Talk:Pope Pius XII: Difference between revisions

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	Looking at the rival edits, I have to say that ]'s fail NPOV by a mile. The language is biased and POV-loaded to a serious degree. It states as ''fact'' John Cornwell's ''analysis'', must of which, as with any historian's text about events he personally did not witness, is by definition ''supposition''. All historical writing is ''always'' treated with caution and critical analysis. (I'm a historian myself BTW). John's allegations need to be covered professionally in this article. Flamekeeper's version fails to deliver that.		Looking at the rival edits, I have to say that ]'s fail NPOV by a mile. The language is biased and POV-loaded to a serious degree. It states as ''fact'' John Cornwell's ''analysis'', must of which, as with any historian's text about events he personally did not witness, is by definition ''supposition''. All historical writing is ''always'' treated with caution and critical analysis. (I'm a historian myself BTW). John's allegations need to be covered professionally in this article. Flamekeeper's version fails to deliver that.

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	::FK's turgid and detail-heavy writing tends to overstate Cornwell IMO. There was accomodation between the church and the Nazis in 1933 but this steadily degenerated. ] 22:37, 14 August 2005 (UTC)		::FK's turgid and detail-heavy writing tends to overstate Cornwell IMO. There was accomodation between the church and the Nazis in 1933 but this steadily degenerated. ] 22:37, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

	==Vanity Fair's ]==

	Required clarity from the link -: ]

	''But there was a problem. The church had historically granted the dioceses in the provincial states of Germany a large measure of local discretion and independence from Rome. Germ..y had one of the largest Cath*c populations in the world, and its congregation was well educated and sophisticated, with hundreds of Cathc associations and newspapers and many Catholic univ......s and publishing houses. The historic autonomy of Germany's Cath....c Church was enshrined in ancient church-state treaties known as concordats.''...............

	:''Aged 41 and already an.....bishop, Pacelli was dispatched to Munich as papal nuncio, or amb....r, to start the process of elimin...g all existing legal challenges to the new papal autocracy. At the same time, he was to pursue a Reich Concordat, a treaty between the papacy and Germany as a whole which would supersede all local agre....s and become a model of Cath...c church-state relations. A Reich Concordat would mean formal recognition by the German government of the Pope's right to impose the new Code of Canon Law on Germany's Cath**s. Such an arrangement was fraught with significance for a largely Pro...nt Germany. Nearly 400 years earlier, in Wittenberg, Martin Luther had publicly burned a copy of Canon Law in defiance of the centralzed authority of the church. It was one of the defining moments of the Reformation, which was to divide Western Chri...dom into Cath*s and Protestants.''.........

	::''"The scene that presented itself at the palace was indescribable. The confusion totally chaotic, the filth completely nauseating; soldiers and armed workers coming and going; the building, once the home of a king, resounding with screams, vile language, profanities. Absolute hell. An army of employees were dashing to and fro, giving out orders, waving bits of paper, and in the midst of all this, a gang of young women, of dubious appearance, Jew* like all the rest of them, hanging around in all the offices with provocative demeanor and suggestive smiles. The boss of this female gang was Levine's mistress, a young Russian woman, a Jew and a divorcee, who was in charge. And it was to her that the nunciature was obliged to pay homage in order to proceed.'' .........


	:''Pacelli spent 13 years in Germany atte....ng to rewrite the state Concordats one by one in favor of the power of the Holy See and routinely employing diplomatic blackmail. Ge*ny was caught up in many territorial disputes following the redrawing of the map of Central Europe after the F....t World War. Pacelli repeatedly traded promises of Vatican support for Gern control of disputed regions in return for obtaining terms advantageous to the Vatican in Con....ts. The German government's official in charge of Vatican affairs at one point recorded the "ill feeling" prompted by Pacelli's "excessive demands." Both Cath*s and Pr....nts in Germany resisted reaching an agreement with Pacelli on a Reich Con....at because the nuncio's concept of a church-state relationship was too auth....arian. In his negotiations, Pacelli was not concerned about the fate of non-Cathc religious communities or institutions, or about human rights. He was principally p.....pied with the interests of the Holy See. Nothing could have been better des..ned to deliver Pacelli into the hands of Hit** later, when the future dictator made his move in 1933.''


	''Meanwhile, he had formed a close relationship with an ind...ual named Ludwig Kaas. Kaas was a rep....tative of the solidly Ca....ic German Center Party, one of the largest and most powerful dem....ic parties in Germany. Though it was unusual for a full-time polit....an, he was also a Roman Catholic priest. Five years Pacelli's junior, dapper, bespectacled, and invariably carrying a smart walking stick, Kaas, known as "the prelate," became an intimate collaborator of Pacelli's on every aspect of Vatican diplomacy in Germany. With Pacelli's enco.....ment, Kaas eventually became the chairman of the Center Party, the first priest to do so in the party's 60-year history. Yet while Kaas was officially a rep.....ve of a major democratic party, he was increasingly devoted to Pacelli to the point of becoming his alter ego.''

	:''Sister Pasqualina stated after Pacelli's death that Kaas, who "regularly acc.....ed Pacelli on holiday" was linked to him in "adoration, honest love and uncon.....nal loyalty." There were stories of acute jealousy and high emotion when Kaas became conscious of a rival affection in Pacelli's secretary, the Jesuit Robert Leiber, who was also Ge....n.''

	::''Kaas was a profound believer in the benefits of a Reich Con...at, seeing a parallel between papal absolutism and the Führer-Prinzip, the Fascist leadership principle. His views coincided perfectly with Pacelli's on church-state politics, and their aspirations for centr..zed papal power were identical. Kaas's adulation of Pacelli, whom he put before his party, became a crucial element in the betrayal of Catholic demo....c politics in Germany.''

