Vatican Cardinal Burke: ‘We’re well on the way’ to Christian persecution in the U.S.

BY JOHN-HENRY WESTEN
Mon Nov 28, 2011

VATICAN, November 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of the highest ranking cardinals in the Vatican has said that the United States is “well on the way” to the persecution of Christians.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, former Archbishop of St. Louis and now the head of the Vatican’s highest court, told Catholic News Agency that he could envision a time when the Catholic Church in the U.S., “even by announcing her own teaching,” is accused of “engaging in illegal activity, for instance, in its teaching on human sexuality.”

Asked if the cardinal could even see American Catholics being arrested for their faith he replied, “I can see it happening, yes.”

In his remarks to several U.S. Bishops meeting with him Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI made similarly emphatic warnings about the U.S. The pope told the bishops that “the seriousness of the challenges which the Church in America, under your leadership, is called to confront in the near future cannot be underestimated.”

He added: “The obstacles to Christian faith and practice raised by a secularized culture also affect the lives of believers.”

In the interview published today, Cardinal Burke declared that “it is a war” and “critical at this time that Christians stand up for the natural moral law.” Should they not, he warned, “secularization will in fact predominate and it will destroy us.”

Pope Benedict too urged the bishops of the United States to speak out in defense of morality. “The present moment can thus be seen, in positive terms, as a summons to exercise the prophetic dimension of your episcopal ministry by speaking out, humbly yet insistently, in defense of moral truth, and offering a word of hope, capable of opening hearts and minds to the truth that sets us free,” he said.

Catholic League President Bill Donohue told LifeSiteNews that Cardinal Burke’s remarks were accurate and not exaggerations. “Secularism has become militant,” he said. “Many elites are taking an aggressive secular approach. They have lined up against the Catholic Church and other Christian churches particularly for their stand on moral values.”

Donohue pointed to New York where gay ‘marriage’ was passed without debate or exemptions for clerks who objected to having to grant such licenses. He also noted the closing of Catholic adoption and foster care agencies since they were unable to comply with laws forcing homosexual adoptions.

“The real big one,” he added, “is the HHS of the Obama Administration.” The forcing of abortifacient and contraceptive coverage in private health care plans under penalty of fines was described by the Catholic League President as the Obama Administration “on a full court press to shove its values down the throats of the Catholic Church.”

See the full interview with Cardinal Burke with Catholic News Agency

Link to story: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vatican-cardinal-burke-were-well-on-the-way-to-christian-persecution-in-the

Scholars Decry Distortion of Pius XII Quotation

Explain Context of Pacelli's Words

ROME, SEPT. 21, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The latest attempt to discredit Pope Pius XII is based on a manufactured quote that distorts his words, assert two authors.

Ronald Rychlak, author of "Hitler, the War, and the Pope," stated this in an article written with William Doino, Jr., contributor to "The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII."

Their article, "Pius XII and the Distorting Ellipsis," pointed out that "as charge after charge that Pope Pius XII failed to resist the Germans or even that he was indeed 'Hitler's Pope' has been refuted, the critics have advanced new and more remote accusations."

"First," it noted, "critics attacked him for what he said or did -- or failed to say or do -- during the war. When those accusations were proved to be without merit, they charged him with failures after the war."

"When those were refuted," the scholars said, "they shifted to the Pope's actions before he was Pope."

They explained, "The current charge claims that in a presentation Pius XII gave at an International Eucharistic Congress in Hungary in 1938 -- when he was still Eugenio Pacelli, Vatican secretary of state -- he referred to Jews as enemies of Christ and the Catholic Church."

Misquoted

The article reported: "The critics claim that on May 25, 1938, just after the Anschluss (the German annexation of Austria), but before the Shoah or even the outbreak of World War II, Pacelli said: 'Jesus conquers! He who so often was the recipient of the rage of his enemies, he who suffered the persecutions of those of whom he was one, he shall be triumphant in the future as well … As opposed to the foes of Jesus, who cried out to his face, 'Crucify him!' we sing him hymns of our loyalty and our love. We act in this fashion, not out of bitterness, not out of a sense of superiority, not out of arrogance toward those whose lips curse him and whose hearts reject him even today.'"

The scholars noted that "one major critic of Pius, Moshe Y. Herczl, claimed that Pacelli was clearly assailing Jews." This claim was echoed by critics Michael Phayer and John Cornwell.

However, the authors said, "there is reason to be suspicious of this quotation, and the anti-Semitic interpretation applied to it."

They continued: "First, no one at the time thought that Pacelli was speaking of Jews. He spoke of the 'military godless' and those who wanted to 'impose a new Christianity,' statements applicable only to the Communists and Nazis."

"Second, look at the quotation the papal critics use," the scholars pointed out. "One has to wonder what the ellipsis is replacing."

They added, "Despite the importance of this quotation to the argument of many Papal critics, it seems that none of them traced it back to its origin."

Original source

The scholars reported: "With the assistance of Vatican historian (and relator of Pope Pius XII's sainthood cause) Father Peter Gumpel, we reviewed the text of the speech as it was published in "Discorsi e Panegirici." The quote as given by the critics does not appear therein.

"The ellipsis was used to link very diverse passages from different pages of Pacelli's speech, producing a complete distortion of Pacelli's words. (To be certain that we were not overlooking anything, we reviewed transcripts from all seven of the talks he gave in Hungary)."

The article explained that "early in the talk, Pacelli spoke about biblical history. He recalled the Passion of Christ, and he mentioned the defiance of disciples, the solitude of Gethsemane, the crowning of thorns, the cynicism of Herod, and the opportunism of Pilate."

It noted that "he referred to the masses that called for the Crucifixion and said they had been 'deceived and excited by propaganda, lies, insults and imprecations at the foot of the Cross.'

The article affirmed: "Those identified as enemies of Christ included Pontius Pilate, Herod, the Roman soldiers, the Sanhedrin, and their followers. He did not call out 'all Jews' or 'the Jews.'"

"About two pages later in the manuscript," the scholars reported, "Pacelli referred to those who were persecuting the Church at that time by doing things like expelling religion and perverting Christianity."

Nazi persecution

"Jews were not doing this, but Nazi Germany certainly was," they asserted. "The future Pope was clearly equating the Nazis, not Jews, to those who persecuted the Church at earlier times."

The article continued: "Pacelli then returned to the theme of Christ's sufferings during the Passion which were being repeated against the Mystical Body of Christ in modern times, contrasting them with the Church's offering of love: 'Let us replace the cry of 'Crucify' made by Christ's enemies, with the 'Hosanna' of our fidelity and our love.'

"Pacelli was rebuking the totalitarians of his day, not the Jews of earlier times."

"Nowhere in the address did he mention or single out Jews as the specific, much less sole, enemies of Jesus Christ, past or present," it asserted. "There is no legitimate way to argue that Pacelli was blaming Jews when he spoke about the enemies of Christ."

The article asked, "Where did the distorted quotation come from?"

It added that "Herczl was not present at the speech and did not even look at Pacelli's script" or "even the Italian version that appeared in the Vatican newspaper."

