What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
|
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, Part I
David G. Dalin has written a book entitled The Myth of Hitler’s Pope. The book is a devastating debunking of the current liberal myth that Pius XII was not only callous about the plight of Jews but was even a Nazi sympathizer and collaborator. The importance of this book in my eyes demands that it be given more space than is allowed in the Lighthouse for this article and so I will write two articles about it. This is the first. The second will appear next month.
The origin of these outrageous charges against Pius XII seems to be a seven-hour 1963 play by Rolf Hochhuth, a Protestant and a member of the Hitler Youth, called The Deputy. The play generated a great deal of controversy which subsided for a while, but recently there has been a flare-up in the form of books condemning Pius XII. Two of these were written by ex-seminarians and one by an ex-priest leaving one with a suspicion that they were unhappy, disaffected Catholics. Certainly they were replete with changes that in their eyes needed to be made in Church doctrine and structure.
The antipapal books have been touted and praised by the mainstream media such as the New York Times. Other books offer ringing endorsements of Pius XII, which have been ignored by the mainstream media with the result that books slandering the late pope are given the sheen of mainstream scholarship while the others are deemed to be mere minority Catholic pleading. Dalin’s book is important because it is written by a Jewish rabbi and a historical scholar.
Pius XII was a Jew hater:
If anyone wants to elicit a groan from Jews just use the expression: “Some of my best friends are Jews.” However in the case of Pius XII it was true. He maintained lifelong friendships with Jewish classmates. He was close friends with Bruno Walter, distinguished conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic and also with composer Gustav Mahler. Both of them converted to Catholicism no doubt in part under the influence of Pius XII. When Mussolini passed laws forbidding Jews to study or teach in any Italian school or university Pius XII appointed several displaced Jewish scholars to positions in the Vatican Library.
Pius XII was silent while Jews were Killed
During Pius XII’s lifetime no one accused him of being silent and of permitting the Final Solution to become the disaster that it became. Pius XII was a persistent, vocal critic of Hitler and Nazism. Of forty-four speeches given in Nazi Germany forty of them criticized some aspect of Nazi ideology. Sir Martin Gilbert, distinguished writer and historian, documents how Pius XII was the first to make public condemnation of Nazi atrocities via Vatican Radio. He wrote, “Hundreds of thousands of Jews [were] saved by the Catholic Church under the leadership and with the support of Pius XII.” In a broadcast of January 19, 1940 Pius denounced over Vatican Radio the “uncivilized tyranny” the Nazis were inflicting on Jewish and Catholic Poles. His speech was noted by the Jewish Advocate of Boston. The New York Times editorialized: “Now the Vatican has spoken with authority that cannot be questioned, and has confirmed the worst intimations of terror which have come out of the Polish darkness.” The Manchester Guardian called the pope “tortured Poland’s most powerful advocate.”
Pius XII drafted the encyclical of Pius XI Mit brennender Sorge that presented a harsh condemnation of Germany. It expressly rejected Nazism and expressly mentioned Jews—something critics seem to miss. On October 28, 1939 the New York Times greeted the encyclical with a front-page headline: “Pope Condemns Dictators, Treaty Violators, Racism.” Allied aircraft dropped 88,000 copies of the encyclical over parts of Germany. The New York Times recognized Pius XII’s first encyclical in 1939, Summi Pontificatus, as a condemnation of dictators, treaty violators, and racism. German propaganda minister, Goebbels, issued 10 million pamphlets labeling Pius as a “pro-Jewish pope.” In March, 1940 German Ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop visited the pope and chastised by him for siding with the Allies. In response the pope read to him a long list of atrocities committed by the Nazis against Germans and Poles. The New York Times reported that the pope’s burning words “came to the defense of Jews in Germany and Poland.”
In his 1940 Easter homily the pope condemned Nazi bombing of defenseless citizens. On May 11, 1940 he condemned the Nazi invasion of Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. The pope’s Christmas addresses of 1941 and 1942 contained the same themes. Some critics said his words were not forceful enough. The New York Times wrote, “The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas…. (T)he pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism.” In June 1942 he spoke out against the deportation of Jews from France. The Nazis characterized his speeches as “one long attack on everything we stand for.”
In response to a Christmas message by Pius XII an internal German analysis notes, “(he) makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.” He protested to the Vichy government about the inhuman arrests and deportations of Jews from the French-occupied zone to Silesia and parts of Russia. A New York Times headline of August 6, 1942 witnessed to the pope’s condemnations: “Vichy Seizes Jews: Pope Pius Ignored.”
October 1, 1942 the London Times praised Pius for his condemnation of Nazism and his support for the Jews.
In view of the witness of secular and Jewish sources that Pius XII was anything but silent in the face of Jewish persecution by the Nazis one can only conclude that the calumnious charge is totally lacking in historical evidence and is nothing more than a dishonest attempt to smear Pope Pius XII.
Pius XII did not excommunicate Nazis
Among the charges against Pius XII, this one is true. It would have been a symbolic gesture and would have led to more persecution. Hitler was a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Catholic before he came to power. This criticism comes from people who have little use for papal pronouncements. How many nations are changing policies on abortion, contraception, and homosexual marriage because the pope condemns them? Popes have excommunicated heads of state with little change in policy. The need to refrain from provocative public statements was fully recognized by Jewish and other agencies such as the International Red Cross in wartime Europe for fear that even more Jews would be massacred. That was true in Holland where the bishops made the loudest protests. 110,000 or 79% of the Jews were deported to death camps. Jewish leaders and Catholic bishops in Nazi-occupied countries advised the pope not to incite the Nazis to further violence. Critics respond that in spite of the Church’s reluctance to incite Nazis six million Jews were slaughtered and ask, “What could excommunication have done that was worse than that?” The answer is, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands more.
In the next Faith Point article I will consider the charges that Pius XII was a Nazi sympathizer and Hitler enabler, that the Vatican entered into an alliance with Hitler in the concordat it signed with the Nazis, that Pius XII personally did nothing for the Jews although individual Catholics helped them, and that the pope did nothing about the deportation of Jews “under his own window.”
(Printed October, 2005)
St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
