Just on the church tax issue. While I don’t have a cite on hand I believe that it was actually Hitler who established the church taxes, on belief that this would turn people against them (the churches). I’ll try to find a cite if requested to.
I made that remark.
It wasn’t flippant. If you found it offensive I apologise, but I stand on the point I tried to make.
Rodrigo Said: “Jews just didn’t blend in that well, EVERYONE knew who was a Jew and a Gentile.”
And then:
"I made that remark.
It wasn’t flippant. If you found it offensive I apologise, but I stand on the point I tried to make."
I did find it offensive, and I still do… so I accept your apology. Thank you.
Dan W
New article this month:
Thanks Von Weber:
“By the beginning of the twentieth century Christian anti-Judaism, traditional for centuries, had attained virtual canonical status”
I found this a very interesting, fair article, but found this sentence particularly amusing. What is “virtual” we can discuss on the internet. Canonic Law was the Anti-Semitic Law of the Church to which the Tenets of the Third Reich draw tremendous parallels. Take out the word “virtual” and I agree with most of the essay.
He doesn’t refute any of Cornwall’s most contentious contentions; he just says it’s “devoid of historical foundation…absurd to outrageous.” Until I hear some good evidence to demonstrate something Cornwall’s made up or exagerated, I still find his presentation as powerful as Cecil does.
DanW
Well the point of the article wasn’r refuting attacks on the Catholic Church.
On the contrary, the point was directed to Catholic Apologists so that they open their eyes and realise the missed opportunities of lessening the imoact of Anti-Semitism.
I’d like a quote on your first statement Canonic Law was the Anti-Semitic Law of the Church to which the Tenets of the Third Reich draw tremendous parallels.
Agreed.
The problem, in this thread though, is that it off-handedly disputes Cornwell as a crackpot, which Von Weber, above, had alluded to as well. I’d just like to hear someone with a tangible point against his writing/research before I buy into it.
For a citation about the Canonic Laws look at “Christian Antisemitism,” which I cited earlier in the thread. He has a chart comparing the Canonical Laws with Nazi Measures. There are 23 Laws and corresponding Measures listed. An Example: Canonical Law: Jews not permitted to be plaintiffs, or witnesses against Christians in the courts, 3rd Lateran Council, 1179, Canon 26
Nazi Measure: Proposal by the Party Chancellery that Jews not be permitted to institue civil suits, September 9, 1942 (Bormann to Justice Ministry, September 9, 1942)
I think it’s worth it to type in his summary to this chapter:
"We do not know whether the Nazis researched the Church canons or the Roman law books looking for measures that could be reenacted. What is clear is that their anti-Jewish legislation was not original but inherited an attitude as well as specific provisions stemming from the Christian Roman Empire and the medieval Catholic World.
Over this history as a whole, we can discern the gradual and incremental development of antisemitism out of the original anti-Judaism of Christian theology. Hilberg's table shows that this development was substantially complete by the end of the Middle Ages. Only nineteenth-century racial theories needed to be added, and the restraining hand of traditional Christianity rejected, for the stage to be set for Holocaust."
–DanW
First of all the quote you give (which I imagine is Cornwell’s) is not from Canon Law. It’s a Canon from a Council (I’m only nit-picking, I get your point).
Yes, Cornwell IS a crackpot in the sense the he has left history behind and embarked in defamation. As to quotes, here they go
**
-As Kenneth L. Woodward rightly stated in his review of the book in the September 27, 1999, issue of Newsweek: “Errors of fact and ignorance of context appear on almost every page.” (Newsweek ain’t particularly Catholic)
-On the dust jacket of the English edition of the book is a picture of the then-Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli, apostolic nuncio at Berlin, leaving a German government building saluted by two soldiers. The photograph is quite tendentious, but what is worse is the caption: “Cover photograph shows Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, leaving the presidential palace in Berlin, March 1939.” This caption is not only totally wrong but seriously misleading. Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, and thus the caption suggests that Pacelli paid a visit in 1939 to a high-ranking Nazi official and was saluted by two Nazi soldiers. However, Pacelli left Germany in 1929 and never returned. He was elected pope on March 2, 1939, and therefore could not be in Berlin during that period. THe photograph actually shows Pacelli coming out of a building after talking to the President of Germany during Wiemar Republic. It’s so wrong that the publisher had to paid a fine a re-label the photo in Europe.