The scholars noted that "in his book, he cited a Hungarian newspaper, Nemzeti Ujsag (National Journal), with a long and controversial history as a political outlet."

Anti-Semitic

They continued: "As its name implies and as numerous articles in the newspaper itself attest, Nemzeti Ujsag was a political journal, not a religious one.

"It was, at least in the relevant years, overtly anti-Semitic and truly despicable. Randolph L. Braham, a noted scholar in the field, called it a voice of National Socialism."

The authors posited: "It is likely that the newspaper manufactured the quotation to support its anti-Semitic position.

"Pacelli, after all, was criticizing the exact political position the paper held. Then as now, Vatican support was a very useful thing to claim."

"Herczl and those who followed him should have been skeptical of this source," they asserted. "Neither he nor anyone else would have accepted what that paper said about Jews, yet with several other reliable sources available, why did he turn to an unreliable source for this crucial information about Pacelli?"

"More importantly," the authors added, "why have critics like Phayer and Cornwell simply repeated the charge, relying upon this English translation of a Hebrew translation from a Hungarian translation of a speech originally made in French by a native Italian speaker?"

"The manufactured quotation blatantly distorted the words of the future Pope," the article stated.

It continued: "Inasmuch that quote was inconsistent with so much other evidence of Pacelli's character, it should have been strictly scrutinized.

"Instead it was readily accepted and insufficiently analyzed by critics eager to discredit the papacy and the Catholic Church. They should be ashamed."

ZE10092107 - 2010-09-21
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-30442?l=english

An Out-of-Touch Ogre?

The media’s mau-mauing of Bishop Thomas Olmsted
By George Neumayr | July 2010
Catholic World Report

In the past, bishops sparked shocked headlines in newspapers by betraying Church teaching. Now a brave few make headlines by upholding it. Consider the case of Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has likened him to a member of the hierarchy during the “cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance.”

That sounds pretty bad. What, exactly, has Olmsted done? Shown corrupt indifference to the protection of children? Profited off the abuse of them? No, it turns out his cruel sin in the eyes of Kristof and company is that he wants to protect children, including the forgotten unborn ones often killed under the worldly logic of false compassion.

In May, it came out that Bishop Olmsted had upheld canon law after learning, to his alarm, that a nun at a Catholic hospital in the diocese of Phoenix, several months earlier, formally cooperated in the killing of an unborn child from a patient’s difficult pregnancy.

Olmsted had quietly, conscientiously, and properly followed Church teaching and discipline in the matter (under canon law, Mercy Sister Margaret McBride incurred “automatic excommunication” through her action; he simply informed her of that, and she lost her executive position at the hospital).

But the media, hungry for stories that pit “progressive” nuns against “reactionary” bishops, publicized it, at which point Olmsted issued a laudably straightforward comment:

I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese. I am further concerned by the hospital’s statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother’s underlying medical condition.

An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother’s life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.

Every Catholic institution is obliged to defend human life at all its stages; from conception to natural death. This obligation is also placed upon every Catholic individual. If a Catholic formally cooperates in the procurement of an abortion, they are automatically excommunicated by that action. The Catholic Church will continue to defend life and proclaim the evil of abortion without compromise, and must act to correct even her own members if they fail in this duty….

St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, where the abortion took place, also made a statement, though considerably more vague, saying that in “this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’s life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” and that its “ethics” committee signed off on it.

Just the “termination of an 11-week pregnancy”? No, an unborn child was terminated too. But it is easier to say a “pregnancy” was terminated than an innocent unborn child suctioned to death. Showing no interest in that victim, the media’s ensuing coverage cast Sister McBride as the big-hearted “saintly” nun and Bishop Olmsted as the out-of-touch ogre.

Yet he is the only figure in the controversy in touch with what actually happened: an unborn child was killed at a Catholic hospital with a nun’s formal cooperation and help, and he is not about to let that happen again. At a time when derelict bishops are justly criticized for ignoring canon law to the detriment of children, the media’s treatment of the conscientious Bishop Olmsted looks even more outrageous and perverse.

It always comes as a rude surprise to the media these days when an American bishop turns out to be a believing Catholic and displays a willingness to govern his diocese according to Church norms. The Fifth-Column newspaper National Catholic Reporter finds his conduct very puzzling indeed, breaking the news, through one troubled source, that Olmsted is “very much governed by canon law and obedience and fidelity to church teaching and the magisterium….” How odd. This makes him, in NCR’s telling, a “strict constructionist” and a backwoods simpleton. “It helps to know that he grew up on a Kansas farm near the Nebraska border and attended a one-room rural school,” observed another of the paper’s sources.

But, wait, Olmsted is also like a pampered Borgia-era bishop. One of Nicholas Kristof’s sources hissed, “True Christians, like Sister Margaret, understand that real life is full of difficult moral decisions and pray that they make the right decision in the context of Christ’s teachings. Only a group of detached, pampered men in gilded robes on a balcony high above the rest of us could deny these dilemmas.”

It apparently doesn’t occur to commentators like Kristof that the very modernist scorn of canon law they demand from Olmsted is what got decadent bishops into the abuse scandal and exposure of children to harm, both spiritual and physical, in the first place. Kristof speaks of the “cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance” while oblivious to the cruel and debauched days of modern liberalism. Both came through the infidelity of soft and corrupt bishops to canon law and orthodox teaching.

Olmsted, needless to say, is the antithesis of a Borgia-era bishop. He has risked his comfort for the sake of thankless duty. He deserves praise for resisting the media’s mau-mauing and the Catholic left’s claimed monopoly on “compassion,” which never extends to the unborn child torn limb from limb.

George Neumayr is editor of Catholic World Report.

Christianophobia at Work in "Crucifix Trial," Says Cardinal

Roundtable Event Held in Rome Ahead of Public Hearing

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 23, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The decision of the European Court of Human Rights to ban the crucifix from Italian classrooms is a result of the encroachment of "secularist fundamentalism" and "Christianophobia," says the former president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.

Cardinal Julián Herranz Casado said this today in Rome at a round table event organized by the Christian Humanism Association, with the sponsorship of the office of Italy's prime minister. The title of the event was "Values and Rights: The Value of the Crucifix."

In November, the human rights court ruled in favor of an Italian citizen of Finnish origin who complained in 2002 that the state school where her two children studied violated their freedom by displaying crucifixes.

Italy launched an appeal in January, contending that the crucifix is part of Italian cultural patrimony. Since then, 10 other member states have joined Italy's appeal as third parties. At stake is not only the crucifix ban, but also the limits of the jurisdiction of the human rights court.

The court's Grand Chamber will hold a public hearing on June 30, and the final judgment on the case is expected by the end of the year.

Cardinal Herranz explained that the ruling is a result of a growing "secularist fundamentalism" that seeks to "relegate the Christian faith and religion in general to the mere private realms of personal conscience, excluding all signs, symbols or external manifestation of the faith in public places and civil institutions (schools, hospitals, etc.)."

