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

The Introduction to Fr. Jean Bernard's Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau

The Introduction to Fr. Jean Bernard's Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau | Robert Royal | Ignatius Insight

http://ignatiusinsight.com/features2010/rroyal_intropriestblock_aug2010.asp

This story is both ordinary and extraordinary. It is ordinary because Catholic priests and religious were regularly rounded up and sent to concentration camps in large numbers during the nightmare of Nazism in Europe. It is extraordinary, as all such accounts are, because they give us vivid and unforgettable indications of both the depths of depravity and heights of sanctity to which the human race is capable. Father Jean Bernard offers a straightforward picture of how Good and Evil played out around him in his imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. He takes great pains to be accurate about the ever shifting conditions as he witnessed them personally. His strict regard for truth, even in such circumstances, is itself an implicit rejection of the violence built on lies that the Third Reich inflicted everywhere it could. If there is any truth missing in this moving story, it is Father Bernard's own quiet heroism and holiness, which he is too humble to include, but which we may intuit in his primary ­emphasis on the plight of his fellow inmates.

People who have not looked carefully at the position of the Catholic Church under the Third Reich may be particularly surprised by this story. The Nazis did not want to exterminate all Catholics, but they most ­certainly did want to exterminate all Jews, and they nearly succeeded. So the Shoah cannot and should not be described as if the Nazis did as much harm to Catholics as they did to Jews. Yet it is a fact of ­history that millions of Catholics were murdered in the Nazi camps, and that is something we must never forget.

During and right after World War II, it was commonly ­assumed that Christians as well as Jews suffered a great deal ­under Hitler. Jews were grateful to Catholics and ­others for such assistance as they were able to provide, and especially esteemed Pope Pius XII, who quite probably saved more Jews from the Nazis than any other single person. That was why Golda Meir, one of the founders and later Prime Minister of the newly ­created Jewish state of ­Israel, thanked the pope and honored him among the righteous gentiles: "When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for the victims." Similarly, Moshe Sharett, the second Prime Minister of Israel, remarked after meeting with Pius: "I told him [the Pope] that my first duty was to thank him, and through him the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public for all they had done in the various countries to rescue Jews. We are deeply grateful to the Catholic Church."

But beginning in the 1960s, following a play entitled The Deputy by the Communist-­inspired revisionist, Rolf Hochuth, there has been a massive attempt to deny these facts and paint the Church as all but a Nazi ­accomplice and Pius as "Hitler's pope."

One of the advantages of a memoir like this is its concrete evidence that the anti-Catholic smears are false. Pius was aware not only of the threats to Jews but the widespread persecution of his own priests by the ­Nazis. Careful study of the records in recent years has even given us some concrete numbers that were not available to the pope at the time. In 1932, for instance, just before the Nazis came to power, there were about twenty-one thousand priests in ­Germany. By the time Nazism was defeated a decade later, more than eight thousand of these men had ­either been threatened, beaten, imprisoned, or killed by the regime. In other words, well over one-third of Germany's priests came into open conflict with the Third Reich. We can be morally certain that the number who, seeing the treatment of their fellows, opposed Nazism in more subtle or quiet ways was even higher.

Father Bernard was not a German. He came from Luxembourg and joined the 2,670 priests who have been documented to have passed through Dachau, some 600 to their death, from Albania, Belgium, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, and other nations. Priests were sent to every camp that Nazis had created, either because they had expressed dislike for Nazism or because Nazism disliked them. (Bogus charges of financial misdealing or sexual impropriety were often trumped up, but many priests, like Father Bernard, never knew what, exactly, they had been arrested for.) For some reason, however, the Gestapo particularly favored Dachau as a destination for priests and Protestant clergy, perhaps as a way of keeping them together and thereby preventing them from ­"infecting" other prison populations with Christianity.

Because in the end the Nazi hatred of the Church and of what they called "negative" Christianity is a spiritual orientation. Both Hitler and Mussolini shared that spirit, but the Italian convinced the German that a direct attack on the Church had historically always led to failure. The case called for delicacy, tact, indirect and subtle means that would not make anyone a conspicuous Christian martyr, but would eventually result in, as Hitler put it, the chance to "crush the Church like a toad." Anyone who looks over these pages will not encounter Nazi subtlety. Camp administrators preferred the most outrageous brutality. Clever attempts at manipulating public opinion, in Germany and around the world, took place at a much more public level. But what we see here is the brutal and sadistic reality behind the misinformation and propaganda.

We lost a lot of what we knew about this history in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In the 1970s Jewish historians were quite energetic and successful in reminding the world about the Shoah, the attempted genocide of Europe's Jews during World War II. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Catholics and other Christians virtually forgot their own heroic witnesses and even had a hard time in keeping before the eyes of world opinion ongoing persecutions and martyrdoms of Christians by the thousands in places like China, Cuba, Vietnam, and the Soviet Bloc. That was why Pope John Paul II made it a part of the program for the Third Millennium, which was celebrated in 2000 in Rome and around the world, to remember the modern Christian martyrs (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant). As he writes in Tertio Millennio Adveniente, "their witness must not be ­forgotten."

