NYTimes editorials on Pius XII from 1941 and 1942

[NeelyAnn]

From Fr. Z:

**NYTimes editorials on Pius XII from 1941 and 1942 **

These are posted on the site of the Catholic League. They are editorials from the New York Times in 1941 and 1942:

On Christmas Day, 1941, the New York Times, commenting on Pius XII’s Christmas Message, carried the following editorial:

The Pope’s Message

The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas. The Pope reiterates what he has said before. In general, he repeats, although with greater definiteness, the five-point plan for peace which he first enunciated in his Christmas message after the war broke out in 1939. His program agrees in fundamentals with the Roosevelt-Churchill eight-point declaration. It calls for respect for treaties and the end of the possibility of aggression, equal treatment for minorities, freedom from religious persecution. It goes farther than the Atlantic Charter in advocating an end of all national monopolies of economic wealth, and so far as the eight points, which demands complete disarmament for Germany pending some future limitation of arms for all nations.

The Pontiff emphasized principles of international morality with which most men of good-will agree. He uttered the ideas a spiritual leader would be expected to express in time of war. Yet his words sound strange and bold in the Europe of today, and we comprehend the complete submergence and enslavement of great nations, the very sources of our civilization, as we realize that he is about the only ruler left o the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all. The last tiny islands of neutrality are so hemmed in and overshadowed by war and fear that no one but the Pope is still able to speak aloud in the name of the Prince of Peace. This is indeed a measure of the “moral devastation” he describes as the accompaniment of physical ruin and inconceivable human suffering.

In calling for a “real new order” based on “liberty, justice and love,” to be attained only by a “return to social and international principles capable of creating a barrier against the abuse of liberty and the abuse of power,” the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism. Recognizing that there is no road open to agreement between belligerents “whose reciprocal war aims and programs seem to be irreconcilable,” he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace. “The new order which must arise out of this war,” he asserted, “must be based on principles.” And that implies only one end to the war.

On Christmas Day, 1942, the Times once again editorialized on the papal Christmas Message and again praised Pius XII for his moral leadership:

The Pope’s Verdict

No Christmas sermon reaches a larger congregation than the message Pope Pius XII addresses to a war-torn world at this season. This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent. The Pulpit whence he speaks is more than ever like the Rock on which the Church was founded, a tiny island lashed and surrounded by a sea of war. In these circumstances, in any circumstances, indeed, no one would expect the Pope to speak as a political leader, or a war leader, or in any other role than that of a preacher ordained to stand above the battle, tied impartially, as he says, to all people and willing to collaborate in any new order which will bring a just peace.

But just because the Pope speaks to and in some sense for all the peoples at war, the clear stand he takes on the fundamental issues of the conflict has greater weight and authority. When a leader bound impartially to nations on both sides condemns as heresy the new form of national state which subordinates everything to itself: when he declares that whoever wants peace must protect against “arbitrary attacks” the “juridical safety of individuals:” when he assails violent occupation of territory, the exile and persecution of human beings for no reason other than race or political opinion: when he says that people must fight for a just and decent peace, a “total peace” — the “impartial judgment” is like a verdict in a high court of justice.

Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were a lifeless thing.

 

[ljubim]

Awesome

It makes me sick, the lies that Pope Pius was a Nazi sympathizer. He did more against them than the United States did, and nobody sees the facts, right in front of their eyes!

People are so manipulated by the media. And they don’t even see it. I have trouble going to non-Catholic sites anymore without becoming depressed at the erosion of society.

 

[rwoehmke]

Having graduated High School the year of Pius XII’s death, in my opinion he was more of a saint than any Pope we have had since and we have and have had very holy and good Popes over the last 100 years or so.

 

[KC91]

I totally agree Pius XII was a great Pope. In the 1950s many had said he was a living Saint adding on the fact that he had apparations with Jesus and Mary.

