Nope. The church wouldn't cover up anything. (cough, cough)
I like this section from canon 3 of the fourth lateran council
If he refuses to make satisfaction within a year, let the matter be made known to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare the ruler's vassals absolved from their allegiance and may offer the territory to be ruled lay Catholics, who on the extermination of the heretics may possess it without hindrance and preserve it in the purity of faith; the right, however, of the chief ruler is to be respected as long as he offers no obstacle in this matter and permits freedom of action. The same law is to be observed in regard to those who have no chief rulers (that is, are independent). Catholics who have girded themselves with the cross for the extermination of the heretics, shall enjoy the indulgences and privileges granted to those who go in defense of the Holy Land. (found in canon 3)
Then there this from the same link as above:
[Note by Schroeder: In 581 the Synod of Macon enacted in canon 14 that from Thursday in Holy Week until Easter Sunday, .Jews may not in accordance with a decision of King Childebert appear in the streets and in public places. Mansi, IX, 934; Hefele-Leclercq, 111, 204. In 1227 the Synod of Narbonne in canon 3 ruled: "That Jews may be distinguished from others, we decree and emphatically command that in the center of the breast (of their garments) they shall wear an oval badge, the measure of one finger in width and one half a palm in height. We forbid them moreover, to work publicly on Sundays and on festivals. And lest they scandalize Christians or be scandalized by Christians, we wish and ordain that during Holy Week they shall not leave their houses at all except in case of urgent necessity, and the prelates shall during that week especially have them guarded from vexation by the Christians." Mansi, XXIII, 22; Hefele-Leclercq V 1453. Many decrees similar to these in content were issued by synods before and after this Lateran Council. Hefele-Leclercq, V and VI; Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIlIth Century, Philadelphia, 1933.]
Sooooo, the Nazi's got their ideas from the RCC!!!! Which might help explain these pics.
There are other things the Nazis seem to have borrowed from the RCC, but they can wait for another post.
"French Catholic Church Apologizes for Silence on Holocaust," New York Times, October 1, 1997
excerpts:
DRANCY, France -- The Roman Catholic Church in France apologized to the Jewish people Tuesday for its silence in the face of French collaboration with the Holocaust.The apology by France's bishops, pronounced in this Paris suburb whose name is synonymous with the deportation of tens of thousands of French Jews to Nazi death camps, amounted to an extraordinary admission of responsibility in a country that has long struggled to come to terms with the acts of the World War II Vichy government.
In a country that until two years ago had never made an unequivocal official admission of the French state's responsibility in sending Jews to their deaths, and long tried to construct a semantic distinction between Vichy and France itself, the language used Tuesday was remarkable.
Denouncing a deep-rooted anti-Semitism, excessive conformity, prudence and indifference in the ranks of the church during the war, the archbishop said the bishops of France had acquiesced through their silence to "a murderous process" that should have been met immediately by protest and protection of the Jews. "Silence was the rule, and words in favor of the victims the exception," he said.
The archbishop also condemned the history and influence "of age-old anti-Judaism" in the Catholic Church -- what he called "the constantly repeated anti-Jewish stereotypes." His words appeared designed on the eve of the Jewish New Year on Thursday to lay the basis for a new and deepened understanding between Christians and the 650,000 Jews in France.
Although Pope John Paul II urged Catholics in 1994 to repent for failing in their moral duty to protest the treatment of Jews, and the bishops of Germany and Poland have apologized for their wartime failings, the declaration read Tuesday appeared to amount to an expression of remorse more complete, uncompromising and anguished than anything previously pronounced by the church.
Tuesday's statement came just before the 57th anniversary of the promulgation on Oct. 3, 1940, of the first of more than 160 anti-Semitic laws and decrees passed by the Vichy regime that progressively excluded Jews from French public life and opened the way for sending about one-quarter of France's Jewish population to their deaths.
Several hundred people -- including Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris, who was born Jewish and converted to Catholicism, and the chief rabbi of France, Joseph Sitruk -- stood and listened in a small square between a railroad freight car and a monument commemorating the 76,000 Jews deported from the Drancy internment camp, most of them to Auschwitz. Drancy was indeed, as the monument records, "the antechamber of the death camps."
After the roundup of Jews by the French police in Paris on July 16, 1942, several leading French churchmen did speak out indignantly against the Vichy regime. Among them was Archbishop Jean-Geraud Saliege of Toulouse, who declared on Aug. 30, 1942 that "the Jews are our brothers, like so many others, and no Christian can forget this fact."
On the other hand, some churchmen, including Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, the rector of the Catholic Institute in Paris, were outspoken supporters of the Vichy government and the Nazis. Baudrillart called Hitler's mission a noble and inspiring one.
But it is clear that in France at least, and apparently also in the Vatican, the heroism of some is no longer regarded as a pretext to hide the failings of others.
"Conscience is formed by memory," the archbishop said Tuesday, "and no society can live in peace with itself on the basis of a false or repressed past, any more than an individual can."
"The attitude of the French church was compassionate toward those who were persecuted, including the Jews," Le Pen said.
In the case of the French church, Pope John Paul's encouragement to his followers to prepare for the new millennium by confronting past mistakes has clearly contributed to the frankness displayed Tuesday.
The archbishop Tuesday quoted the pope's words in a 1994 encyclical: "To recognize the stumblings of yesterday is an act of loyalty and courage that helps us reinforce our faith."
Serge Klarsfeld, the president of the Association of Sons and Daughters of Deported French Jews, said he believed that the French statement would "put pressure on the Vatican so that it, too, finally completes and makes public its declaration on the Holocaust."