Pope Benedict XVI opened an old wound last week when he praised the achievements of his predecessor Pope Pius XII:
Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday thanked the organizers of a symposium examining role played during World War II by Pius XII - a pope criticized by some for his stance towards the Nazi-led persecution of Jews. Benedict, referring to Pius as "this noble Pope" said the symposium's work had helped appreciate that pontiff's "human wisdom and pastoral intensity... especially in providing organized assistance to the Jewish people," Benedict said. The pontiff was addressing participants of the symposium, organized by the Pave the Way Foundation, a US-based group including Jews and Catholics that promotes improved relations between followers of different religions.
By coincidence, last week I also saw the the film Constantine's Sword, a powerful documentary of James Carroll's book by the same title. Carroll was a Roman Catholic priest who became disenchanted with the Church during the Vietnam War and eventually left the priesthood. Constantine's Sword is an historical and also personal account of anti-Semitism, which Carroll feels is embedded in the history and teaching of the Catholic Church. Needless to say, both the book and the film have a different take on Pope Pius XXII and his actions - or inactions - during the Nazi era.
I always felt there was something odd about the efforts of Pope John Paul II to beatify Pius XII. Was the Church engaging in a massive coverup? The Vatican then made the preposterous claim that Pius had "saved hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives". The Symposium that Benedict addressed had determined that Pius had, in fact, saved 80 Jews from the death camps. Given the enormous power of the papacy, is saving 80 lives sufficient for achieving sainthood?
The fact is, Pius' "secret efforts" on behalf of the Jews were so secret they went unnoticed by the Nazis. The Vatican was silent about the atrocities committed during Kristallnacht and its aftermath. Pius was obsessed with the spread of Russian Bolshevism and spoke out repeatedly against "atheistic communism" while remaining silent about National Socialism. Presumably Pius viewed Hitler - a born Catholic - as a lesser evil than Stalin. The the one historical fact that speaks against the canonization of Pope Pius XII is his documented postwar effort to smuggle Nazi criminals and Croatian fascists out of Europe. Why does Benedict remain silent about this shameful episode in the Church's history?
Individual Catholics such as Cardinal August Graf von Galen, the Lion of Münster, spoke out bravely against Nazi atrocities. And elsewhere Benedict XVI has spoken movingly about the hundreds of priests who perished in the concentration camps, sharing the fate of the Jews. But the Catholic Church as an institution failed as an embodiment of Christian faith - just as the Protestant Church failed abysmally to stop the evil. I recommend Carroll's book, and for an historical analysis of Christianity (both Protestant and Catholic) in the Third Reich I recommend Doris Bergen: Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich.
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