K
Kaninchen
Guest
What gives you the idea I would expect you to accept anything I say?
Perhaps you might try to find a fair-minded person and ask them?
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A
Al_Masetti
Guest
Pinchas Lapide
users.binary.net/polycarp/piusxii.html
The Israeli consul, Pinchas E. Lapide, in his book, Three Popes and the Jews (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1967) critically examines Pope Pius XII.
According to his research, the Catholic Church under Pius XII was instrumental in saving 860,000 Jews from Nazi death camps (p. 214).
Could Pius have saved more lives by speaking out more forcefully? According to Lapide, the concentration camp prisoners did not want Pius to speak out openly (p. 247). As one jurist from the Nuremberg Trials said on WNBC in New York (Feb. 28, 1964), “Any words of Pius XII, directed against a madman like Hitler, would have brought on an even worse catastrophe… [and] accelerated the massacre of Jews and priests.” (Ibid.)
Yet Pius was not totally silent either. Lapide notes a book by the Jewish historian, Jenoe Levai, entitled, The Church Did Not Keep Silent (p. 256). He admits that everyone, including himself, could have done more. If we condemn Pius, then justice would demand condemning everyone else. He concludes by quoting from the Talmud that “whosoever preserves one life, it is accounted to him by Scripture as if he had preserved a whole world.”
With this he claims that Pius XII deserves a memorial forest of 860,000 trees in the Judean hills (pp. 268-9). It should be noted that six million Jews and three million Catholics were killed in the Holocaust.
users.binary.net/polycarp/piusxii.html
The Israeli consul, Pinchas E. Lapide, in his book, Three Popes and the Jews (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1967) critically examines Pope Pius XII.
According to his research, the Catholic Church under Pius XII was instrumental in saving 860,000 Jews from Nazi death camps (p. 214).
Could Pius have saved more lives by speaking out more forcefully? According to Lapide, the concentration camp prisoners did not want Pius to speak out openly (p. 247). As one jurist from the Nuremberg Trials said on WNBC in New York (Feb. 28, 1964), “Any words of Pius XII, directed against a madman like Hitler, would have brought on an even worse catastrophe… [and] accelerated the massacre of Jews and priests.” (Ibid.)
Yet Pius was not totally silent either. Lapide notes a book by the Jewish historian, Jenoe Levai, entitled, The Church Did Not Keep Silent (p. 256). He admits that everyone, including himself, could have done more. If we condemn Pius, then justice would demand condemning everyone else. He concludes by quoting from the Talmud that “whosoever preserves one life, it is accounted to him by Scripture as if he had preserved a whole world.”
With this he claims that Pius XII deserves a memorial forest of 860,000 trees in the Judean hills (pp. 268-9). It should be noted that six million Jews and three million Catholics were killed in the Holocaust.
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Sepharad
Guest
Is it correct that many of the Jewish children who were rescued by Catholic clergy, were also baptized after they rescued them?
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wisdomseeker
Guest
how wonderfull that these children were baptized. they lived.
today at the church we had a priest from the Holy Land. he told us how catholics were being persecuted over there. he was asking us for help. supporting them, financially they are in trouble. because of the persecussion their numbers have greatly decreased.
now i dont know who is persecuting them since i dont know much what is going over there.
Peace.
C
Claude_Kenneson
Guest
The following is an article I wrote to the Tallahassee Democrat on Oct. 21, 1999. I still stand by it.
“Pope led efforts to
assist Jews during war”
“Pope led efforts to
assist Jews during war”
Code:
"On Oct. 9, columnist Leo Sandon discussed a new book by John Cornwell titled 'Hitler's Pope.' While this may be a catchy title, it nevertheless is a misnomer. Pope Pius XII was hardly a pawn in Hitler's master plan.
"In this pope's first encyclical, he strongly attacked totalitarianism, racism and materialism. Editorials in The New York Times on Christmas of 1941 and 1942 indicate that the pope's messages were anti-Hitleristic. Likewise on June 2, 1943, he deplored the treatment of 'hundreds of thousands of persons who, through no fault of their own and by the single fact of their nationality or race, have been condemned to death or to progressive extinction.'
Many people today criticize this pope. Yet, they say little about the many who did not even lift a finger to help the Jews. Where was the rest of mankind during the Holocaust? What did the Jews of this country do in behalf of their fellow Jews in Europe? What did President Roosevelt or British Prime Minister Churchill do to help the Jews during the war years?
Most took an active part only when the war came to an end, whereas Pius XII was working all those years, through the clergy and the Catholic laity, hiding hundreds of thousands of Jews--even in the Vatican itself. It has been estimated that as many as 850,000 Jews were saved through the pope's efforts. Does anyone else match that record?
In defense of Pius XII, I say that he did what he could. And actions speak louder than words."