 

[NeelyAnn]

**The Internal Order of States and People
Pope Pius XII’s Christmas Message of 1942. **

MY DEAR CHILDREN of the Whole World:

As the Holy Christmas Season comes round each year, the message of Jesus, Who is light in the midst of darkness, echoes once more from the Crib of Bethlehem in the ears of Christians and re-echoes in their hearts with an ever new freshness of joy and piety. It is a message which lights up with heavenly truth a world that is plunged in darkness by fatal errors. It infuses exuberant and trustful joy into mankind, torn by the anxiety of deep, bitter sorrow. It proclaims liberty to the sons of Adam, shackled with the chains of sin and guilt. It promises mercy, love, peace to the countless hosts of those in suffering and tribulation who see their happiness Shattered and their efforts broken in the tempestuous strife and hate of our stormy days.

The church bells, which announce this message in every continent, not only recall the gift which God made to mankind at the dawn of the Christian Era; they also announce and proclaim a consoling reality of the present, a reality which is eternally young, living and lifegiving; it is the reality of the “True Light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this World,” and which knows no setting. The Eternal Word, Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, began His mission of saving and redeeming the human race by being born in the squalor of a stable and by thus ennobling and hallowing poverty.

He thus proclaimed and consecrated a message which is still, today, the Word of Eternal Life. That message can solve the most tortuous questions, unsolved and insoluble for those who bring to their investigations a mentality and an apparatus which are ephemeral and merely human; and those questions stand up, bleeding, imperiously demanding an answer, before the thought and the feeling of embittered and exasperated mankind.

The watchword “I have compassion on the multitude” is for Us a sacred trust which may not be abused; it remains strong, and impelling in all times and in all human situations, as it was the distinguishing mark of Jesus.

The Church would be untrue to herself, ceasing to be a mother, if she turned a deaf ear to her children’s anguished cries, which reach her from every class of the human family. She does not intend to take sides for any of the particular forms in which the several peoples and States strive to solve the gigantic problems of domestic order or international collaboration, as long as these forms conform to the law of God. But on the other hand, as the “Pillar and Ground of Truth” and guardian, by the will of God and the mandate of Christ, of the natural and supernatural order, the Church cannot renounce her right to proclaim to her sons and to the whole world the unchanging basic laws, saving them from every perversion, frustration, corruption, false interpretation and error.

This is all the more necessary for the fact that from the exact maintenance of these laws, and not merely by the effort of noble and courageous wills, depends in the last analysis the solidity of any national and international order, so fervently desired by all peoples. We know the qualities of courage and sacrifice of those peoples, and We also know their straitened conditions and their sorrow; and in this hour of unspeakable trial and strife We feel Ourselves bound to each and every one of them without exception, by a deep, all-embracing, unmovable affection, and by an immense desire to bring them every solace and help which is in any way at Our command.

Primary Elements of Social Life

In our last Christmas Message, We expounded the principles- which Christian thought suggests, for the establishment of an international order of friendly relations and collaboration such as to conform to the demands of God’s Law. Today We shall, with the consent, We feel, and the interested attention of all upright men, pause to consider very carefully and with equal impartiality, the fundamental laws of the internal order of the States and peoples.

International relations and internal order are intimately related. International equilibrium and harmony depend on the internal equilibrium and development of the individual States in the material, social and intellectual spheres. A firm steady peace policy towards other nations is, in fact, impossible without a spirit of peace within the nation which inspires trust. It is only, then, by striving for an integral peace, a peace in both fields, that people will be freed from the cruel nightmare of war, and the material and psychological causes of further discord and disorder will be diminished in a desire for peace, and hence aims at attaining peace, that “tranquil living together in order” in which St. Thomas finds the essence of peace. Two primary elements, then, regulate social life, a living together in order, and a living together in tranquillity.

Order

Order, which is fundamental in an association of men (of beings, that is, who strive to attain an end appropriate to their nature) is not merely external linking up of parts which are numerically distinct. It is rather, and must be, a tendency and an ever more perfect approach to an internal union; and this does not exclude differences founded in fact and sanctioned by the will of God or by supernatural standard.