Errors

The 80-year-old cardinal said the erroneous reasoning behind the court's decision asserts that the presence of the crucifix in classrooms is "contrary to the right of parents to educate their children in line with their own convictions, and to the right of children to religious liberty," as the atmosphere of the school would be "marked by a specific religion."

The court, he continued, also wrongly affirmed that the presence of the crucifix might be "emotionally disturbing," and that its display might not "foment critical thought in pupils" or the "educational pluralism" that is essential to preserve a "democratic society."

"This decision," the Spanish cardinal responded, "makes reference without a motive -- because the mere display of the crucifix does not have an imperative or discriminatory character -- to the religious liberty of non-Christian pupils, while it does not respect Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affects Christian pupils of Italian schools and the 'patria potestas' of their parents."

"This norm," Cardinal Herranz stressed, "guarantees the right of religious liberty, which includes among other things: 'the liberty to manifest one's religion or belief, individually and collectively, both in public as well as in private, by teaching, practice, worship and observance.'"

In second place, the cardinal indicated that "secularism certainly represents a constitutive principle of democratic states," but noted that the court ignores the rights of states to "determine in each case their concrete forms of application, in the light of the different circumstances and local traditions."

Secularism, he insisted, "is not an ideological principle that must be imposed on society violating the traditions, feelings and religious beliefs of the citizens."

Anti-confessional

Cardinal Herranz said that the Strasbourg Court confuses the meaning of "the neutrality or a-confessionality of the state" with the idea that "the state must be 'anti-confessional,' that is, opposed to the presence in public institutions of any religious sign or symbol."

"This attitude of rejection of religion would make of atheism a sort of ideology or state religion," he stressed.

Moreover, the Opus Dei cardinal continued, "it seems that the court has exceeded illegitimately the limits of its own competence, pronouncing itself on a question that affects the legitimate and due safeguarding on the part of the state of the national traditions and culture, as well as the commitments assumed with concordats or particular conventions with the Catholic Church and eventually with other religious confessions."

He spoke of "strong media powers and some political groups that for a long time have supported the ideology of secularist fundamentalism" and who hope for a law of religious liberty that would prohibit "crucifixes and other religious signs [...] in public institutions and official ceremonies (schools, courts, hospitals, state funerals, etc.)."

And they do this, the cardinal added, knowing that "the majority of citizens, if consulted in a referendum, would vote against this."

ZE10062306 - 2010-06-23
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-29688?l=english

NO! Empire State Building refuses to light up in honor of Mother Teresa

It is sad that it doesn't surprise me that this is happening....


BY Adam Lisberg
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF
Wednesday, June 9th 2010, 2:06 PM

The Empire State Building has a message to Mother Teresa - you don't deserve to be honored in lights.

The building has colored its famous lighting in the past for Mariah Carey, stock car driver Jimmie Johnson and drug-loving musicians the Grateful Dead, but its owner said Wednesday that Mother Teresa doesn't qualify.

"As a privately owned building, ESB has a specific policy against any other lighting for religious figures or requests by religions and religious organizations," said Anthony Malkin, head of the family company that owns the building.

The firm "no" comes after the Catholic League and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn both urged the city's tallest tower to turn its lights blue and white on Aug. 26 for what would have been her 100th birthday.

Quinn said she spoke to Malkin on Tuesday and hoped he would change his mind.

"He said he would reflect on it," Quinn said today. "It's a really wrong-headed decision that he has made. It's his private building, and he has the right to make it, but I think it's a hugely lost opportunity for the city."

Catholic League President Bill Donohue said the tower was lit red and white when Cardinal O'Connor died in 2000, and the lights were extinguished to mark the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005.

"Malkin has made his decision to stiff Catholics," said Donohue, who now plans an Aug. 26 demonstration outside the building. "His decision to double down at this juncture - in the face of massive support for our request - is something he will regret for the rest of his life."

Archbishop Timothy Dolan is monitoring the situation, a spokesman said. He earlier said he was stumped why a nun who devoted her life to helping the suffering was not deserving of the honor.

"I kind of shrug my shoulders with everybody else," Dolan said in March. "I guess there must be a reason. It'd be tough for me to understand a credible one, but I wish they'd kind of tell us. It's tough to be against Mother Teresa?"

The City Council is scheduled to consider a resolution Wednesday calling on the skyscraper to change its mind.

Malkin said the building lights itself up for religious holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah and Id al-Fitr, but not individuals.

"We try to use the lighting to celebrate everybody who thinks highly of the building," he told the New York Times last year. "We do important Western holidays, we have fun with the Mets versus the Yankees or the Jets versus the Giants."

The decision outraged tourists lining up to tour the building's 86th-floor observation deck today, who saw no earthly reason not to honor a heavenly nun.

"She's not just a Catholic figure - she's an inspiration to everybody," said Mary Shull, 54, visiting from northeast Tennessee.

Added Wesley Dessert, a 28-year-old social worker from Brooklyn: "It's an iconic building in New York, and she's an icon too. It's special to honor her 100th birthday. It's a milestone."



With Frank Lombardi and Samantha Shirley

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/06/09/2010-06-09_no_empire_state_building_refuses_to_light_up_in_honor_of_mother_teresa.html#ixzz0qNrFam6Z

Why Time Magazine Misses the Point

Benedict XVI's Pontificate Is Marked by Reform and Renewal

By Gregory Erlandson

HUNGTINGTON, Indiana, JUNE 8, 2010 (Zenit.org).- It would probably be too much to ask that Time magazine run a cover story on the bold statements and concrete actions that Benedict XVI has taken to address the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

No self-respecting journalistic enterprise wants to be separated from the pack when it comes to covering a controversial news story, which means it must always follow the herd, even when the evidence points elsewhere.

But the Time magazine June 7 cover story is a particularly frustrating example of a media enterprise playing to prejudices with half-truths even to the point of severely misrepresenting the story.

"Why Being Pope Means Never having To Say You’re Sorry: The Sex Abuse Scandal and the Limits of Atonement" is the provocative headline splashed across the most recent Time cover, which also features an image of the back of Benedict XVI's mitered head.

Lest we have any doubts where this is heading, the lead sentence of the story manages to drag in the Inquisition: "How do you atone for something terrible, like the Inquisition?"

The gist of the story is that as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he wasn't so up to apologizing for the Inquisition, and he isn’t really doing enough to apologize for the clergy sexual abuse crisis, either. Time magazine wants the Pope to offer a personal mea culpa, particularly for his handling of a case in Germany when he was archbishop of Munich, and more generally for the fact that he "was very much part of a system that had badly underestimated and in some cases enabled the rot of clergy abuse that spread through the Church in the past half-century."

The target

The story, written by Jeff Israely (reporting from Rome) and Howard Chua-Eoan, while appearing to be about the sexual abuse crisis, is really a subtly written assault on the papacy itself, making the following case:

1. For the past two centuries, the Vatican has centralized power and authority over the Church, including the declaration of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council.

2. This centralization is how it has managed to control its docile flock even as it has lost temporal power.

3. At stake in the sexual abuse crisis is the prestige and power of the papacy and the Church’s own authority.

4. There needs to be some sort of acceptance of personal guilt on the part of Pope Benedict for his actions, despite all he has done to address the crisis.