	:''In 1929, Pacelli was recalled to Rome to take over the most important role under the Pope, Cardinal Secretary of State. Sister Pasqualina arrived uninvited and cunningly, acc...ing to Pacelli's sister, and along with two German nuns to assist her, took over the manag...nt of his Vatican residence. Almost immed...ly Kaas, although he was still head of the German Center Party, started to spend long periods--months at a time-- in Pacelli's Vatican apartments. Shortly before Pacelli's return to Rome, his brother, Francesco had success...ly negotiated on behalf of Pius XI, the current Pope, a concordat with Mussolini as part of an agre...nt known as the Lateran Treaty. The rancor between the Vatican and the state of Italy was officially at an end. A precondition of the negot...ns had involved the destruction of the parlia....ry Catholic Italian Popular Party. Pius XI disliked pol...al Catholicism because he could not control it. Like his predecessors, he believed that Cat...ic party politics brought democracy into the church by the back door. The result of the demise of the Popular Party was the wholesale shift of Cat....cs into the Fascist Party and the collapse of dem....cy in Italy. Pius XI and his new secretary of state, Pacelli, were determined that no accommodation be reached with Communists anywhere in the world -- this was the time of persecution of the church in Russia, Mexico, and later Spain - but totalitarian movements and regimes of the right were a different matter.''..............


	''Hitler, who had enjoyed his first great success in the elec...ns of September 1930, was determined to seek a treaty with the Vatican similar to that struck by Mussolini, which would lead to the disbanding of the German Center Party. In his pol....al testament, Mein Kampf, he had recollected that his fear of Catholicism went back to his vagabond days in Vienna. The fact that German Cat...cs, polit...ly united by the Center Party, had defeated Bismarck's Kulturkampf -- the "culture struggle" against the Catholic Church in the 1870s --constantly worried him. He was convinced that his movement could succeed only if political Catholicism and its democratic networks were eliminated.''

	:''Hitler's fear of the Cath...c Church was well grounded. Into the early 1930s the German Center Party, the German Cat...ic bishops, and the Catholic media had been mainly solid in their rejection of National Socialism. They denied Nazis the sacraments and church burials, and Catholic journalists excoriated National Socialism daily in Germany's 400 Cat...c newspapers. The hierarchy instructed priests to combat National Socialism at a local level whenever it attacked Christianity. The Munich-based weekly Der Gerade Weg (The Straight Path) told its readers, "Adolf Hitler preaches the law of lies. You who have fallen victim to the deceptions of one obsessed with despotism, wake up!"''

	::''The vehement front of the Cath...c Church in Germ..y against Hitler, however, was not at one with the view from inside the Vatican -- a view that was now being shaped and promoted by Eug..io Pacelli.''

	:''In 1930 the influential Cath...ic polit...n Heinrich Brüning, a First World War Veteran, became the leader of a brief new government coalition, dominated by the majority Socialists and the Center Party. The country was reeling from succ...ive economic crises against the background of the world slump and reparations payments to the Allies. In August 1931, Brüning visited Pacelli in the Vat...n, and the two men quarreled. Brüning tells in his memoirs how Pacelli lectured him, the German chanc...or, on how he should reach an understanding with the Nazis to "form a right-wing administration" in order to help achieve a Reich Con...at favorable to the Vatican. When Brüning advised him not to interfere in German politics, Pacelli threw a tantrum. Brüning parting shot that day was the ironic observ...on -- chilling in hindsight -- that he trusted that "the Vatican would fare better at the hands of Hitler... than with himself, a devout Catholic."''

	''Brüning was right on one score. Hitler proved to be the only chanc...r prepared to grant Pacelli the sort of authoritaran conc....t he was seeking. But the price was to be catastrophic for Catholic Germany and for Germany as a whole.''

	:''After Hitler came to power in January 1933, he made the co....at negotiations with Pacelli a priority. The negot....ns proceeded over six months with constant shuttle diplomacy between the Vat...n and Berlin. Hitler spent more time on this treaty than on any other item of foreign diplomacy during his dictatorship.''

	::''The Reich Conc....t granted Pacelli the right to impose the new Code of Canon Law on Cath....s in Germany and promised a number of measures favorable to Cath....c education, including new schools. In exchange, Pacelli collaborated in the withdrawal of Cat....cs from political and social activity. The negot....s were conducted in secret by Pacelli, Kaas, and Hitler's deputy chancellor, Franz von Papen, over the heads of German bishops and the faithful. The Cat....c Church in Germany had no say in setting the conditions.''

	:''In the end, Hitler insisted that his signature on the concordat would depend on the Center Party's voting for the Enabling Act, the legislation that was to give him dictatorial powers. It was Kaas, chairman of the party but completely in thrall to Pacelli, who bullied the delegates into acceptance. Next, Hitler insisted on the "voluntary" disbanding of the Center Party, the last truly parliam...ry force in Germany. Again, Pacelli was the prime mover in this tragic Cath...c surrender. The fact that the party voluntarily disbanded itself, rather than go down fighting, had a profound psycho....al effect, depriving Germany of the last democ...c focus of potential noncompliance and resistance: In the political vacuum created by its surrender, Catholics in the millions joined the Nazi Party, believing that it had the support of the Pope. The German bishops capitulated to Pacelli's policy of central.....n, and German Cath....c democrats found themselves polit....y leaderless.''

