Thursday 29 January 2009

The Eagle And The Cross

This Richard Williamson business has brought the "Pius XII and the Holocaust" nutters out of the woodwork.

As someone once said, "Tell a lie big enough..." In fact, Pius XII was first ever called "Hitler's Pope" by none other than 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, currently getting the full Tom Cruise treatment, was a devout Catholic, with close dynastic connections to the Bavarian Royal House of Wittelsbach (whom the Jacobites would have on the Thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland), to the family of Saint Philip Howard (martyred Earl of Arundel), and do on.

In Austria, Hitler had murdered the Chancellor, Englebert Dolfuss, who in fact defended, on the borders of Italy and Germany, Catholic Social Teaching and what remained of the thoroughly multiethnic Hapsburg 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.

Yes, he was authoritarian. But look at his neighbours, and look what he was up against domestically. Imagine if a Fascist putsch in the Irish Free State (and at least one was attempted) had coincided with very serious Communist and Fascist threats in Britain. The British Government of the day would have been authoritarian, too. And, while the emergency lasted, it would have been right. In the same tradition was Blessed Franz Jägerstätter. Google him, people. Google him.

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.

As for Williamson, it is simply not a heretical proposition or a schismatic act to deny the Holocaust. It is purely an historical error, like saying that the Battle of Hastings happened in 1067 or not at all. One cannot be excommunicated for that, nor can one be denied reconciliation to the Church for it. And Williamson's is not the bespoke voice of Lefebvrism on the subject. On the contrary, one of this country's leading scholars of Judaism – Professor Robert Hayward, Professor of Hebrew at Durham – is a very active Lefebvrist.

4 comments:

  1. My understanding was that he does not so much deny the Holocaust as deny the figures of those killed and the methods. Now, this is highly contentious historically, but we might ask, is denying the extent of the Holocaust the same as actual Holocaust denial? Perhaps not, but is the intention of questioning the numbers to legitimize Holocaust denial and thus absolve the Fascists?

    Much of the controversy surrounding the Church is related to the postwar period, "helping Nazis to escape justice", etc. So in terms of international relations, this hasn't helped Rome one bit - but then, wasn't the move part of a reaching out to traditionalists? Or will we be seeing Liberation Theologists welcomed back?

    ReplyDelete
  2. If there are any of them left! Liberation Theology has not survived into a third generation, and Latin America's poor always held it low esteem anyway. They just saw it as ivory tower Marxism. Which it was.

    Of course, none of the Liberation Theologians was excommunicated, just as Hans Kueng (the voice, in relation to John Paul II, of the age-old Teutonic racism against the Slavs - he only gets away with it because he is Swiss) never has been. Perhaps they should have been. But they weren't.

    ReplyDelete
  3. And of course Rolf Hochhuth, as well as being a KGB dupe on the matter of Pius XII, is also a close friend of Bp. Williamson's chum David Irving. They used to be flatmates in London and the latter was actually visiting his old chum in Austria when he was arrested and put in prison for denying the Holocaust.

    Quite what conspiracy theorists are meant to make of this sort of thing of course I don't know. One might argue, of course, that Pius XII's silence on the Holocaust was the precursor of the shocking silence of the Second Vatican Council when confronted with Communism.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, there is no way that the Council's documents are compatibel with Communism, of course.

    So, have you removed the David Irving link from your blog?

    ReplyDelete