Commonweal has an excerpt, “Nazi Racism and the Church,” from a forthcoming book by John Connelly that will appear next month: From Enemy to brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965.
Briefly, Msgr. Oesterreicher was far more of a critic of the Vatican and of Pius XII’s dealings with the Nazis before and during the war than he was after the war when he defended Pius XII against of accusations of being pro-Nazi (e.g., Hochhuth’s The Deputy).
A reader of these letters encounters a very different Oesterreicher from the man who appeared on U.S. nightly news in 1963. Instead of defending the Vatican, the Oesterreicher of the prewar years is freely critical, calling Pius XII “timid” and accusing him of currying favor with fascism. The letters reveal Thieme and Oesterreicher attempting repeatedly to get the bishops of Europe—above all, the bishop of Rome—to come out unmistakably against Nazism and anti-Semitism. What they encountered was a Vatican in many ways similar to Hochhuth’s later portrayal of it. In 1937 Oesterreicher decided to publish Catholic arguments against anti-Semitism in a brochure bearing the signatures of as many prominent Catholics as he could find. The resulting “Memorandum on the Jewish People,” written anonymously by Thieme and the exiled political writer Waldemar Gurian (another Jewish-born convert to Catholicism), appeared simultaneously in Vienna, Paris, and New York, and used a range of arguments from Scripture and church history to oppose all discrimination against Jews. Despite intense canvassing, Oesterreicher found not a single bishop willing to support the effort.
Pius XII had a diplomatic mindset which was inadequate to deal with the evils of Nazism. Oesterreicher wanted Pius to release German Catholic soldiers from their oath to Hitler; that would have resulted in the martyrdom of tens of thousands of Catholic priests and laity, and possibly even civil war in Germany –but it might have prevented the universal catastrophe of World War II and the Holocaust. Pius could not even imagine such a course of action, and made indirect public criticisms of Nazi actions, which in diplomatic terms was very daring.
A few Catholic clergy were pro-Nazi (like Bishop Hudal), most were vaguely anti-Semitic, and were exhorted by some “progressive” Catholics to adopt to the new, modern world of eugenics and scientific racism. The real opposition to Nazism, the prophetic voices that were to bear fruit in Vatican II’s statement on the Jews, was heard in the voices of converts like Oesterreicher and Maritain and Dietrich von Hildebrand – those who had chosen Catholicism and who took it seriously.
Although anti-Semitism has not been purged from the Catholic Church, it is on the decline – although one cardinal blamed the media’s interest in clerical sexual abuse on the Jews who wanted to punish the Church for supporting the Palestinians. However, on the whole, Catholic anti-Semitism is in decline, because of the actions of a small group, many of them converts.
Perhaps something similar will happen with attitudes to sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Clearly abuse had been tolerated for a long time. “The Vatican” is not monolithic in its attitudes, any more that “Washington” is. Some still refuse to take the matter of abuse seriously; others like Benedict have come to a partial realization of how evil it is; a few, like Msgr. Scicluna (a promoter of justice [investigator] for the CDF), want to hold bishops accountable for their failures.
The small group of laity, such as Jason Berry, Richard Sipe, Terry McKiernan, and a few others, representing a spectrum of Catholicism, may be the catalyst for a change of heart in the way sexual abuse in regarded and handled in the entire Catholic Church. In such a massive institution, the change will take decades to filter throughout the world, and the change will only be partial, but it seems to be a real change, and that can be credited to those who insisted on speaking out.
Key figures such as Timothy Dolan have been saying for sometime that bishops should be held accountable (see SNAP’s announcement today on his poor record).
But, the fact that Cardinal Levada and Monsignor Rosetti were speakers at this conference indicates that accountability is not being held toward the very architects of the cover-up. They are two of the worst offenders and they have become the self-professed reformers of the new evangelization.
If these men have control of records, research, analysis, interpretation, and communiation regarding the official documents of the crisis in these new “academic” efforts, then history will be rewritten, and the beautiful-boy-recruiting, Hellenized clerical culture will rebound underground to flourish another day.
Excellent spot on observations CM !
A friend noted after reading all the articles coming from the Vatican , that not one Prelate condemned the homosexual act of sodomy.Now isn’t it even PC for the Church to speak out against this in public?
“………..then history will be rewritten, and the beautiful-boy-recruiting, Hellenized clerical culture will rebound underground to flourish another day.”
Nobody will condemn sodomy. SNAP obviously will not. Neither will VOTF or any of these “lay reform” groups. Some of them might say and do some useful things but they will not do anything to stop sodomy in the Church. SNAP and VOTF serve up what the media want to hear about the Catholic Church. Maybe they were designed specifically to be media-savvy.
