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The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII

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"The Pius War will likely remain the definitive answer to the slew of malicious and misleading books that have in recent decades assailed Pius XII for his "silence," or worse, during the period of Hitler and the Holocaust. Turning the tables, Rabbi Dalin makes a persuasive case that Pius should be honored as a "righteous gentile" in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Of inestimable value, and the product of years of laborious effort, is an annotated bibliography by William Doino, Jr. It is almost two hundred pages in length and will become an indispensable reference for all responsible writers on Pius XII, the Holy See, and the Hitler era. The Pius War includes a brilliant critique of John Carroll's Constantine's Sword by Robert Louis Wilken. The attack on Pius, Wilken notes, is about ever so much more than Pius: "At the end of the day, in spite of the enormous effort to lay bare the sins of the Church over two millennia, Constantine's Sword is not really a book about Christian theology of the Jews. Its subject is Christian theology tout court, and its polemic springs from the currently fashionable `ideology of religious pluralism'-what might be termed horror at strong opinions. Carroll wants a Christianity that celebrates a `Jesus whose saving act is only one disclosure of the divine love available to all,' and calls for a pluralism of `belief and worship, of religion and no religion, that honors God by defining God as beyond every human effort to express God.' What we have, then, is a rather conventional cultural critique of Christianity. The Jews are the victims par excellence of the excesses of revealed religion. But what Carroll forgets is that the Jews, too, believe in revelation. If Christians, on the basis of Scriptures and the Christian tradition, cannot confess Jesus as Lord, can the Jews, on the basis of Scriptures and Jewish tradition, claim that they are the elect people of God? In Carroll's brave new world there will be neither Jews nor Christians." On the specifics of what Pius did or did not do, could or could not do, during the Holocaust, and also on the larger theological questions addressed by Wilken and others, The Pius War will likely be an important resource in advancing the cause of Pius XII toward his canonization." -- First Things

1. The Many Good Deeds of the Catholic Church

Initially it is important that discussion of Pope Pius not turn into an unwarranted attack on the Catholic Church. During the last half century, the Church has done a tremendous amount of good. If others considered the goal of feeding the hungry and clothing the poor a platitude, the Church helped. Many Catholic Churches have food kitchens on premises and organized campaigns for helping the poor, with Catholic Relief Services coordinating campaigns throughout the world. The Church was a forceful opponent of slavery in the United States at a time when others accepted it. One must separate discussion of Pius during the Holocaust from the Church itself. The historian can analyze individual responsibility without over-generalization, assigning culpability to Pius while noting Pope John Pau lI's heroism and involvement in the underground fighting Nazis. It may well be that attacks on the church have been excessive and unwarranted, but they choose something other than a moral catastrophe in which many Catholics participated to make their claim.

2. Overview

The case against Pius though looks compelling. He signed an agreement with the Nazi party which he never repudiated, oversaw the German Catholic Church as attacks on Jews turned from vandalism, harassment, loss of jobs to mprisonment, starvation, medical experiment, and extermination of men, women, and children like Anne Frank. His comments were vague and ineffective, and his regime saw the involvement of German Catholics (along with Lutherans) in the most horrible acts known to man. German Catholics along with Lutherans and other Christians arranged the burning of temples, the destruction of Jewish business, and the arrest of women and children --- as a start. They went on to arrange for the organization of extermination camps, and the developement of a modern, orderly system of death. As one German might have said- they talk about Ben Ladin and the 3,000 people killed on 9/11, we killed that number in one week. We pushed the Jews in, starved them, and then killed them, one week, I helped kill 3,431 and was chastized for being slow. For the average German Catholic, it was church on Sunday, during the week help capture Jewish children and women and others, put them in concentration camps, and arrange for their orderly extermination. Auchwitz bore a cross and had Christmas celebrations, along with its instruments of murder. So let's look at Pius's defense.