-Among the many scholarly works that Cornwell should have consulted is that of the Hungarian Jewish author Jeno Levai’s Hungarian Jewry and the Papacy. Levai used the Significant subtitle “Pope Pius XII did not remain silent”
-In his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus (1939), Pius XII condemned the aggression against small countries by stronger nations, which, as everybody understood, could refer only to the aggression of Russia against Finland and that of Nazi Germany against Poland. The Nazis forbade publication of this encyclical in German. Cornwell considers the encyclical to be wishy-washy and insignificant. If so, why did the Allies drop by plane 88,000 copies of it over Germany? Cornwell did not mention these facts at first, and when it was quoted against him, he tried to belittle the events, since they do not fit his thesis that Pius XII was “Hitler’s pope.”
-Cornwell also never asked himself why the projected roundup of 8,000 Roman Jews was suddenly stopped after about 1,000 were rounded up by Hitler’s troops in October 1943. He misrepresents the interview that occurred immediately afterwards between Secretary of State Maglione and the German Ambassador von Weizsacker, who was called to the Vatican upon Pius XII’s urgent request. Weizsacker, afraid that a formal protest made by the Holy See would enrage Hitler, gave an overly bland impression of the attitude of the Holy See. This became patently clear in the Nuremberg trials, which Cornwell ignores completely.
-The Nazis ferociously attacked Pius XII for what he said during his famous speech on Christmas 1942. They went on record stating: “Here he [the pope] condemns everything we stand for and he has made himself a mouth-piece of the Jewish warmongers.” When Pius XII spoke in his allocution about “hundreds of thousands” of victims, there was no evidence at that time that the number of victims ran, or was going to run, into the millions. Cornwell accuses the pope of downgrading the Holocaust; however, he does not take into account what was known at that time.
-The encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (“With burning anxiety”) was one of the strongest condemnations of a national regime that the Holy See had ever published (Although done by Pius XI it was Pacelli’s brainchaild) . In fact, the Vatican took pains to ensure that Nazi officials could not prohibit its distribution. Unlike most encyclicals, which are written in Latin, Mit brennender Sorge was written in German. It was then smuggled into Germany, secretly distributed, and read at the Masses on Palm Sunday, March 14,1937. Mit brennender Sorge condemned not only the persecution of the Church in Germany but also the neopaganism of Nazi theories, the idolizing of the state, and the use of race and bloodlines to judge human value. It declared:
Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.
One statement in particular is an evident swipe at Hitler and Nazism:
None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are “as a drop of a bucket” (Isaiah 11:15).
-As to the passage ". . . a gang of young women, of dubious appearance, Jews like all the rest of them, hanging around in all the offices with lecherous demeanor and suggestive smiles. The boss of this female rabble was Levien’s mistress, a young Russian woman, a Jew and a divorcée, who was in charge. . . . This Levien is a young man, of about thirty or thirty–five, also Russian and a Jew. Pale, dirty, with drugged eyes, hoarse voice, vulgar, repulsive, with a face that is both intelligent and sly.
To Cornwell (and Goldhagen) these words (taken from Schioppa’s report to his superior, Pacelli) prove that Pacelli was an anti–Semite.
In truth, however, this translation is grossly distorted. It uses pejorative words, instead of neutral ones that are more faithful to the original Italian. For instance, the most damning phrase in the translation, “Jews like all the rest of them,” turns out to be a distorted, inaccurate translation of the Italian phrase i primi. The literal translation would be “the first ones” or “the ones just mentioned.” (Therefore Goldhagen’s statement that “the Communist revolutionaries, Pacelli averred, were ‘all’ Jews” is wrong. The word “all” appears only in the Cornwell/Goldhagen mistranslation.) Similarly, the Italian word schiera is translated by Cornwell as “gang” instead of “group,” which would be more appropriate. Additionally, the Italian gruppo femminile should be translated as “female group,” not “female rabble.” Finally, the Italian occhi scialbi should be translated as pale (asky, livid) eyes, not “drugged eyes.”
