The Defamation of Pius XII

Rating:
Summary: A blow to the enemies of the True Faith!
Review: Congratulations are due Professor McInerny for a masterful rebuttal of all those vile, horrid, nasty, depraved, vicious, disgusting, cruel, evil, false, base, and not-nice rumors about the Church during the Second World War. He has undertaken a Herculean bout of cut-and-paste research, presenting the results with a winning literary style compounded of querulousness and bile. The good professor wisely avoided consulting unreliable works by secular academic historians such as Saul Friedlander, Guenter Lewy, and Walter Lacquer; (What should those names tell you?) not to mention libels from turncoats such as John Morley, Michael Phayer, and Susan Zuccotti. (It would have been the stake for them in the good old days!) This current campaign of defamation is, of course, a vast secret conspiracy masterminded by dissident Catholics, adherents of a certain non-Christian religion, Freemasons, liberals, and--worst of all--sodomites! The ranks of the Nazis, of course, were pervaded with sodomites so it should come as no surprise that there should be an attempt to shift the onus for their atrocities onto the One True Church.

Why, only last night I saw perverts prancing about in Nazi-style garb at the local leather bar where I often repair to once my wife, six children, and grandchildren are all safely asleep. (I am studying sexual immorality in order to denounce it, I'll have you know!) There I sat, nursing my usual Shirley Temple while filthy and obscene acts unfolded before my fascinated gaze. Finally, overcome with longing--er, loathing--I abandoned my emission--uh, my mission--and fled the sordid scene for home. (Must remember: Aquinas says self-pollution more heinous than rape!) But I digress.

Professor McInerny would surely agree that anyone raising the least question about any of our church's actions--past, present, or to come--is a dangerous degenerate who should be horsewhipped. But not just with any whip, mind you. No. It must be a new, freshly oiled leather whip, one of the sort with bits of metal woven into it; well laid on in clean, even strokes across their backs until they shriek for mercy, and the blood streams down their glistening bodies and (...)

ADDENDUM: Any correspondence sent to Professor Hatteras pertaining to this review will be returned to the sender until he is again permitted to deal with his mail.--Madelyn Murray O'Harelip, Secretary to Professor Hatteras, Tomas de Torquemada Center, 714 Radcliffe Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556-5629.


Rating:
Summary: Flawed but Good
Review: Dr. McInerny starts out slow, but builds to a nice rollicking finish. As an ex-Catholic I have little sympathy for his support of dogma, but I don't appreciate seeing th Church get bashed for things it didn't do either.

Rating:
Summary: A First Draft Does Not A Book Make
Review: I'm sorry to write such a nasty review. But the author has done almost no research for the book, relies solely on hearsay for his proof, and offers nothing worth reading. If you are a religious fundamentalist seeking any refutation (substantiated or not) to the claims that Pope Pius was "Hitler's pope", then this book would probably be worth reading. For most normal people, this book is not worth the paper it was written on. By the way, I am a Catholic who is still looking for a good argument against the claims that Pope Pius was "Hitler's Pope" ... this book failed to provide me with one.

Rating:
Summary: Just one tool in understanding the defamation of Pius XII
Review: The Defamation of Pius XII by Notre Dame university philosophy
professor Ralph McInerny is strong on evidence of Pius XII as a true
hero in speaking out for Jews and leading a church in saving hundreds
of thousands of Jewish lives during World War II - more than all
the other relief organizations combined. McInerny's 150 pages of
evidence is noticeably missing from books that allegedly defame Pius
XII as anti-Semitic, a "Hitler's Pope", and a man who supposedly
turned his back on the Jews. An epilogue in Hitler's Pope (1999) by
John Cornwell acknowledges that The Last Three Popes and the Jews
(1967) by Pinchas Lapide (Israeli consul in Milan Italy) is "a
formidable and scholarly riposte to those who would paint Pius XII and
the Holy See as villains." Cornwell adds that Lapide
"ransacked" various Jewish archives "for details of Vatican
assistance to Jews during the war" and that Lapide "calculated
that Pius XII, directly or indirectly, saved the lives of some 860,000
Jews." Yet Lapide's details of the extensive and heroic Vatican
assistance to Jews are nowhere to be found in the chapters of Hitler's
Pope. McInerny's book provides Lapide details and more. The
Defamation of Pius XII does not by itself demonstrate defamation found
in such works as Hitler's Pope. To sense a Cornwell genius of
spinning half-truths into defamation, one must read Hitler's Pope and
reread portions while referring to McInerny's book and several other
works ("McInerny et al."):