	''After the Reich Concordat was signed, Pacelli declared it an unparalleled triumph for the Holy See. In an article in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican-controlled newspaper, he announced that the treaty indicated the total recog....n and acceptance of the church's law by the German state. But Hitler was the true victor and the Jews were the conco....'s first victims. On July 14, 1933, after the initialing of the treaty, the Cabinet minutes record H***** as saying that the concordat had created an atmosphere of confidence that would be "especially significant in the struggle against international Jewry." He was claiming that the Cat....c Church had publicly given its blessing, at home and abroad, to the policies of National Socialism, including its anti-Semitic stand. At the same time, under the terms of the conc...t, Cat....c criticism of acts deemed polit...l by the Nazis, could now be regarded as "foreign interference." The great German Catholic Church, at the insistence of Rome, fell silent. In the future all complaints against the Nazis would be channeled through Pacelli. There were some notable exceptions, for example the sermons preached in 1933 by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, the Archb....p of Munich, in which he denounced the Nazis for their rejection of the Old Test...nt as a Jewish text.''

	:''The conc...t immed....y drew the German church into complicity with the Nazis. Even as Pacelli was granted special advantages in the concordat for German Cat.....c education, Hitler was trampling on the educa....l rights of Jews throughout the country. At the same time, Cat....c priests were being drawn into Nazi collabo...n with the attestation bureaucracy, which established Jewish ancestry. Pacelli, despite the immense centralized power he now wielded through the Code of Canon Law, said and did nothing. The attestation machinery would lead inexorably to the selection of millions destined for the death camps.''

	::''As Nazi anti-Semi...m mounted in Germ..y during the 1930's, Pacelli failed to complain, even on behalf of Jews who had become Cath''''s, acknowledging that the matter was a matter of German internal policy. Eventually, in January 1937, three Ger..n cardinals and two influent..l bishops arrived at the Vatican to plead for a vigorous protest over Nazi persecution of the Cath....c Church, which had been deprived of all forms of activity beyond church services. Pius XI at last decided to issue an encyclical, a letter addressed to all the faithful of the world. Written under Pacelli's direction, it was called Mit Brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety), and it was a forthright statement of the plight of the ch...h in Germ..y. But there was no explicit condemnation of anti-Semit..m, even in relation to Jews who had converted to Catholicism. Worse still, the subtext against Nazism (National Socia..sm and H**** were not mentioned by name) was blunted by the publicat...n five days later of an even more condemnatory encyclical by Pius XI against Communism.''

	:''The encyclical Mit Brenn...er Sorge, though too little and too late, revealed that the Cat....c Church all along had the power to shake the regime. A few days later, Hermann Göring, one of Hitler's closest aides and his commander of the Luftwaffe, delivered a two-hour harangue to a Nazi assembly against the Cat.....c clergy. However, Roman centralizing had paralyzed the German Cat....c Church and its powerful web of associations. Unlike the courageous grass-roots activism that had combated Bismarck's persecutions in the 1870s, German Cath....sm now looked obediently to Rome for guidance. Although Pacelli collaborated in the writing and the distrib....n of the encyclical, he quickly undermined its effects by reassuring the Reich's ambassador in Rome. "Pacelli received me with decided friendliness," the diplomat reported back to Berlin, "and emphatically assured me during the convers....n that normal and friendly relations with us would be restored as soon as possible."''

	''In the summer of 1938, as Pius XI lay dying, he became belatedly anxious about anti-Sem....m throughout Europe. He commissioned another encyclical, to be written exclusively on the Jewh question. The text, which never saw the light of day, has only recently been discovered. It was written by three Jesuit scholars, but Pacelli presumably had charge of the project. It was to be called Humani Generis Unitas (The Unity of the Human Race). For all its good intentions and its repudiation of violent anti-Sem*m, the document is replete with the anti-Jewishness that Pacelli had displayed in his early period in Germ..y. The Jews, the text claims, were resp....ble for their own fate. God had chosen them to make way for Christ's redemption, but they denied and killed him. And now, "blinded by their dream of worldly gain and material success," they deserved the "worldly and spiritual ruin" that they had brought down upon themselves.''

	:''The document warns that that to defend the Jews as "Christian principles and humanity" demand could involve the unacceptable risk of being ensnared by secular politics -- not least an assoc....n with Bolshevism. The encyclical was deliv....d in the fall of 1938 to the Jesuits in Rome, who sat on it. To this day we do not know why it was not completed and handed to Pope Pius XI. For all its drawbacks, it was a clear protest against Na attacks on Jews and so might have done some good. But it appears likely that the Jesuits, and Pacelli, whose influence as sec....y of state of the Vatican was paramount since the Pope was moribund, were reluctant to inflame the Naz by its publication. Pacelli, when he became pope, would bury the document deep in the secret archives.''

	::''On June 16, 1942, Harold Tittmann, the U.S. repr....e to the Vat...n, told Washington that Pacelli was diverting himself, ostrichlike, into purely religious concerns and that the moral authority won for the papacy by Pius XI was being eroded. At the end of that month, the London Daily Telegraph announced that more than a million Jews had been killed in Europe and that it was the aim of the Naz "to wipe the race from the European continent." The article was re-printed in The New York Times. On July 21 there was a protest rally on behalf of Europe's Jews in New York's Madison Square Garden. In the following weeks the British, American, and Brazilian representatives to the Vat....n tried to persuade Pacelli to speak out against the Nazi atrocities. But still he said nothing. In September 1942, President Fr.....n Roosevelt sent his personal rep....ve, the former head of U.S. Steel, Myron Taylor, to plead with Pacelli to make a statement about the extermination of the Jews. Taylor traveled hazardously through enemy territory to reach the Vatican. Still Pacelli refused to speak. Pacelli's excuse was that he must rise above the belligerent parties. As late as December 18, Francis d'Arcy Osborne, Britain's envoy in the Va.....n, handed Cardinal Domenico Tardini, Pacelli's deputy secretary of state, a dossier replete with information on the Jewish deportations and mass killings in hopes that the Pope would denounce the Na regime in a Christ**s message.''