5. Such an admission of guilt and apology would call into question, however, the "theological impregnability of the papacy" and hasten other changes in the Church that will diminish its size and authority.

The provocative headline of the article -- "Why Being Pope Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry" -- makes more sense in this narrative because it yokes the claim of infallibility to the current crisis, making the papacy the center of the abuse story.

The fact that the Pope has apologized repeatedly thus becomes irrelevant for Time magazine -- despite the obvious contradiction of the headline -- because the apologies are just a public relations strategy to head off a greater challenge.

In laying out this political analysis of the last 200 years of Church history, the article also serves to bolster the case of those lawyers seeking damages from the Vatican for sexual abuse cases that occurred in the United States. Since the Vatican was so centralized and domineering, the question of its liability for the handling of individual local cases becomes more plausible.

Infalibility

Thus, after recounting the many positive steps the Pope has taken, Time still concludes that he is hedging: "He assigned wrongdoing not to the Church but to its servants." This, the magazine suggests, is to protect the Church from legal liability. "The consequences of sin are subject to divine salvation, but the consequences of crime lie within the purview of human judges and entail courts of law, prison, public humiliation and the loss of property."

Time quotes an Irish theologian: "This very centralized Church [tightly managed out of Rome] has only really been the case since the end of the 19th century." Here it ties everything back to the First Vatican Council and its statement on papal infallibility. In keeping with the heavy editorializing of the entire story, it sums up Vatican I as a "stage-managed" council that used a "suspect majority of bishops" to approve infallibility, thus allowing the Roman Curia to become "ever more centralized and domineering."

While the article dismisses "a purportedly impromptu crowd of 150,000 people" who showed up to cheer the Pope one Sunday (although no one claims it was impromptu), it lauds plans for a "Reformation Day" in October being organized by victims of clergy sexual abuse to "pressure the Vatican to act" and to "take back" the Church.

The story gets so many details wrong, that defenders of Benedict XVI in some ways don't know where to start.

Papal authority

Infallibility has nothing to do with the story of sexual abuse. The centralization of authority is more stereotype than truth, as witnessed by the diversity of Catholic voices, the independent actions of many bishops, the rise of the national bishops' conferences and on and on. If anything, what is frustrating to many Catholics and puzzling to non-Catholics who hold a simplistic view of papal authority is that the Pope cannot just rule by arbitrary decree. (It is ironic that this same misunderstanding permeates the controversy surrounding Pope Pius XII and the struggle with Nazism.)

The real story is this: Benedict XVI is aware of the scale and the scope of the crisis worldwide. He has taken decisive actions (such as the removal of the founder of the Legion of Christ). He has intervened strongly in Ireland, with a remarkably honest and plain-spoken letter to the Irish Catholics, a visitation of top prelates to study the root causes of the crisis and how it was handled, the acceptance of several resignations by bishops, and a high-level meeting with Irish prelates at the Vatican. He has quite clearly led the way in encouraging local bishops’ conferences to address their scandals head on, and he has laid out the language for understanding the crisis: Endorsing the search for truth, calling for penance, not blaming the media or enemies outside the Church, but pointing to the enemies within.

Mistakes have been made. Grievous mistakes. Mistakes were made by bishops, by priests, by psychiatrists and police and judges and yes, even by well-intentioned and grief-stricken relatives. The cost of these mistakes is very high, and the Church will have to pay these costs. But efforts to make Benedict XVI part of the problem rather than part of the solution would be an even bigger mistake, for it is he who is providing real leadership on this issue.

It is Benedict XVI who is refusing to circle the wagons and understands the spiritual as well as the canonical and civil issues at stake. It is Benedict XVI who is championing the necessary reform and renewal that the scandals demand.

* * *

Greg Erlandson is the president and publisher of Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, and co-author of the newly released "Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal" (2010, Our Sunday Visitor).

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-29530?l=english

Roman Catholic bishop stabbed to death in Turkey

By SUZAN FRASER, Associated Press Writer Suzan Fraser

Via Yahoo News

ANKARA, Turkey – A Roman Catholic bishop was stabbed to death in southern Turkey on Thursday, a day before he was scheduled to leave for Cyprus to meet with the pope, officials and reports said.

Luigi Padovese, 63, the apostolic vicar in Anatolia, was attacked outside his home in the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun. The killing was not believed to be politically motivated.

Dogan news agency video footage of the scene showed the bishop lying dead in front of a building.

Mehmet Celalettin Lekesiz, the governor for the province of Hatay, said police immediately caught the suspected killer. He said the man, identified only as Murat A., was Padovese's driver for the last four and a half years and was mentally unstable.

"The initial investigation shows that the incident is not politically motivated," Lekesiz said. "We have learned that the suspect had psychological problems and was receiving treatment."

Padovese, who is the equivalent of the bishop for the Anatolia region, was scheduled to leave for Cyprus on Friday to meet with the pope, who is visiting the island, and fellow bishops from around the region to prepare for a synod of Roman Catholic bishops in the Middle East. The synod is scheduled for October.

The Vatican-affiliated Asia News agency cited unnamed witnesses as saying the driver appeared to be "depressed, violent and threatening," in recent days.

No one answered phones at his church in Iskenderun.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told The Associated Press in Rome that the Vatican felt "immense pain, consternation, (and) bewilderment" over the death and noted that it showed the "difficult conditions" of the Catholic community in the region.

He said the pope's upcoming visit to Cyprus and the upcoming synod of bishops on the Middle East showed "how the universal church is in solidarity with this community."

The killing is the latest in a string of attacks in recent years on Christians in Turkey, where Christians make up less than 1 percent of the 70 million population.

In 2007, a Roman Catholic priest in the western city of Izmir, Adriano Franchini, was stabbed and slightly wounded in the stomach by a 19-year-old man after Sunday Mass. The man was arrested.

The same year, a group of men entered a Bible-publishing house in the central Anatolian city of Malatya and killed three Christians, including a German national. The five alleged killers are now standing trial for murder.

The killings — in which the victims were tied up and had their throats slit — drew international condemnation and added to Western concerns about whether Turkey can protect its religious minorities.

In 2006, amid widespread anger in Islamic countries over the publication in European newspapers of caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, a 16-year-old boy shot dead a Catholic priest, Father Andrea Santoro, as he prayed in his church in the Black Sea city of Trabzon. The boy was convicted of murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Padovese was appointed to his post in 2004.

Mustafa Sinanoglu, the mufti or top Muslim cleric for Hatay province, told the Anatolia news agency that he and Padovese had been working together toward establishing closer dialogue between their faiths.

"I have been deeply affected by the death of a colleague with whom I had been working together on projects for the region, Turkey and world peace," he said.

"These kinds of incidents are damaging our country's image," he added.

Asia News said the Bishop was also involved in work for the unity of the Christian church and to revive the tiny Christian community in Turkey.

Turkey's Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay paid tribute to Padovese saying he had "made important contributions to the culture of tolerance through his services in Hatay."

