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Summary: smoking
Review: I loved it, truely rivitin
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Summary: From a Protestant perspective, this book is unfair
Review: You have to read 370 pages into this book to get to the crux of the matter, Cornwell's real aim:"Those who long for the realization of collegiality in the Catholic church may also come to accept, in the light of this narrative ... that papal autocracy, carried to the extreme, can only demoralize and weaken Christian communities. ... It has been the urgent thesis of this book, however, that when the papacy waxes strong at the expense of the people of God, the Catholic Church declines in moral and spiritual influence to the detriment of us all." I have no illusions about the power of the Papacy to inflict harm needlessly and unconsciously on the Christian church. I have no doubt that past popes have been responsible for death and destruction to further their own political power. However, I do not think Cornwell presents a credible case to damn Pius XII. He merely presents an indictment of the papacy as a strong, reactionary, unresponsive office badly in need of reform from his own perspective. To do this, he invokes the name of Hitler in the title, conjuring up all the evil of history associated with that name, hoping some will rub off on the pope. He then calls him by his Christian name, stripping him of title and making him into a faceless bureaucrat. Finally, he associates him with every evil of the era, from fascism to McCarthyism, hoping for some revolt against John Paul II at the end, in a chapter which seemed hastily added on and beside the point until you arrive at page 370, the next to last page. This is history as polemic, and not necessarily well done either. The section dealing with Pius' death is, frankly, dispicable. Because of the nature of the work as revealed at the end, this book calls all of its conclusions into suspicion. If Pius stood idlely by while the Holocaust was going on, he was no more guilty of the same moral astigmatism when presented with a choice between communism and fascism that many of that era were. One would expect a biography of FDR entitled "Hitler's President." But such a criticism would be unfair in that case, and in this. A final word on Cornwell's thesis: John Paul II has stood against so-called reformist movements, such as liberation theology, the push to ordain women and homosexuals, a more modern view of contraception, etc. If one has a problem with a strong, centralized leadership standing in the way of "reform," there are plenty of denominations to choose from besides Catholicism, a sect not known in the past for its visionary reform. But speaking as a Protestant, frankly, Catholicism without a strong Papacy would be ridiculous, and I think Martin Luther would agree with me. And to the reader from New Jersey: Americans don't necessarily like sugar coated history. We just don't chase after every damned red herring thrown to us by dubious historians ready to abandon credible history based on their own axe-grindings. The author and those who agree with him should instead find a better way of pursuing Catholic reform instead of dishonoring the memory of those unable to defend themselves.
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Summary: VERY WELL RESEARCHED AND TOLD TALE OF PAPAL DUPLICITY
Review: "Hitler's Pope," is a very well written & researched book about Pope Pius XII and his deal with the devil for the sake of papal diplomacy. Cornwell uses source material from the vatican including the writings of Pius and others to tell the story of how the Vatican under the pope stood by during Hitler's Final Solution. Prehaps the saddest chapter of all is near the end of the book when the Nazis round up the Roman Jews and parade them almost right by the Vataican and the pope fails to take any action to save the thousands of souls passing under his window toward their doom. A controversial book to sure it, is a story that needs to be told and Cornwell does an excellent job in telling it!
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Summary: And People Wonder Why Anti-Semitism Persists
Review: Golda Meir and many European rabbis, including the chief rabbi of Rome, of the 1940's praised Pius efforts to save 860,000 Jews during WWII. A monument is actually dedicated to him in Israel as a recognition for what he had done to save so many. I remember reading many of the warnings that Pius issued against Nazism in encyclical letters and in his own private correspondence with other leaders in Europe. It amazes me that the Jews would allow this man to be criticized, mucless offer support to attacking him and the Catholic Church. How many Jews saved the lives of their own during the war? Why did so few serve proportionally in WWII if they believed the lives of other Jews were worth saving? What other organization can boast a record of nearly a million saved from the death camps? One praises this book on blind adherence to ideology. If you hate Catholicism and Christianity, you will find this a factual, hard hitting book and nothing that contradicts its conclusions will convince you otherwise. It is no accident that the history of Pius has undergone such a recent and strident revisionist effort: he was a vocal opponent of homosexuality, abortion, and contraception, things we moderns like. If you can paint Pius in a Nazi officer's uniform, you can attack the Church's moral position to teach against abortion.
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Summary: Polemical ; unscholarly;; :
Review: Truth eventually prevails. But this book is not interested in truth. It was written from a biased point of view and too close to the events in question to be fair.
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Summary: This book is a hatchet job against Pope Pius XII.