	:''On December 24, 1942, having made draft after draft, Pacelli at last said something. In his Christ**s Eve broadcast to the world on Vat....n Radio, he said that men of goodwill owed a vow to bring society "back to its immovable center of gravity in divine law." He went on: "Humanity owes this vow to those hundreds of thousands who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only by reason of their nationality and race, are marked for death or gradual extinction."''

	''That was the strongest public denunciation of the Final Solution that Pac***i would make in the whole course of the war.''

	:''It was not merely a paltry statement. The chasm between the enormity of the liquidation of the Jewish people and this form of evasive language was profoundly scandalous. He might have been referring to many categories of victims at the hands of various belligerents in the conflict. Clearly the choice of ambiguous wording was intended to placate those who urged him to protest, while avoiding offense to the Na regime. But these considerations are over-shadowed by the implicit denial and trivialization. He had scaled down the doomed millions to "hundreds of thousands" without uttering the word "Jews," while making the pointed qualification "sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race." Nowhere was the term "Nazi'' mentioned. Hi** himself could not have wished for a more convoluted and innocuous reaction from the Vicar of Christ to the greatest crime in history.''

	::''But what was Pac***'s principal motivation for this trivialization and denial? The Allies' diplomats in the Vat...n believed that he was remaining impartial in order to earn a crucial role in future peace negotiations. In this there was clearly a degree of truth. But a recapitulation of new evidence I have gathered shows that Pac**i saw the Jews as alien and undeserving of his respect and compassion. He felt no sense of moral outrage at their plight. The documents show that:''

	:''1. He had nourished a striking antipathy toward the Jew* as early as 1917 in Germ..y, which contradicts later claims that his omissions were performed in good faith and that he "loved" the Jew* and respected their religion.''

	''2. From the end of the First World War to the lost encyclical of 1938, Pac**i betrayed a fear and contempt of Judaism based on his belief that the Jew were behind the Bolshevik plot to destroy Christendom.''

	:''3. Pac*i acknowledged to representatives of the Third Reich that the regime's anti-Semitic policies were a matter of Germany's internal politics. The Reich Concordat between Hit* and the Vatican, as Hitler was quick to grasp, created an ideal climate for Jew*sh persecution.''

	::''4. Pac*i failed to sanction protest by German Cathc bishops against anti-Semitism, and he did not attempt to intervene in the process by which Cath**c clergy collaborated in racial certification to identify Jews.''

	:''5. After Pius XI's Mit Brennender Sorge, denouncing the Nazi regime (although not by name), Pac**i attempted to mitigate the effect of the encyclical by giving private diplomatic reassurances to Berlin despite his awareness of widespread Nazi persecution of Jew.''

	''6. Pac*i was convinced that the Jews had brought misfortune on their own heads: intervention on their behalf could only draw the church into alliances with forces inimical to Catho....m. Pacelli's failure to utter a candid word on the Final Solution proclaimed to the world that the Vicar of Christ was not roused to pity or anger. From this point of view, he was the ideal Pope for Hit*'s unspeakable plan. His denial and minimization of the Holocaust were all the more scandalous in that they were uttered from a seemingly impartial moral high ground.''

	:''There was another, more immediate indication of Pacelli's moral dislocation. It occurred before the liberation of Rome, when he was the sole Italian authority in the city. On October 16, 1943, SS troops entered the Roman ghetto area and rounded up more than 1,000 Jews, imprisoning them in the very shadow of the Vat***n.''

	::''How did Pacelli acquit himself'?''

	::''On the morning of the roundup, which had been prompted by Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of the organization of the Final Solution from his headquarters in Berlin, the German ambassador in Rome pleaded with the Vat*n to issue a public protest. By this stage of the war, Mussolini had been deposed and rescued by Adolf Hit* to run the puppet regime in the North of Italy. The German authorities in Rome, both diplomats and military commanders, fearing a backlash of the Italn populace, hoped that an immediate and vigorous papal denunciation might stop the SS in their tracks and prevent further arrests. Paci refused. In the end, the German diplomats drafted a letter of protest on the Pop's behalf and prevailed on a resident German bishop to sign it for Berlin's benefit. Meanwhile, the deportation of the imprisoned Jews went ahead on October 18.''

	:''When U.S. chargé d 'affaires Harold Tittmann visited Pacelli that day, he found the pontiff anxious that the "Communist" Partisans would take advantage of a cycle of papal protest, followed by SS reprisals, followed by a civilian backlash. As a consequence, he was not inclined to lift a finger for the Jewish deportees, who were now traveling in cattle cars to the Austrian border bound for Auschwitz. Church officials reported on the desperate plight of the deportees as they passed slowly through city after city. Still Pac***i refused to intervene.''

	''In the Jesuit archives in Rome, I found a secret doc....t sworn to under oath by Karl Wolff, the SS commander in Italy. The text reveals that Hi***** had asked Wolff in the fall of 1943 to prepare a plan to evacuate the Pope and the Vat...n treasures to Liechtenstein.''

	:''After several weeks of investigation, Wolff concluded that an attempt to invade the Vat....n and its properties, or to seize the Po in response to a papal protest, would prompt a backlash throughout Italy that would seriously hinder the Na war effort. Hitler therefore dropped his plan to kidnap Pacelli, acknowledging what Pacelli appeared to ignore, that the strongest social and political force in Italy in late 1943 was the Cat....c Church, and that its potential for thwarting the SS was immense.''