The Foreign Ministry said the death of Padovese was an "important loss from a religious and scholarly point of view," adding that the Bishop had written extensively on Turkey.

In a 2006 telephone interview with the AP, following another knife attack that injured another priest, Padovese expressed concern over the safety of Catholics priests in Turkey.

"The climate has changed," he said. "It is the Catholic priests that are being targeted."

British author blasts the new atheists, "secular inquisition"

by Carol Olson
Ignatius Insight

Yeah, yeah, yeah—yet another hyper-reactionary papal apologist whining and complaining about how the Pope is being treated:

It’s worth asking why otherwise fairly intelligent thinkers get so dementedly exercised over the pope and the Catholic Church. What exactly is their beef? What are they objecting to? Very few (if any) of the pope-hunters were raised Catholic, so this isn’t about personal vengeance for some perceived slight by a priest or nun. And despite their current lowdown, historically illiterate attempt to equate a priest fondling a child with a state’s attempt to obliterate an entire people – under the collective tag ‘crime against humanity’ – the truth is that some of these pope-hunters don’t really think child abuse is the worst crime in the world. In 2006, Dawkins criticised ‘hysteria about paedophilia’ and said that, even though he was the victim of sexual abuse at boarding school, he would defend his abusive former teachers if ‘50 years on they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers’. Yet now he wants to put abusive priests on a par with genocidaires.

But what do you expect from a brainwashed pope-worshiper who refuses to acknowledge The Truth about Benedict the Cover Upper and the Vile Vatican Filled With Old, Perverted Men?

The reason this crusade is so hysterical is because it is not really about the pope at all – it is about the New Atheists themselves. The contemporary pope-hunting springs from a secularist movement which feels incapable of asserting a sense of purpose or meaning in any positive, human-centred way – as the great atheists of old such as Marx or Darwin might have done – and which instead can only assert itself negatively, in contrast to the ‘evil’ of religion, by posturing against the alleged wickedness of institutionalised faith. It is the inner emptiness, directionless and soullessness of contemporary secularism – in contrast to earlier, Enlightened and more positive secular movements – which has given birth to the bizarre clamour for the pope’s head.

Secularism is in crisis. In Enlightened times, progressive secular movements, those which eschewed the guidance of God in favour of relying on mankind to work out what his problems were and how to solve them, were all about having a positive view of humanity. Their vision was both terrifying and extremely liberating: that man alone could master the complexities of life on Earth and improve it for himself and future generations. Today, however, we live in misanthropic, deeply downbeat times, where mankind is looked upon as a greedy, destructive, unreliable force whose behaviour and thoughts must be governed from without.

Well, sure, what else could you expect from an ultra-right-wing, atheist-hating Romanist?

This is what drives their war against religion: an instinct for ridiculing those who still, unlike contemporary secularists themselves, have an overarching outlook on life and a strong belief system. That is really what they find so alien about the Catholic Church in particular – its beliefs, its faith, its hierarchy. An atheism utterly alienated from the mass of humanity and from any future-oriented vision can only lash out in an extreme and intolerant way against those who still seem to have strong beliefs: the religious, or the ‘deluded ones’, as the New Atheists see it.

Pah-leaze! Stop the papal propaganda already!

No doubt some will accuse me of ‘defending paedophile priests’ in contrast to the New Atheist campaign on behalf of ‘powerless victims’. In truth, my only concern, as an atheistic libertarian—

Uh. What? What?? You're not a Catholic? You're a former Catholic? And an atheist? Really?

Yes, really, he most certainly is all of that. Brendan O’Neill, the editor of spiked, is a former Catholic and an "atheistic libertarian" who has been sticking his neck out on this subject for a while now and who deserves some kudos and thanks for good Catholics, in my estimation. There's no doubt all all that O'Neill and Catholics disagree about a whole host of very significant issues, but his analysis of the ongoing media furor—"witch-hunt", he calls it—is all the more powerful because O'Neill is not trying so much to defend the Catholic Church (although he is doing so), but because he is trying to save a form of rational, reasonable atheism, and he sees the attacks by Dawkins, Hitchens, and Co. as being anything but rational and reasonable. And he's right. Is he right about there being a viable form of rational, reasonable atheism to be lived in today's world? Well, that would be a fascinating topic for a conversation over a pint, but for the time being it is worth noting that non-Catholics—non-theists!—are capable of some excellent insights and cool reasoning about all of this. Again, bravo to Mr. O'Neill, to whom I tip my hat, once again.

Blair Saw Catholic Ban as "Ridiculous"

Comments on Requirement for UK Envoy to Holy See

LONDON, FEB. 16, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Tony Blair overturned British government policy to ban Catholics from representing the nation to the Holy See because he considered the ban "the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard."

This is what the former prime minister -- now himself a Catholic -- reveals on a documentary to be aired Wednesday by the BBC Northern Ireland.

In the documentary, titled "Our Man in the Vatican," Blair recounts his surprise at learning in 2005 of the policy, when the ambassador post became vacant.

"I said, 'It's the Vatican, the Pope, he's a Catholic. You mean we actually as a matter of policy ... say you can't have a Catholic?' I said, 'What is this? It's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard,'" Blair said, as reported by the BBC.

"Can you imagine we say for years and years and years the one category of person we shouldn't have as ambassador to the Holy See is someone who shares their faith?" he added. "I don't think that is very sensible -- not in this day.

"Quite apart from being discriminatory, how stupid is it?"

Formal diplomatic links between England and the Holy See were first established in 1479; in fact, the ambassador position before the Holy See is the oldest in the United Kingdom's diplomatic service.

However, when England's relationship with the Vatican went sour under Henry VIII, ties were broken and were not restored until 1914.

Rational

The BBC noted how in 1917, a Foreign Office memorandum stated Britain's Holy See representative "should not be filled with unreasoning awe of the Pope."

The Blair administration's selection of Francis Campbell, still the British ambassador, finally broke that trend.

Now, the embassy is considered a "vital part of the UK’s overseas network," as explained on the embassy's site. "The mission works jointly with the Holy See on international development, interfaith and climate change. But those examples are replicated many times over in ecumenism, conflict prevention, disarmament and human rights, not to mention the value of the Holy See as a global listening post.

"In an era when religion has once more emerged in international relations, the Vatican is key to the continuing policy debate on the proper boundary between faith and politics. The Vatican is a key stabilizing influence in the global faith/politics debate and helps keep discussion rational."

Faith and politics

Campbell's role as ambassador will be unique this year as he prepares for Benedict XVI's trip to Great Britain in September.

The Holy Father already caused a stir in England when he told the nation's bishops Feb. 1 that some legislation designed to protect equality imposes "unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs," and sometimes "actually violates the natural law."

British government is considering the Equality Bill, defended as protection from discrimination due to sex or sexual orientation.

Critics caution that it could restrict the Church from selecting staff or even priests who live according to Church teaching and morality.