Review: John Cornwell grinds an ax against Pope Pius XII for his absolutist conception of the papacy and against Pope John Paul II for advocating in practice that same view. Cornwell holds that Eugenio Pacelli, the future pope, devoted his diplomatic career to increasing the power of the papacy. This accounts for the pope's alleged failure to speak out in defense of the Jews (for this, "He was Hitler's Pope," p. 297). If one examines the evidence, there are three points that become evident. First, Cornwell does not understand that all papal diplomats must be trained in the canon law of the church to protect the rights of the church abroad. In holding that Pacelli was unique in this respect, Cornwell gives a warped interpretation of relations between the Holy See and Germany just as he creates the false impression that the initiative for the concordat with Germany came from Pacelli, rather than from Adolf Hitler. The author compounds his distortion of the past by overlooking that the support for the Nazi leader was more a consequence of the Versailles Treaty than of any concordat with the Vatican. Just as Cornwell underplays the role of Pacelli's superiors early in his career regarding the Serbian concordat so does he do the same with Pius XI in the German concordat. Secondly, Cornwell's work shows a heavy reliance on secondary sources and a tendency to ignore documents and scholars that demolish his view of Pius XII. In failing to base his analysis of what the pope did or did not do for Jews (apart from ten references out of some 650 in the book), on the four key volumes (6, 8, 9, and 10) of documents out of the twelve published by the Holy See, the author undermines his own credibility. This emerges in his claim to new evidence in Pacelli's letter of April 18, 1919, originally published in 1992, which is taken out of context to prove Pacelli's alleged anti-Semitism, and in his new revelation with Hitler's plan to kidnap Pius, which was presented by this reviewer in his book on "The Jesuits and the Third Reich" in 1989. Refusing to concede that Pius was effective against the Nazis in his Christmas message of 1942 (pp. 291-295), when "The New York Times" lauded him for doing so, shows how Cornwell's preoccupation with his book's main thesis does not help his objectivity. So, dominated by his preconception, Cornwell does not understand the involvement of the Vatican in trying to prevent the Jews of Rome from deportation to the death camps in October of 1943. Thirdly, if the author's thesis had been based on objective evidence, he would not have seized every opportunity to dishonor his subject. Yet, Cornwell ridicules Pacelli by portraying him in bad light as he shows how his housekeeper dominated his life; how the aging pope was periodically injected with monkey hormones to lengthen his years; and, how before he was buried, the pope's body underwent decomposition. Even the words and actions of Pius XII dealing with matters of faith and morals are interpreted in such a way as to denigrate his reputation. Unwittingly, however, the author's own narration (pp. 234-240) of the pope's courage in involving himself early in the war in the conspiracy to eliminate the Nazi leader stands as a glaring contradiction to everything which Cornwell has set down in this attempt to block the beatification of Pius XII and to undercut the effectiveness of John Paul II.
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Summary: Powerful, damning account of the Pope who failed
Review: The title is sensationalistic; Pius was not Hitler's pawn. What he was was a figure who should have stood in the way of Hitler and did not, as Cornwell demonstrates overwhelmingly. ("He would have put Catholics, even himself, in danger," people say in response. Well, wasn't that his JOB? Could there possibly have been anything on earth more important for the Vicar of Christ to do at that time in history? On that basis alone, Pius is a pathetic failure as Pope and human being.) So he protested the deportation of Jews who had converted to Catholicism, as an article in Salon says in his defense. Cornwell demonstrates over and over that he couldn't be bothered for any other Jews. The Pope could certainly have raised civil disobedience against the regime in Italy, yet he did nothing. The destruction of the German Catholic party for his own ends was a blindly reckless and irresponsible act-- unilateral moral disarmamament in the face of a vicious enemy. Churchill said he would have made a deal with the devil himself to fight Hitler. Pius, alas, did make that same deal, to fight Bolshevism. He deserves not to rank with the saints, but with Chamberlain, Petain, Quisling.
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Summary: Well-researched and insightful
Review: Did the people who wrote the vituperative reviews here read the same book I did?? Cornwall doesn't parrot Hochhuth's play (The Deputy); he takes great pains to point out how unfair Hochhuth was to the papacy. He translates Mit brennender Sorge correctly, if not literally ("With Deep Anxiety", p. 181). The cover picture is correctly identified as dating from 1927... and he does discuss the efforts which the Vatican made in rescuing Jews during the war. The title is a bit sensationalistic (probably intended to sell more books). As Cornwell clearly states, Pacelli was no friend of Hitler's. It's easy to sit in our armchairs 50 years later and second-guess what he should have done during the war, but I don't think anyone is entitled to demand someone else's martyrdom. Surrounded by Fascist Italy, and with at least one Nazi plot to kidnap him, one can hardly blame Pacelli for not coming down on the side of the Allies. I think there's room to give him the benefit of the doubt (which Cornwell, alas doesn't) that he felt that maintaining neutrality was the best strategy (for both the papacy and the world), and sincerely believed what he said, that protests would have caused more harm than good in the long run.
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Summary: Thought provoking
Review: First, let's get one thing straight, Hitler was the son of a Bavarian CATHOLIC schoolmaster. I am a convert to Catholicism and I read this book with interest because it only confirms what I already knew coming into the Church, that the Church HAS made mistakes in the past and will continue to do so in the future. There are NO institutions, secular or religious run by human beings that can escape unscathed from fear, weaknesses, pride or pure evil. The Borgia popes, the Avignon episode, the Inquisition, etc. all point to the same mistake even the first "pope", Peter made-the denial and rejection of Jesus to his enemies. Fortunately, the Popes never claimed to be perfect (infallibility in matters of faith and morals is not the same as impeccability). Even the Pope goes to Confession. This reminds me of a story. A potential convert once told a Catholic priest that he was going to visit Rome before making up his mind about converting to Catholicism. The priest, aware of the scandals and corruption prevailing in the Church of that time (so what else is new?), begged him to reconsider the trip but the man's mind was made up. When the man returned, the priest thought that for sure, the man had changed his mind about converting. Instead, the man asked for baptism into the Church. "Did you not notice the scandal and corruption in Rome?" "Yes," the man replied. "If the Church can thrive for 2,000 years under those kinds of conditions, it HAS to be DIVINELY guided! Any other institution would have already been consigned to the dustbins of history."
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Summary: Too biased
Review: I don't like this book because I think that it is bad research, and even worse targetting at misleading the masses. BTW I am not Catholic, so I have no interest or particular reason to defend Pius XII. The argumentation of the book is poor and the evidence very selective. Cornwell ignored the mass of evidence that sustained the contrary thesis, and the reasons that led Pius to use a soft policy for helping the Jews (Hitler reacting with more persecution when the pope would condemn antisemitism strongly, and Hitler's becoming full of hate just by hearing the word "Jew".) For those who are interested in a much better book on the same topic, I definitely recommend Pierre Blet's book on Pius XII. (Pius XII and the Second World War : According to the Archives of the Vatican)
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