	::''Pacei was concerned that a protest by him would benefit only the Communists. His silence on the deportation of Rome's Jews, in other words, was not an act of cowardice or fear of the Germans. He wanted to maintain the Na-occupation status quo until such time as the city could be liberated by the Allies. But what of the deported Jews? Five days after the train had set off from the Tiburtina station in Rome, an estimated 1,060 had been gassed at Auschwitz and Birkenau - 149 men and 47 women were detained for slave labor, but only 15 survived the war, and only one of those was a woman, Settimia Spizzichino, who had served as a human guinea pig of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Na** medical doctor who performed atrocious experiments on human victims. After the liberation, she was found alive in a heap of corpses.''

	:''But there was a more profound failure than Pacelli's unwillingness to help the Jews of Rome rounded up on October 16. Pacelli's reticence was not just a diplo....c silence in response to the political pressures of the moment, not just a failure to be morally outraged. It was a stunning religious and ritualistic silence. To my knowledge, there is no record of a single public papal prayer, lit votive candle, psalm, lamentation, or Mass celebrated in solidarity with the Jews of Rome either during their terrible ordeal or after their deaths. This spiritual silence in the face of an atrocity committed at the heart of Christendom, in the shadow of the shrine of the first apostle, persists to this day and implicates all Cath**s. This silence proclaims that Paci had no genuine spiritual sympathy even for the Jews of Rome, who were members of the community of his birth. And yet, on learning of the death of Adolf Hi**, Archbishop Adolf Bertram of Berlin ordered all the priests of his archdiocese "to hold a solemn Requiem in memory of the Führer."''

	''There were nevertheless Jews who gave Pac**i the benefit of the doubt. On Thursday, November 29, 1945, Pacelli met some 80 representatives of Jewh refugees who expressed their thanks "for his generosity toward those persecuted during the Na-Fascist period." One must respect a tribute made by people who had suffered and survived, and we cannot belittle Pace's efforts on the level of charitable relief, notably his directive that enclosed religious houses in Rome should take in Jews hiding from the SS.''

	:''By the same token, we must respect the voice of ], the sole Roman Jewish woman survivor from the death camps. Speaking in a BBC interview in 1995 she said.''

	''::"I came back from Auschwitz on my own. I lost my mother, two sisters and one brother. Pius XII could have warned us about what was going to happen. We might have escaped from Rome and joined the partisans. He played right into the Germans' hands. It all happened right under his nose. But he was an anti-Semitic pope, a pro-German pope. He didn't take a single risk. And when they say the Pope is like Jesus Christ, it is not true. He did not save a single child."''

	:''We are obliged to accept these contrasting views of Pac* are not mutually exclusive. It gives a Cathc no satisfaction to accuse a Pope of acquiescing in the plans of Hit. But one of the saddest ironies of Pac's papacy centers on the implications of his own pastoral self-image. At the beginning of a promotional film he commissioned about himself during the war, called 'The Angelic Pastor,' the camera frequently focuses on the statue of the Good Shepherd in the Vat*n gardens. The parable of the good shepherd tells of the pastor who so loves each of his sheep that he will do all, risk all, go to any pains, to save one member of his flock that is lost or in danger. To his everlasting shame, and to the shame of the Catc Church, Paci disdained to recognize the Jews of Rome as members of his Roman flock, even though they had dwelled in the Eternal City since before the birth of Christ. And yet there was still something worse. After the liberation of Rome, when every perception of restraint on his freedom was lifted, he claimed retrospective moral superiority for having spoken and acted on behalf of the Jews. Addressing a Palestinian group on August 3, 1946, he said, "We disapprove of all recourse to force...Just as we condemned on various occasions in the past the persecutions that a fanatical anti-Semitism inflicted on the Hebrew people." His grandiloquent self-exculpation a year after the war had ended showed him to be not only an ideal pope for the Nas Final Solution but also a hypocrite.''

Revision as of 10:28, 15 August 2005

Because of their length, the previous discussions on this page have been archived. If further archiving is needed, see Misplaced Pages:How to archive a talk page.

Previous discussions:

Archive1 Str1977 20:57, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Archive2 Str1977 21:02, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Archive3 Str1977 21:06, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Complaints

I changed the sentence next to

Between the German Concordat's signing in 1933 and 1939, Pope Pius XI made three dozen formal complaints to the Nazi government, all of which in reality drafted by Pacelli.

change: In Duffy's words, their tone was 'anything but cordial.' with: The strongest condemnetion of Hitler's ideology and ecclesiastical policy was the Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, issued in 1937 because the text of the Encyclical (much more than a diplomatic complain: it was read in all parishes of Germany) proves that the complains were not cordial at all. The complete text of the Encyclical is strongly against Hitler policy.

Repair for Article

Uh Have uh repaired the article . uh sourced uh this earlier (see uh posts). If you uh want more Ill put in my summary here uh? Famekeeper 10:43, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Re-repairing article

Some of the edits have been useful, but some of them have introduced POV. I have added an NPOV tag to the section in question until I can remove unsourced allegations and put sourced allegations as POV. Robert McClenon 23:53, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

The following have been removed from the article. Robert McClenon 01:43, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Moved

A year prior to the Reichskonkordat Cardinal Pacelli had been transmitting the wish of the pontiff for Adolf Hitler to assume control of Germany , as bulwark against atheistic Communism .

The notorious up-ending of the Liberal Weimar Republic constitution is the single example of a parliamentary Democracy voting for its own demise . It is also an example of the conflicts of interest between Ecclesiastical and civil power , personified here by the Ecclesiastic Party Leader, Monsignor Kaas

The terms of the Enabling Act themselves forbad the earlier interference with the Institution of the Reicshstag which these arrests achieved .