That’s why groups such as Roman Catholic Faithful were so dangerous to the powers-that-be in the Church.
“Msgr. Oesterreicher was far more of a critic of the Vatican and of Pius XII’s dealings with the Nazis before and during the war than he was after the war when he defended Pius XII against of accusations of being pro-Nazi (e.g., Hochhuth’s The Deputy).”
That shouldn’t be surprising, Lee. In fact, it’s symptomatic of groupthink. It’s OK for those w/in the group to criticize each other but not for those outside the group to do so. It’s endemic within Catholicism, I think, and results in the reflexive charges of “anti-Catholicism” whenever somebody outside the Church makes a legitimate criticism. Chicago’s Cdl. Cody tried to do the same thing when he was being investigated for financial malfeasance in the 1970s.
After the war Oesterreicher also knew the impossible situation that the Nazis placed the hierarchy in. When a German bishop criticized the Nazis, they would not go after the bishop, but beat some priest to within an inch of his life. Even if someone is willing to accept martyrdom for himself, it is another matter to force other people to be martyrs.
What would I have done if I knew that my opposition to the Nazis would have caused my wife and children to be killed? The Nazis were diabolical in their manipulation of the best and worst in human nature.
I remember a few years ago I was listening to NPR. That week, an African Christian congregation had been sealed inside a church and burned to death by opponents. A nearby pastor was interviewed by NPR. He said his sermon on Sunday was to prepare his own people to die.
I read of another account that happened more recently of a pastor watching his wife and children being slowly tortured and bisemboweled in front of him, as he gently consoled and counseled them that he would see them in heaven. I wonder if he had a choice to renounce his faith but didn’t.
George Weigel announced in a speech I attended in 2002 that the complicit bishops would be taken care of eventually. I took that to mean stall, stall, stall, until the bad bishops are dead, the victims in this round are dead, and the whole matter whitewashed. “This is not a matter for the state but for the Church to handle,” he said.
Better children be placed in continued danger, raped and tortured than priests and bishops dishonored in this reverse logic. Holy Mother Church must be protected at all costs. That entire Vatican summit on child abuse was a PR trick. Contain the bad press, stall, smile.
I remember having read (maybe on here?) that the Polish bishops told Pius XII not to criticize the Nazis because every time he did, Catholics suffered more persecution.
A few months ago I read Practicing Catholic by James Carroll. Carroll goes on and on about how Pius XII didn’t do anything to stop the Nazis. This seems to be the standard progressive Catholic position. Back in the 1930s progressives wanted eugenics and criticized the Church for not updating itself to the modern world. Today’s it’s gay marriage, abortion, etc.
A elderly Dutch relative told me some pretty grisly stories of what the Nazis did when they occupied the Netherlands (and the Dutch were seen as fellow “Aryans”, God forbid what was done to “untermenschen” like Poles, other Slavs, Gypsies and of course, especially the Jews). I wondered then, and I wonder now, how brave I would have been.
Prominent Jews took out a full page in the New York Times just after the war, to thank Pius XII for all that he did to help the Jews. the signatories included Albert Einstein. The head rabbi of Rome was also impressed with what Pius did for his people and after converting to Christianity took the name Eugenio (Pius’s real name) in honor of the pontiff.
I just found two sources of interest.
The first is an article from Time magazine in December of 1940 where Einstein says, among many positive things, “I am forced to admit that what I once despised [The Church], I now praise unreservedly.”
Also, February of 1944, a letter from Rabbi Israel Herzog, who would become the chief Rabbi of Israel. He says “The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion, which form the very foundation of true civilization, are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in the world.”
Finally, a really wonderful book by Rabbi David G. Dalin, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, is a very readable and lucid Jewish defense of Pius XII.
George Weigel announced in a speech I attended in 2002 that the complicit bishops would be taken care of eventually. I took that to mean stall, stall, stall, until the bad bishops are dead, the victims in this round are dead, and the whole matter whitewashed. “This is not a matter for the state but for the Church to handle,” he said.
Weigel is such a toady that it beggars the imagination how intelligent people can take him seriously.
I remember having read (maybe on here?) that the Polish bishops told Pius XII not to criticize the Nazis because every time he did, Catholics suffered more persecution.
That’s the exact same rationale the bishop of Benghazi used to support Kadaffi when the Libyan Revolution began. It’s the same rationale that Rome used regarding Saddam Hussein.
So-called Anti-semitism is never going to go away for one primary reason: Jews, by reason of the conditioning their culture imposes on them, are Anti-Christian. Sooner or later they will tick off enough people to empower anti-Jewish thought and action in the population of the communities they live in.
