I've posted evidentiary links since you made this post. The evidence that Pius XII was in collusion with the Nazis for his own power-reasons is great.
Do you really think the Church behaved well during the Holocaust? As well as the Inquisitors?
Here's a review of one book. The review is in a Lutheran Church paper. I posted another link to a different review of this book:
Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII
John Cornwell
Viking, 1999
$29.95
Anyone with a hankering for the good old days, when black was black and white was
white and people respected authority, ought to read this book. It tells a chilling tale
about a pope’s drive to achieve absolute control of the Church and the kinds of
deals he is willing to strike in order to achieve that end.
As co-author of the Code of Canon Law, in 1917, Eugenio Pacelli had a hand in
developing the modern theoretical foundation of papal control of the Church. The
appearance of this document, exactly 400 years following Luther’s posting of his 95
Theses, describes lines of authority, lays down rules, and prescribes penalties.
Sharing Pius X’s anti-Modernist stance, Pacelli believed that the Roman Catholic
Church could survive in the modern world only by strengthening papal authority and
imposing world-wide uniformity.
As the Vatican’s secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli was the chief actor in
implementing the expansion of papal control. By undermining the grass-roots power
of the German Catholic Church, he, more than any other person, paved the way for
Hitler’s accession. In order to gain Vatican authority to appoint German bishops,
Pacelli dismantled the Catholic Center Party, a significant block who might have
stayed Hitler’s hand. During the period of Hitler’s ascendancy, the Roman Catholic
Church was the most influential institution in Germany. And while the German
bishops, clergy and lay people appeared willing to challenge National Socialism,
Pacelli, fearing the expansion of communism and seeing an opportunity to use Hitler
to increase Rome’s control of the German church, adopted a conciliatory posture
toward the Fuhrer.
The 1929 Lateran Treaty, negotiated with Mussolini, declared Roman Catholicism to
be the sole recognized religion in Italy. In turn, the Vatican disbanded the Catholic
Popular Party and instructed priests to withdraw from political activity. This
resulted in a vacuum that was filled by the Fascists. Priests were encouraged to
support Fascism, and Pope Pius XI spoke of Mussolini as "a man sent by Providence."
In a 1932 essay on the Lateran Treaty, Ludwig Kaas, Pacelli’s mouthpiece in
Germany, declared that the moment called for a movement away from democratic
principles toward an authoritarian church and state.
The Reich Concordat of 1933, agreed to by Pacelli and Hitler, was another quid pro
quo agreement in which each man received something of what he wanted. The Roman
Catholic Church received the German state’s permission to govern its internal
affairs on its own terms; and Hitler obtained the disestablishment of the Catholic
Center Party (the Roman Catholic political party in Germany), the withdrawal of the
Roman Catholic Church from political activity, and ostensible moral sanction of his
program. As Cornwell puts it, the great church agreed to "confine itself to the
sacristy." In a letter to the Nazi party, following the concordat, Hitler wrote: "The
fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the
acknowledgment of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty
shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National
Socialism is hostile to religion is a lie." And in a meeting with his cabinet, the Fuhrer
said: "An opportunity has been given to Germany in the Reich Concordat, and a
sphere of confidence has been created that will be especially significant in the
urgent struggle against international Jewry."
Although Pius XI made attempts to publicly condemn the Nazi persecution of the
Jews in the late 1930s, Pacelli, in his powerful position as the Vatican secretary of
state, consistently undermined him.
Grass-roots Roman Catholic protest against Nazi policies, especially the removal of
crucifixes from schools and the extermination of mental defectives, was effective.
However, Pacelli’s drive to centralize papal control of the German Roman Catholic
Church undercut such activity. Cornwell writes: "Without the deading hand of
Vatican control, resistance might have multiplied across the country from the outset.
And had Catholic officialdom, from the outset, not turned a blind eye to the
expanding anti-Semitic propaganda and persecution, the terrible disaster that befell
the Jews might never have occurred."
Later as the pope, Pacelli repeatedly appeased Hitler, and, with clear knowledge of
the latter’s atrocities against the Jews, issued only veiled rebukes. In spite of
Pacelli’s wide reputation as a skillful politician, Hitler played him like a fiddle,
effectively silencing Vatican criticism of his Final Solution, when widespread Roman
Catholic resistance might well have stayed the Fuhrer’s hand in the matter.
Cornwell’s explanation is that Pacelli feared communism more than the Nazis and, as
a matter of political expediency, cast his lot with Hitler.
Later, after America had entered the war, Pacelli, as Pius XII, assumed a neutral
stance and frequently said of the Allies, as well as the Axis powers, "a pox on both
of your houses." Some say that he struck this posture of neutrality, with an eye
toward serving as a peace-maker following the end of the conflict. However, such a
position betrays a serious lack of moral judgment. The Allies and the Axis were not
equivalent!
In recently years, various individuals and groups have made well-publicized
statements commending Pius XII for his work on behalf of the Jews, during World
War II. However, the fact is that the Jews who were rescued from the Nazi’s Final
Solution, in Hungary and elsewhere, were, for the most part, saved by Roman
Catholic lay people and clergy, acting alone or in small groups, without
encouragement or support from the Vatican.
In summary, the author poses the dilemma faced by Pacelli. "Was it best to
compromise with these regimes (Fascism and Nazism) in order to maintain a
structure with which to survive and hope for better days? Or was it best to resist,
to speak out, to confront, risking annihilation?" It’s hard not to conclude that Pius
XII made the wrong choice.
Cornwell, quite rightly I think, sees the current movement to canonize Pius XII as an
attempt to reaffirm the ideology of papal power. Today’s occupants of the Vatican
seem to believe, along with Pacelli, that what the world needs is more law and order.
However, writes Cornwell, "the reassertion of Pacelli’s power model ignores the
harsh lessons of recent world history; that papal autocracy, carried to the extreme,
can only demoralize and weaken Christian communities."
The author concludes: "It has been the urgent thesis of this book . . . that when the
papacy waxes strong at the expense of the people of God, the Catholic Church
declines in pastoral and spiritual influence to the detriment of us all." How true.
The good old days of Eugenio Pacelli weren’t good for Germany or for the Jews of
Europe. And, to be sure, they weren’t good for the soul of the Church. If one
intends to speak for Christ, he has to behave in a Christ-like manner, risking it all
for the sake of the biblical vision. Preserving the papacy won’t do.
If John Paul II or his successor canonizes Pius XII, it will be another scandal in the
long list of such events in the history of this institution.
For another opinion, go online and see Tad Szulc’s review in the October 3, 1999,
edition of The Washington Post, Book World, page 8.
The book is in the church library. |