It can be argued that Pius XI had to make the best of the situation, in order to ensure some amount of protection for the Church in Germany, but of his early approbation for Hitler , and his attitude against Communism , there is no doubt .

The Catholic Church has yet to release documents for the relevant period, but the accusation is that the Centre vote elevated Hitler to power much more quickly than Hitler's preferred "legal" entry to power might have otherwise required. Ludwig Kaas is remembered as the conduit for Pacelli's and Pope Pius XI's favour towards Hitler. Reports of complicity towards restoration of the German monarchy in 1925 suggest great care by the Vatican to avoid evidential remains in delicate political negotiations . The war-time vatican channel between the German Widerstand and the Allies in 1940 and 1943 even more naturally , for fears of the Gestapo implicating the Holy See , were purely verbal .

There is accusation that the German concordat (see Reichskonkordat ) which remains in force to this day - allowed for the induction of Catholic priests into the armed forces during hostilities. Article 27 of the concordat states, in part, "The Church will accord provision to the German army for the spiritual guidance of its Catholic officers, personnel and other officials, as well as for the families of the same...The ecclesiastical appointment of military chaplains and other military clergy will be made after previous consultations with the appropriate authorities of the Reich by the army bishop." The clear reference here is the drafting of priests not as soldiers, but as chaplains.

It nevertheless did not mention anti-semitism nor the Jews by name despite the obvious need for this , and , Pacelli's own pontificate did not do so either during the whole of the World War II and the Holocaust .

Critics cite the danger of the destabilisation of a democracy by a church, relevant even in today's politics.

The quid pro quo with Adolf Hitler lives in histories relating to this descent of Europe into barbarity and war . In terms of the Holocaust itself Pius not having spoken out for the Jews publicly by name , nor in strong and explicit condemnation of Nazism is noted .It is recently argued (see Hitler's Pope that Pacelli himself was a lifelong anti-semite who otherwise could have seriously undermined Hitler and Nazism among Germany's many catholics. While the world was divided politically and geographically, many catholics were united behind their Pope, and followed his lead into their own personal accomodations with Hitlerism .

Had Pope Pius XII denounced Nazism in the strongest possible terms, it is possible that it could have not only caused unrest amongst catholics in the German army, but it could have also caused catholics working in German war factories to undermine German army support and logistics systems. This would have dealt a serious blow to the German war effort. Conversely, such action probably would have caused heavy suppression of Catholics, given that Nazism was more focused on Protestantism in the first place.

Such speculation does not form any part of the German Resistance ( Widerstand ) studies .

Although an individual of self-less habit , he was a believer of the absolute leadership priciple . he more than anyone promoted the concept of absolute papal rule , diminuishing the earlier collegiality of the church councils . Modesty of appearance belied great subtlety and cunning as he inherited his forbears desire for the papacy to once again exert all powerful control over the church through ecclesiastical and international law .

The historic autonomy of the Germanic Catholic Church stood in contrast to these developements so ...

Disagreement

The following statement on my talk page should probably appear here also:

No, I'm afraisd to say that I do not accept your ediing of this article at all . Since you would simply make me repeat all my sourcing , I take this ill as the editing you have done is clearly POV because it does not accept the sources . I am blocked , by you McC .Famekeeper 09:05, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

All of the material that I considered either speculative or POv has been moved to this talk page and is available for any Wikipedian to review and re-edit.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has been "blocked". Blocking is an administrative function that can be used on a short-term basis to deal with abuse, typically 3RR violations or vandalism. I am not an admin and do not have (or want) the power to block anyone. Rather than complaining that editing is blocking him,Famekeeper would do better to request a third opinion or mediation. Robert McClenon 11:27, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Article repaired Through Scholarly Source John Cornwell

Here is the link ] to the source from Vanity Fair Magazine of an abbreviation of John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope . If the Misplaced Pages rules according to its rules , then a source is a source . This is the most complete up to date scholarly source . By all means add more recent source . Full acknowledgement to both John Cornwell and Vanity Fair- I have lagely substituted as many simple parallel terms as appropriate . Any more adherence to the Vanity Fair text is by regard for fair educational use . Something especially urgent here on WP . Famekeeper 16:19, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

At Famekeeper 16:45, 9 August 2005 (UTC) I note disappearance of John Cornwell's explanations . I note no discussion here by Str1977 , who is editing under the impressions Cornwell is POV and or mistranslating . I see no proofs nor any sign of well, lets not go into that . I refer editors to thr Rfc re:Famekeeper , linked from my name page . I can only think that this is not my argument any more , and that Str can do as he wishes . What anybody else might judge is up to them . I see messages but they should be here . This article page needs careful consideration by some authority of Wkipdia rules and regulations who can decide when a historian is not a source and consider a protection . It is not for me to say , not to hang around more in hand to hand. Famekeeper

I reverted, not because I oppose including your information (see my post at your talk page), but because the whole edit was infused with a anti-Pacelli POV (which might come from Cornwell) studded with factual inaccuracies (rewrote concordats), debunked claims (anti-semitic letter) or off-topic remarks (Martin Luther burned canons etc).

I also removed one of the links linking (sorry the redundancy) to Vanity Fair's excerpt of Cornwell's book. This is why I put them side by side first so that everyone could see that I removed only a doublette.

