A Note to Gabriel

I received a comment on my recent post about Pope Pius XII.The person who wrote the comment obviously dislikes the Catholic Church and believes the phony charges against Pope Pius. He also is using my blog to push his anti-Catholic book, something I won't tolerate.

His comments follows:

Not everyone that has a different viewpoint from yours can be dismissed as "revisionist" or can be called historian in quotes, as if putting in doubt their credentials. You should ask yourself the question of why there are such divergent views. The public record of what Pope Pius XII did is, after all, public and therefore cannot be disputed. And it shows the pope was inactive during the Holocaust. If he did indeed do a lot of "discreet" work behind the scenes, then no historian yet knows what that was.

He followed this with links to his book and website.

Here's my less than charitable response.


Sorry, Gabriel, but you're wrong. Indeed, the "public record" shows exactly the opposite. And I resent your not so subtle accusations against the diplomacy of the Pope and the Church during World War II. The truth is, Pope Pius XII saved more Jews from the Nazis than any other person. What did Roosevelt do? What did Churchill do?

The Jewish people knew this and recognized Pope Pius XII for his courageous acts and the wisdom of his wartime diplomacy. Remarkable, too, that the Pope did all this, without an army, while surrounded by armed Italian fascists and German Nazis who despised him and the Church.

Indeed, The Jewish Community publicly acknowledged all that Pius had done.

In September 1945, Dr. Joseph Nathan — who represented the Hebrew Commission — stated "Above all, we acknowledge the Supreme Pontiff and the religious men and women who, executing the directives of the Holy Father, recognized the persecuted as their brothers and, with great abnegation, hastened to help them, disregarding the terrible dangers to which they were exposed."

In 1958, at the death of Pope Pius XII, Golda Meir sent an eloquent message: "We share in the grief of humanity. …When fearful martyrdom came to our people, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace."

Pope Pius XII — through his public discourses, his appeals to governments, and his secret diplomacy — was engaged more than any other individual in the effort to curb the war and rebuild the peace.

Documents show that Pius XII was in contact with the German generals who sought to overthrow Hitler. Documents also show that the Jewish community received enormous help: Pius XII’s personal funds ransomed Jews from Nazis. Papal representatives in Croatia, Hungary, and Romania intervened to stop deportations. The Pope called for a peace conference involving Italy, France, England, Germany, and Poland in 1939, in a last-minute bid to avert bloodshed.

Never were the Jews and the Vatican so close as during World War II. The Vatican was the only place on the continent where they had any friends. Pope Pius XII’s response to the plight of the Jews was to save as many as possible.

Early in the war, Albert Einstein, disenchanted by the silence of universities and editors of newspapers, stated in Time magazine (December 23, 1940): "Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth...The Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom." Indeed, executing the directives of Pope Pius XII, religious men and women opened their doors to save the Jews.

And later, in 1944, Einstein again wrote, "Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, but the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, but they, like the universities were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers...they too were mute. Only the Church," Einstein concluded, "stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth...I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel great affection and admiration...and am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly."

Even in the midst of the war the Pope's support and courage were acknowledged. The New York Times editorial (December 25, 1942) was specific: "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas...He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all."

The Pope’s Christmas message was also interpreted in a Gestapo report: "in a manner never known before...the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order [Nazism]...his speech is one long attack on everything we stand for...Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews."

Perhaps the rest of the world should interpret the Pope’s words as they were meant and, undoubtedly, correctly understood by the Nazis. From the beginning of his reign, the Nazis understood who Pius was. The day after his election (March 3, 1939), the Nazi newspaper, Berliner Morganpost stated its position clearly: "the election of Cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism."

The lies and attacks all began in 1963 Rolf Hochhuth portrayed Pope Pius as a Nazi collaborator in the play "The Deputy." (Interestingly, Hochhuth himself has been accused of denying the holocaust and of receiving KGB assistance in writing his play.) In contrast to the image suggested by this play, Vatican records indicate that the Church operated an underground railroad that rescued 800,000 European Jews from the Holocaust. After a careful study of available documents, whoever is interested in the truth will no longer condemn the actions of Pope Pius XII’s words and the Catholic Church during this tragic period. And, Gabriel, any historian -- even you -- can gain access to these documents at the Vatican.

You say that no one knows. If you actually checked the public record and removed your bigoted blinders, perhaps you'd actually see what the record states.

The foremost Jewish Scholar of the Holocaust at its height in Hungary, Jeno Levai, insisted some years ago that it was a "particularly regrettable irony that the one person in all of occupied Europe who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others."

The Israeli diplomat and scholar Pinchas Lapide concluded his careful review of Pius XII’s wartime activities with the following words: "The Catholic Church under the pontificate of Pius XII was instrumental in saving lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands." He went on to add that this "figure far exceeds those saved by all other Churches and rescue organizations combined."

After recounting statements of appreciation from a variety of preeminent Jewish spokespersons, he noted. "No Pope in history has been thanked more heartily by Jews...Several suggested in open letters that a Pope Pius XII forest of 860,000 trees be planted on the hills of Judea in order to fittingly honor the memory of the late Pontiff ("Three Popes and the Jews" pp. 214–215)." Levai in his own book did not hesitate to argue that the attacks on the Pope’s wartime record are "demonstrably malicious and fabricated...The archives of the Vatican of diocesan authorities of Ribbentrop’s foreign ministry, contain a whole series of protests—direct and indirect, diplomatic and public, secret and open. The nuncios and bishops of the Catholic Church intervened again and again on the instructions of the Pope," he wrote. Their interventions were just as unsuccessful as the demands and threats of the British and American governments. Moreover, the delicacy of the matter was often heightened by the fact that such protests could put Jews themselves and their protectors at additional bodily risk.

Sorry, Gabriel, the record is there for all to see. But folks like you, who simply despise the Catholic Church, prefer to ignore it. And so you are a revisionist "historian" and I do doubt your credentials.

End of story...and end of discussion.

Find another venue to attack Pope Pius XII and plug your book, because you won't do it again here.