Pope considering push to canonize Pius XII? [CWN]

  • Thread starter Thread starter CWN_News
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
JohnR77 said:
snip

These questions below are not mine, but what others have asked.

Why does the Pope consort with the Nazi’s ?
Why is the SS officer saluting the Pope ?
Click to expand...
Are we sure that it’s the Pope that the officer is saluting, or may it rather be Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, the Papal Nuncio to Berlin in the 1930s (same man, obviously, but the fact that Card. Pacelli is among a bunch of Germans and being saluted by a Nazi officer would have a different meaning.)
 
JohnR77 said:
Why does the Pope consort with the Nazi’s ?
Why is the SS officer saluting the Pope ?
Click to expand...
That doesn’t appear to be an SS uniform – it looks like the uniform of a chauffeur. And he doesn’t appear to be saluting but rather tipping his hat as one would out of polite deference. All of this would support Ronald Rychlak, who claims in Hitler, the War, and the Pope that Cornwell dated the photo improperly. He claims it was from the 1920’s and Pius was therefore not leaving a meeting with Hitler but instead a party for Hindenburg.

It should be noted here that even Cornwell has stepped back from Hitler’s Pope.
 
DaveBj said:
Are we sure that it’s the Pope that the officer is saluting, or may it rather be Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, the Papal Nuncio to Berlin in the 1930s (same man, obviously, but the fact that Card. Pacelli is among a bunch of Germans and being saluted by a Nazi officer would have a different meaning.)
Click to expand...
Oops! 😊 Make that the 1920s (specifically, 1920-1929).

I blew the picture up and examined it again, and I agree with GracePoole (sorry 😛 I have a thing about capitalizing names.). 1) There are no swastikas on the soldiers’ uniforms, and 2) the style of the camera in the background and the construction of the vehicle door that the chauffeur (on second look, that’s pretty obvious) is holding open are both definitely pre-Hitler, most likely early '20s Weimar Republic. The one thing I don’t know is when the German army started using that style of helmet.
 
That information is important, but I was referring to Catholic Nationalism and the atrocites of the Ustase and the situation in the Balkans. Rome’s role in all of that is also a question on Pius XII’s record.
 
gracepoole said:
Why oh why would the Vatican choose to further inflame the already problematic relationship between Jews and the Holy See? Why not wait until the Vatican’s records from Pius’ period are open? Why waive the required miracles? I’m not one for criticizing the Holy Father (whom I love!), but none of this makes sense to me.
Click to expand...
Very true, and I’ve been agreeing with everything you’ve said (I studied a lot on this era as well, so I got to have a bit of a particular insight), but I think Pope Francis should stick a bit to protocol. Yes, I know of his acts and all, but we’ve stepped back from public acclamation back in the Middle Ages for a reason. We have a particular method to see if one’s in Heaven by the observation of miracles when praying for him/her because it works. If Pius XII is really with the Lord, no push will be necessary. The amount of time is infinite, but the amount of saints is not.
 
One point I want to clarify: The German occupation of Rome lasted from September 8, 1943-June 4, 1944.

Professor Rychalk confirms that the soldiers in the picture are from the Weimar Republic, before the Nazi’s took over. And that the picture was taken in 1927, as admitted in a later edition of Cornwell’s book. I apologize that I had previously confused which edition of Cornwell’s book was published in America with the one in Britain. See

home.olemiss.edu/~rrychlak/morphing/outsideframe.htm

I just finished watching the Movie, Pope Pius XII, Under the Roman Sky by James Cromwell, 2010 AD on EWTN. The movie was great. It was very entertaining. It was told from the perspective of a young Jewish couple who fell in love. It closely followed historical fact. One scene was based on the Ardeatine Massacre where Hitler order 10 Italians to die for every SS Nazi soldier that was killed on March 23. Hitler was brutal and ruthless.

Quote from the wikipedia.org on the Ardeatine_massacre

“On 23 March 1944, a column of the German 11th Company, 3rd Battalion, S.S. Police Regiment ‘Bozen’, was attacked by an ambush of Partisans while marching and singing on a prescribed route that led through the Piazza di Spagna into the narrow street of Via Rasella. …
The attack was carried out by 16 Partisans of the Communist-dominated Gruppo d’Azione Patriottica (“Patriotic Action Group”) …
The blast caused the immediate deaths of 28 S.S. policemen and at least two civilian bystanders, one of whom, Piero Zuccheretti, was an eleven-year old boy. More would die over the next few days. All sixteen Partisans — some of whom fired on the German soldiers — succeeded in melting away into the crowd unscathed…