I decided to let Mr. Dalton’s comment stand. Jews initially persecuted Christians, and as soon as they got the upper hand in the fourth century Christians responded in kind, and have been at it a lot longer. With a millennium and a half of discrimination, persecution pogroms, and the Holocaust , it is not surprising that Jews might not feel the tenderest sentiments toward their Christian and Gentile neighbors.
Theologically it is difficult to define the relationship between Judaism and Christianity – Paul himself wavers between diatribes and reminders that they are still the Chosen People. Even if they are our enemies as to the Gospel, we are commanded to love our enemies.
Thomas Collins, who has just been made a Cardinal, was one of my teachers in seminary. He is fluent in Hebrew and has an in depth knowledge of Jews and Judaism (he is also one of the kindest and most holy churchmen I have ever met – at the risk of sounding cynical, I was surprised at his appointment to the red hat). He told us that in his mind, one big, if not the biggest reason Jews have still not accepted Jesus as the Messiah is because we Christians have treated them so miserably in His name.
My best friend from high school is Jewish as are other friends from my youth. They were happy for me in my vocation and supportive of my faith. With respect to Jesus, we agree to disagree. But I have never picked up anti-Christianity from any of them. They simply don’t believe that Jesus is the Christ. In fact, my high school best friend generally likes Catholics, though not the Bishops and Popes.
Anyone read the Pink Swastika by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams?
The Alton Route, I read it some years ago and would be curious to know if you have read anything else that confirms the claims Lively and Abrams make.
It has been well known for a long time that the SA (Sturmabteilung) was lead by Ernst Roehm who was a militaristic thug and gay and that Hitler did not seem to have any problem with this for a number of years. As a matter of fact Roehm was targeted for assassination on the Night of the Long Knives because of jealousy of the SS leaders, Himmler and Gehlen. He also shot his mouth off while drunk about Hitler betraying Socialist principals. Roehm was partying with his soldiers at Bad Weisse when he was arrested and murdered. Of course the Nazis had a program to boost illegitimate births of healthy Aryan men and women who would continue the master race. ISTM that the Nazis had no morals at all. They were for anything that served their purposes.
This whole train of thought has set me wondering about the medieval military monastic orders. Were they gay?
Two things bother me about Pius XII and the Nazis. One is the quote from a reporter named Eduoardo Senatro who allegedly asked Pius while he was nuncio in Berlin why he had not said anything critical of Nazism. Pius alledgedly answered that he did not want to challenge the consciences of those German Catholics serving in the Wehrmacht. If this is true then he certainly had abrogated his position as Pastor.
The second is that I have never found any Papal condemnation of the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Surely the Pope was not so naive that he believed that Poland had attacked Germany. Why would a Pope not condemn a majority Protestant nation when it invaded a majority Catholic nation? Can anyone shed any light on these situations?
Fr. Koening,
No, I haven’t read that book. It looks very interesting, though. I certainly don’t doubt that homosexual thugs were a driving force behind Nazism. No wonder they wanted to destroy Judaism as well as Christianity.
Regarding Pius XII, I am reading The American Pope by John Cooney. Cooney portrays Pius XII as a self-centered coward, who thought only about Italy and nothing else. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know. The American Pope has a liberal tone similar to that of In God’s Name by David Yallop. So maybe the material on Pius XII is distorted.
I read somewhere else that the Polish bishops asked the pope to refrain from condemning the Nazis because any condemnation only would increase persecution. Maybe somebody else knows whether this is true or not.
“In such a massive institution, the change will take decades to filter throughout the world…”
Change will occur much faster if the perverts and their enablers are tossed into prison in great numbers.
“Change will occur much faster if the perverts and their enablers are tossed into prison in great numbers.”
What the Church needs is a George Patton for a Pope, not another isolated, effete, arcane
European intellectual.
Perverts and their enablers should not be tossed into prison. They should be recalled to Rome and publicly executed. If destroying faith in a loving, compassionate, righteous God is not a capital offense (outside of murder), then I don’t know what is.
Has anyone read Cornwell’s “Hitler’s Pope?” Eugenio Pacelli had quite an unusual upbringing, being raised in a household where his father and grandfather were curial lawyers. As Bishop Pacelli, he was papal nuncio in Bavaria until 1920 when he was made the nuncio to Berlin, where he remained until 1929, and arranged the signing of the Vatican Concordat with Adolph Hitler.
This episcopal collaboration with the Nazis prompted Pope John to call the Second Vatican Council, and primacy of conscience reigned supreme. Still does, thank All That Is Holy.
AW