3. Failure to Help His Own Catholics

It is important to remember that many killed for being Jews were not Jews at all. Some had converted, had their children baptized, and took communion. Some like Edyth Stein would even become Saints in the Catholic Church. Pius let his own people down, allowing Hitler to determine who was Catholic (having coordinated authority under the Lateran accord). What would have happened had he said, these people you call Jews are members of our church, they are our brothers and sisters, if you hurt them you must hurt us, if you kill them, kill us. The chasm and chaos, and moral questions would have saved thousands, probably millions. Instead, most Catholics said about the new Catholics/ formerly Jews, take them, put them away, do what you want. While some helped most did not.

4. The Failure to examine the Horrors of Nazi Germany

While supporters talk of how well-docuumented the book is, in fact, it choose to ignore most of the horrors of the Nazi state. Rather than being a detailed and even-handed analysis, he attempts to scrape together vague pronouncements while ignoring his failure to speak out clearly and forcefully against the horrors of Nazism. The vague the better seemed to be the watchword, what she called prudence allowed Germans to remain Nazis and members of the Church. Where were the ex-communications for mass murder.

5. The First Argument- the Pope has No Power or Authority, and German Catholics Would not Have Listened to Him.

Pius XII's critics insist that if he had confronted Hitler directly - publicly excommunicating him and all who supported him - that German Catholics might have risen up in revolt. Rather than live in courage fighting in justice, their lives were consumed with the horrors of following the Nazi state with many to die anyway.

The Pope had millions of loyal Catholics who listened to him. One Papal visit to a city would bring not hundreds or even thousands, but hundreds of thousands of loyal followers. Christians followed his teaching regarding not only religious worship, but the most personal things in their lives, whether to remain married, engage in contraception, and how to raise their children. The idea that these Catholics would have ignored the Pope had he spoke forcefully is absurd. Instead, the widespread ignominy of starvation, murder, medical experiments- horrors vastly exceeding any Pagan country, only occurred because of the Pope's perceived submission to Nazi policies. How Pius visited but one synagogue or publicly embraced one Rabbi, the depth and scope of this tragedy would have been reduced.

The Pope might not have toppled Hitler but if he spoke out if he could have mitigated many of the horrors; German Catholics did not divorce or abort in part because of Church condemnation, they did kill Jews and then others because they saw no inconsistency between Nazi doctrine and the Church, particularly after their Pope had signed an agreement with the Nazi government. Does anyone think Nazis could have attacked Catholics the same way they did Jews. Well, fellow Nazis, you've done a good job at destroying Jews and burning their businesses but today we have a change. Horst, I need you to go down and burn the church your family belongs to, Helmut, go to the church down the road and break the statutes of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and Dieter, get a group together to beat up and rape the nuns at the convent down the road.

6. Nazis and Christians saw no Inconsistency Between Christian Teachings, and Nazi teachings partly because of the Silence and Acquisesnce of German Religious Leaders

Today Christians today rightly condemn Nazi ideas as barbaric and contrary to Jesus's teachings of love, forgiveness, and morality. The central concept of forgiveness was obviously ignored in Nazi ideology, and the doctrine of Pope John Paul II that Jews do not live in perpetual infamy because of their sins had not seen its day. Constantine's vision of a Christian state seems similar to the Nazi ideal of a Juden-free society, an earlier Pope had suggested the armband to identify and segregate Jews, Jesus himself became so angry at Jewish moneylenders that he turned over their tables, and Jews were believed to have betrayed for monetary gain the same way Judas betrayed Jesus. Instead, many saw little inconsistency between Nazi and Christian thought, and most Christians in this Christian country became enthusiastic supporters. From 1933-1940, the worse the state treated the Jews the better everyone else's lives became. Only in the next 5 years, would these Nazis suffer a comparable fate, as German soldiers would freeze in Russia, German women in 1945 would be raped and murdered, and German children as young as 10 would be asked to fight and die in a war that was clearly over.