This letter was published in its original Italian in 1992. Church historian John Conway—an Anglican and a distinguished scholar—reviewed the book in which it was included for the Catholic Historical Review. Neither he, nor anyone else at that time, suggested that the letter was anti–Semitic. When the entire letter is read in an accurate translation, it is not anti–Semitic. The tone of anti–Semitism is introduced only by Cornwell’s dubious translation.
- Albert Eintein called him, during the war "Only the Church 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 a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.” (Time Magazine, December 23, 1940). (Maybe Time was run by the Jesuits)
-The Jewish community has not been silent about what Pius XII did for his persecuted brethren. In October 1945, the World Jewish Congress made a financial gift to the Vatican in recognition of the work the Holy See performed in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecutions. Dr. Israel Goldstein of the same World Jewish Congress said, on the occasion of Pius XII’s death, “The Jewish community told me of their deep appreciation of the policy which had by the pontiff for the Vatican during the period of the Nazi-Fascist regime to give shelter and protection to the Jews, whenever possible.
-Pichas Lapide put the nuber of Jews saved over 800,000. Although Lapide’s number’s may be wrong, why would an Israeli Foreign Minister purposely inflate the number…was he a crypto-catholic?
-Rome’s chief Rabbi became a Catholic after the war and took Puis XII’s name Eugenio as his Christian name.
-The New York Times in its Christmas editorials of 1941 and 1942 praised Pius XII for his moral leadership as a “lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent” and for, among other things, assailing “the violent occupation of territory, and the exile and persecution of human beings, for no other reason than race.”
-Golda Meir, Israel’s representative to the United Nations, was the first of the delegates to react to the news of Pope Pius XII’s death. She sent an eloquent message: “We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness, Pope Pius XII. In a generation afflicted by wars and discords he upheld the highest ideals of peace and compassion. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, 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.”
-In 1955, the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra flew to the Vatican to give a special concert to show the nation’s gratitude.
- When Pius XII spoke out agaisnt deportation in the Nehterlands, it was answered by deportation of Catholics, so he was asked to keep the tone down in other to lessen what already was a terrible thing
-Baptismal certificates that were distributed and all the false identity cards that were sent around to all the Jews
- As to only individual clerics doing it not the Pope I say PROVE IT.
-As prisoner in the Vatican, Pius XII was silent about many things, and on principle, not out of fear. Archbishop Sapieha of Krakow upbraided him publicly for not speaking up in late 1939 and 1940 as the intellectual leaders of the Polish Church, lay and clerical, were persecuted by the thousands, beaten, killed, thrown into concentration camps. Sapieha later recognized that moving into open rhetorical warfare would have been useless—and worse, positively inflammatory. He later grasped the method in the Pope’s coolness and followed suit in his own style of leadership as the years went by. He was young Karol Wojtyla’s protector and teacher.
**
I read this thread with wry amusement. Suppose at the beginning of World War II either Pope mentioned above had been in office at the outbreak of hostilities and condemned France and Britian for declaring war upon Germany when neither France or Britian had been directly threatened by Germany? Thanks to the Hitler/Stalin pact many of Europe’s leftists voiced such views, laying the responsibility for World War upon the doorstep of the Western Allies…so that Pope would have had considerable public support for such a postition. Suppose the then Pope went public with criticisms of Chamberlin and in a display of support for the German regime invited Nazi Foreign Minister Von Ribbentrop for a very well photographed audience in the Vatican? This Pope would be a slam-dunk Anti-Semite, right?