By mistake, a total of 335 Italian prisoners were taken, five in excess of the 330 called for. On March 24, led by SS officers Erich Priebke and Karl Hass, they were transported to the Ardeatine caves in truckloads and then, in groups of five, put to death inside the caves. …

That night, Adolf Hitler authorized the reprisal, stipulating that it be carried out within 24 hours…. Because of the time limit that Hitler had imposed, Mälzer and Kappler agreed that the victims would have to be shot in the back of the head at close range rather than by conventional firing squad.[9]

The massacre took most of the day and soon degenerated into a drunken shambles. Some of the victims’ heads were blown off by the shots; others were only wounded and may have survived until the explosions intended to seal the caves after the massacre was completed: one youth and his father were found in each other’s arms in a corner of the cave galleries which had been not filled with the debris under which most victims had been buried. Some crawled into corners to die. …

The concept of “ten Italians for one German” is also frequently cited in making this argument, implying that the Partisans could or should have realized beforehand that their attack would cost 330 innocent Italians their lives. In fact, in the hours following the bombing, there were arguments among the Nazi leadership in Rome as well as between Hitler and his commanders as to whether 10, 30, or 50 Italians should be killed for every dead German, not to mention whether all or part of the city of Rome should also be burned.”

End Quote

Have other seen the movie?
What did you think?

What does the fact above speak about Pope Pius XII’s options ?

John
 
Vatican City is a tiny speck in the middle of (then Mussolini’s) Rome, Italy. The moment that Ven Pope Pius XII would say anything publicly would have been the moment that he’d lose most of his power to secretly save the Jews. :rolleyes: Do you really think that the Swiss Guards could defend the Vatican City “speck” against the Italian military?
 
gracepoole said:
No, I think that title is unmerited and extreme. I think the questions that remain relate to the *extent *of Pius’ actions on behalf of the Jews and his decision not to speak more publicly about the Holocaust after the war.
Click to expand...
I believe the biggest questions relate to Eugenio Pacelli’s pushing of the Concordat of 1933 which effectively silenced organized Catholic opposition to the Regime, which was still politically vulnerable at the time, and thus helped legitimize the Third Reich and helped them consolidate power. This is established historical fact. Also his later failure, as Pope Pius XII, to unequivocally condemn the Nazis by name, to urge political opposition, and use the formidable canonical and persuasive weapons that he had against the Nazi government. Instead he maintained a policy of “neutrality”, and right up to the end some German bishops were urging German Catholics to fight for the Reich. Germany was well over one third Catholic, Catholics were only slightly less than the Protestant majority. If Pius XII had tried to mobilize loyal German Catholics against the Regime, there is little doubt that the Nazi governance and war effort would have been disrupted. But Pius XII didn’t want to do that. He didn’t mind working behind the scenes to save some Jewish lives, which is commendable as far as it goes, but he could not bring himself to declare open opposition to Hitler. He didn’t want to jeopardize the status of the Church in Germany and risk open persecution against the Church as such (of course, the courageous Catholics, clergy and lay, who individually worked against Hitler were persecuted.)

That is why Pius XII should not be declared a saint.
 
Church_Militant said:
One thing that has always bothered me is people saying that he didn’t do enough.

Yet the facts show that he did more than anyone else did, including all the oh-so-noble allies who also knew what was going on and did exactly nothing at all until the end of the war. Odd too that we never hear anyone badmouthing the allies for not doing anything and then denying the visas, do we?
Click to expand...
There is plenty of “badmouthing” of world leaders and countries at that time for not being prescient and not doing enough.

*But the difference is, none of them claimed to the be the Vicar of Christ on earth, and none of them are being considered for sainthood. *
 
The Concordat with the German government was something that the Church signed under duress. It was probably that contention, that the Church was “neutral” in WWII, was the only argument that kept the Germans out of Catholic Church property so that hundreds of thousand of Jews could have been saved in Rome.

defendingthebride.com/sn/1930pwf4.jpg

In history today we hear so much of the “He said…” “She said …” versions of what really happened.
[Reminds me of Protestant versions of early Church history.]

To find what really happened we need to read the documents of that time.
And What power did the Pope actually have?

For example, today all the Pope has to do is tell all Catholics to stop using
Artificial contraception and they will stop, right ?

Was the Pope vocal ?

