This papal visit is a good time to reprieve Pius XII

Alan Jordan

I have just finished Richard Evans' excellent triology on the Third Reich. With a few honourable exeptions, it is clear that the Catholic Church fell far below its claim for moral superiority during the 1930s and the War. Indeed, many priests were actviely involved with anti-semitism, in some cases leading to murder. Even at the end of the War some figures in the Vatican helped war criminals to escape to South America. Whatever the role of Pius, the Catholic Church can hardly hold its head up with pride on this issue.

David Short

It is well-known that the Catholic Church helped leading Nazis at the end of the war.

They had a common and very deadly enemy in Soviet Communism.

John Thomas

Remember - Pius XII's "reputation" is determined, in the end by the Western mainstream media, who have "a visceral hatred of the Catholic Church". - Antisemitism, today (unlike in the 1930s) is a pursuit of left-wing "liberal", white, middle-class westerners, who are the stooges of Jihadism/Iran. - Very terrible though the Holacaust was (and those of Stalin, Mao, etc), today's mega-holacaust, abortion, is much, much, much bigger and supported by very powerful people, mainly white, in the West and elsewhere.

David Lindsay

Simon Caldwell effects the very long overdue entry of the facts of this matter into the mainstream media, although when this article is in the Guardian or the New Statesman then we really will be getting somewhere. They know where I am.

As someone once said, "Tell a lie big enough..." In fact, Pius XII was first ever called "Hitler's Pope" by none other than John Cornwell, in his 1999 book of that name, a thinly disguised liberal rant against John Paul II with the 'thesis' that the future Pius XII, while a diplomat in Germany, could have rallied Catholic opposition and toppled Hitler. Pure fantasy, like the origin of the whole "Pope supported Hitler" craze: the 1963 play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth, who was later successfully prosecuted for suggesting that Churchill had arranged the 1944 air crash that killed General Sikorsky.

Pius XII directly or indirectly saved between 8500 and 9600 Jews in Rome; 40,000 throughout Italy; 15,000 in the Netherlands; 65,000 in Belgium; 200,000 in France; 200,000 in Hungary; and 250,000 in Romania. This list is not exhaustive, and the Dutch figure would have been much higher had not the Dutch Bishops antagonised the Nazis by issuing the sort of public denunciation that Pius is castigated for failing to have issued.

After the War, Pius was godfather when the Chief Rabbi of Rome became a Catholic, and was declared a Righteous Gentile by the State of Israel, whose future Prime Minister (Moshe Sharrett) told him that it was his "duty to thank you, and through you the Catholic Church, for all they had done for the Jews." When Pius died in 1958, tributes to him from Jewish organisations had to be printed over three days by the New York Times, and even then limited to the names of individuals and their organisations.

All of this is contained in works of serious scholarship by Margherita Marchione, Ralph McInerny, Ronald J Rychlak, and others, most recently the superlative Rabbi Professor David G Dalin.

Colonel Claus Schenk, Count von Stauffenberg, recently given the full Tom Cruise treatment, was a devout Catholic, with close dynastic connections to the Bavarian Royal House of Wittelsbach (whom the Jacobites would have on the Thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland), to the family of Saint Philip Howard (martyred Earl of Arundel), and do on.

In Austria, Hitler had murdered the Chancellor, Englebert Dolfuss, who in fact defended, on the borders of Italy and Germany, Catholic Social Teaching and what remained of the thoroughly multiethnic Hapsburg imperial ethos (to this day, numerous German, Magyar and Slavic names are found throughout the former Austria-Hungary) against both the Communists and the Nazis.

Yes, he was authoritarian. But look at his neighbours, and look what he was up against domestically. Imagine if a Fascist putsch in the Irish Free State (and at least one was attempted) had coincided with very serious Communist and Fascist threats in Britain. The British Government of the day would have been authoritarian, too. And, while the emergency lasted, it would have been right. In the same tradition was Blessed Franz Jägerstätter. Google him, people. Google him.

Examples of Catholic anti-Nazism could be multiplied practically without end. The more Catholic an area was, the less likely it was to vote Nazi, without any exception whatever.

Oh, and the present Pope's Maths teacher sent him to get the Hitler Youth form, and then just kept it on file for him. "Thus was I able to escape it." In other words, he was never in it.

Jon Livesey

This is a sad effort that relies on some very convoluted logic. A Pope who should not be blamed for failing to condemn killers because they might have killed? A Pope who should be excused for lack of action because in private he "opposed"?

If these are the qualifications for the job, the what on Earth is a Pope for?

Oh, and isn't it a pity that Jews were not allowed to just "keep their Jewishness on file"? It would have saved a lot of fuss. No?