Str1977 16:58, 9

I really don't mind what you do as it is your own choice to intervene in this way . I do think you will be the subject of scrutiny , but I have played my part . It is not for me to fight : You are rv'ing source ., and it's up to you . Personally I believe this takes us right back to the beginning- you are a fantastic terrier for the cause of Pacelli , and it really isn't any of it to do with my POV . I sourced everything I ever did on articles , the rest were my attempts to cure you of this craziness . The WP is being made a mockery , and there is an ongoing resultant responsibility . The page will need to return to my last edit , or sources are not part of WP . As ever this goes in tandem with Kaas , attacked by McC . It's not my problem ,see? It's yours and his and the WP's . You are certainly not within the guidelines now, but it is not news to me , as you never were . Bye August 2005 (UTC)

Your insertions were reverted because they were not presented as Cornwell's POV, but as fact. It is fact and NPOV that Cornwell says that Pacelli believed in centralized power and was working toward that objective. It is POV to simply say that. You did not present them as Cornwell's statements, but as fact.

I am still agreeable to mediation or arbitration. I am not trying to block or censor any view. I am only trying to remove unattributed POV to the talk page. If you can present it as POV, then it can be presented. You did not attribute it. I suggest that you move all of the questioned material to Hitler's Pope, which is a summary of what Cornwell wrote. There is an NPOV flag on that article because I questioned whether you had accurately summarized what Cornwell wrote. If you can accurately esummarize what he wrote, then I will remove the NPOV tag. I do suggest not relying on a summary of Cornwell's book. I do suggest using the book itself.

If you think that the Misplaced Pages is being made a mockery of, please post another RfC or RfM or even RfAR. I am looking for truth, but truth is not found by shouting. Robert McClenon 01:50, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

No contrary source added . No substantiated claim . Famekeeper 01:12, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, FK, but no. Your last edited might be taken out of Cornwell word for word, but this is about Pacelli/Pius the man as he was - not as Cornwell portrays him. Cornwell is just one book about him. I didn't want to revert alltogether - I started removing certain bits that were clearly unsuitable but it turned that the anti-Pacelli bias (even Pacelli-hate) permeated through the whole text (I guess you took that directly from Cornwell). As it were it cannot stand - not as fact - only as POV, Cornwell's POV and, there I agree with Robert would be best placed at the Hitler's Pope page - there Cornwell's book and his description of Pius is the basis of the article. Str1977 08:38, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

What-say-you to this: You get your strictly ecclesiastical article . We remove controversy out of it completely - but both ways. All Cornwell?Mowrer?Centre whatever OUT.

We remove all defence as exists OUT.

We leave it as strict biographical listing of his life , so it looks like any other Pope. All Concordat politics becomes only v briefest references, with no conclusions whatever either way political . Leaver it Only to cover canon law and that which the Reichskonkordat covered . No refs to Hitler controversy nor Kaas nor no one . No letters of accusation, no defence .

Then we agree between you and me , that you have a [See also: whatever defence page u title it.....

Equally I put a link .

Both to be prominently included at the point where the Concordat story is briefly touched upon . Pius X! will need however to have equal see also .How about that ?

No uptake on the reasonable suggestion as to a solution . While it is further considered , we can return to the published source basis .Famekeeper 20:47, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't get it - you have upset my apple cart . i was being frank with you , and I was not being frivolous. This is not at all the way it should have to be that I am to tell you what you hould do . I can only tell you what you are already absolutely aware of : this is pure Cornwell that now even you , have reverted . What am I supposed to say is really not the point . The point is on what basis is Cornwell not allowed entry ?

No sourced argument was provided to justify revision of my last text expansion .Your revert like that now puts you as you yourself see under the responsibilility to justify the action against topical published source . This has to be dealt with of and in itself . I was entirely aware that you had and were suggesting reasons and movement . This rv however has simply a quality of denial , of going against a very simple wikipedianess . Would you kndly justify your rv of source , as much as Str1977 would have to justify should he have done it ? Famekeeper 23:49, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

If source is denied , then the balance is denied . Currently therefore the POV tag is required . Sad unacceptance .The woman who survived Auschwitz- she's Po v removable -justlike that , uh Wyss Str1977McClenon who don't answer.... Famekeeper 09:36, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Mr Famekeeper,

... as for your proposal:

1) I cannot do anything for you in regard to the RfC. I didn't start and I won't stop it. If Robert, who started it is content with your behaviour he will do so himself. And I guess I would acquiesce in this too.

2) I unfortunately cannot accept your proposal. We cannot create one article for your "accusations" and one for my "counter-point" - this would go against all Wiki principles I know: balance, NPOV. Two wrongs (in the sense that they are POV) don't make it right. Accusations should be included in the main article in a depov'ed language and counter-criticism should be next to it. (The same goes for a "Hitler's Pope" page - it covers the book and its accusations pluse a critical treatment of it - to make it NPOV). Apart from the fact that there probably is no fitting name for such a accusation page (Hitler's Pope is about the book, Pope's Hitler is -sorry to say it- nonsense and even "Catholic Holocaust complicity" doesn't actually say what the title suggests - our debate has never been about the Shoa (as I prefer to call it)). And I don't want to have to think of a catchy name for a defense page. Anyway, the main problem is that it'd violate NPOV.

I agree with you that the concordat should be included in Pius XI too (and Dilectissima certainly belong there - but in proper context). After all it was his concordat (like the others), though Pacelli did some negotiating. I though about this for some time. However, let us first settle the dispute on the other pages.

So, I'm afraid I have to say: no.

Str1977 12:15, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

outside view

Looking at the rival edits, I have to say that Flamekeeper's fail NPOV by a mile. The language is biased and POV-loaded to a serious degree. It states as fact John Cornwell's analysis, must of which, as with any historian's text about events he personally did not witness, is by definition supposition. All historical writing is always treated with caution and critical analysis. (I'm a historian myself BTW). John's allegations need to be covered professionally in this article. Flamekeeper's version fails to deliver that.

