The PC MC paradigm is, to use one of many metaphors, an edifice of a thousand bricks.
One of those bricks is the blithely apodictic assumption that Pope Pius XII -- the Pope during the years of World War Two -- at best countenanced, and at worst colluded with, Hitler.
There's a book that definitively refutes this: The Pius war: responses to the critics of Pius XII (2004), by J. Bottum and (it should be noted, Rabbi) David G. Dalin. Not only do the authors definitively refute that canard, they interestingly delve into the complex sociocultural phenomenon of the construction of the myth itself, which spanned quite a few years.
Here's a taste, of the solid evidence Rabbi Dalin brings to the table to refute that (all too commonly believed) canard:
"Curiously, nearly everyone pressing this line today -- from the ex-seminarians John Cornwell and Gary Wills -- to the ex-priest James Carroll -- is a lapsed or angry Catholic. For Jewish leaders of a previous generation, this campaign against Pius XII would have been a source of shock. During and after the war, many well-known Jews -- Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Moshe Sharrett, Isaac Herzog, and innumerable others -- publicly expressed their gratitude to Pius. In his 1967 book Three Popes and the Jews, the diplomat Pinchas Lapide (who served as Israeli consul in Milan and interviewed Italian Holocaust survivors) declared the Church under Pius "was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands." (chapter 1, "Pius XII and the Jews", p. 14).
There's much more, easily enough to destroy that silly myth. And incidentally, the Introduction by Joseph Bottum to that book provides a helpful overview of the development of the revisionist myth itself over the past few decades.
Note: Google Books (see the link above) provides a free sampling of the Introduction and Chapter One in their entirety, and also a good deal of many of the other essays.
Further Reading:
An excellent analytical review of a book (The Popes against the Jews) by a typically perverse anti-Catholic modern historian, David Kertzer, by the above-mentioned David Dalin:
Popes and Jews; Truths and Falsehoods in the history of Catholic-Jewish relations.
4 comments:
I've studied a little of ww2 and the Holocaust.
I will never believe that Pius was Hitler's friend. There were many people who actively defied the Nazi regime, standing firmly on the basis of their Catholic beliefs.
To be an activist dissident in Nazi Germany was to open one's self to the possibility of worse treatment in internment than was meted out to the Jews before they were killed. Many Catholics did this, and they suffered in the name of Christ, but also in the name of the Pope.
The Latin Church, attacked by: nationalist noblemen, radical Calvinists, Jacobins, Nazis, Communists, Progressives of all stripes and, for sure, Muslims.
One would almost be tempted to suspect she must have been doing something right.. ;-)
But seriously, besides the one mentioned, rabbi Dalin has wrote quite a few wonderful and thoroughly researched books on the subject, most notably, The Myth of Hitler's Pope" (2005), followed by "Icon of Evil" (2008), about the real buddy of Adolf, that - unsurprisingly - Western powers allowed to go unpunished. The best book on the subject is, alas, written in Dutch, by prof. Hans Jansen (called: "Pius XII: Chronologie van een onophoudelijk protest"). It meticulously describes, to the day, the unrelenting protests against the nazi persecutions and the actions undertaken by and on direct orders from, Pius XII. Already in the fall of 2000, his 800-plus page book was published, called "Zwijgende Paus?" (Silent Pope?). Over the years, Rabi Dalin and colleagues have been in close contact with prof. Jansen.
Sag.
Thanks for the extra info Sagunto. No doubt one or more of the books you mentioned go in depth into the actual issue of the history of the matter at the time. Perhaps I should have clarified in my article here that the book I cited, while it lays out the pertinent information exonerating the Pope, more centrally delves into the construct (both in academe and in news media and pop culture) of the myth of the Pope's collusion with Hitler -- a myth that only really became dominant and mainstream I believe by the 80s.
Must get my hands on that book, that's for sure.
Meanwhile at GoV, things have been heating up: Sex, Gender, and Civilization
Take care,
Sag.
Post a Comment