Pope Pius XII, the Allies, and WWII

[JP2Iloveyou]

I'm taking a class right now which talks about the influence the Catholic Church had on politics in the early to middle parts of the 20th century. Right now, we are studying a video about Pope Pius XII's role in opposing the Nazis. We watched a video yesterday which was very biased against the Holy Father (this is very solid Catholic university. The class is taught by a solid Dominican sister). Anyway, I want to get both sides of the story before really criticizing the Pope, but if what they say was true, I think Pope Pius did not do enough to help the Jews during the war. In any event, the Pope didn't have an army and couldn't respond with anything other than prayers and words against Hitler.

There was a group of people, however, who could respond. Realize that Pius XII was elected in March of 1939 if I'm not mistaken. By that time, the Nazis were well on their way to gaining control of Germany and then of Europe. Pearl Harbor happened on December 7, 1941. That's a full three years after the war really got going. As an American, I have to ask myself, "How dare we?" How dare we sit over here on our rear ends and basicly watch an entire race of people get slaughtered. The entire course of the war changed after the U.S. entered the fight. The bottom line is that we acted to late. The United States allowed millions and millions of people to be killed. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

Which brings me to today. A similar situation was going on in Iraq two years ago. A ruthless dictator was killing those he didn't agree with in an effort to gain more power than he already posessed. Saddam Hussein, by invading Kuwait, showed he was not afraid to attack others in an effort to expand his empire. The United States again acted to late. From the time we pulled out of Kuwait in 1991, until the time we invaded Iraq in 2002, Saddam Hussein murdered countless people, maybe even in the millions, and we sat over here and watched it happen.

How can anyone, after looking at history and what is currently going on, not say that we were justified in removing Saddam? If only we had done the same with Hitler. Thank you President Bush and the United States military for being willing to remove a murderer from power.

As I write this, however, there are many other murderers in power throughout the world. Let me name some of them for you. Kim Jong Il in North Korea, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Mamuar Gadafi in Libya, the thugs running the Sudan, and many others. When we're done cleaning up in Iraq, here's to hoping these guys are next on our list.

[vianney]

JP2ILOVEYOU.....I love you....

[God Conquers]

Well... in it was unknown until most of the way through the war that there was genocide going on in Germany.

The Pope did an incredible job under the circumstances. He wrote a letter to the German Church denouncing the Nazis not in name, but by policy, it was banned by the Nazis, and those priests who read it to their congregations arrested.

If Pius had applied any more pressure there arguably would have been two religions slaughtered in the holocaust... he had a duty to both speak out against genocide and to protect his flock.

For the first time in thousands of years Pius allowed cloistered monasteries to open their doors to thousands of jewish refugees... arguably no one did more to help the jewish people at this time then the Catholic Church. Look at Sts like Edith Stein, Maximillien Colby.

Pope Fiction by Patrick Madrid defends alot of the accusations leveled at many different popes.

[url="http://www.allcatholicbooks.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=ACB&Product_Code=I25x8t2&Category_Code="]The Defamation of Pius XII[/url] is the best book on the subject.

Also, I'm not sure you could compare Fidel Castro, Mahmar Gadahffi and Kim Jong Il to Hitler... the situation was quite different.

[toledo_jesus]

The Germans didn't really advertise to the other nations that they were slaughtering Jews by the millions. There were reports from those Jews that made it to America, and there was an idea that there was something going on...but the full extent wasn't known until we got to those camps.
The Pope was in the middle of Fascist Italy, and if he had dared to call for direct action against Hitler just what would have stopped der Fuhrer from having Pius killed? Not much. Popes are generally old men...old men sometimes have accidents or get sick...hmmmm. Pius did more good alive than dead.

Don't you believe those stupid videos, cause nobody who made them was in that man's position, and only he and God are aware of what he could have done better. :angry:

[Guest Aluigi]

I have a book that is just the memoirs of an American Diplomat to the Holy See, they did soooo much to try to stop the Nazis. It is all lies originally propogated by the Communists to stop his beatification and canonization because they hated the papacy.

The concordat defined a Catholic as a baptized person even if they were a Jew, and thus was open the door for Pius XII to issue countless false baptismal certificates saving tens of thousands of Jews.

I've seen pictures of the Jewish refugees hidden in the Vatican of Pius XII itself.

A close friend of Pius XII during the time period has recounted how he spent hours of prayer contemplating the issue of whether to excommunicate hitler and all the nazis, but he came to the conclusion it would only serve to cause more evil and backlash. He was torn because he knew they should be excommunicated, but since it would cause more death he refrained.

The Jews of the day called him a "righteous genitle". The Jews of today have the wool pulled over their eyes and sometimes easily fall into considering him "hitler's pope" :angry:

[Guest Aluigi]

there's this little old nun, i've seen her on EWTN, who knew Pius XII and now goes around everywhere debunking these myths.