Specifically

It would also allow for imposition of the new Canon Law in the land of Martin Luther who had nearly 400 years previously publicly burnt a copy the canon law in act od defiance of centralised papal control . — irrelevant and pointless hyperbole.

.Pacelli noticed the repulsiveness of the Jewish leader Eugen Levine and of his followers and thence grew a suspicion and contempt of Jews for political reason — chronic and franky laughable mispresentation of what Cornwell wrote.

At what Cornwell wrote already was a misrepresentation/mistranslation of what Pacelli wrote in his letter.

Pacelli also campaigned for Allied troops to not include colored soldiery in the occupied Rhineland, and in the aftermath of World War II repeated this demand of the Americans entering Rome — breaks cardinal rule of historiographical writing — never single out as remarkable attitudes of someone if they were reflective of contemporary attitudes. Pacelli's attitude were, unfortunately all too typical of the attitudes of most white people of his generation. If a pope today held those views when society doesn't it would be newsworthy. But all he was doing was reflecting contemporary attitudes.

Pacelli spent in all 13 years trying to re-write the German State Concordats one by one — deliberate mispresentation of fact out of context. The Vatican decided to rewrite the concordats. Pacelli was given the job. That misleading sentence implies he personally did it off his own bat.

And "rewriting" was needed since even where concordat existed, they were with the monarchies. The revolution overturned the whole situtation and hence new concordats were needed.

He routinely involved himself in complicated territorial disputes following WWI ,trading Vatican support for German control under terms advantageous to the vatican Concordats . However the overall Reichskonkordat eluded him because both the catholic and the protestant population resisted this new authoritarian papal control . — POV mispresentation of what Cornwell and other historians actually say.

And certainly, Catholics did not oppose a concordat. Quite the contrary. And

Pacelli's long-standing house-keeper , Sister Pasquilina Lehnert , stated after Pacelli's death that Kaas regularly holidayed with him and was linked to him in "adoration , honest love and unconditional loyalty ." The slightly younger Kaas became an intimate collaborator in every aspect of Pacelli's vatican diplomacy in Germamy . Kaas served as secretary from 1925 and then with Pacelli's encouragement took the chairmanship of the influential catholoc Centre party Germany in 1928 . Officially Kaas , also a specialist in canon law , was the representative of democratic civil party , but one who was so attached to Pacelli that he became vitually his alter ego — Innuendo-filled mispresentation of what Cornwell actually wrote.

In the memoirs of the Chicago Daily News bureau chief for Berlin reference is made to an actual letter in 1932 , from Pacelli enjoining the Centre leadership to the papal wish for the success of Adolf Hitler . The letter which not been found , confirms essentially the Bruning meeting — if the letter can't be found then the charge cannot be made as there is no substantiation to prove it. History requires evidence.

the letter is only mentioned by the journalist in question in his memoirs. But even he has not seen it. A Centre Party friend told him about it. And what he told him actually does not necessarily warrant what is in the above paragraph.

The spring of 1933 brought a thaw of approbation towards Hitler from the Vatican and from the German Hierarchy. — Without explaining the context of German politics in 1933 that sentence out of context constructs a false impression.

All was conducted in secret and over the heads of the German Bishops and faithful by Kaas, Pacelli and Hitler's catholic associate ex-Centre Foreign Minister ,Franz von Papen — misrepresentation of what Cornwell says.

Pacelli demanded the imposition of the new Canon Code of Law upon all catholics , as well as various educational measures — The Canon Law code was binding on all Catholics since 1917!!!

I could go on with the other mistakes. Many are mispresentations of claims by Cornwell and others. Many are distortions. Many suggest that Flamekeeper is, to put it politely, inexperienced in how to wrote in an NPOV manner and how to write history. In addition the standard of English in the edit is appalling. Links are all wrong. Context is wrong. The understanding of Catholicism is all wrong. The grasp of what a diplomat does (and for much of the time Pacelli was a diplomat) is all wrong. The understanding of the context of the 1930s is non-existent. Historians follow a basic rule — analyse events in a time period taking into account the nature of the time period, eg, don't make a big issue of someone in the 1920s holding rascist, homophobic or sexist views; they were the norm then. But they would be a big issue in the 1970s or 1980s, when they were not the norm. Don't demand that someone possess an insight that we only have by knowing the outcome of events. Use the knowledge of what happened later to judge the wisdom of past decision, but don't demand that people who did not know what the future would bring that they act as though they know the future.

Quite frankly, Flamekeeper's edits are so POV-driven, so heavy-handed and on occasions so OTT as to be appalling. An article with so much conjecture, inaccuracy, POV and misdirected analysis could not possibly be let stand in an encyclop�dia. FearÉIREANN\ 20:16, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

So the situtation is worse than I imagined - worse for FK, that is, and slightly better for Cornwell. Still, even if Cornwell had said all this (and appearently he doesn't), it cannot be simply stated as fact. Str1977 21:16, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, better for Cornwell. I have not re-read Cornwell within the past few months, but my recollection of what I did read is that much of what FK attributes to Cornwell is not what Cornwell wrote. Cornwell, for instance, does take into account the basic historian's rule as stated above, of noting that anti-Jewish sentiments were common among both German Catholics and Italian Catholics, and places Pacelli's thinking in that context. Cornwell, while very critical of Pacelli, presents a much more nuanced view than FK quotes him as presenting. Robert McClenon 23:18, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

FK's turgid and detail-heavy writing tends to overstate Cornwell IMO. There was accomodation between the church and the Nazis in 1933 but this steadily degenerated. Wyss 22:37, 14 August 2005 (UTC)