As they say at Yad Vashem.
In fact, Pius XII was first ever called “Hitler’s Pope” by John
Cornwell, in his 1999 book of that name, a thinly disguised liberal rant
against John Paul II with the ‘thesis’ that the future Pius XII, while a
diplomat in Germany, could have rallied Catholic opposition and toppled
Hitler. Pure fantasy, like the origin of the whole “Pope supported
Hitler” craze: the 1963 play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth, who
was later successfully prosecuted for suggesting that Churchill had
arranged the 1944 air crash that killed General Sikorsky.
Pius XII directly or indirectly saved between 8500 and 9600 Jews in Rome; 40,000 throughout Italy; 15,000 in the Netherlands; 65,000 in Belgium; 200,000 in France; 200,000 in Hungary; and 250,000 in Romania. This list is not exhaustive, and the Dutch figure would have been much higher had not the Dutch Bishops antagonised the Nazis by issuing the sort of public denunciation that Pius is castigated for failing to have issued.
After the War, Pius was godfather when the Chief Rabbi of Rome became a Catholic, and was declared a Righteous Gentile by the State of Israel, whose future Prime Minister (Moshe Sharrett) told him that it was his “duty to thank you, and through you the Catholic Church, for all they had done for the Jews.” When Pius died in 1958, tributes to him from Jewish organisations had to be printed over three days by The New York Times, and even then limited to the names of individuals and their organisations. All of this is contained in works of serious scholarship by Margherita Marchione, Ralph McInerny, Ronald J Rychlak, and others, most recently the superlative Rabbi Professor David G Dalin.
Colonel Claus Schenk, Count von Stauffenberg, recently given the full Tom Cruise treatment, was a devout Catholic, with close dynastic connections to the Bavarian Royal House of Wittelsbach that Jacobites would have on the Thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland, and to the family of Saint Philip Howard, martyred Earl of Arundel. In Austria, Hitler ordered the murder of the Chancellor, Englebert Dolfuss, who defended, on the borders of Italy and Germany, Catholic Social Teaching and what remained of the thoroughly multiethnic Habsburg imperial ethos (to this day, numerous German, Magyar and Slavic names are found throughout the former Austria-Hungary) against both the Communists and the Nazis. In the same tradition was Blessed Franz Jägerstätter.
Examples of Catholic anti-Nazism could be multiplied practically without end. The more Catholic an area was, the less likely it was to vote Nazi, without any exception whatever. Not least, the present Pope’s Maths teacher sent him to get the Hitler Youth form, and then just kept it on file for him. “Thus was I able to escape it.” In other words, he was never in it. Have you got that? He was never in it.
Quite how relations came to deteriorate so far between the Church and those now screaming falsehood and abuse on this score could then be a subject of examination. And who knows, we might then be permitted to move on to some setting of the record straight about the torrent of falsheood and abuse relating to sex between men and teenage boys, a torrent emanating from those who at least turn a blind eye to, and who not uncommonly engage in, sex between men and teenage boys?
Still, anything to support organised shakedowns, often by people whose records would otherwise cause their testimony to be laughed out of court, against the Catholic Church. Why? You and I know the answer to that one, dear reader. But imagine if the whole world were caused to know.
Pius XII directly or indirectly saved between 8500 and 9600 Jews in Rome; 40,000 throughout Italy; 15,000 in the Netherlands; 65,000 in Belgium; 200,000 in France; 200,000 in Hungary; and 250,000 in Romania. This list is not exhaustive, and the Dutch figure would have been much higher had not the Dutch Bishops antagonised the Nazis by issuing the sort of public denunciation that Pius is castigated for failing to have issued.
After the War, Pius was godfather when the Chief Rabbi of Rome became a Catholic, and was declared a Righteous Gentile by the State of Israel, whose future Prime Minister (Moshe Sharrett) told him that it was his “duty to thank you, and through you the Catholic Church, for all they had done for the Jews.” When Pius died in 1958, tributes to him from Jewish organisations had to be printed over three days by The New York Times, and even then limited to the names of individuals and their organisations. All of this is contained in works of serious scholarship by Margherita Marchione, Ralph McInerny, Ronald J Rychlak, and others, most recently the superlative Rabbi Professor David G Dalin.
Colonel Claus Schenk, Count von Stauffenberg, recently given the full Tom Cruise treatment, was a devout Catholic, with close dynastic connections to the Bavarian Royal House of Wittelsbach that Jacobites would have on the Thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland, and to the family of Saint Philip Howard, martyred Earl of Arundel. In Austria, Hitler ordered the murder of the Chancellor, Englebert Dolfuss, who defended, on the borders of Italy and Germany, Catholic Social Teaching and what remained of the thoroughly multiethnic Habsburg imperial ethos (to this day, numerous German, Magyar and Slavic names are found throughout the former Austria-Hungary) against both the Communists and the Nazis. In the same tradition was Blessed Franz Jägerstätter.
Examples of Catholic anti-Nazism could be multiplied practically without end. The more Catholic an area was, the less likely it was to vote Nazi, without any exception whatever. Not least, the present Pope’s Maths teacher sent him to get the Hitler Youth form, and then just kept it on file for him. “Thus was I able to escape it.” In other words, he was never in it. Have you got that? He was never in it.
Quite how relations came to deteriorate so far between the Church and those now screaming falsehood and abuse on this score could then be a subject of examination. And who knows, we might then be permitted to move on to some setting of the record straight about the torrent of falsheood and abuse relating to sex between men and teenage boys, a torrent emanating from those who at least turn a blind eye to, and who not uncommonly engage in, sex between men and teenage boys?
Still, anything to support organised shakedowns, often by people whose records would otherwise cause their testimony to be laughed out of court, against the Catholic Church. Why? You and I know the answer to that one, dear reader. But imagine if the whole world were caused to know.
As you say, tell a big lie, keep repeating it loudly, and people will believe it. Politicians do it all the time. And so do many others when they have an ulterior motive. The truth can often be inconvenient for these people but the truth will always be the truth, and a lie will always be a lie.
ReplyDeleteGolda Meir, the Israeli Foreign Minister at the time of Pope Pius XII's death in 1958, praised him at the United Nations for his support of the Jewish people during the Nazi atrocities.
More recently, there has been credible evidence that these lies were spread by the KGB to undermine the moral authority of the Church and Christianity in general. Now there's a surprise.
If the doubters would like a little enlightenment I would recommend the film 'The Scarlet and the Black', and the book 'The Assisi Underground'.