** Letter Shows Future Pius XII Opposed Hitler in 1923**
(Zenit).- A letter written in 1923 by the future Pope Pius XII shows his early opposition to Nazi anti-Semitism. …

Items below from Vatican Archives:

Letter from Card. Pacelli trying to secure 200,000 visas for “Converted Italians” in 1938 3 weeks after Kristallnacht. The following pages list over 65 nuncios asked for assistance. “Non-Aryan Catholics” was a code word for persecuted Jews. Since the 1933 concordat permitted the Church to care for converted Jews they used this phrase in their correspondence. There is also no reasonable way one can believe that there were 200,000 converted Jews in Germany in 1938. The following documents are of the list of nuncios that received the requests. There is one response in English from Scotland speaking about caring for the Jews. There is the front page of the Irish News stating that the Pope is trying to help the Jews of Germany. Courtesy of Michael Hesemann

Letter response to Joseph Goebbels complaint about the excommunication of Catholics who join the Nazi party Courtesy of Michael Hesemann

I believe the Canonization of Pope Pius XII will help people reexamine their position and opposition to him and find out what really happened.

John
 
JohnR77 said:
First, the Concordat with the German government was something that the Church signed under duress.
John
Click to expand...
No. There was no “duress” in any precise sense of the term. There was no “gun to the head” of Cardinal Pacelli. It was a purely voluntary act. As I stated in my post, at that point (July of 1933) Hitler had been chancellor less than six months. The Nazi party still had to govern by coalition. The Nazis were politically very vulnerable at that point, which is why neutralizing the potential opposition of the Catholic Church was of huge importance to Hitler, as he stated many times. The Concordat was a huge gift to Hitler and the Third Reich.
 
JohnR77 said:
snip

Professor Rychalk confirms that the soldiers in the picture are from the Weimar Republic, before the Nazi’s took over. And that the picture was taken in 1927, as admitted in a later edition of Cornwell’s book. I apologize that I had previously confused which edition of Cornwell’s book was published in America with the one in Britain. See

snip
Click to expand...
Thanks for that info. I would have guessed earlier in the '20s, but 1927 is very believable.
 
The Concordat is a complicated issue requiring several minutes of study.
Part 1.

Catholic Response to Nazi Oppression and the Concordat

Chronological Time Line
Prior to Concordat
Timing: Hitler’s consolidation of Power was Before Concordat
Conditions and Persecution Under which the Concordat was Signed
Catholic Church’s Response
What is a Concordat ?
Pope Pius XII – A Holy Man
Did the Pope have a Direct Role in Saving the Jews in Rome
Vatican Archives

Chronological Time Line

1.** 1923 - January 1933. Cardinal Pacelli works tirelessly to prevent the ideas and the party of the Nazi’s from gaining power. E.g.Letter Shows Future Pius XII Opposed Hitler in 1923 (Zenit).- A letter written in 1923 by the future Pope Pius XII shows his early opposition to Nazi anti-Semitism. … The letter dated Nov. 14, 1923.**

2. 1930. Vatican Publishes the order of excommunication by the German Bishops to all Catholics who join the Nazi Party.

3.** 1933, on January 30: The Nazi’s gain power in elections and Adolf Hitler was officially appointed chancellor and he acted quickly to consolidate power into an absolute dictatorship.
**

4.** 1933, in February : Hermann Göring banned all Catholic newspapers in Cologne on the claim that Catholics were illegally engaging in politics.
**

5. 1933, on March 23: Hitler’s Nazi government was given dictatorial powers through an Enabling Act which was passed unanimously by all parties except for those who were already imprisoned. Basic human rights were set aside for “four years.”

6.** 1933, on 20 July : Concordat signed. Cardinal Pacelli as a Nuncio is commissioned to do the bidding of the Pope Pius XI. Pope Pius XI was eager to obtain Concordats with several countries so as to minimize the control and oppression that those governments wished to place on the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, as the excommunication decree mentioned above failed in preventing Hitler from gaining absolute dictatorial power in Germany the Catholic Church agreed to lift the decree in exchange for some concessions from the Nazi’s. At this time many people in Germany were atheists and amongst Christians Catholics were are a minority due to the influence of Martin Luther. Under the severe persecution of all those opposing Hitler and the threat of having all the Catholic churches and schools completely shut down the Catholic Church agreed to lift the excommunication decree and to refrain from political issues in return for the Nazi’s agreement to allow the Catholic churches and schools to remain open and unhindered in religious affairs. The previous excommunication decree had had minimal effect in the overall German population and this way the Church would still have a free voice in encouraging people to repent of the sins of racism and oppression, at least according to the agreement of the Concordat.**

7.** 1937. Cardinal Pacelli and later as Pope Pius XII continues to opposes the Nazi’s and their racist eugenics. E.g. See 1937 Cartoons Lampooning Pacelli – one of many. 1937, in March : The Holy See issued the Mit brennender Sorge encyclical to Germany, condemning racism, idolatry of the state, neo-paganism, and repeated Nazi violations of the Concordat, while defending the Old Testament sourced in Jewish history.**

8. 1939 Cardinal Pacelli is elevated to the Papacy.