William Cobbett

There had to be something wrong: I had not realised that the Vatican as well as the Soviet bloc so closely followed the USA in establishing the Zionist tyranny based as ever on ethnic cleansing. Ilan Pappe in his book Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine shows how meticulously planned (as well as how more integral to Zionist ideology) ethnic cleansing was - far more intergral, and far more planned, than the Nazis' mass murder of Jews and others. The Nazis had no plan Dalet (see Pappe's book).
There's a good defense of Pius XII by a Louisiana prof which I will look up, forgotten for the time being. It's a response if I remember to the smear campaign by Daniel Goldhagen - a Goebbels without the physical courage, if there ever was one. "Israel's Pope" would have been an accessory before the fact to the dreadful Zionist campaign against the Palestinians, a campaign that has already lasted more than seven times the length of the 3rd Reich. Objectively the Nazis and the Zionists were and are allies, and subjectively too in their hatred of diaspora and assimilationist Jewish culture.

Gil

Alan Jordan, David Short & Jon Livesey: Excelllent posts.

Perhaps Simon Caldwell could have moderated his sneering tone in the first paragraph. It sets the scene for the rest of his piece. Also, A tiny factual error: The pope did not condemn antisemtism at Yad Vashem but on his arrival in Israel.

At Yad Vashem the pope's speech fell short of what many had yearned for the pope to say. Here is the quote from the Yad Vashem website, and I refer in the main to paragraph 2:

"The Pope’s remarks in the Hall of Remembrance contained positive fundamental elements that are noteworthy. For example, the importance of remembering the victims of the Holocaust and their identities, which are embodied by their names, and his reference to the illegitimacy of Holocaust denial: “May the names of these victims never perish! May their suffering never be denied, belittled, or forgotten!” The Pope also expressed respect and compassion to the victims when he said, “The Catholic Church, committed to the teachings of Jesus and intent on imitating his love for all people, feels deep compassion for the victims remembered here…I am deeply grateful to God and to you for the opportunity to stand here in silence: a silence to remember, a silence to pray, a silence to hope.”

The Pope’s remarks were, however, missing elements that Yad Vashem had anticipated hearing, such as a reference to antisemitism - the very antisemitism that was the essential underpinning of the Holocaust, antisemitism that still exists, in recent years cloaked in different and new guises. Similarly, the identity of the murderers - the German Nazis - was not addressed. This is important not as an indication of guilt, but rather of responsibility, especially in light of the fact that the Pope is German born, and grew up in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust years. Yad Vashem regrets the use of the term “killed” and not “murdered” in relating to the Jewish victims, since this does not express the great extent of the crime that was committed. While these omissions left some sense of missed opportunity at the conclusion of his address, the visit as a whole was clearly a significant and welcome event."

Note that even Simon Caldwell uses the word 'killed' not 'murdered'.

John Thomas@10:47: your comment about the provenance of modern antisemitism is simply ludicrous and you clearly don't follow events in the world.

David Lindsay: The state of Israel has not declared the pope a 'righteous gentile', do go back and check your facts. in any case, it is Yad Vashem that has the authority to do so.

Gil

It didn't take long for someone with a visceral hatred of the Jewish State to come out.

William Cobbett: The USA did not establish Israel. The United Nations passed a resolution on Nov 29, 1947 calling for the partition of Palestine. The Arabs rejected the resolution and attacked the Jews. These are the facts whether you like them or not.

And, old chap, this is what happened after the vote:

'On the day after the vote, a spate of Arab attacks left seven Jews dead and scores more wounded. Shooting, stoning, and rioting continued apace in the following days. The consulates of Poland and Sweden, both of whose governments had voted for partition, were attacked. Bombs were thrown into cafes, Molotov cocktails were hurled at shops, a synagogue was set on fire...' (Wikipedia).

Also, your attempt to lump together a defence of Pius (which may be justified on its own merits) together with an attack on Israel, speaks volumes.

Ilan Pape is one view. There are many others who see it as a defensive plan in the face of a war in which the Jews were outnumbered. Many Jews were murdered or killed in battle by Arab forces as well, you know. Do try and keep up, old chap.

David K

"The Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide estimated that the Church under Pius saved up to 850,000 Jews from death — and he based his assessment on Yad Vashem’s own records. "

What part of that simple statement do Alan Jordan, John Livesay and Gil not understand? What other Church had thousands of priests imprisoned in Dachau? The simple fact is that the Catholic Church saved more Jews from the Nazis than any other organisation. More than Britain, more than the Soviet Union, more than the USA, more than the pathetic Red Cross who reported that all was well in the camps right up to the end of the war.

But we are expected to believe that a church, with no armies, no weapons and no territory to speak of, was supposed to do what the combined armies of the Allies could not. Preposterous!

Could more have been done? Probably. But what _was_ done on continental Europe was largely done by the Pope and men like him - more interested in results than glory. The opinions of armchair generals like Alan, John and Gil don't count.

Anti-Catholicism, like anti-semitism, is an intellectual disease that eventually destroys the capacity for rational thought and moral seriousness. It certainly has done for these gentlemen.

Of course, they may disagree. if so, they can no doubt list for us the many organisations and groups who did more - in reality, not just in words.

Russ Brown

It was the sincere belief by many great men over the ages, including Sir Isaac Newton, that the prophecy of Revelation chapter 17 condemns the political harlotry and astonishing riches of the insitution that is the Vatican and the office of the papacy.

Yet this knowledge seems to be forgotten by this generation?