Pius XII Defended in Israeli Newspaper

That dispicable anti-semitic Pope Pius XII is in the news again. An American writer has written an article for the Israeli Periodical Haaretz praising the heroic virtue of Pius XII for his defence of the Jews during WWII.

Hey, wait, WHAT??!?

American Scholar Says Defamation is "Doomed to Failure"

In that piece, Cavalli asserted that the "campaign against Pope Pius XII is doomed to failure."

"[H]is detractors cannot sustain their main charges against him -- that he was silent, pro-Nazi, and did little or nothing to help the Jews -- with evidence," Cavalli contended.

The author said the proof that exists shows the contrary.

He noted that in 1933, when Cardinal Pacelli [the future Pius XII] was still secretary of state, he "instructed the papal nuncio in Germany to see what he could do to oppose the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies."

The author also points out that Pope Pius XI's 1937 encyclical "Mit brennender Sorge," which was drafted by Cardinal Pacelli, was considered by the Germans as a "security threat."

Then, Cavalli continued, when Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope on March 2, 1939, " on March 4, Joseph Goebbels, the German propaganda minister, wrote in his diary: 'Midday with the Fuehrer. He is considering whether we should abrogate the concordat with Rome in light of Pacelli's election as Pope.'"

Moreover, Cavalli continued, "During the war, the Pope was far from silent."

And, he asserted: "Unlike many of the Pope's latter-day detractors, the Nazis understood him very well.

"After studying Pius XII's 1942 Christmas message, the Reich Central Security Office concluded: 'In a manner never known before the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. ... Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.'"

"Pick up any book that criticizes Pius XII, and you won't find any mention of this important report," Cavalli reflected.

The author reiterated that during the War, representatives of the Pope "frequently ordered the Vatican's diplomatic representatives in many Nazi-occupied and Axis countries to intervene on behalf of endangered Jews."

And he observed that until the Holy Father's death in 1958 "many Jewish organizations, newspapers and leaders lauded his efforts." He cited in this regard a 1944 letter to the papal nuncio in Romania, from Alexander Shafran, chief rabbi of Bucharest.

Cavalli concludes, saying, "Perhaps only in a backward world such as ours would the one man who did more than any other wartime leader to help Jews and other Nazi victims, receive the greatest condemnation."

Zenit

The complete article is here


OMG!!! YOU MEAN TO TELL ME I WAS LIED TO BY THE MSM???


Well that just goes to show you can't believe anything you read anymore...



[edit on 1-2-2010 by FortAnthem]

So where did all the bad press for Pius XII originate?

Some say it was the Soviets who created the "Black Legend" in order to diminish the stature of the Roman Catholic Church in the eyes of the world:




It seems Zionism may have played a role in the continuance of the "Black Legend".

The birth of the "black legend" of Pius XII

by Giovanni Sale

The "black legend" of a pope who was a friend of Hitler and a supporter of totalitarian regimes was not born, as is often maintained, in Jewish circles, in response to the presumed silence of Pius XII on the Holocaust, but in the communist world, in the period during which, shortly before the end of the second world war, the division of the world into two opposing blocs was approaching, one under Soviet influence and the other under that of the United States. [...]

From the sources, it emerges that the "accusation" of Pius XII as a friend of Hitler, Mussolini, and other fascist dictators predates the scorching and even more controversial accusation of the pope's silence over the extermination of Jews in Europe. [...] In reality, the perception of this extermination and its theoretical elaboration, which were lightly developed in the years just after the war, made headway only beginning in the 1960's. The events surrounding the Eichmann trial [in 1961, held in Jerusalem], and his execution in 1962 made a noteworthy contribution to making the genocide of the European Jews the founding event, from the moral point of view, of the state of Israel. In this regard, the historian and diplomat Sergio Romano writes: "Up until that moment, the essential elements of Israeli identity had been the Zionist saga, the laborious progress of the Jewish presence in Palestine, the fight for life, the victorious war against the Arab states .... The Eichmann case changed the picture and contributed to making Jewish genocide the cornerstone of Israel. The state of pioneers and farmer-soldiers was thus replaced, in collective self-representation, with the state of victims and their heirs."

The play "The Deputy" by Rolf Hochhuth, performed for the first time in Paris in 1963, spread among intellectuals and the wider public the accusation of a pope who was silent and indifferent toward the fate of the Jews; of a pope who, out of fear of the atheistic and revolutionary communism, had aligned himself with the dictators of his time. In this way, Pius XII was called before the tribunal of history, to the roll of those charged in the offense of the Holocaust; this call of "co-defendant" extended, beyond Germany, the field of responsibility for what happened to the "hated and despised" Jews in Christian Europe. Anti-Catholic historical literature then had a field day creating the legend of a silent pope who was Hitler's friend; this literature has had great success in recent years in the English-speaking world, but today has been subjected to serious and well thought-out historical criticism. These events, moreover, were and still are exploited by the most radical and intransigent form of Judaism, interested in keeping alive, for reasons that were more political than intellectual, an old dispute with the Catholic Church for its anti-Judaism, upheld by many Catholics until Vatican Council II. The recent position statements by the Jewish world on the beatification process for Pius XII is situated in this climate of undue pressure on the Holy See.

Source

[edit on 1-2-2010 by FortAnthem]

It's pretty scary when the culture at large lionizes figures like Che Guevara and condemns men like Pope Pius.

Vested interest and prejudice too often win out over historical accuracy.

Eric