Of course. I’m saying, though, that he was mostly the brains of the operation, the one out there risking his own life. AND the one later bestowed the honor of “Righteous Among Nations.”
What he “should” have done is speak out more, as others have pointed out. I do not believe, however, that he was “Hitler’s Pope”, nor was he as evil, or did nothing.
Of course, this is all speaking from hindsight. However, I do think that had it been John XXIII in there, he would have been more pro-active. Pius was too quiet. (As would be John Paul II, in the face of communism and the Soviets)
D’oh! BTW, what I meant to say was that JP II was more pro-active when it came to defying the Soviets and their cronies – I was trying to compare him to John XXIII, not Pius. That if JP had been in charge during WWII, he probably would have been more defiant to Hitler.
JP was pretty defiant to Hitler in his work as a priest!
Elendil’s Heir, thanks for the elaboration. I’d forgotten his name. It is truly an amazing story. Simon Wiesenthal Centre calculates that over 40,000 people are alive today because of Sugihara’s actions to save their ancestors.
I also just read that Helena Bonham Carter’s grandfather was a Spanish diplomat who did something similar, granting visas for Jews to escape through Portugal against the instruction of the (Franco) government.
I said Sister Margherita Marchione is a Catholic nun. She is a Catholic nun. What part of that is an ad hominem attack?
Fair enough. He could have openly stated that genocide is a sin and directed Catholics not to aid in it. He could have gone on to tell them to resist it as much as possible and help save anyone who was threatened by the Nazi extermination plans.
Going further, a lot of Germans have said they felt bound by the oaths of obedience that they were required to swear to Hitler starting in 1934. (These oaths were pledged to Hitler personally, by name, not to Germany or the office of chancellor.) Pius could have excommunicated Hitler and announced that Catholics were no longer bound to obey him.
Pius could have renounced the Lateran Pact of 1929 and gone back into “exile” in the Vatican City in protest of Mussolini’s support of the Nazis.
Instead what Pius did was negotiate an agreement with Hitler. The Reichskonkordat of 1933 was an agreement whereby Hitler recognized some privileges for the Catholic Church in exchange for them not making any political protests against the Nazis. As Hitler himself said, the agreement was *“especially significant in the struggle against international Jewry.” *
Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich, acknowleged the danger that Catholics could face by opposing Hitler. He wrote “We bishops are being asked why the Catholic Church, as often in its history, does not intervene on behalf of the Jews. This is not possible at this time because the struggle against the Jews would then, at the same time, become a struggle against the Catholics.” But Cardinal Faulhaber also wrote “At a time when the heads of the major nations in the world faced the new Germany with cool reserve and considerable suspicion, the Catholic Church, the greatest moral power on earth, through the Concordat expressed its confidence in the new German government. This was a deed of immeasurable significance for the reputation of the new government abroad.” And even after threats were made against his life, he said “I have deemed it my duty to speak out in this ethico-legal, non-political question, for as a Catholic bishop I may not remain silent when the preservation of the moral foundations of all public order is at stake.” Cardinal Faulhaber understood that protecting the legal status of the church was meaningless if it came at the cost of abandoning its moral authority. And he understood that some moral stands were worth dying for if it came to that. (Although as it turned out, the Nazis weren’t willing to risk alienating Catholics by killing a prominent church leader. Cardinal Faulhaber survived the war and lived until 1952.)
Pius XII: “Stop killing those Jews!”
Hitler: “No.”
According to Dan Kurtzman’s “A Special Mission”, the Pope had a conversation with Harold Tittmann, US special envoy to the Vatican, where he says why he wouldn’t be more explicit:
If you have the chance, you should read the book. It argues that Hitler, upset with what he saw as Pius’s role in the overthrow of Mussolini and Pius’s anti-Nazi and pro-Jewish sentiment, ordered SS General Wolff to kidnap the Pope, and that Wolff, along with General Dollmann, and the German Ambassador to the Vatican, von Weizsaecker, plotted to save the Pope by getting the Pope to remain silent during the roundup of the Roman Jews. It’s not a bad book, and chapter 13 deals with the debate over Pius’s role in the Holocaust.