(1)"Cornwell's Pope: A Nasty
Caricature of a Noble and Saintly Man"(ZENIT News Service, 9/16/99)
by Father Peter Gumpel, arguably the world's leading expert on Pius
XII. Gumpel's twelve-page critique, posted online, concludes,
"Cornwell who is a rank amateur in the field of history, canon law,
etc., has produced a shoddy, superficial and totally untrustworthy
book which, to say the very least, is objectively biased, tendentious
and so unilateral and one-sided that one wonders what really prompted
this man to write this book." (2)HITLER THE WAR AND THE POPE (2000)
by Ronald Rychlak, a non-Catholic attorney. The 27-page epilogue
critiques Hitler's Pope. Cornwell's account of Rome's Jews is based
in large part on Katz's book Black Sabbath (1969) which per Cornwell
"remains the most authoritative account" and was the subject of
a defamation suit "lost" by the Pope's relatives who appealed
with judgment "inconclusive." Actually, per Rychlak, Katz was fined
and received a suspended prison sentence for defaming Pius XII.
(3)Pius XII and the Second World War According to the Vatican Archives
(1997) by Pierre Blet, S.J. Whenever Cornwell cites Blet, one should
read the few pages before and after the cite to see what Cornwell
failed to mention. (4)Before the Dawn (1954, reprinted as Why I Became
a Catholic), memoirs of Eugenio Zolli, Rome's chief rabbi in 1943 when
the Nazis took over Rome. Zolli extols Pius XII as a great hero for
the Jews. Portions are quoted by McInerny and Rychlak, but additional
passages aid in questioning Cornwell's choice of facts and his
conclusion. (5) The online interview (Oct. 2000) by ZENIT News Service
of Jewish Holocaust historian Tagliacozzo who in 1943 escaped the Nazi
roundup of Rome's Jews. He also hails Pius XII as a hero for the
Jews. (6) Pope Pius XII Architect for Peace (2000) by Margherita
Marchione, a book that adds additional evidence to the heroics of Pius
XII and his staff in aiding Jews, prisoners of war, and refugees
during WW II. The evidence found in McInerny et al. compels me to
believe Hitler's Pope defamed and denied a true hero of the Holocaust
putting Cornwell and publisher Penguin Books in bed with those who
deny the Holocaust ever happened. Ironically, Penguin admirably stood
with Professor Deborah Lipstadt in successfully winning a judgment
against Holocaust denier David Irving at the same time Penguin was
shamefully promoting Hitler's Pope. McInerny does not address the
role of Penguin and the media in the defamation of Pius XII.





Rating:
Summary: Worth the Read
Review: The past few years have seen book after book critical of Pope Pius XII, and behind almost every one of them was a larger attack on the papacy and the Catholic Church. The culmination is Daniel Goldhagen's hate-filled A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair. Fortunately, there are also occasional books that offer more insight than hate. The Defamation of Pius XII is a fine contribution from Ralph McInerny, professor of philosophy and head of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame.

McInerny offers a vigorous "defense" (though neither he nor I like that word in this context) of Pius XII as a holy and courageous leader who was responsible, directly and indirectly, for saving 860,000 Jews from the Holocaust. He goes on to note that the evidence for this truth is massive, the testimonies are many, and the facts are incontestable.

For McInerny, then, the question is not whether Pius XII acted heroically during World War II. That is certain. The question becomes: Why is this good man being defamed? Who are the people devoted to besmirching Pius XII's reputation, and what are they really after?

McInerny makes abundantly clear that the real subject of attack is the Catholic Church and her unchanging moral doctrine, especially on all matters sexual. The animus of the (mostly Catholic) authors is directed as much against Paul VI and John Paul II as it is against Pius XII. McInerny calls these writers: "Catholic anti-Catholics" because they call themselves Catholic despite their denial of central dogmas of the faith. On this list, McInerny would place former seminarians John Cornwell and Gary Wills, Father John F. Morley, and former priest James Carroll.

McInerny is dismayed that some Jewish writers have also joined in the defamation. Analyzing this, he advanced a position that virtually all other supporters of Pius XII have avoided. He raises questions about what certain Jewish leaders, particularly Zionists, did or did not do to help save other Jews during the war. In fact, McInerny concludes that Jewish leadership today is not in a moral position to criticize the much bolder and more effective actions of Pius XII and the Catholic Church.