Continue here:
papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/P12CH42.HTM

 

[NeelyAnn]

**Christmas Radio Message of His Holiness Pius XII

December 24, 1941

(From the Vatican website. This is a Google translation form Spanish.)**

1. At the dawn and the light shines in preparation for the Christmas party, expected always yearning for joy soft and penetrating, while all fronts will have to bow and every knee to bend in adoration before the ineffable mystery of the merciful goodness of God who, in his infinite charity, wanted to give as a gift supreme and August, to humanity, his only Son, our hearts, beloved sons and daughters scattered upon the face of the earth, it opens to you and, of course to earth, rises and sinks in the sky.
2. The star indicates the cradle of the newborn Savior two thousand years still shines in the sky wonderful Christianity. Shake the peoples and nations conjúrense against God and his Messiah (Sal 2, 1-2.) Through the storms of the human world, the star did not know, does not know or know sunsets, the past, present and future are yours. She never taught not to despair: shine before the people even when on earth, as on an ocean roaring in the storm, black clouds piled up, filled with ruins and calamities. Its light is light of comfort, hope, unwavering faith, life and safety in the final triumph of the Redeemer, which led, which flood of salvation, inner peace and glory to all those, high order supernatural grace, have received the power to become children of God because of God were born.
3. Therefore, we, that in these bitter times of convulsions of war, we are saddened by your grief and pain with your pain, we who live, like you, under the weight of a very serious scourge that tears at three years and humanity, on the eve of a big feast, we want to address you, shaken father’s heart with the word to exhort you to remain steadfast in faith and to communicate you the comfort of that true, and superhuman exuberant hope and certainty that radiate from the birthplace of Salvador newborn.
4. True, dear children, that if our eyes Let them consider the matter further and meat, hardly could find any cause for comfort. Diffuse, yes, the bells on Christmas joyful message, enlighten the churches and chapels, religious chants cheer the spirits, it’s all party and ornament in the sacred temples, but humanity continues to tear into a war of extermination. In the liturgy resonates on the lips of the Church’s wonderful anthem: Rex pacificus magnificatus est, cuius terra universa Vultum desiderata ( “It’s been glorified peaceful King, whose face you want to see the whole earth.” [Roman Breviary, 1st antiphon eve of Christmas]); anthem that resonates in shrill contrast to the noisy events that are precipitated by hills and plains with a terrific roar, devastate land and homes in large areas and throw a million men and their families in the Unfortunately, misery and death. Certainly impressive are the many shows of indomitable courage in defending the right and the motherland; of serenity in the pain of burning souls living as holocaust for the triumph of truth and justice. But also with anguish that oppresses the soul, think and, as in dreams, behold the terrible shock of arms and bloodshed in the year that breaks down into its twilight, the unhappy fate of the wounded and prisoners, the suffering body and spiritual, the havoc, destruction and ruin that the air war carries and dumps on large and populous cities, industrial centers and vast territories, the riches of the dilapidated state, the millions of men the enormous conflict and violence are hard visiting impoverishment and hunger.
5. And while the freshness and health of a large proportion of youth, approaching to maturity, are diminishing by the hardships imposed by this scourge, will, however, soaring costs and contributions of war which causing the decline of the productive forces in the civil and social field, can not fail to disturb those who become painfully worried look toward its future. The idea of force chokes and perverts the rule of law. Dad possibilities and let the door open to individuals and social or political groups to infringe upon the property and the lives of others; also permit any other disturbing moral destruction and turn on the storm in the civil atmosphere, and you yourselves will see how the notions of good and evil, right and wrong, they lose their sharp edges are dulled, confused and threaten to disappear. Who, under the pastoral ministry is the way to penetrate the hearts, know and see what pile of unspeakable pain and anguish weighed and spread over so many souls, taking away the desire and joy of working and living, how to drown spirits and makes them dumb, lazy, suspicious, and almost without hope to events and needs; disturbances of soul that no one can take lightly if you have in your heart the true good of the people and want to promote a return far not to the normal and orderly life and work. Given this view of this, comes a bitterness that pervades the breast, especially since today is not open no path of intelligence between the warring parties, whose reciprocal war aims and programs seem to be in irreconcilable opposition.

**Continue reading here:

vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/speeches/1941/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19411224_radiomessage-peace_sp.html**