Posted on 10/24/2008 7:21:46 AM PDT by Publius804
Vatican fumes at Israeli minister's remarks on Nazi-era pope
By Adi Schwartz, Haaretz Correspondent and Staff
Vatican officials are furious over Minister Isaac Herzog's statement in Thursday's Haaretz that the planned beatification of Pope Pius XII, who headed the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, is "unacceptable."
Cardinal Andrea Lanza di Montezemolo told the Italian paper Corriere della Serra yesterday that "Israel's interference in the matter of Pius XII must stop. We've had it with this interference. Outside opinions are liable to disrupt [the process], and they look like an attempt to force Pope Benedict XVI to make a decision. The decision to declare someone a saint is an internal decision of the church."
Father Paolo Molinari, a priest involved in the the beatification process, told the paper Il Messaggero that "Minister Herzog's statements constitute intervention in the process of declaring Pius XII 'blessed,' which is an internal affair of the Catholic Church." Beatification, or being declared blessed, is the final stage before achieving sainthood.
Moreover, Molinari claimed, "such statements contradict what others in the Jewish world have said, including [former Israeli prime ministers] Moshe Sharett and Golda Meir, who left no room for doubt about the positive part played by Pius XII during the Nazi era."
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
You love the Church but don't take the time to learn about Pius XII and instead want to take as fact all the negative posted about him? You said the Church "would do well to face the facts". They are.
I am well familiar with the history of the Church. It looks like you are not based on your knowledge of Pius XII.
you would definitely understand why Luther did what he did
I will never understand why Luther taught to "be a sinner and sin boldly".
So you think that the man who set in motion the means to save nearly all of Italy’s Jews from the Nazis and the Fascists should be punished. Can you name an occupied European country that had fewer Jewish deaths than Italy? Can you name another person who was able to save so many?
In Israel they plant trees with the names of those who played a major part in saving the lives of Jews. One guy who is honored was a Franciscan priest. In his very interesting book he states he was only following orders from the Vatican. He said the pope’s instructions were relayed to him through his bishop and if anyone deserves to be honored it was the pope and not him.
Research where American Jews sent their money during the war to help other Jews, you’ll find that many of them sent it to the Vatican because they knew it would be helpful and used for the purpose intended.
As for this rabbi involved here, I'm afraid I can't find the proper word to express my disgust at his ingratitude. Pius XII did more to help European (and especially Italian) Jews from the Nazis than any other world leader. FDR, Churchill, any other head of state among the Allied powers, you name it. None of them even helped at all, and didn't even bomb the railways leading to the camps when, by 1943, this was certainly quite feasible.
Pius was deterred from much overt denouncement after, among other events, the Nazis retaliated for the Dutch bishops' public protests by rounding up all of the Dutch Jewish converts (including St. Edith Stein and her sister, both Carmelite nuns who had converted from Judaism) and sending them to the camps. Furthermore, it can be plausibly argued that almost no one knew the extent of what was going on in the camps as recently as April 1944. You may recall the famous escape from Auschwitz by two Slovakian Jews, Alfred Weczler and Rudolph Vrba, who escaped precisely to make the plight of Jews in the death camps known to the outside world. They were met with complete disbelief when they tried, after their successful escape, to convince the Jews of Hungary that they were "next" in line for deportation and extermination. This, in April 1944!! Check out a few of the many sources on this that I'm enclosing below:
http://remember.org/witness/wit.res.esc.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Vrba
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/auschwitz/ftp.py?camps/auschwitz//auschwitz.07
http://books.google.com/books?id=8InGE7lTy08C&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=weczler+vrba&source=web&ots=6z14RLkzUg&sig=yHL8hs8TjPMKD6CT9SXnOtf_AUI&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result
If the Jews of Hungary refused to believe it, and had no prior, common-knowledge evidence that this was going on, and the Western governments dismissed the reports from both Weczler and Vrba, it is safe to say that Pius XII might not have know the extent of the genocide himself by that date. He may, as a world leader, have had an inkling, but he might not have been sure enough about actual death camps (as opposed to slave-labor camps) to risk inciting the Nazis with constant public condemnations. Remember, again, what happened in Holland after the first real protest from the Church had been lodged against what had merely been supposed had been going on.
