Good Job to Cardinal Mahony and the Catholic Church for Standing up to the Feds

[Ted Striker]

Nice escape route.

[Drake Tungsten]

I'm just pissed I only reeled Oerdin in. You two usually come as a package deal...

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Pyrodrew




EXCUSE ME FATHER?

I couldn't help but notice the color of your skin. Show me your papers. /german accent

We seem to be in a real Mexican standoff.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Sava

Everysing zeems to be in perfect order. (Clicks heels and exits stage right)

[Sikander]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Why is Mohammed on Zig Zag wrappers?

Decadent western hippies are burning cartoon images of the prophet! By Allah's beard I'm so confused!

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Oerdin
No, no it didn't. In fact the Pope at the time was pretty much a tool of the facists. I can't say I blame him much since the Italians and later the Germans controlled Rome but he most certainly did agree to support Mussolini in exchange for allowing the Pope to once again have sovereinty over Vatican City.

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Godwins Law in full effect beyotch!!!!!

How is Godwin's Law in effect? The Catholic Church didn't stand up to the Nazi's, so I don't really see the connection with this case.

The Catholic Church: "Sending six million Jews to the ovens is ok, just as long as you don't make us check any of their IDs."

Learn

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Would this be the same church that issued the only encyclical it has ever issued in its history that was written in German denouncing the Nazi regime? Or are we going to condemn them for acting to save hundreds of thousands of Jews from the death camps?

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Riiiiiiight -- the Catholic church still holds that it was ok how they conducted themselves during the Holocaust??

Their behavior was ok, despite distressingly commonplace views to the contrary.

You can't seriously have the opinion that the way the Catholic Church conducted itself was ok.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by MrFun
You can't seriously have the opinion that the way the Catholic Church conducted itself was ok.

Yes. Why not?

“Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.” (Time Magazine, December 23, 1940, p.38.)
- Albert Eistein

[MrFun]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Yes. Why not?

“Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.” (Time Magazine, December 23, 1940, p.38.)
- Albert Eistein

Maybe I'm mistakened in thinking of a previous pope before the Holocaust then, but I thought the Vatican was runned by an anti-semitic pope during World War II.

[Ben Kenobi]

Maybe I'm mistakened in thinking of a previous pope before the Holocaust then, but I thought the Vatican was runned by an anti-semitic pope during World War II.

Same pope.

Just he had to be circumspect in the face of Nazi Germany. Handle them with kid gloves in public while working to save the lives of as many folks as possible.

[MrFun]

The controversy of Pope Pius XII's actions during the Holocaust is less simple than anyone in here (including myself) have portrayed (from wikipedia):


Pius XII and the Holocaust
Prior to 1963, the efforts of Pius XII on behalf of all victims of war-time fascist aggression were well known and unquestioned[citation needed]. During and after the war, many Jews publicly thanked the Pope for his extraordinary help (see quotation section infra). But in 1963, Pius XII's role during World War II became a source of controversy and as such, 1963 marks the first of two distinct points in time since the end of World War II that anyone questioned Pius XII's actions. The first and short-lived criticism was after the debut of Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 controversial fictional drama Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel (The Deputy, a Christian tragedy), which portrayed Pope Pius XII as a money-grabbing hypocrite who remained silent to the Holocaust. Hochhuth, who was at first (along with current Pope Benedict XVI) a member of the Hitler Youth, and later an avowed Communist, stated that the characterization of Pius XII was untrue and ultimately unfair[citation needed]. Despite this disavowal of the play as representing anything historical, a few picked up on Hochhuth's theme and claimed Pius XII's efforts to mitigate the Holocaust were inadequate and that his role in negotiating the Reichskonkordat may have been well-meaning but played into the hands of Adolf Hitler.

These criticisms in the mid-1960s were short-lived and quickly dismissed since both Jewish and non-Jewish witnesses to Pius XII's efforts during the war were still alive and attested to his pro-active efforts to help save would-be victims of fascist aggression. Books such as Dr. Joseph Lichten's, A Question of Judgment (1963) were written in response to The Deputy to serve as an unambiguous historical defense of Pius XII's actions during the war. Dr. Lichten, a Polish Jew who served as a diplomat and later an official of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith in Rome, wrote that any criticism of the Pope's actions during World War II was "a stupefying paradox", because "no one who reads the record of Pius XII's actions on behalf of Jews can subscribe to Hochhuth's accusation."