Source

New Prague Bishop Endured Communist Prison

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, FEB. 15, 2010 (Zenit.org).- A bishop who was forced to work in a factory instead of as a priest, and who endured time in a Communist prison, has been named the archbishop of Prague.

Bishop Dominik Duka of Hradec Kralove, 66, succeeds Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, 77, who has retired for reasons of age.

Dominik Duka was born in 1943. He entered the Dominican Order, making his temporary profession in 1969, and receiving priestly ordination the next year.

For five years he worked in several parishes in Prague, and made his perpetual vows in 1972.

Three years later, he was deprived of authorization to exercise his priestly ministry, and was forced to work in a car factory in Plzen for almost 15 years (until 1989).

Meanwhile, he worked in secret within his congregation as master of novices and professor of theology.

He was imprisoned in Plzen between 1981 and 1982, according to the biography issued by the Vatican press office.

After the fall of Communism, he was elected president of the Federal Conference of Major Superiors and, from 1992 to 1996 was vice-president of the Union of European Conferences of Major Superiors.

From 1990 to 1999 he was a professor in the faculty of theology of Palacky University in Olomouc. On June 6, 1998, Pope John Paul II appointed him bishop of Hradec Kralove.

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-28359?l=english

Vatican Secret Archives Documents Going Online

Pave the Way Foundation Proposal Approved


By Jesús Colina

VATICAN CITY, FEB. 12, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See is planning to publish on the Internet, free of charge, several documents from the Vatican Secret Archives in relation to World War II.

The initiatives is partially in response to a petition from Pave the Way Foundation, an organization dedicated to bridging gaps between religions.

The foundation proposed making digital files of, and later publicizing, some 5125 descriptions and copies of documents from the closed section of the Vatican archives, from the period of March 1939 to May 1945.

Gary Krupp, the foundation's president and founder, told ZENIT that "the 'Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs a la Seconde Guerre Mondiale [Acts and Documents of the Holy See relative to the Second World War],'" which were "previously published and mostly ignored," will "shortly be available for worldwide scrutiny and study online, free of charge."

He explained that these documents will be available on the Web site of his foundation as well as that of the Vatican.

This project is part of the mission of the foundation, a non-sectarian organization that works to remove obstacles between religions, foster cooperation and to end the misuse of religion for private agendas.

The organization's president, who is from New York but of Jewish decent, stated, "In the furtherance of our mission we have recognized the papacy of the war time Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) as a source of friction impacting over one billion people."

A plot

"Controversy abounds on whether he did enough to prevent the slaughter of Jews at the hands of the Nazis," Krupp affirmed.

He continued: "Our research has revealed that five years after Pius XII's death, the KGB hatched a plot to discredit their enemy, the Roman Catholic Church, called 'Seat 12.'

"A dirty trick, which condemned Pope Pius XII for his 'silence' during the Holocaust in the form of Rolf Hochhuth's fictitious 1963 play 'The Deputy.' The result was the worst character assassination of the twentieth century."

Based on his foundation's research, Krupp stated that in 1964, Pope Paul VI asked a team of three Jesuit historians, Father Pierre Blet, Father Burkhart Schneider, and Father Angelo Martini, to "conduct intensive research to identify relevant documents from the war years from the closed section of the Vatican Secret Archives."

He added: "A few years later Father Robert Graham joined the group. The first volume was published in 1965, the last in 1981."

Krupp explained that in 1999, Cardinal Edward Cassidy, at that time the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, called for a special commission of Jewish and Catholic scholars to come together to study these documents.

"This positive advance unfortunately ended July 21, 2001 in failure," he added, "partly because the scholars simply did not read the languages of the collection."

"They issued a list of 47 questions and demanded the opening of the yet un-catalogued archives" from the 1939-1958 period, the foundation president said.

He stated that his foundation "sought to gain permission to digitize this collection, making it broadly available for study" so as to further "our mission to publicly disclose as many documents as possible to help to move this obstacle between Jews and Catholics into the light of documented truth."

Black legend

Krupp explained that "this effort is simply to show clear evidence of Pope Pius XII's efforts to mitigate suffering during the war and that the 'black legend,' which besmirched his name, is simply not true."

He added that this initiative is "not meant to be a substitute for the full access" to the archives, "but will absolutely show the unique efforts of Pope Pius XII and the dangers he was forced to operate under a direct threat from the Nazi regime."

"Ironically," he said "the Vatican Secret Archives [from the period prior] to 1939 were opened over two years ago," and they showed that "65% of Pacelli's ministry has simply been ignored by the critics who call for the war years to be opened."

On behalf of the foundation, the president expressed gratitude to the Pope's Secretary of State and the Libreria Editrice Vaticana "for their confidence in us by allowing us this unprecedented privilege."

He continued: "We sincerely hope that international historians will carefully scrutinize these records. We expect the digitization process of over 9000 pages will take about four weeks to complete [at which time] we will announce their posting on Internet."

In the meantime, the foundation already has thousands of documents and eyewitness videos available on their Web site for study.

Krupp concluded by requesting that "French, Italian and German scholars consider helping us by translating documents into English and forward this work to Pave the Way Foundation so that we can make the information available to more scholars for research."

He added, "We also would like to receive any comments, positive or negative, relative to the content of these documents."

--- --- ---

On the Net:

Pave the Way Foundation: http://www.ptwf.org

The BBC and Anti-Catholic Bias

Director Mark Thompson Defends Its "Rounded" Approach


By Edward Pentin
www.Zenit.com

ROME, FEB. 11, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is not known to be one of the Catholic Church's closest friends.

Although it has a worldwide reputation for high quality programming, the vast state-funded broadcaster has often been accused of treating the Church and the Catholic faith unfairly at best, and maliciously at worst.

Many examples back up this accusation, beginning with a number programmes over the past 10 years that have been blasphemous and highly offensive to Catholics.

In 2003, the BBC broadcast -- to a large international audience -- a documentary entitled "Sex and the Holy City," which intentionally misrepresented the Church and its teaching on condoms and AIDS. Two years later, it aired "Jerry Springer the Opera," a blasphemous and very offensive programme that ridiculed Jesus and the faith in general. Earlier, the BBC had spent £2 million ($3.13 million) on a program called "Popetown" -- an animated series set in the Vatican that mocked the Church and included plotlines about bestiality. Due to protests, it was banned in Britain but broadcast overseas and sold in Britain on DVD.

The BBC has also been accused of failing in other areas when it comes to Catholicism. The persecution of Catholics in the Middle East or Asia is rarely covered or warranted adequate attention; the immense good work that Catholic priests, religious and laity do around the world is generally passed over; and the Church's invaluable contribution to Western culture tends to be disparaged in favour of focusing on the sins of Church members in the past.

The BBC has also been blamed for more subtle instances of anti-Catholic bias. Discussion panels, news reports and web articles tend to focus on the sensational; they also often comprise contributions from secular figures or dissenting Catholics but hardly ever from orthodox Catholics who will properly convey the Church's teaching.