McInerny lays out his case clearly and convincingly, as his well-written book moves, year by year, through World War II. While he did not do new archival work, he refers to newspaper accounts of the time and stresses the importance of listening to the contemporaneous voices-many of them from within the Jewish community-that praised Pius XII during and after the war. He shows that no other person or group accomplished anything close to what Pope Pius XII and his nuncios did during the war.

I was not certain about McInery's observations regarding the defamation campaign until I read Goldhagen's Moral Reckoning, but that convinced me. The attacks against Pius cannot be explained by new evidence or honest variations in historical accounts. There is something else at work here, and it is very troubling. It is, in fact, nothing short of a campaign to defame the papacy and to portray the Church of Christ as the enemy of mankind. Read McInerny's book.

Ronald J. Rychlak

Rating:
Summary: I highly recommend this book
Review: This book is a thorough examination of the Pope's actions during the war. Prof. McInerny simply puts forward the most compelling evidence to demonstrate that the Pope was anything but silent or indifferent to the plight of the Jewish people during the Second World War.

Don't fall prey to reading garbage like "Hitler's Pope" where cowards like John Cornwell indulge in speculation based on sloppy research and pre-formed anti-Catholic prejudice. It's fun to wonder what these ivory tower heros would have done themselves had they been confronted with the spectre of arrest and torture by the Gestapo if they were caught helping Jews.

This book, while a little dry at times, evaluates the Pope on the only two criteria that matter; his actions and what other people had to say about him at the time. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the Read
Review: This book is very weak. What is wanted is a book of historical scholarship to make the case that Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) was not what his detractors have said about him, but there is no such scholarship here. (The dust jacket says McInerny is the author of 100 books of philosophy and fiction; I don't know which of those genres this book purports to be, but it is NOT historical scholarship.) The author cites either to secondary sources, or more frequently to no sources at all, in making his defense of Pius XII. Here are a few examples of the shortcomings of the book: First, relying on Catholic bishops' actions in speaking out against Nazi atrocities as evidence of Pius's actions on behalf of the Jews, McInerny weakens his own case. Is this the best defense he has? Why not more direct evidence of the Pope's actions? Are they so few and subtle that he must rely on the heroic or courageous actions of others (not least, the actions of his predecessor, Pius XI, and those of his successor, John XXIII) which McInerny seeks to attribute to Pius XII? Second, McInerny's failure to understand the most damning indictments of Pius XII made by John Cornwall (author of Hitler's Pope) make the book particularly weak. Cornwall shows how Pius ignored the warnings of the German bishops when he negotiated the Reich Concordat with Hitler (1933) that forced Catholics to abdicate political activity in Germany. The Catholic Central Party polled 14% of the vote consistently in Germany before this time. Removing this opposition to Hitler undoubtedly (although surely unintentionally) assisted the Nazis' hold on power. And for what? So Germany could promise to support Catholic schools (a promise that Hitler soon repudiated anyway) and could acknowledge the primacy in Church affairs of the Code of Canon Law (prepared by Pacelli before he became Pope) that was a key building block of the hierarchical papacy? Was Pacelli the kind of man so taken with his own abilities, work product, and world vision that he would take the actions he did in the face of warnings from those much closer to the actual events than he? To what extent did the "top-down" world view held by Pacelli (based, not incidentally on the hierarchical papacy) lead him to ignore these warnings? What lessons (if any) are there in the resulting history? Where is McInerny's discussion of any of these points? Third, his argument that all the anti-Pius literature is motivated by animus against the strong papacy of which Pacelli was a major architect is not only unpersuasive but it is also extremely disjointed. For example, McInerny launches a broadside attack on Gary Wills who, I gather from McInerny's book, has disputed Vatican II's position on contraception. (I didn't see the relevance but gave McInerny the benefit of the doubt as I read on.) How does he introduce Wills? By citing to his "fawning" introduction to Lillian Hellman's Scoundrel Time. His not very subtle references to the "pro-Stalinist" Hellman are intended to make us think the worse of Hellman (and therefore, presumably, of Wills, by association). Still unsatisfied with this obiter dictum, in a further effort to discredit Hellman, he diverts us into a brief discussion of the libel lawsuit between Hellman and Mary McCarthy over Hellman's book Pentimento. None of this is even remotely related to Pius XII! Rather, all of this is to get us to think poorly of Wills who is the secondary subject of McInerny's attack--the primary subject being those, like Wills, who dislike the strong papacy and seek to bring it down through attacks on the actions of Pius XII. (Are you following McInerny's line of thought here?) Needless to say, like the rest of the book, this argument is unpersuasive. Do not misunderstand. I do not believe Pius was anti-Semitic. I do not believe he is guilty of taking no action to help the Jews. I understand the Hobson's choice with which he was presented: by speaking out more forcefully, he risked even harsher treatment of those within Hitler's grasp. But this book is not the treatment of those topics that you want to read. And on top of that, the book is repetitious and poorly edited.

