins. It simply means the person is now - whatever “now” means to God - in Heaven in the Lord’s presence, as verified by miracles through his intercession.
I’ll ask Venerable Pope Pius XII, and a few other late Popes, to pray for us!
It's between him and God now.
Certain people around here are just trying to use the issue to criticize the Catholic church.
This is anti-Catholic revisionist nonsense. This is part of a campaign by some in the Jewish community to wage war against Christianity and the papacy using the Pius XII controversy as cover. They could care less about historical accuracy or the 8th Commandment. Shameful bigots.
I’ve been clear enough in enough posts over these recent months
that such an assertion rings exceedingly doubtful, to me.
This link summarizes the actions by the leaders of the Presbyterian churches.
GOD ALMIGHTY
must have a huge laugh at the irony . . . to put it politely . . .
when Vatican Affiliates/Papal submissives
rant at me about being insulting.
LOL
Incredible.
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