J
JReducation
Guest
That is inaccurate. There may have been some isolated cases, but not as a general rule and practice.
Canon law forbids the baptism of any child without the consent of the parents.
What did happen was that many children who were orphans were adopted by Catholic families and raised as Catholics. These were baptized.
Others were never legally adopted, but were raised as Catholics, nonetheless to protect their identity and they were baptized. But these were children whose parents’ whereabouts were unknown.
Also, people like John XXIII and John Paul II who were young men at the time falsified many baptism certificates and changed family names to allow these individuals to escape.
Someone mentioned whether Maximilian Kolbe acted individually or with Church authority. The answer is simple. Maximilian Kolbe was a Franciscan Friar. The Superior General of the Franciscans had authorized the friars to act on behalf of the Jews in any way possible. He even went as far as to create the Assisi Underground at the Franciscan Generalate in Assisi.
Also, Maximilian Kolbe was the Superior of the friary where he was stationed. He took his orders from his Superior General, who is the equivalent of a bishop and he gave orders to the friars under his jurisdiction.
Therefore, the orders to act came from above.
At the time John XXIII was an Archbishop and an abassador to France. He authorized the French clergy to join the underground. These orders also came from above.
John Paul II was a seminarian. His bishop allowed his seminarians to act. These orders also came from above.
The Holy Father knew that all of these bishops and religious superiors were allowing and encouraging such actions, even violating Church law to do so and he looked the other way. He gave his tacit approval of their actions by keeping silent, even when Church law was broken. For example, you cannot falsify a document of baptism, ordination or religious vows. This is what was done on behalf of many Jews. Many passed as priests and religious with certificates of ordination or religious profession of vows. Children passed with certificates of baptism, all falsified.
JR
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Al_Masetti
Guest
Excellent book:
amazon.com/Because-They-Hate-Survivor-Islamic/dp/0312358377
Author appeared on BookTV.
Click here to view author’s presentation on BookTV:
booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8379&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No
Ask your library to get the book.
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Eden
Guest
Historian Heinz Hürten (professor emeritus at the Catholic University of Eichstaett) argued that the Nazi party had plans for the Roman Catholic Church, according to which the Church was supposed to “eat from the hands of the government.” The sequence of these plans, he states, follow this sequence: an abolition of the priestly celibacy and a nationalisation of all church property, the dissolution of monastic orders and religious congregations, and the influence of the Catholic Church upon education. Hutzen states that Hitler proposed to reduce vocations to the priesthood by forbidding seminaries from receiving applicants before their 25th birthdays, and thus had hoped that these men would marry beforehand, during the time (18 - 25 years) in which they were obliged to work in military or labour service. Also, along with this process, the Church’s sacraments would be revised and changed to so-called “Lebensfeiern”, the non-Christian celebrations of different periods of life. There existed some considerable differences among officials within the Nazi Party on the question of Christianity. Goebbels, is purported to have feared the creation of a third front of Catholics against their regime in Germany itself. In his diary, Goebbels wrote about the “traitors of the Black International who again stabbed our glorious government in the back by their criticism”, by which Hurtzen states meant the indirectly or actively resisting Catholic clergymen (who wore black cassocks).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany#cite_note-36
Wikipedia uses as its source for this information:
HÜRTEN, H.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany#cite_note-36
Wikipedia uses as its source for this information:
HÜRTEN, H.
Endlösung für den Katholizismus? Das nationalsozialistische Regime und seine Zukunftspläne gegenüber der Kirche, in: Stimmen der Zeit, 203 (1985) p. 535-538
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Al_Masetti
Guest
A
Al_Masetti
Guest
There is a book with the title “La Popessa” by Paul Murphy.That is inaccurate. There may have been some isolated cases, but not as a general rule and practice.
Canon law forbids the baptism of any child without the consent of the parents.
What did happen was that many children who were orphans were adopted by Catholic families and raised as Catholics. These were baptized.
Others were never legally adopted, but were raised as Catholics, nonetheless to protect their identity and they were baptized. But these were children whose parents’ whereabouts were unknown.
Also, people like John XXIII and John Paul II who were young men at the time falsified many baptism certificates and changed family names to allow these individuals to escape.
Someone mentioned whether Maximilian Kolbe acted individually or with Church authority. The answer is simple. Maximilian Kolbe was a Franciscan Friar. The Superior General of the Franciscans had authorized the friars to act on behalf of the Jews in any way possible. He even went as far as to create the Assisi Underground at the Franciscan Generalate in Assisi.
Also, Maximilian Kolbe was the Superior of the friary where he was stationed. He took his orders from his Superior General, who is the equivalent of a bishop and he gave orders to the friars under his jurisdiction.
Therefore, the orders to act came from above.
At the time John XXIII was an Archbishop and an abassador to France. He authorized the French clergy to join the underground. These orders also came from above.
