12/29/09

Was Pope Pius XII a Friend to the Jews?

Let the Pius XII revisionism games begin.

The NY Post reports (and what better and more reliable source than the Post) the news that Pope Pius XII was really a friend to the Jews.

Seven anecdotes of questionable value and a claim that as a boy his "best friend" was a Jew, that clears these terrible rumors about Pius XII up for all of us doesn't it?

And to top it off, the reason we were so mislead to believe how bad this pope was - that was not just a misunderstanding - it was part of a KGB plot to discredit him and ruin the Catholic church ("The evidence strongly suggests...").

Written by a crusading Catholic apologist, Gary Krupp, the article in the Post ends with a question, "Were all these witnesses who lived through the war misguided?" To this we must answer yes, the few random sources Krupp gathered do not add up to a prove anything, let alone that Pius XII was a friend to the Jews. Krupp says he was, "Unfairly tarred as Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite." Take a look at the wafer thin dossier of the best  evidence there is to defend the man, linked here, and judge it for yourself.

So on the one side, there is an amateurishly assembled handful of ambiguous sources and some innuendo that Pius XII was a friend of Jews, and thus the implicit conclusion that he should be canonized in the Church (a logic that escapes me).

And on the other side yes, there are the numerous writings of credible historians and the ghosts of 6 million contrary witnesses that say Pius XII did not show heroism, that he was no saint, and that he should continue to be at least shunned and most likely condemned as the Deputy who neglected his duty to humanity.

No, we do not believe that Pius XII was a friend to the Jews.

2 comments:

Richard said...

I believe that Pius XII Jewish "best friend" was none other than Father Edgardo Mortara who was forcibly kidnapped from his Jewish parents in the 1850s by the Catholic Church and subsequently raised by Pius IX.

The Pope is quoted as saying - "I had the right and the duty to do what I did for the this boy, and if I had to, I would do it again." If this behavior meets the requirements for Beatification, the whole institution of sainthood is a farce.

Tzvee Zahavy said...

No, that's not who is mentioned. But your point is well taken that the record overall is not favorable.