9.** ? 1940’s It was not immediately obvious to world just how bad the Jews were being treated. About 6 million were put to death. From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered 1.3 million people to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz, around 90 percent of them Jewish.**

10. 1940 Seven years after the Concordat – Jewish physicist Albert Einstein praises the Church as being the only one who stood in the way of Hitler and the oppression of freedom.

11.** 1943 – 1944 Pope Pius XII works directly to help save the Jews in Rome. See physical documentation from 1943 below.**
 
Part 2

Prior to Concordat
Much ink has spilt on the claim that the Catholic Church enabled Hitler to rise in power by signing the Concordat in 1933. These antagonists against the Church fail to recognize the timing of the Concordat in relation to when Hitler assumed dictatorial control, the conditions under which it was signed, and what a concordat is.
Code: 
     **Prior to signing the Concordat the Catholic Church went to enormous lengths to prevent Hitler from coming into power.**

     **Cardinal Pacelli  (later Pope Pius XII)  was such  an  outspoken opponent to the Nazi’s that they Lampooned Cardinal Pacelli  repeatedly as an Anti-Nazi.  See one example here**

     **[www.defendingthebride.com/sn/pius.html#cartoon](http://www.defendingthebride.com/sn/pius.html#cartoon)**

     **         Letter Shows Future Pius XII Opposed Hitler in 1923
    ([Zenit](http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/1923-letter-shows-the-future-pius-xii-opposed-hitler)).-  A letter written in 1923 by the future Pope Pius XII shows his early  opposition to Nazi anti-Semitism. ...**

     **The Catholic Bishops in Germany had even gone so   far as to  excommunicate Catholics who joined Hitler’s party in 1930,  three years  before he came into power.  This was republished in the Vatican  Newspaper of that year.**

     **[defendingthebride.com/sn/1930pwf4.jpg](http://www.defendingthebride.com/sn/1930pwf4.jpg)
**
Timing: Hitler’s consolidation of Power was Before Concordat
The Concordat that the Catholic Church signed with the German government was on July 20 of 1933. However, Adolf Hitler had assumed dictatorial control by March of 1933.

Conditions and Persecution Under which the Concordat was Signed
From Catholic dot Com article
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/catholic-martyrs-of-the-holocaust

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was officially appointed chancellor by the aged President Paul von Hindenburg. A mere month later, on February 27, the infamous Reichstag Fire (a plot concocted by the Nazis) gave Hitler the pretext to establish a dictatorship through the so-called Enabling Act that was passed in March 1933. The act bestowed sweeping powers on the government, including setting aside key elements of basic rights, for four years. …

In February 1933, Hermann Göring banned all Catholic newspapers in Cologne on the claim that Catholics were illegally engaging in politics. …

As the parties were disbanded, the Gestapo began rounding up all who might oppose the social revolution. Hundreds of priests were arrested for speaking out against the anti-democratic changes and the persecution of Jews. …

catholic.com/magazine/articles/catholic-martyrs-of-the-holocaust

“The truth is many thousands of Catholic men, women, and children died in concentration camps, SS and Gestapo torture chambers, or in fields and villages across Europe for the ‘crime’ of proclaiming the truth to one of the most evil regimes in human history. The historical reality of this oppression does not in any way reduce the culpability of some Catholics in the Holocaust, nor does it suggest that the unprecedented genocide of the Jewish people should be forgotten or considered reduced in significance. …

“By the late 1920s, the Catholic Church in Germany claimed some 20 million members. They were outnumbered by the 40 million Lutherans …

“At first, many average Catholics, like other Germans, were not fully aware of the dangers of National Socialism. Some saw the Nazis as a potential ally against the spread of Communism. Bishop Christian Schreiber of Berlin, for example, granted permission for Catholics to join the party. Most German bishops and priests, however, were alarmed by the Nazis and their anti-Semitic speeches, radical nationalistic tone, and clear willingness to use violence and intimidation. In early 1931, the bishops’ conference of the Cologne region condemned National Socialism …”

From Wikipedia sources
On 20 July 1933, the Vatican signed an agreement with Germany, the Reichskonkordat, partly in an effort to stop Nazi persecution of Catholic institutions … With this background, Catholic officials wanted a concordat strongly guaranteeing the church’s freedoms. Once Hitler came to power, and started enacting laws restricting movement of funds (making it impossible for German Catholics to send money to missionaries, for instance), restricting religious institutions and education, and mandating attendance at Hitler Youth functions (held on Sunday mornings to interfere with Church attendance), the need for a concordat seemed even more urgent to church officials. …

On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. On 23 March 1933, his government was given dictatorial powers through an Enabling Act passed by all parties in the Reichstag except the Social Democrats and Communists (whose deputies had already been arrested).
 