After the quick and thorough defense made in the 1960s, a lull of over thirty years ensued when the record seemed settled and little comment was made regarding Pius XII's actions during World War II. As such, the second phase of criticism came toward the end of the 20th century with the debut of books such as John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope. In this second phase of criticism, more than fifty years after the end of the war, a new generation of critics, many of whom did not remember World War II were trying their hand at critiquing the role Pius XII played during the war. Likewise, by the late 1990s most of the eye witnesses of Pius XII's actions as well as the recipients of his kindness and saving actions, were no longer alive to silence the new wave of criticism as they had in the 1960s. Additionally, the second phase of criticism in the 1990s relied less on questioning the demonstrable efforts of Pius XII which no one could deny, and more on speculation that the Pope could have done more which is a charge virtually beyond the realm of proof or disproof. As such the argument of "he could have done more" simply lingers and requires individual appreciation of the conditions of World War II; conditions perhaps not fully appreciated by those who did not experience the war's fury first hand. Pius XII's critics have been largely dismissed by pro-Pius XII writers who allege poor scholarship, e.g. failure to cite to primary sources, and a certain bias, extending into anti-Catholic bigotry[citation needed]. Critics have said the same about Pius XII's defenders, including arguing that the numbers of jews supposedly rescued by the Pope are unsubstantiated.[citation needed]

In concrete terms, Pius XII was notably more critical of Nazi racial policies before and during the war than was Churchill or Roosevelt.[citation needed] The accusations against Pius XII come despite numerous public statements such as in his Christmas message of 1942, although it is rightly stated that the Pope's protests and all protests from public figures were done in a careful manner.

The main argument for his purportedly muted policy was twofold. First, public condemnation of Hitler and Nazism would have achieved little of practical benefit: his condemnation could effectively be censored and so unknown to German Catholics (who in any case had been told as early as the early 1930s by the German Roman Catholic hierarchy that Nazism and Catholicism were incompatible).[citation needed]

Second, if Pius XII had condemned Nazism more aggressively, the result would have been reprisals within Germany and countries occupied by her, making the Church's efforts against Nazi policies at the parish level difficult. Indeed such a reprisal occurred, when the Dutch bishops protested against the deportation of the country's Jewish population. The occupiers retaliated by singling out Jewish converts to the Church for deportation, the most notable example being Edith Stein. Likewise, when Clemens August Von Galen, bishop of Munster, wanted to speak against the persecution of the Jews in Germany, the Jewish elders of his diocese begged him not to because it would only damage them. Various episcopal conferences, first of all in Poland, urgently requested Pius XII not to condemn the persecution of the Poles and Jews because it would not save lives but increase the persecution.[citation needed]

Since vocal protest resulted in increased persecution by the Nazis, no one on the European Continent enjoyed the ability to protest. Accordingly, the Pope mostly concentrated on practical measures, such as hiding Jews in convents, monasteries, Castel Gondalfo and even the Vatican itself[citation needed]. Likewise, the Jews being hidden were even provided with Kosher meals[citation needed]. Also an "underground railroad" of secret escape routes had been set up by prominent Catholics such as Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, who operated under the tacit, if not explicit, approval of Pope Pius XII (as portrayed in the 1983 TV-movie "The Scarlet And The Black").[citation needed]

During the war, the Pope was widely praised for making a principled stand. For example, Time Magazine credited Pius XII and the Catholic Church for "fighting totalitarianism more knowingly, devoutly, and authoritatively, and for a longer time, than any other organized power" (Time, 16 August 1943).


Pope Pius' Coat of ArmsThese questions have also resurfaced of late because of the moves toward canonisation of Pius XII. In addition to canonization, during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II (1978–2005), some Catholic and Jewish leaders, including Rome's Chief Rabbi (and Holocaust survivor) Elio Toaff, began discussing and promoting the cause of Pius XII to receive such posthumous recognition from Yad Vashem. Despite these positive causes, some in the Jewish community remain concerned with the history of Pius XII.

In 1999, a class action suit against the Vatican Bank and others was brought up in the United States by various Holocaust survivors, alleging collusion in war crimes by the Ustashe regime of the Independent State of Croatia. In addition, the same lawsuit concerns secreting large vaults of war loot from Croatia into Vatican accounts. The suit alleges these funds were used to finance 'rat-line' escape routes for Nazi and other fascist war-criminals such as the Catholic Ustashe leadership who were allegedly assisted by Vatican agencies to find safe haven mostly in South America. (See also:ODESSA.)

[Ben Kenobi]

Why are you muddying the waters Mr Fun?

Your article is quite clear.

Additionally, the second phase of criticism in the 1990s relied less on questioning the demonstrable efforts of Pius XII which no one could deny, and more on speculation that the Pope could have done more which is a charge virtually beyond the realm of proof or disproof

Which is spot on.

[MrFun]

Note, I originally stated in that article post that some people have simplified the portrayal of Pope Pius XII, which, as I stated, included me; not that I still believe that he was as guilty as I initially had posted.

He was not a cold-hearted anti-semtic villain, but neither was he an unblemished, noble hero.

[Dr Strangelove]

During the war there were many instances of French, Italian, and German Catholics courageously acting to save persecuted Jews, but AFAIK these were indivdual acts of mercy, not a part of plan initiated at the top of the Catholic church. I've never seen anything to indicate that the Papacy endorsed efforts to hide Jews from danger or smuggle them out of Nazis occupied territory, nor that it allocated material or human resources towards such efforts.

Don't forget the courageous acts on behalf of the Jews by Protestant Dutch, Germans and Swedes during the war.

[Drake Tungsten]

My trolling has done learned Mr. Fun a thing or two.