Thread: The Pope
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Post imported post - 06-04-05, 02:33 PM

@BELLE

If you want to bandy about terms like "revisionist," you should do it while looking in a mirror. Your description bears no coherent resemblance to the facts.

Do you know anything at all about the Vatican's crucial role in the passage of the Enabling Act -- the law that gave Hitler dictatorial powers -- in the German Reichstag in 1933? About the Vatican's crucial role in Mussolini's victory in 1922? About the Vatican's crucial role in Mussolini's bid for dictatorship in 1923? About the Vatican's crucial role in propping up Mussolini's government during the Matteotti crisis in 1924?

Do you know anything at all about the rape of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1936? Do you know anything at all about the Roman Catholic Church's genocide against Orthodox Serbs in Nazi-Catholic Croatia?

Do you exepct anyone to take you seriously when you claim that the Roman Catholic Church "sp[o]k[e] out against such tyranny?" Here are some facts:

(a) Francis d'Arcy Godolphin Osborne, British Minister to the Vatican, sent regular reports on fascist atrocities to Pius XII -- the very Eugenio Pacelli who had brokered the deal that gave Hitler absolute power -- from 1940 on, and Pius XII did nothing.
(b) Requested to intercede to prevent the deportation of Jews from Spain and Lithuania, Pius XII did nothing.
( c) Beseeched by Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj to speak out against the extermination of Jews, at a time when 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had already been murdered, Pius XII advised the Metropolitan to "bear adversity with serene patience".
(d) When the collaboratist French government instituted Jewish statutes, the Vatican delcared that such statutes were in accord with Catholic teaching as long as they were administered with "charity" and "justice" -- which is as good a reflection as any of what the Roman Catholic Church really thinks about charity and justice.
(e) Asked by the Bishop of Berlin and the President of Poland's government-in-exile to denounce Nazi violence, Pius XII did nothing.
(f) Informed by Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini (later Paul VI) that the "massacres of the Jews [had] reach[ed] frightening proportions and forms," the Vatican continued to assert that it was impossible to verify "rumors" of such crimes.
(g) Informed that 77% of Slovakian Jews had been deported to probable death, Pius XII did nothing.
(h) Informed that the Jewish population of the Warsaw Ghetto had been reduced by 400,000, Pius XII did nothing.

Only when it became clear that the Allies would win the war did Pius XII change his tune. Suddenly, the extermination of the Jews became a matter of concern -- purely political concern. The Vatican finally began to give refuge to Jews in Rome because, as Pius XII advised the German and Hungarian bishops, being on record condemning the slaughter of the Jews would be politically advantageous after the collapse of the Third Reich.

The Roman Catholic Church claims that Pius XII intervened to help Jews before the tide of war turned by persuading Brazil to grant 3000 visas to European Jews in 1939. That is false. Pius XII interceded with Brazil only on behalf of Jews who had converted to Catholicism. When most of those Jews reverted to Judaism, their visas were revoked, and Pius XII did nothing.

In 1999, the Vatican appointed a group of Catholic and Jewish scholars to investigate the matter, but the investigators were not given full access to the Vatican's pertinent documents. And when even the evidence selected by the Roman Catholic Church belied its stock defenses of Pius XII, the Vatican shut the whole investigation down.

Facts are facts. And what the facts plainly demonstrate (among other things, such as the Church's genocidal tendencies) is exactly what I wrote before: In the struggle among communist tyranny, fascist tyranny, and representative-democratic freedom, the Church allied itself with fascist tyranny.

By the way, have you ever read Quanta Cura, Syllabus of Errors, or Unam Sanctam? If not, you should. (And if so, you clearly need to read them again.) It ought to prove quite the learning experience.
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