Could Pius have done more? Sure. I'm sure that's possible. How do you quantify such a thing, anyway? But he did what he thought he could do prudently without making the situation worse. Keep in mind, too, that he did what he did while surrounded by German troops garrisoned in Rome through early June 1944!!! It is absolutely ludicrous for this rabbi, or any rabbi, to condemn Pius for "inaction," when he did far more than any other major religious or political leader in the entire world, and did so while in a far more exposed position (in an occupied city) than any of them. The New York Times, in several instances contemporary to the events, lauded Pius as the "lone voice" crying out against what was known was going on a the time. He was eulogized at his death by many Jews, including Golda Meir and Albert Einstein, as the greatest savior of Jews in Europe during the Holocaust. What else is there to say in defense of this man?
Revisionist history is usually spawned by bad motives, but revisionist history, applied in a spirit of utter ingratitude, against the benefactor of one's own people is just reprehensible! I hope this rabbi sleeps well.
The Church was inhibited by the fear that many Catholics felt and by the support of many others for the regime. Like pro-choice Americans, they more wanted to be counted good Germans than good Catholics. This included no small number of priests. There was another group: those priests and Catholics who feared the Communists to such an extent that they were willing to accept the Nazis who were their allies in combiting communism.
“Revisionist history is usually spawned by bad motives, but revisionist history, applied in a spirit of utter ingratitude, against the benefactor of one’s own people is just reprehensible! I hope this rabbi sleeps well. “
Reminding me that the play “The Deputy” was basically leftish propoganda intended to sully the reputation of communism’s most constant foe, the Catholic Church. Were their pro-Nazi clerics in the Vatican. Probably. There were also pro-communists clerics, just as today there are in the Vatican “progressive”priests who are secretly working against the true faith.
I think if you actually read my posts you would see that I WANT to learn. Hostility never opened any minds.
Who said anything about ‘punishment’? I just like the truth. You didn’t read anything about punishment from me.
“....he was only following orders from the Vatican. He said the pope’s instructions were relayed to him through his bishop and if anyone deserves to be honored it was the pope and not him.”
Thank you. What is the name of the book? Would like to read it.
Well, I was as ignorant as that rabbi on the topic. I appreciate your post and others here on FR who have enlightened me. I am big on reading about WWII, but that has mostly included books about the actual war. I need to delve into this aspect. Thank you.
I wish I could provide that but it has been a few years. If there is a site that gives the names of those honored by Israel you could search the Italian names and come up with it that way. A funny line he mentioned was when he explained why he became a priest. He said all the women considered him a peasant so he decided maybe he should consider the priesthood.
You came on this thread and posted like your mind is already made up: "The Church would do well to face the facts and realize their beatification of this man is ill advised". That sentence gives the impression that you drank the Pius XII revisionists kool-aid. If you WANT to learn you should do so before critizing someone or the Church.
Hostility never opened any minds.
That's right; don't be hostile toward Pius XII or the Church when you don't have the facts.
My problem was that I thought I had the facts. The fact that Pius was publicly silent for the most part during WWII was troubling.
I know the barbarians were at the gates of the Vatican...but lesser men have taken public stands even in recent history...some survived and some didn’t.
I want to find out if the current and post war efforts at the rehabilitation of his image meet the smell test. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
The Church has not always been trustworthy. Villains should be named not hidden or protected or redesigned/reassigned. The Vatican is not above politics as far as playing what cards they think is best for The Church. For me the Truth is what is best for The Church, regardless of the fall out.
The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth. Men within it, being sinners, have not always been trustworthy.
Villains should be named not hidden or protected or redesigned/reassigned.
Make sure you have the facts before throwing stones.
“The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth. Men within it, being sinners, have not always been trustworthy.”
Yes...you are correct...it is the human factor that fails, not The Church.
I love facts...will do my best at sourcing them.
Thanks for your time and this exchange.
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