[God Conquers]

[quote name='Aluigi' date='Nov 30 2004, 03:57 PM'] there's this little old nun, i've seen her on EWTN, who knew Pius XII and now goes around everywhere debunking these myths. [/quote]
huzzah to little old nuns!

HUZZAH!

[JP2Iloveyou]

Here's the thing though, the Pope is only infallible in matters of faith and morals. This wasn't a matter of faith and moral, therefore, the Holy Father COULD have made a mistake in his prudential judgment. The fact is that 4,000,000 people were killed with the Pope NOT speaking up. It couldn't have been a whole lot worse if he had. I'm sure Pope Pius XII acted in good faith; he did what he thought was right at the time. Hindsight will always be 20/20, and I don't want to rush to judgment. Like I said, the movie was very biased and it wouldn't be fair to make a decision after only hearing half the story. We are not being responsible Catholics though if we blindly defend every decision the Pope makes, regardless of who the Pope is. John Paul II has made some mistakes and I'm sure he would be the first to admit that. However, I still love him, I still respect his office, and I certainly believe that he has never made a mistake in matters of faith and morals, as he can't because he is protected by God against doing so.

However, I'm still very upset by the response of the U.S. and other allies. I don't believe for a second that we didn't know what was going on. We had intelligience. The U.S. sat on her hands and did nothing though. I can't believe that something of this big a scale was going on and we didn't know about it. Even if that is the case, then we can REALLY begin talking about the actions of Pius XII because at the very least, he should have had closed door meetings with President Roosevelt asking the U.S. to get involved.

There is no doubt that Pius knew what was going on. He had two options. He could either deal with it quietly in the background, or loudly and publicly. He choose quietly. Since he did so, a reasonable next step would have been to try to get the world's greatest super power on your side, and that was the United States. Either Pius XII neglected a duty to inform FDR, or FDR knew about it and did nothing. Please, don't misunderstand. I love Pius XII and I respect FDR, though I disagree with many of his policies. I'm not trying to drag their names through the mud. I'm just using history as a guide for the present and future. Had the French tried to stop Hitler before he drove his tanks through Paris, had the British done more, had the U.S. intervened earlier, far few lives would have been lost. Just my opinion. I could be wrong. It's open to debate.

[God Conquers]

[quote]Since he did so, a reasonable next step would have been to try to get the world's greatest super power on your side, and that was the United States[/quote]

Arguable... Britain and Russia were probably still just as great... 1956 is the breaking away point for the US.

And what makes you think he didn't?

[quote]I'm just using history as a guide for the present and future.[/quote]

This is not the purpose of history. We can be informed by the past, but not bound to it's successes or mistakes. We are to use history to enhance our knowledge of the past as it was. Ranke would be apalled.

[quote]Had the French tried to stop Hitler before he drove his tanks through Paris, had the British done more, had the U.S. intervened earlier, far few lives would have been lost. [/quote]

Speculative history is dangerous. What more could the British have done? How could the French have prevented Hitler from driving tanks into Paris? Why would the US intervene earlier? (earl;ier than what? They did begin intervening very early in the war)

[Guest Aluigi]

guess what saved the most jews in WWII. was it the U.S.? nope. the U.S.S.R.? nope, guess again. certainly not any of the other Allied Countries, right? yep, none of em. Give up?

IT WAS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

If Pius XII had spoken up the nazis would have had an even larger public and unrestricted outlash against the Church.
If Pius XII had been more open and public, Mussolini would have marched right into the Vatican and stopped his entire effort.

It's not a question of papal infallibility, it's a question of I believe Pius XII deserves to be a saint and these lies and propaganda out there stopped the process.

Pius XII's actions were commendable, noble, and the best course of action he could have taken. The Church definitely raged against the Nazis and the Fascists, until they signed the concordat because if they kept doing it the Vatican would be rubble today, and besides the concordat helped them save Jews by giving out fake baptismal records.

Pius XII also gave his Apostolic Blessing to many attempts to assassinate Hitler.

[Guest Aluigi]

and FYI there was definitely a correspondance between Hitler and Roosevelt, I read about it in the Memoirs of Harold H. Tittmann, an American Diplomat to the Vaticfan of Pius XII during world war II.

[amarkich]

They Nazis were anti-clerical, too; they did not just hate Jews. Obviously the Church does not support anti-clerical organizations. The worst part of the Holocaust was the murder of holy priests and religious (I believe there were convents that were seized by the Nazis).

[Guest Aluigi]

the torture and death genocide of the Jewish people was horrible too... i don't think we should be keeping a scorecard of which deaths were worse.

[amarkich]

Oh, I did not mean it that way. I was just saying how bad it was to kill priests and religious. It's much worse to kill a priest than a layman, I would think.

[qfnol31]

I agree.