John Paul II was a seminarian. His bishop allowed his seminarians to act. These orders also came from above.
The Holy Father knew that all of these bishops and religious superiors were allowing and encouraging such actions, even violating Church law to do so and he looked the other way. He gave his tacit approval of their actions by keeping silent, even when Church law was broken. For example, you cannot falsify a document of baptism, ordination or religious vows. This is what was done on behalf of many Jews. Many passed as priests and religious with certificates of ordination or religious profession of vows. Children passed with certificates of baptism, all falsified.
JR
amazon.com/Popessa-Controversial-Biography-Pascalina-Powerful/dp/0446512583
It is the biography of Pope Piux XII’s housekeeper.
In one section, she describes how thousands of Jewish refugees went to the Vatican for security. The Holy Father and his staff set up an “underground railroad” in American parlance.
Cardinal Spellman of New York smuggled huge amounts of money into the Vatican in his suitcases.
Sister Pascalina used the money to buy food for the refugees.
The Jewish refugees were given phoney passports and identity papers. Because of their reliance on officious bureaucracy, the Germans honored the documents. The “Forger in Chief” was Angelo Roncali, who became Pope John XXIII.
The Jews were put on the Vatican Railways trains and taken to the seaport and put on ships that took them to safety.
At one point the German general in charge of Rome went to the Vatican to demand that Pope Pius XII stop rescuing the Jews. Apparently they actually met at the border of Vatican City, literally nose-to-nose. The Holy Father refused and the German general broke out into a sweat, backed down, and retreated.
To this day, as far as I know, it has never been revealed where those thousands … perhaps hundreds of thousands of refugees ended up.
Clearly it was a dangerous and expensive voyage. The refugees had no money and neither did the Vatican, so the entire operation had to be paid for by American Catholics.
South America was too far away. Israel was closed by the British. North Africa??? Spain??? The Mediterranean was full of German U-Boats and German bombers, fighters and patrol planes. No one seems to know (or they’re not telling) where the Jewish refugees ended up. Must be extremely politically incorrect.
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Eden
Guest
Did you know that the Croatian Fr. Filipovic-Majstorovic was excommunicated?
This is from the Catholic League on Daniel Goldhagen’s book A Moral Reckoning:
Another of Goldhagen’s most blatant errors relates to the Franciscan friar Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, also known as “Brother Satan.” Goldhagen ends his discussion of Croatia by writing: “Forty thousand…perished under the unusually cruel reign of ‘Brother Satan,’… Pius XII neither reproached nor punished him… during or after the war.” Actually, “Brother Satan” was tried, defrocked, and expelled from the Franciscan order before the war ended. In fact, his expulsion occurred in April 1943, before he ran the extermination camp. For Pius XII to have punished him “after the war” would have been difficult indeed, since he was executed by the Communists in 1945.
catholicleague.org/pius.php?id=9
[E]x-friar Vjekoslav Filipovic (alias Miroslav Majstorovic), the only individual of Franciscan affiliation who was connected with the shedding of blood of “Orthodox, Communists, and Jews” by the Croatian Ustashas, was excommunicated by his bishop well before he became the commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp.
209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:l0KI2UNFo4AJ:www.nybooks.com/articles/6208+Father+Filipovic/Majstorovic+excommunication&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
K
Kaninchen
Guest
Early on in this thread, I said that I’ve always thought that the Pius XII question was a diversion - I meant it. In a later response, I said:
The thing is that anti-Semitism was rife in Catholic Europe, ‘Catholics’ were involved in the Nazi machine and ‘Catholics’ collaborated with Nazi occupation authorities. Not only that, institutional Catholicism in countries like Slovakia and Croatia had a role in the authoritarian, persecutory regimes.
The truth is mixed - ‘Catholics’ were involved in the Nazi State, the Nazi war and the Nazi genocide - ‘Catholics’ were also involved in resistance to the Nazi State and occupation, fighting against the Nazis and saving Jews from the Holocaust. The activities of the former do not form some kind of ultimate condemnation of ‘Catholics’ but the activities of the latter do not form some kind of ultimate defense.
Now, I appreciate that the Catholic League doesn’t agree with that assessment and that you agree with the Catholic League - however, the question of one concentration camp commander is hardly a history of the Ustaše regime.
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Eden
Guest
Some Catholics during WWII helped Jews, some harmed them. O.K. Some Jews have persecuted Christians, some have been friendly. Your attempts to find a conspiracy of collaboration by the “Catholic Church” by saying “some Catholics” and “Institutional Catholicism” “had a role” is paranoid and it’s off-topic. Did someone start a new thread in here?
