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To: dubyaismypresident
"Mussolini was Italian too, you think he'd answer anything but "yes sir" if Hitler told him to level the Vatican."

Suicide for Il Duce...

The RCC superceded even the authority of Mussolini, who would have been hung 4 years early had he followed such a directive.

IF the Pope had spoken up against Nazism, Hitler would have indeed found himself in a conundrum.

67 posted on 08/22/2005 6:10:56 PM PDT by F16Fighter
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To: F16Fighter
IF the Pope had spoken up against Nazism, Hitler would have indeed found himself in a conundrum.

Do your research before uttering ignorance:

A Righteous Gentile

Pius XII publicly and privately warned of the dangers of Nazism. Throughout World War II, he spoke out on behalf of Europe's Jews. When Pius learned of the Nazi atrocities in Poland, he urged the bishops of Europe to do all they could to save the Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution. On January 19, 1940, at the Pope's instruction, Vatican radio and L'Osservatore Romano revealed to the world "the dreadful cruelties of uncivilized tyranny" that the Nazis were inflicting on Jewish and Catholic Poles. The following week, the Jewish Advocate of Boston reported the Vatican radio broadcast, praising its "outspoken denunciation of German atrocities in Nazi [occupied] Poland, declaring they affronted the moral conscience of mankind."

In his 1940 Easter homily, Pius XII condemned the Nazi bombardment of defenseless citizens, aged and sick people, and innocent children. On May 11, 1940, he publicly condemned the Nazi invasions of Belgium, Holland, and Luxemburg and lamented "a world poisoned by lies and disloyalty and wounded by excesses of violence." In June 1942, Pius spoke out against the mass deportation of Jews from Nazi-occupied France, further instructing his Papal Nuncio in Paris to protest to Marshal Henri Petain, Vichy France's Chief of State, against "the inhuman arrests and deportations of Jews from the French occupied zone to Silesia and parts of Russia."

The London Times of October 1, 1942, explicitly praises him for his condemnation of Nazism and his public support for the Jewish victims of Nazi terror. "A study of the words which Pope Pius XII has addressed since his accession," noted the Times, "leaves no room for doubt. He condemns the worship of force and its concrete manifestations in the suppression of national liberties and in the persecution of the Jewish race."

Pius XII's Christmas addresses of 1941 and 1942, broadcast over Vatican radio to millions throughout the world, also help to refute the fallacious claim that Pope Pius was "silent." Indeed, as The New York Times described Pius' 1941 Christmas address in its editorial the following day, it specifically applauded the Pope, as a "lonely" voice of public protest against Hitler: "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas…In calling for a 'real new order' based on 'liberty, justice, and love'…the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism. Recognizing that there is no road open to agreement between belligerents 'whose reciprocal war aims and programs seem to be irreconcilable,' Pius XII left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace." The Pope's Christmas message of 1941, as reported by The New York Times and other newspapers, was understood at the time to be a clear condemnation of Nazi attacks on Europe's Jews.

So, too, was the Pope's Christmas message of the following year. Pope Pius XII's widely-discussed Christmas message of December 24, 1942, in which he expressed his passionate concern "for those hundreds of thousands who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, are marked down for death or progressive extinction," was widely understood to be a very public denunciation of the Nazi extermination of the Jews. Indeed, the Nazis themselves interpreted the Pope's famous speech of Christmas 1942 as a clear condemnation of Nazism, and as a plea on behalf of Europe's Jews: "His [the Pope's] speech is one long attack on everything we stand for…he is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews…he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals."
305 posted on 08/23/2005 7:32:32 AM PDT by Antoninus (Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini, Hosanna in excelsis!)
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