Maurice, you said:
"...for example, the Pope quietly, or complicitly, stood by as the Jews were carted off to death in Nazi Europe."
Pope Pius XII quietly saved tens of thousands of Italian Jews from the Holocaust. The Chief Rabbi of Rome was so impressed and so grateful that he converted to Catholicism.
No, the Pope did not lead the Swiss guards in an assault on Auschwitz so that they, and the Vatican, would die along with the other innocents at the hands of Hitler, but he did the best he could under the circumstances, being completely surrounded by the armed forces of the Nazis. I'm afraid you are a victim of the flawed revisionist history that can't ever stop trying to find a scab on the Catholic Church to pick, despite the fact that our entire Western culture is owed to the Church. Yeah, it's an institution of humans, and therefore imperfect, but that's no reason to ignorantly malign a good man who did the best he could under imposssible circumstances. Read Ralph McInerny's "The Defamation of Pius XII" if you care to know the facts.
If you still think Pius did so badly, how would you have done better? Would your plan have saved tens of thousands of innocent lives, as Pius did, or would it merely have destroyed the Vatican and led to the senseless deaths of more tens of thousands of Catholics, in order to "make a statement". Sheesh!
BlaineK |