The corporation's treatment of clergy not infrequently involves interrogations by disparaging and dismissive presenters who seem to view them as guilty until proven innocent. Stephen Glover, a non-Catholic British newspaper columnist, wrote how a BBC television interviewer, quizzing English Archbishop Vincent Nichols in 2007, "treated him like a member of some extreme sect, interrupting him continually, and sneering at him as though he were a half-wit."

Bias

Most of this bias is attributed to a predominantly secular mindset in the corporation that embraces, or is sympathetic to, the culture of death, whether it be abortion, radical feminism, the homosexual agenda, euthanasia, or unethical science such as embryonic stem cell research. "The BBC," Glover once wrote, "represents a materialist, mechanistic consensus which has rejected God, and deludes itself that science is capable of providing a complete explanation of existence."

Even one of the BBC's most accomplished journalists, Andrew Marr, admitted the difficulty the corporation has in offering unbiased coverage. "The BBC is not impartial or neutral," he told a secret summit of BBC executives in 2006. "It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."

At that same meeting, one veteran BBC executive was reported in the British press as saying there was "widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness" and that much of this mentality is "so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it." It was also reported that "nearly everyone" at the summit agreed the Bible could be thrown into the bin on a comedy show, but not the Koran for fear of offending Muslims.

Denial

The BBC's managers are, of course, quick to publicly reject most allegations of anti-Catholic bias. Last week, Mark Thompson, the corporation's director-general -- essentially its editor-in-chief -- gave a speech at Rome's Pontifical University of the Holy Cross on the theme "Broadcasting and Civil Society." Disappointingly and perhaps revealingly his speech didn't specifically mention religion at all but rather focused on how well the BBC is performing as an independent state broadcaster, and how a forthcoming review promises to deliver better quality programmes.

But during the question and answer session afterward, he admitted some anti-Catholic bias "may be the case" in relation to news coverage, although as far as the corporation's religious broadcasting was concerned, he said the BBC tries and generally succeeds in giving "a rounded picture."

He then gave examples of BBC documentaries and live coverage of the Church, from the funeral of Cardinal Basil Hume, the former archbishop of Westminster, to the exposition in Britain of the relics of St. Therese of Lisieux. Asked if he believed the BBC tends to favour an ideology at odds with the Church's teaching, he replied: "No, I really don't," and recalled another programme, this time on the Passion shown at Easter in 2008.

Mother's advice

This wasn't the first time he'd had to confront such criticism. Speaking on the theme of religious broadcasting at a London lecture in 2008, Thompson, who is a Catholic, recalled how his mother shook her head when told her son had been appointed director-general. "The BBC is anti-Catholic and anti-God," she told him in no uncertain terms.

But such anti-God labels, he explained to the audience in London, were "not just too sweeping; they are not even directionally true." He said that naturally, inside the BBC are many people "who take a strongly sceptical view of religion," but you'd also find "thousands of people for whom religion plays a central role in their lives." He accepted that coverage of religion as "faith and lived experience" rather than as a story or controversy was "unusual" but noted there is more interest in "high profile" religious affairs programming than there was 25 years ago.

And yet on his watch, BBC television coverage of religious affairs has fallen, from 177 hours in 1987-88 to 155 hours in 2007-08. This week the Church of England's governing body, the General Synod, is debating whether the BBC marginalises Christianity, treating it like a "freak show" or a "rare species" to be studied on a nature programme.

Marginalization

At last week's lecture, Thompson said he didn't address religion specifically because he didn't want to put it into a special category, preferring instead to include religion in his comments on history, knowledge and culture. Yet such a vision risks sidelining it further, and is perhaps one reason why the BBC rarely airs programmes aimed at a particular faith but instead lumps them together into a relativist muddle.

As one priest asked after hearing Thompson's speech: Why not have programmes dedicated to each religion, for example one made up of a group of Catholic theologians discussing the role of works in justification, or another of Muslim scholars debating the interpretation of the Koran?

Speaking with Thompson later on, he appeared open to having an honest dialogue with the Church and to listening to ideas on how to improve coverage. The main purpose of his visit was to meet the Holy Father and Vatican officials to discuss the Pope's visit to Britain later this year.

A hopeful sign, though how genuinely serious BBC management takes the Church remains very much open to doubt.

Should any reader wish to propose ideas to Mark Thompson on how to improve coverage of the Church on the BBC, e-mail me and I'll send you details on how you can drop him a line.

Pius XII and objectivity

Carl Olson | Ignatius Insight | Friday, January 22, 2010

I was reading a couple of articles this morning about responses to Pope Benedict's recent visit to the Great Synagogue in Rome, and was struck by this, from The Catholic Herald:

Although Rabbi Rosen was critical of the way in which certain crisis situations had been dealt with by the Curia (and believes the Pope must take responsibility for this) he says it is unfair to perceive Pope Benedict's pontificate as a step backwards. He says, however, that it was easy to see how even educated people come to that conclusion, citing the beatification of Pius XII, the Lefebvrists and the liberation of the older form of the Latin Mass among other instances, but these would ultimately not affect the substance of the dialogue. He says that not one of these was an initiative put forward by Pope Benedict.

Really? That is a remarkable statement, one I have a very hard time believing is accurate. (It bears resemblance to the claims that a beleaguered Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae because of nefarious conservatives in the Vatican.) And then this:

Rabbi Rosen says the issue of Pius XII goes back many years. "We should ask ourselves why it has taken so many years for the Vatican to approve his status of heroic virtues - surely out of caution and sensitivity to the Jewish community. Pius XII belongs to the most traumatic period in the history of the Jewish people and it is inappropriate to expect Jews not to be upset about the issue, that anybody who did not lay down his life in protest could be considered a saint is almost anathema to Jews."

He says that while it caused angst for some people, "it is not something which would torpedo the process for both parties. And on this period in history, we shall have to learn to agree to disagree. It's unfair to expect Jews to be objective about that period of their history just as its unfair to expect Catholics to be objective about popes."

First, this remark: "... it is inappropriate to expect Jews not to be upset about the issue, that anybody who did not lay down his life in protest could be considered a saint is almost anathema to Jews." One question that comes to mind immediately: "Is it better to die dramatically but foolishly, or to quietly go about saving lives and then be damned as an anti-Semitic 'do-nothing' in years to come?" The more I read about the criticisms of the "silence" of Pope Pius XII, the more I am convinced that they are quite often driven by the modern, obsessive belief that dramatic symbolic gestures are morally superior to mundane, concrete action. Put another, we live in age in which style and image tends to trump—often shamelessly—prudent action and moral rectitude. I get the impression that even if there is irrefutable proof Pius XII saved, say, 700,000 to 800,000 Jews, that would mean almost nothing because it did not include the appropriate level of eye-catching public demonstration and dramatic symbolic gestures. Sure, he might have saved a lot of lives, but he did too quietly! But, as Dimitri Cavalli summarizes in a short piece, "Much-maligned pontiff," published today in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz:

During the war, the pope was far from silent: In numerous speeches and encyclicals, he championed human rights for all people and called on the belligerent nations to respect the rights of all civilians and prisoners of war. Unlike many of the pope's latter-day detractors, the Nazis understood him very well. After studying Pius XII's 1942 Christmas message, the Reich Central Security Office concluded: "In a manner never known before the pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order ... Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals." (Pick up any book that criticizes Pius XII, and you won't find any mention of this important report.)