What does any of this have to do with the joyous occasion in which Holocaust survivors honored the Church for its role in saving their lives at an audience with Pope Benedict XVI last month? If you recall, that was the original subject of my thread. It is you who has created diversions, which we have all been led into in response. I do thank you for not mentioning hamsters yet though…
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Sepharad
Guest
There were many Eastern Orthodox in the Ukraine, Romania, etc who were just as bad if not worse to Jews than Roman Catholics have been.
I could run down the list of many of them, but Valerian Trifa (former bishop in the Romanian Orthodox church) stands out most in my mind.
I could run down the list of many of them, but Valerian Trifa (former bishop in the Romanian Orthodox church) stands out most in my mind.
K
Kaninchen
Guest
There was no diversion whatsoever - I was commenting on the article you cited. If you don’t want comments on a cited article, then you shouldn’t cite an article.
Just to remind you, this is in the article:
“Despite attempts by embittered ex-priests and seminarians, and others, to discredit Pope Pius XII’s heroic efforts in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust (as many as 860,000 were saved), the evidence is mounting that Pius was a ‘Righteous Gentile.’ What is happening in the Vatican today is another reminder of just how great a man he was.
I just said that I’ve always regarded that Pius XII question as a diversion and then took you up on your simplistic understanding of Italian history. This led to a conversation with others where I explained why I thought it was a diversion - your posts are always excellent examples of just why, by the way.
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Eden
Guest
As I stated, we are led into responding to your comments, because you have already started the diversion. The article I was responding to was in response to your diversion. If you look at the title of my thread, it was not about Croatia or Serbia.
Now your diversion has reached amusing levels, since you have concluded that some Catholics helped Jews in WWII and others harmed them. So, where is this vast Catholic Church conspiracy against the Jews? And since there isn’t one, what is your point?
**I think the rest of us are here to celebrate with the survivors of the Holocaust who came to an audience with Pope Benedict XVI a few weeks ago to thank the Church for saving their lives.
**You’ve gone off into some other dimension of conversation, which I regret having been duped into following, as it only encourages further diversion from the joyous topic originally being discussed.
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Claude_Kenneson
Guest
How sad! Thanks for posting that.
K
Kaninchen
Guest
How on earth can your op be a response to something I said on this thread?As I stated, we are led into responding to your comments, because you have already started the diversion. The article I was responding to was in response to your diversion. If you look at the title of my thread, it was not about Croatia or Serbia.
By the way, it was ‘Slovakia’ not ‘Serbia’ that I mentioned - they happen to be in Europe, they are predominantly Catholic and in both cases members of the institutional church (ie clergy) were involved in the persecutory regimes.
The idea that there was a vast Catholic Church conspiracy against Jews is a strawman of your manufacture and nothing to do with what I’ve been arguing. This is exactly what I was talking about as the Pius XII diversion - rather than come to terms with the antisemitism that was rife in Catholic Europe, rather than come to terms with the association of Catholic political parties and groups with the far right antisemitic parties in Europe at the time - we get ‘Pius XII’ saving whatever millions of European Jews the claimant currently considers sounds nicest.
Perhaps you should have posted this in one of the more self-congratulatory sections of CAF?
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Eden
Guest
My post about Fr. Filipovic-Majstorovic was in response to your thread diversion about Croatia. And the topic of the thread has nothing to do with Croatia, Slovakia or Serbia… so the correction doesn’t help me understand your point any better.You are claiming that anti-Semitism was rife in Catholic Europe. Again, what does that have to do with my OP that survivors of the Holocaust came to an audience with Pope Benedict XVI several weeks ago to thank the Church for saving their lives? I’ve asked several times now what your comments have to do with the OP and I still don’t have an answer. It’s unfortunate that a positive news item about Jewish-Catholic relations has been met with such cynicism on your part.
Why would I congratulate myself? I wasn’t even alive during WWII…
K
Kaninchen
Guest
I’ll try again. If necessary, tell me at which number your comprehension breaks down:
You are claiming that anti-Semitism was rife in Catholic Europe. Again, what does that have to do with my OP that survivors of the Holocaust came to an audience with Pope Benedict XVI several weeks ago to thank the Church for saving their lives? I’ve asked several times now what your comments have to do with the OP and I still don’t have an answer. It’s unfortunate that a positive news item about Jewish-Catholic relations has been met with such cynicism on your part.
- Your op contained a link to the story behind the op - OK so far?
- That story contained a paragraph about the criticisms of Pius XII - OK so far?
- I said that I considered the Pius XII question a diversion - OK so far?
- I went on to have conversations with other people where I explained my position - OK so far?
- Replying to one of the posters (JReducation - we had quite a pleasant conversation, by the way), I mentioned the Slovakia and Croatia issue, something I was to do again in a later reply (post #64) on the question of complicity. OK so far?
- You brought up Filipovic-Majstorovic (post #75). OK so far?
- I restated my position (post #77). OK so far?
- You complained that I was diverting the thread.
I was referring to those parts of CAF less given argument.
- Status