Pardon me, but Pius’ reasoning here seems remarkably wishy-washy. If he were really serious about doing all that he could to stop Hitler, he could’ve excommunicated him. Hitler was Catholic after all.
Not really. They’re not saying her opinion should be discounted–just showing that she may be biased. If we were looking at a website that said that abortion causes death and emotional distress and then we saw that it was made by pro-lifers and re-evaluated it in that light, is that an ad hominem?
Ths comes up a lot and shows a serious misunderstanding of the situation.
Excommunication is typically made public when the church wants to encourage a person to return to the church and follow its rules. Since Hitler had stopped any pretense at being an active Catholic years before he became Chancellor of Germany, it would have been a pretty hollow gesture.
No one in the 1930s or 1940s actually considered him to be a Catholic.
Beyond that, what does anyone think excommunication would have done? Napolean got excommunicated. Victor Emmanual got excommunicated. Neither one stopped their political and military activities and neither one lost the support of their mostly Catholic countries. How much less would have happened with Hitler, who was already considered outside the church, in a country with a large Protestant population?
I certainly agree that Hitler himself would be unmoved by excommunication. But what’s your opinion on the point I made early about the obedience oaths?
That a declaration of excommunication would have had no effect. The oaths were not sworn as part of a Catholic rite, so declaring Hitler outside the church, (where he had been for more than a decade), would have no affect on any oath sworn to him. And, as noted, the Italians and French certainly did nothing to stop following their leaders in actions that were taken directly against the church after the leaders were excommunicated; why would excommunication have had an effect on actions against Jews, the Rom, or homosexuals–the first two are not Catholic and the last are “sinners.”
The claims of Hochhuth and his supporters that the pope did notyhing or even aided the Nazis are bullshit. The claims of others that the pope could do no more are clearly lopsided apologies.
The discussion appears to be about what more could or should the pope have done. That point will always be a matter of debate.
Here are three views from the Jewish Virtual Lbrary:
Right. Germany in the 1930s and 40s was largely a secular society (and the Nazis made it even more so, stripping both the Catholic and Protestant churches of most of their influence). German Catholics were Germans first and Catholics second, and if Pius had ordered Germans to rebel against Nazism, the German Catholics likely would have ignored him and wondered why the Pope was betraying them (and it would have given the German government cause to take even stronger actions against the church than it did.)
Yes, it is an ad hominem by definition. Here you are propping up one logical fallacy with another. Now you’ve created a pro-life straw man to contend with.
An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: “argument to the man”, “argument against the man”) consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the source making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim.
A critical part of the Pope’s (correct) understanding was that German nationalism was very strong. Within Germany, he had the support of most of the priesthood, as well as monastic orders. However, there was a serious and significant threat in that most German Catholics (as with most Germans, Christian and otherwise) were extremely obedient of civil authority, or outright “Germans First, Christians Second.” Repeatedly, small groups acted against Hitler (such as Dietrich Bonhoffer, to name a Protestant), but the majority of Germans were quite willing to obey. That’s how the entire mess got started in the first place.
The Pope knew this. He also knew that the Church does not contest civil power openly and as a unified power. The power of the Church is the power of weakness, and while it can undermine almost anything, it’s not capable of radically and quickly changing the world.
Only if the characteristic or belief isn’t relevant to the issue. If I said a Catholic nun’s opinions on baseball might be biased then that would be an ad hominem argument. But saying that a Catholic nun’s opinions on the leadership of the Catholic church might be biased is a relevant point.
Most nations at that time did absolutely nothing to save the Jews. Nothing. So why pick on the Pope? Most nations today are completely passive when it comes to humanitarian crisis like Iraq or Darfur. Seventy years ago there was less information about what was happening and a more insular feeling that other people’s problems did not affect us. America rejected Jewish refugees just because. American Wartime Indifference to the Plight of the European Jews.
Maybe the Pope was not perfect but he comes out above the other countries who actually had the means to do something and did not do it.
Pretty much nobody today cares or does anything about the huge humanitarin crisis in Iraq, Darfur or other places and we are going to second guess the Pope Pius XII?