In early 1940, the pope acted as an intermediary between a group of German generals who wanted to overthrow Hitler and the British government. Although the conspiracy never went forward, Pius XII kept in close contact with the German resistance and heard about two other plots against Hitler. In the fall of 1941, through diplomatic channels, the pope agreed with Franklin Delano Roosevelt that America's Catholics could support the president's plans to extend military aid to the Soviet Union after it was invaded by the Nazis. On behalf of the Vatican, John T. McNicholas, the archbishop of Cincinnati, Ohio, delivered a well-publicized address that explained that the extension of assistance to the Soviets could be morally justified because it helped the Russian people, who were the innocent victims of German aggression.

Throughout the war, the pope's deputies frequently ordered the Vatican's diplomatic representatives in many Nazi-occupied and Axis countries to intervene on behalf of endangered Jews. Up until Pius XII's death in 1958, many Jewish organizations, newspapers and leaders lauded his efforts. To cite one of many examples, in his April 7, 1944, letter to the papal nuncio in Romania, Alexander Shafran, chief rabbi of Bucharest, wrote: "It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the supreme pontiff, who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings of deported Jews ... The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance."

In a much longer article published in the October 2000 edition of Inside the Vatican, in which he detailed Pius XII's opposition to the Third Reich's pogroms against the Jews, Cavalli wrote:

Many Catholics have been puzzled by the fact that many of the same Jewish organizations that condemn Pius XII today once never passed up an opportunity to praise him. What could have caused the vast shift in Jewish attitudes toward the late Pope?

Some Catholic writers point to the influence of Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 play, The Deputy, which presented the Pope as a cold-blooded Nazi collaborator who did nothing as six million Jews went to their death. However, allegations that the Vatican collaborated with the Nazis did not begin with Hochhuth. While Pius XII was still alive, anti-Catholic authors like Avro Manhattan (The Vatican in World Politics, 1949) and Paul Blanshard (American Freedom and Catholic Power, 1949) condemned his actions during World War II. Although Manhattan and Blanshard found isolated audiences in some Protestant and fundamentalist Christian circles, many Jews continued to have a favorable impression of the wartime Pope.

Other cultural shifts in society ensured that Hochhuth's demonic portrait would become accepted as conventional wisdom. Shortly after Hochhuth's play made its appearance, the movement known as the New Left marched across college campuses. The New Left was more than a political movement; it was also a cultural movement whose members seized influential positions in the universities, the media and the entertainment industry. The Catholic Church strongly opposed the New Left's social agenda of legal abortion, contraception and sexual promiscuity. Activists needed a weapon to undermine the Catholic Church's moral authority and influence. "The silence of Pius XII" provided such a powerful weapon, and it was used at every possible opportunity. What right would a Church that failed to oppose the mass murder of Jews have to teach morality to anyone? A few years ago, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized US Surgeon General Dr. Jocelyn Elders for her pro-abortion views. Dr. Elders responded by noting the Catholic Church's indifference toward both slavery and the Holocaust.

Which brings me back to the other remark by Rabbi Rosen: "It's unfair to expect Jews to be objective about that period of their history just as its unfair to expect Catholics to be objective about popes." If by that he means this is an emotionally charged topic, I understand and agree. But if he is insinuating it is not really possible to honestly assess the facts available to us, he is shortchanging both Jews and Catholics who are interested in the truth. It is, in fact, quite possible for Catholic to be objective about the actions of popes, who are not sinless, perfect, or flawless when it comes to governing. It is, however, rather difficult to be objective about what might have resulted if Pius XII had jumped in front of trains deporting Jews (the advice of Ed Bradley on "60 Minutes") or issued endless public statements. (Am I the only one who finds it hard to believe that the Catholic-hating Nazi leadership would change course because of papal announcements? After all, consider how Paul VI was attacked and denounced—by many Catholic priests, theologians, and lay people!—when he issued Humanae Vitae.)

What frustrates Catholics such as myself is that Pius XII is repeatedly condemned for "failing" to do what this or that critic thinks he could have and should have done while the same critics ignore the evidence for what he did do: quietly saved hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives. As Robert Lockwood remarked in an essay, "Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust":

Pulitzer Prize winning historian John Toland, no friend of Pius XII, summed it up: "The Church, under the Pope’s guidance…saved the lives of more Jews than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations combined…The British and the Americans, despite lofty pronouncements, had not only avoided taking any meaningful action but gave sanctuary to few persecuted Jews."

"Lofty pronouncements" saved no lives during the horror of the Holocaust. Action did so. Pinchas Lapide, Israeli consul in Italy, estimated that the actions of Pius II saved over 800,000 Jewish lives during World War II. If that were an exaggeration by half, it would record more Jewish lives saved than by any other entity at the time.

One can only hope Cavalli is correct: "The campaign against Pope Pius XII is doomed to failure because his detractors cannot sustain their main charges against him - that he was silent, pro-Nazi, and did little or nothing to help the Jews - with evidence. Perhaps only in a backward world such as ours would the one man who did more than any other wartime leader to help Jews and other Nazi victims, receive the greatest condemnation."

Dan Brown's anti-crusade

I am convinced that Dan Brown is knowingly deceiving millions. I cannot possibly believe that the "pain-staking" research he claims was ever done..... unless all of the problems to his theory were purposely ignored.

For instance, the integrity of the DaVinci Code hinges on what he calls the "fact" that Leonardo DaVinci was the grandmaster of the Priory of Sion at one point. The Priory did not exist until 1956, and has nothing to do with protecting esoteric secrets about Jesus. Therefore there was nothing for DaVinci to encode, and the motivations Brown attributes to him cannot exist.

The BBC exposed the Priory of Sion hoax in 1996. When you want to do "pain-staking" research on a topic, how do you miss a BBC investigation? How?

The idea that Mary Magdalene was portrayed in DaVinci's Last Supper is absolutely laughable for art historians. This was exemplified in the ABC special when the woman interviewer brought the art historian to view the painting, and asked him, in all seriousness, "Doesn't that look like Mary Magdalene?" The look on the professor's face was priceless! It was one of those looks when someone has asked a question so incredibly stupid that you actually lose respect for them on the spot!

How could Brown not, in his painstaking research, have come across Leonardo's notes and sketches of the painting... in which all of the apostles are labeled by name?

And when he claims that at the Council of Nicea, Constantine (a) deified Jesus, and (b) established the canon of the New Testament, why did he not read the resolutions of the Council? They are readily available to anyone with an internet connection. The Council said nothing on the divinity of Jesus (this was well established in the New Testament, not to mention various writings of the early theologians) and had nothing to do with the formation of the canon (this would not happen, for good, for another ~65 years at Hippo).

I have lost all respect for Dan Brown, except the respect due to him by the mere fact that he is alive and a fellow human. He is one of those who you should "love as a neighbor, but not like," to paraphrase C.S. Lewis.