Look, let’s make it clear:
Pope Pius XII did not support the Nazis and did not believe in nor approve of, Nazi-ism,
which he regarded (correctly) as the revival of a very evil pagan blood and race cult.
Croatia and it’s atrocities (which did occur in the WWII years) is another matter, stemming from HUNDREDS of years of mutual hatred between Croats and Serbs.
It is much too complex to be discussed here.
WERE there Vatican officials sympathetic to Nazi-ism? I’m sure there were.
There are Vatican officials, you can count on it, TODAY, who
are, either openly or secretly, in support of evil and sinful things.
Surprise, this has always been true in the Christian Church.
The Church has ALWAYS had it’s sinners and even it’s Useful Idiots.
Why are we surprised?
Jesus had his Judas Iscariot. The early Church had Ananias, Sapphira, Simon Magus,
Hymenaeus and Alexander the Blasphemers, the Christian man living in Incest and Adultery with his DAD’s wife ((and the Christian Corinthians were PROUD of their deliberate TOLERANCE of this evil relationship!!)).
So your friend’s accusations of very sinful things in the Church are not entirely without foundation, nor are they in any way without precedent, either. Since the Resurrection, there have been unrepentant deliberate willful sinners in the church. Some of them even made it to the Papacy itself (such as the “Borgia” pope as but one example).
NONE of this proves CatholicISM false or erroneous, which is what your friend is REALLY getting at: These SINNERS are BAD FRUIT, thus proving that Catholicism is false, supposedly. But that’s nonsense. What’s good for the goose, is good for the Gander. The Native Americans of North America were annihilated, and massacred primarily by PROTESTANTS. Ethnic Cleansing, Mass Murder like that, is ALSO Bad Fruit, and mostly protestant Army members did it, so if the sins of CATHOLICS prove Catholicism false, then THESE protestants’ heinous acts prove Protestantism false, ipso facto.
Sorry, but truth doesn’t work that way. Our doctrines and their correctness, stand or fall on their own merits, and are provable to be the historical original apostolic teachings and apostolic authoritative interpretations of the New Testament writings as well.
Were the early church’s DOCTRINES “false” because the entire Corinthian Church was PROUD of it’s tolerance of Incest and Adultery??? Of course not.
If the Vatican Bank is hiding Nazi loot belonging to Nazi and Ustashi victims’s families, then once proof of ownership is presented (ANYBODY can make a claim, heck, I could claim some Vatican money, but my claim would be false), once presented, the funds or gold should be relinquished to the rightful owners immediately, and NO CATHOLIC would dispute that.
As for foolish decisions by Church Officials, which they later were mortified with embarassment to have to admit they made, CARDINAL INNITZER of Vienna, in 1938, welcomed the Anschluss and wrote a letter encouraging Austrians to welcome it. Why? Austrian Nationalism. They all thought of themselves as part of a “Greater Germany,” and he and many of THEM ignored the reality of the dangers of Hitlerism. He even signed his letter, HEIL HITLER! , which is something he later very much deeply regretted, and LONG BEFORE Hitler had lost the War, so not out of convenience nor out of desire to cover his own back. He was horrified at Nazi-ism once they had taken over and pulled off their Mask and revealed their true and vicious nature as they ruled Austria. But Innitzer, in the eyes of his enemies, was never allowed to live that letter down.
Lesson? Church Officials should be always MUCH MORE CAREFUL with regard to who they throw political support behind. “Vett” them, so to speak, and be extremely careful.
