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
|
|
by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, Part II
The book, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, by Rabbi David G. Dalin, raised too many issues to deal with in one article and so the material was divided into two articles. The last article dealt with the charges that Pius XII hated Jews, remained silent while Jews were being killed, and failed to excommunicate the Nazis. This second article will deal with some other charges mentioned in the book.
Pius XII was accused of being a closet Nazi Sympathizer and Hitler enabler
One anti-Pius XII book written by John Cornwell charges that without Pius XII Hitler might never have been able to press forward with the Holocaust. Before the accession of Hitler Pius XII supposedly had been a devoted follower and supporter of Hitler whereas the historical record above shows that he was one of Hitler’s earliest and consistent critics and utterly despised Nazism. Cornwell hysterically charges that Pius XII was not only responsible for the rise of Hitler but also the cause of World War II. William D. Rubenstein, an authority on the Holocaust, called Cornwell’s book “a malign exercise in defamation and character assassination.”
The Vatican signed a Concordat with Nazi Germany thus approving Nazism
Some charge that the concordat silenced Catholics who might have been opposed to the Nazis and made them unable to speak out. It was signed in 1933 before Hitler began his anti-Semitic campaign. It was not an alliance with the Nazis but a defensive document that, had it been observed by the Nazis, would have guaranteed certain rights to the Church. It enabled the Church to protest violations, which came soon enough, by appealing to the concordat. Dalin writes: “No one accuses Neville Chamberlain of being ‘Hitler’s prime minister’ because of the Munich Agreement and no one can fairly call Eugenio Pacelli ‘Hitler’s pope’ for trying to secure the rights of Catholics against a dangerous regime that he despised.”
Pius XII is accused of personally doing nothing for Jews although individual church members helped them
For every Jewish detractor of Pius XII there is a Jewish defender. These include Pinchas Lapide who argued that Pius XII saved at least 700,000 and as many as 860,000 Jews from Nazi destruction. Jeno Levai, deputy chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg, leapt to Pius XII’s defense against the charge that he remained silent during Hitler’s persecution. He showed that in Hungary “on the instructions of the pope” the papal nuncio and bishops repeatedly intervened on behalf of Jews and that there was practically no Catholic institution in Hungary where Jews did not find refuge. Many cardinals including two future popes (Pope Paul VI and John XXIII) rescued and sheltered Jews and all said that they acted on direct orders of Pius XII. Cardinal Palazzini hid some Jews and as he was honored by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial, he declared that he was ordered by Pius XII to do whatever he could to save the Jews. Others so honored including Tibor Baranski and the heroic Father Pierre-Marie Benoit stated that they acted at the pope’s behest and with his financial support. Dr. Joseph Lichten, diplomat and legal scholar, stated that Pius XII’s direct interventions by six official protests and numerous oral interventions were responsible for saving approximately 20,000 Slovak Jews. While the US, Great Britain, and other countries refused to allow Jewish refugees to immigrate during the war, the Vatican issued tens of thousands of false documents to allow Jews to pass as Christians so that they could escape the Nazis. It is curious that while Roosevelt and others turned their backs on Jews they are not vilified but someone who saved nearly a million of them is.
Pius XII is accused of ignoring the plight of Jews being rounded up by the Nazis under his own window
Michael Tagliocozzo, a survivor of the Holocaust, stated that Pius XII’s activities saved 80% of the Roman Jews from execution. Sir Martin Gilbert declared, “The pope himself…gave his personal order on the eve of the German deportation of the Jews from Rome to open the sanctuaries of Vatican City to all Jews who could reach it…. As a result of the pope’s order…, of Rome’s 6,800 Jews, only 1,015 were actually deported.” While 80% of Jews in Europe were killed in Italy through the pope’s intervention 80% were saved. Pius XII instructed churches and convents to hide Jews. In Rome 155 convents and monasteries housed 5,000 Jews. At least 3,000 were hidden in the pope’s summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. It is absurd to think that this could happen without his knowledge and involvement. Jewish children were born in the pope’s private quarters which were converted into an obstetric ward. Sixty Jews lived in the Gregorian University and 477 were sheltered in the Vatican and its enclaves while another 4,238 found refuge in numerous monasteries and convents in Rome. Pius XII gave financial aid to Jews that Joseph L. Lichten, Pinchas Lapide and others said amounted to millions of dollars.
Motives for Vilification of Pius XII
Another critic of the pope, Gary Wills, condemns the entire papacy, the teachings on priestly celibacy, contraception, abortion, ordination of women, papal infallibility, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, apostolic succession, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, and the Magisterium itself. It would be easy to find some Protestant denomination that agrees with him on these points and one wonders why he still remains a Catholic. It is ironic that writers who condemn the pope for not doing enough to stop Hitler’s Final Solution have no qualms about supporting the final solution of unborn humans by abortion.
What Pius XII’s Jewish Contemporaries thought of him
Rabbi Shmuely Boteach charges Pius XII with “moral cowardice” for “having never once summoned the courage to condemn the Nazi Holocaust.” Here is what Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel, wrote at the death of Pius XII: “We share in the grief of humanity. When fearful martyrdom came to our people during the time of the Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for the victims.”
At the close of the war Rome’s chief rabbi, Emilio Zolli, inspired by the steadfast commitment of the pope, converted to Catholicism and took the name Eugenio in admiration of the pontiff. Zolli write: “No hero in all history was more militant, more fought against, none more heroic than Pius XII in pursuing the work of true charity, and this on behalf of all the suffering children of God.”
At the end of World War II and for decades thereafter Pius XII was universally acclaimed by Jewish leaders. These included Albert Einstein; Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president; Israeli prime minister Moshe Sharett; Rabbi Isaac Herzog, chief Rabbi of Israel; Dr. Alexander Safran, chief Rabbi of Romania. No other Gentile had ever been so universally praised by Jews as Pius XII for his efforts in defense of Jews during World War II. The Israeli Philharmonic was flown May 26, 1955 to Rome to play Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony for Pius XII as a token of gratitude for all that he had done for the Jews. It is hard to believe that these clever people and Jewish leaders were duped by Pius XII.
The Israelis have a custom of planting a tree in honor of “righteous Gentiles” who assisted Jews during the Holocaust. Pope Pius XII should have a forest in Israel named after him.
(Printed November, 2005)
St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