Leaders like John PaulII clarified Christian thoughs making it clear that punishing Jews is not Christian; Pius's failure to speak out clearly allowed the myth that one could be a Nazi Catholic to prevail under the end of the war, when even Christians reflected on the horrors, saw the naken starved bodies piled up in Auschwitz and realized what horrors had been committed at the concentration camps where Christsmas had been celebrated. By not striking a moral path and hiding any support for the Jews, Pius failed not only those who could have been saved but his German Catholic followers themselves who once they became used to tormenting and then murdering Jews, went on to kill others, and then sent 10 and 12 years old boys to the war front.

One critic writes, "Did Pope Pius XII help the Jews? Indeed he did. Nor can one claim he was silent. Rather one must speak of his "prudence." That vagueness and equivocation couched as prudence allowed German Catholic to participate in the holocaust and they did. The murder of 1,000,000 Jews in Poland, a country that was 90% Catholic, could not have occurred with the active opposition of the Church. He knew how to speak clearly; no Catholic could fail to know of his Church's opposition to abortion or divorce; but equivocation and vagueness could be construed as permission for those who sought ways to avoid confronting a brutal regime.

7. Modest Help for Italian Jews Cannot be Disputed

Did he help Italian Jews; undoubtedly so, and that dispells the notion that he was anti-semitic. But the many more who died much be laid at his legacy as his followers committed the most horrible acts known to man. The case of him as an atni-semite is weak and based upon a few supposed statement, that his followers committed horrible crimes is an indictment far more difficult to rebut.

8. As we Should Recognize the Heroic Acts of Many Catholics and those charity of so many in the Catholic Church, we cannot give Pius a Pass for doing too little too late.

Would those who opposed Hitler have suffered-undoubtedly so. But it is the role of a religious leader to suggest submission to horrible acts to save one's skin- do you turn your head to a brutal beating because you are worried about the consequences. What about morality. Many would surely have ignored church statements but others would have followed.

Ultimately the scope of suffering and death means we cannot excuse Pius's vagueness and equivocation. Some say Hitler or the government might have been angered if someone said not to exterminate Jews. Whether angry or not, the scope of death and depravity could not have been worse, and a religious leaders could have prompted more to look to their consciences.

It is rare in intellectual history that you get such an uruborotically symmetrical insight as Mr. Bottum's serpentine one that "anachronism is the only available tool for anti-Catholicism." He mentioned it about Pius XII but it comes around to bite his own bizarrely unconscious anti-Catholic sentiments in the whole idea of his new book, The Catholic Awakening. In the past one of the tropes of anti-Catholicism was that they wanted to secretly control all of culture. Of course, to any reasonable person the trope of any group secretly wanting to control everything is, to the smart person, instantly identifiable as a sham. And Catholics were certainly eager to point this out in the past. But enter the new breed of Catholic "intellectual" like Mr. Bottum, who have been raised on the mother's milk of historical fantasy and propaganda. And now he has forgotten his own words about "anachronism" and is going to publish his little manifesto about how with the "collapse" of Protestantism, which I have not really heard about, Catholics and Evangelicals are ready to take over as a "national church". And the pliability of Evangelicals to fold into Catholic understandings is a teensy problem, especially since many believe that Catholics are not going to be raptured anyways. But left as they say to keep to their "grape juice and crackers" in post- rapture nastiness. Therefore, frankly, that anyone could hold themselves out as offering anything in the intellectual realm of the United States and speak of a "national church" defies understanding. Even on purely religious terms. But only a pure shill could not see how the serpent has eaten his tail here, and now the tropes of Catholicism's ambitions, often conceived by anti-Catholics themselves are now turned on their head by this apparently very silly mind. Truth is stranger than fiction. And Mr Bottum's whole intellectual trajectory, as reflected in his forthcoming effort is apparently much stranger than fiction. That it is also ridiculous in light of current trends is almost a side issue.

One last matter is the guy's historical ignorance too. He avers that Pius XII was probably the most institutionally efficient and effective Pope ever. Could he remotely hold a candle to Innocent III?? But medieval history is good for this type of hack only for color, not close comparison.