Why, then, did no one so condemn Pope John Paul II after his audience with Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz? Some openly Jewish posters to this board instead apparently both like and admire Pope John Paul II. Yet the regime he openly supported littered its own country with mass graves beyond counting, practiced barbaric tortures on a daily basis, launched Nazi style blitzkriegs against its neighboring states, and both financed and helped to execute the mass killings of Jews in Israel through terrorist acts. We forget so quickly…the UN Ambassador from Iran telling everyone who would listen after Saddam’s attack on his country that the invaders were behaving “just like Nazis”, the disappearences and murders after Hussein’s secret police took control in Kuwait, the money paid by the Iraqi regime to the survivors of suicide bombers to curry favor in certain Arab circles (although documents seized recently suggest Saddam had his own deep-seated hatred of the Jews and their state, and very girm plans for the near future of both). So why beat Pius XII to death and applaud John Paul II while pretending to hold to a single standard for weighing Papal conduct?
Dear W,
Your “wry amusement” amuses me. Sorry to mix metaphors, but you’re comparing apples and oranges and sending this discussion careening off track. There must be twenty five million conversations going on on-line about our involvement in Iraq; this is not one of them.
To Rodrigo,
Sorry I haven’t responded. I’m impressed with your argument, though far from convinced. I’ve been trying to free up some time to get back into Hitler’s Pope and see how he might address these statements, but without much luck. There’s certainly contention of this whole issue. I appreciate your quotes from Jews. The point on the mistranslation of Italian is very interesting, though I’m not as much interested in Paceli as anti-semitic; more as pro-fascist, and someone willing to place the importance of the Holy See over the value of human lives. Most of your argument is relating people’s perspectives from the 40’s and 50’s. How he seemed then, might not have been as he really was and had been. History is making up its mind, weighing the information, while the Church turns him into a Saint.
I don’t have the time to go back and look through the book now, but I just keep going back to the idea that the leader of the Catholic religion knew that thousands of Catholics were exterminating hundreds of thousands of Jews (I’ll give him credit for probably not understanding that it was really millions) and he never told them not to. The book goes much farther than that in it’s scope and implication, but I dont’ have the time go back now and sort through it. One day, but not today. Take care.
DanW
“Apples and Oranges”? How does one distinguish between brutal, murderous, warlike, anti-semitic regimes? Why is it wrong for Pius XII to mute his criticisms while surrounded by Nazi troops while it is somehow proper for John Paul II to send off for the representative of a blood-stained regime so they can appear before the cameras together? While there is doubtless implicit some value judgement as to the desirability of the survival of Saddam’s government in my previous post, it dealt with Papal reactions to anti-semitic regimes in times of armed conflict, not the pros and cons of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Did John Paul II disapprove of the actions of President Bush? Obviously. Did he have to express that disapproval by patting Tariq Aziz on the back? I think not, and I submit the posters to this board would have roasted Pius XII if he had an auidence with Himmler.
But if we are to retain a single-minded fascination with the body counts of the holocaust and consider all subsequent anti-semitic killer regimes so ineffectual in their assults in citizens of other nations and folk of Jewish heritage as to permit other considerations to govern our reactions to their activities, we must still recoil over the legalistic definitions involving the presence of WMDs that sprang out of the recent conflict. We will have our “proof” of WMDs when our body count exceeds that of the holocaust and keeps going. John Paul II knew beyond a doubt the record of Saddam’s regime with regard to WMD’s yet still offered a gesture of his support. Pius XII had no certain knowledge of the holocaust but we seeminly must fix our attention solely on his era, judge him by benefit of our hindsight, and ignore the reactions of others in similar situations.
DanW
I’ve just come back from a month-long SD-free diet, so that’s why I’m responding so late.
I too, get most of yourpoints and I think we’re getting closer. I still think that there is a point, after certain number of cold-blooded murders, past which you can no longer consider yourself a Catholic and where you pay no heed to the Pope.
I think we can agree that the Pope could’ve and should’ve done more, but it would be difficult to gauge the effect (positive of negative) these condemnation would’ve had and that it is unfair to blame the Holocaust on the Pope and not on the Murderous Son of a Bitch eh of a Bitch who did it.
I take exception on your saying he placed the Holy See over lives; I am convinced he would’ve happily become a martyr if it 'd done sany good, but he thought ( he might’ve been wrong) he did more good alive.