The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini and Hitler. Book 27 of 2022

 

Pope Pius XII has had an ambiguous history until the opening of the Vatican archives this book was based on. The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler  ends the ambiguity about the record of Pius XII during World War II and makes clear he chose to preserve the Vatican and the institution of the Church and never condemn Nazis or Fascists while they were in power.

Beginning in June 1945, when the guns were silent, the Vatican relentlessly defended Pope Pius XII. The task was easier until March 2020 when the archives of Pius XII were opened.  Access to the archives would have to wait several months until COVID restrictions were relaxed, but when the doors were opened, David I. Kertzer was there. 

The result is a 500-page story of a Pope, the leader of the Catholic Church beginning in March 1939, who chose to preserve the Church as an institution and the Vatican itself rather than exercise moral leadership.  

His predecessor, Pius XI, was, by Kertzer's account, a man who saw evil in Fascism and Naziism. He was set to publicly denounce both regimes in February of 1939 when he fell ill. His remarks were printed in 150 copies for distribution to Church leaders. When Pius XII became Pope, he had every copy of his predecessor's attack on Fascists and Nazis destroyed.

By March of 1939, Catholics in Germany, Austria and other lands the Nazis occupied were being persecuted.  Pius XII was secretly negotiating the Nazis for better treatment for Catholics, but he believed the Nazis and Fascists would win the coming war.  

Further, Pius XII, like the Germans who supported Hitler, were more afraid of communism than anything else.  

Then in September 1939, the Nazis conquered Poland and divided the demolished country with the Soviets.  Hitler and Stalin were persecuting and killing Polish Catholics. Church leaders were clamoring for the Pope to condemn the Nazis. Later they were joined by French, Dutch, Belgian, and other Catholic leaders. Pius XII never condemned the Nazis publicly.  

By 1941, the reports of extermination of the Jews reached the Pope through his own envoys and Italian military leaders.  He knew in considerable detail that a million Jews were dead and the pace of slaughter was accelerating.  Pope Pius XII never said the word Jew during the entire war.  He never went further than to regret the death of minorities. 

In 1943 when the fascist government in Italy failed and the Nazis occupied Italy, Pius XII did his best to protect Rome and the Vatican. With the Nazis in charge, the Jews who were already in fascist camps and ghettos were deported to death camps.  Pius XII made some effort to save Jews who were converts, but nothing for Italian Jews. During his papacy, the Vatican newspaper published justifications for keeping Jews away from Christians in ghettos that were Church policy hundreds of years before. 

In 1941, Pius XII spoke to a Catholic youth group about maintaining morality and staying away from movies and other temptations.  It is sadly funny to hear the moral leader of a world Church talking about morality when he has a perfect record of never condemning persecution, death and murder. 

Pius XII also made passionate pleas to stop the bombing of Rome in 1943 and 44 and not to bomb the Vatican.  Winston Churchill was especially vehement in rejecting the Pope's pleas. Pius XII had never condemned the Nazi bombing of London nor spoke out about the suffering of British Catholics under the Blitz. 

The Pope and the Vatican survived the war. When the shooting stopped the rationalizing began. The Pope who never said Jew and never condemned Nazis stayed in office until 1958.  Then his canonization process began.  Hopefully, the archives that are the basis of Kertzer's excellent book will stop the sainthood of a man who chose to save the Vatican and the Church and never condemn evil. His place in eternity is better described in Canto 19 of Inferno by Dante Aligheri. 

First 26 books of 2022:

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

A Book Justifying Support for Trump by White Evangelicals

 

I am reading a book by a white Evangelical Christian justifying his support of the "chaos candidate." I am reading it with two friends who are Christians who live in German and are trying to understand the trumpian Church in America.

The author quotes Christian leaders who celebrate him as a "Chaos Candidate." These trumpians see the white Evangelical Church as embattled by dark forces of secularism who want to take away their freedom.

Imagine those who say they worship the Creator of the Universe celebrating chaos! Chapter 6 has extensive quotes of those celebrating the chaos candidate.

It reads like a librarian celebrating book burning.

The book is a strong confirmation in Church language that the trumpians in the Church, like all trumpians, love their orange idol because he hates who they hate.

Another chilling bit of clarity in the book is that in his reptilian instinct for power, trump has found a huge loyal group who really, deeply celebrates his authoritarian goals. The religious people who support him want rights reversed for everyone who is not them.

MAGA re-elected will reverse gay rights, abortion rights, women's rights, voting rights, the rights of the disabled, worker's rights and when the steamroller gets some momentum going, Bill Barr will reverse civil rights.

Evangelicals at the Crossroads: Will We Pass the Trump Test?

Faith in the Military: Which Church to Attend?

First I was blind.  Then I believed.  Then I got my sight back.  I should have quit smoking right at that moment.  It was soooooo hard to light cigarettes when the slightest flash was blinding.  I had to flick the lighter and look out of the corner of my eye to get the cigarettes lit.

As my sight and use of my fingers returned, I had to get to the practical matter of going to Church.  I knew enough about faith from Collin that Christianity was not a solitary faith.  I had to commit to a Church, or at least start attending one.  The base chapel was not an option.  Then as now, whatever the military blesses as faith is what the old soldiers believe.  In the 1970s, the military chapel system was run mostly by priests and pastors from Catholic and Mainline Protestant denominations.

In a later post, I will talk about today's chapel system, but for now, I was not going to the base chapel.

Since I was in Utah, the biggest Church was the Mormon Church.  I went to a Baptist Church just off post.  It was founded by non-Mormons who worked at Hill Air Force Base.  In fact, the pastor of this Church believed his main mission beyond leading the Church was to convert Mormons to Christianity.

This may seem strange, but before 1980, most Churches, especially those that were theologically conservative, had a statement of faith that was central to their mission and membership.  Christians actually believed doctrine was a matter of life and death, at least spiritually.  After I read the Bible (King James, of course) the next book the pastor gave me was Walter Martin's The Kingdom of the Cults.

This book was an encyclopedia of the beliefs of religions other than conservative protestantism and was clear that most of these religions were heretical.  Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Bahai Faith, anything that used the name of Jesus, but departed from orthodox Christianity was a pathway to Hell.  Liberal Protestantism was also condemned as was Catholicism.  With this view of the world, more than 99% of the planet was a mission field.  Because pretty much everyone in the world was wrong.

Wow!!!  Being a Baptist was like walking down a slightly cone-shaped cave.  With every step the cave gets smaller.  By the time I finished The Kingdom of the Cults the number of believers in the world was huge, but the number of believers who knew the truth was tiny.  I, of course, was in the elect.  I was in a Baptist Church.

I could have settled in for a comfortable life of knowing I was one of the elect and most everyone else was not.  But then the cave got too narrow.  The pastor said Collin and all of his kind, Pentacostals and Charismatic believers were wrong too.  At that point, I did not know a lot, but if Collin my old roommate was not a Christian nobody was.

At that point I got out of the Air Force and my luminous faith went rather dim.

So I re-enlisted in the Army.