Part 3.

Catholic Church’s Response
from Wikipedia sources
In March 1937 the Holy See issued the Mit brennender Sorge encyclical to Germany, condemning racism, idolatry of the state, neo-paganism, and repeated Nazi violations of the Concordat, while defending the Old Testament sourced in Jewish history.

Eugenio Pacelli, the former Nuncio to Germany (1920–1930), became Pope Pius XII in 1939. His legacy is contested. As Vatican Secretary of State through the 1930s, he assisted in drafting the Concordat and Mit brennender Sorge. … Pius used diplomacy to aid war victims and lobby for peace. At times, risking neutrality, he shared intelligence with the Allies, used Vatican Radio and press to speak out against atrocities like race murders. Under Pius XII, the Church rescued many thousands of Jews, by issuing false documents, lobbying Axis officials, and hiding them in monasteries, convents, schools and elsewhere including the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo.

In the Nazi Empire, responses to Nazism varied. Priests were watched closely, frequently denounced, or imprisoned. The Nazis established a dedicated clergy barracks at Dachau, where 2,579 Catholic priests were imprisoned; mostly, Polish, among them, 411 Germans.

Mit brennender Sorge (German: “With burning concern”) On the Church and the German Reich is a Catholic Church encyclical of Pope Pius XI, published on 10 March 1937 (but bearing a date of Passion Sunday, 14 March). Written in German, not the usual Latin, it was smuggled into Germany for fear of censorship and was read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches on one of the Church’s busiest Sundays, Palm Sunday (March 21 that year). It condemned breaches of the Reichskonkordat agreement signed between the German Reich and the Holy See in 1933, criticised Nazism and its elevation of one race above others.
End Quotes.

What is a Concordat ?
A Concordat is not an agreement amongst friends. One does not have to have a friend put in writing that he will recognize your rights, rather it is more like a temporary truce between opposing enmities.

Pope Pius XII – A Holy Man
What Power Does the Pope Have?
**Some imagine that if the Pope said more than he did – which was already substantial even before Hitler came to power - then Hitler would not have persecuted the Jews, as if everyone just jumped at his command. However …
**
Read more below and see links to Vatican Archives on

Did the Pope have a Direct Role in Saving the Jews in Rome ?
defendingthebride.com/sn/concordat.html
 
I certainly think they should definitely start the process. There was a film on EWTN called “Under the Roman Sky” that was about Pope Pius XII and his efforts to save as many of Rome’s Jews as he possibly could. You can watch the movie on Netflix.
 
I know there’s been some talk here about John Cornwell’s “Hitler’s Pope”, but has anyone here read “Under His Very Windows” by Susan Zucotti? The book is promoted as having a lot of credibility because Zucotti is a Yale professor who’s won a lot of awards for her other books she’s written on Holocaust history, she’s Jewish herself (even though she’s a “humanist” Jew), and she uses archived sources from the Vatican; and she concludes in her book that Pope Pius XII did not help any Jews.
However, Rabbi David Dalin in “The Myth of Hitler’s Pope”, and in some reviews I’ve read on it, claim that Zucotti cherry picks pieces of her sources that make Pius look bad, but basically tells the reader to ignore pieces of her sources that make Pius look like he saved Jews (which apparently she encounters a lot of). But has anyone here actually read it and can shed more light on it?
 
As I understand it the idea behind canonisation is to hold up people of exemplary holiness as inspirations for the faithful. Beyond the possibility that what we call miracles may be attributable to factors, mental or otherwise, which we do not yet understand, the formal canonisation of ‘controversial’ candidates could bring the Church into disrepute. While I agree that the Church should not be constrained in these matters by whom it might offend, it should nonetheless be cognisant of the effect such decisions might have on people struggling with their faith.

Everybody knows that the Church covered up clerical child abuse and it would seem that recent Popes have been complicit in that. Do we wish to add to the hurt caused by those failings by canonising those suspected of cover up. This is a particularly hot topic with critics here in Ireland. The Popes themselves don’t need canonisation if they are already in Heaven. Why bring more opprobrium down on our heads when we don’t need to?

Michael
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top