Rating:
Summary: Waste of time
Review: This book is very weak. What is wanted is a book of historical scholarship to make the case that Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) was not what his detractors have said about him, but there is no such scholarship here. (The dust jacket says McInerny is the author of 100 books of philosophy and fiction; I don't know which of those genres this book purports to be, but it is NOT historical scholarship.) The author cites either to secondary sources, or more frequently to no sources at all, in making his defense of Pius XII. Here are a few examples of the shortcomings of the book: First, relying on Catholic bishops' actions in speaking out against Nazi atrocities as evidence of Pius's actions on behalf of the Jews, McInerny weakens his own case. Is this the best defense he has? Why not more direct evidence of the Pope's actions? Are they so few and subtle that he must rely on the heroic or courageous actions of others (not least, the actions of his predecessor, Pius XI, and those of his successor, John XXIII) which McInerny seeks to attribute to Pius XII? Second, McInerny's failure to understand the most damning indictments of Pius XII made by John Cornwall (author of Hitler's Pope) make the book particularly weak. Cornwall shows how Pius ignored the warnings of the German bishops when he negotiated the Reich Concordat with Hitler (1933) that forced Catholics to abdicate political activity in Germany. The Catholic Central Party polled 14% of the vote consistently in Germany before this time. Removing this opposition to Hitler undoubtedly (although surely unintentionally) assisted the Nazis' hold on power. And for what? So Germany could promise to support Catholic schools (a promise that Hitler soon repudiated anyway) and could acknowledge the primacy in Church affairs of the Code of Canon Law (prepared by Pacelli before he became Pope) that was a key building block of the hierarchical papacy? Was Pacelli the kind of man so taken with his own abilities, work product, and world vision that he would take the actions he did in the face of warnings from those much closer to the actual events than he? To what extent did the "top-down" world view held by Pacelli (based, not incidentally on the hierarchical papacy) lead him to ignore these warnings? What lessons (if any) are there in the resulting history? Where is McInerny's discussion of any of these points? Third, his argument that all the anti-Pius literature is motivated by animus against the strong papacy of which Pacelli was a major architect is not only unpersuasive but it is also extremely disjointed. For example, McInerny launches a broadside attack on Gary Wills who, I gather from McInerny's book, has disputed Vatican II's position on contraception. (I didn't see the relevance but gave McInerny the benefit of the doubt as I read on.) How does he introduce Wills? By citing to his "fawning" introduction to Lillian Hellman's Scoundrel Time. His not very subtle references to the "pro-Stalinist" Hellman are intended to make us think the worse of Hellman (and therefore, presumably, of Wills, by association). Still unsatisfied with this obiter dictum, in a further effort to discredit Hellman, he diverts us into a brief discussion of the libel lawsuit between Hellman and Mary McCarthy over Hellman's book Pentimento. None of this is even remotely related to Pius XII! Rather, all of this is to get us to think poorly of Wills who is the secondary subject of McInerny's attack--the primary subject being those, like Wills, who dislike the strong papacy and seek to bring it down through attacks on the actions of Pius XII. (Are you following McInerny's line of thought here?) Needless to say, like the rest of the book, this argument is unpersuasive. Do not misunderstand. I do not believe Pius was anti-Semitic. I do not believe he is guilty of taking no action to help the Jews. I understand the Hobson's choice with which he was presented: by speaking out more forcefully, he risked even harsher treatment of those within Hitler's grasp. But this book is not the treatment of those topics that you want to read. And on top of that, the book is repetitious and poorly edited.

Rating:
Summary: This book is a horrible. It is simply plaigarism
Review: This book was horrible. It mentions John Cromwell's book, "Hitler's Pope" in the forward and calls it "the latest contribution to the sorry genre," but does nothing to refute it. This author is just plain bad. He does NO ORIGINAL RESEARCH!!! This book has only TWO SOURCES, namely, Pierre Blet's "Pius XII and the Second World War" and Pinchas Lapide's "The Last Three Popes and The Jews."

All this author does is repeatedly quote his two sources and fail to counter any of Cornwell's arguements.

The bottom line: This book is the worst book that exists on this subject.