His words continue to hold a lesson for us today. This little book works against one temptation that those of us who have never had a similar experience may never have felt, but which we may become complicit in by a failure of truthfulness on the order of the author's. Anyone who suffers a trauma of this magnitude or who has come upon such horrors will be tempted to turn away. But to do so always has repercussions, not only for our understanding of the past, but for our very lives in the present and the future. As Father Bernard writes, "Wanting to forget would also be a weakness on the part of those who suffered... it would be turning a blind eye to similar events taking place today, in full view, in many other parts of the world... Forgetting would be cowardice on the part of the people against whom all these crimes were committed."

The anti-Christian currents in Nazism and Fascism and Communism did not entirely disappear from our world with the fall of the regimes associated with those ideologies in the twentieth century. They are still among us today in disguised cultural forms that demand our constant vigilance.

This republication of Priestblock 25487 is a valuable reminder of the price of failing to be vigilant both for the Church and for the world, because the persecution of Catholics in the twentieth century is not merely a part of religious ­history. It is an important but widely neglected part of the secular record of our time as well.

God is not dead. He isn't even tired

Christendom College Commencement Address

Dr. Charles E. Rice, Professor Emeritus, Notre Dame Law School

May 17, 2010



The following Commencement Address was given at Christendom College, Front Royal, Virginia, on Saturday, May 15th. It is reproduced here by kind permission of Dr. Rice.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When President O'Donnell asked me to give this address, I expressed one concern: "Will there be a protest? And will you prosecute the protestors? Or at least 88 of them?" He made no commitment. I accepted anyway.

So what can I tell you? This is a time of crises. The economy is a mess, the culture is a mess, the government is out of control. And, in the last three years, Notre Dame lost 21 football games. But this is a great time for us to be here, especially you graduates of this superbly Catholic college. This is so because the remedy for the general meltdown today is found only in Christ and in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Let's talk bluntly about our situation and what you can do about it.

We are living through a transformation of our federal government. A one-party regime, the leader of which was elected with 54 percent of the Catholic vote, is substituting for the free economy and limited government a centralized command system of potentially unlimited jurisdiction and power. Its takeover of health care, against the manifest will of the people, not only funds elective abortions and endangers the elderly and conscience rights. It was enacted in disregard of legislative process and by a level of bribery, coercion and deception that was as open as it was unprecedented.

To find a comparable example of the rapid concentration of executive power by a legally installed regime, we have to go back to 1933. Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor on January 30. Over the next few weeks he consolidated his power. The decisive event was the Reichstag's approval of the Enabling Act on March 23, 1933, by which it ceded full and irrevocable powers to Hitler. That was the point of no return. The Enabling Act received the needed two-thirds vote only because it was supported by the Catholic party, the Centre Party.[1] Our "Health Care Reform," enacted with the decisive support of Catholic members of both houses of Congress, may be the Enabling Act of our time in the control it cedes to government over the lives of the people. It includes the federal takeover of student aid. What do student loans have to do with health care? The common denominator is control. No student will be able to get a federally guaranteed educational loan without the consent of a federal bureaucrat. This opens the way to make political loyalty a test for educational advancement, as it was in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This confirms the wisdom of Christendom's decision to forego all federal aid.

Unlike Germany in 1933, we have legal means of redress. I am proud to say I am a Tea Party guy. In November, the reaction may dislodge the Congressional arm of the ruling class. But that reaction will be only temporary unless we go to the source of the evil. The root problem is not political or economic. It is religious. And that is where you come in. "The social crisis," said Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, "happens when we elect people to rule over us who are immoral. .... [P]eople who don't have a moral bearing to elect other moral people, elect immoral politicians to serve over them.... So immoral lifestyles produce immoral leaders."[2] In other words, we elect immoral, rather than moral, people because we have lost the ability, or the desire, to tell the difference. The answer, said Fr. Euteneuer, is "to turn back to God. ... What we need is a conversion of heart."

We rightly urge fidelity to the Constitution. But no paper charter can survive the disappearance of the morality that produced it. In 2001, thirteen days after 9/11, Pope John Paul II, in Kazakhstan, cautioned the leaders of that Islamic republic against a "slavish conformity" to Western culture which is in a "deepening human, spiritual and moral impoverishment" caused by "the fatal attempt to secure the good of humanity by eliminating God, the Supreme Good."

You graduates will enter a culture in which the intentional infliction of death upon the innocent is widely seen as an optional problem-solving technique. The Columbine shootings set a precedent. If you have a grievance against your classmates, fellow employees or IRS agents, the answer is to blow them away. Legalized abortion is the prime example of murder as a problem solver. And the execution of someone like Terri Schiavo occurs routinely, without public notice, when the family and caregivers agree to withhold food and water because it is time for the patient to "die with dignity." The separation of morality from killing has counterparts in the separation of morality from economics, from sex and from personal decisions in general.

There is no mystery in this. We are living through what Fr. Francis Canavan, S.J., called "the fag end of the Enlightenment," the collapse of the effort by philosophers and politicians, over the past three centuries and more, to build a society as if God did not exist.[3] That Enlightenment culture is built on three lies, secularism, relativism and individualism. They are components of what Benedict XVI called a "dictatorship of relativism... that recognizes nothing as absolute and which leaves only the 'I' and its whims as the ultimate measure."[4] Those three lies are weapons deployed by our enemy, Satan, the father of lies. Your job, for which you are well equipped, is to counter his lies with the truth. If you speak the truth, you will have an impact beyond what you know. Cardinal Edouard Gagnon described a conversation he had with John Paul II:

[T]he Holy Father... told me, "error makes its way because truth is not taught. We must teach the truth.... not attacking the ones who teach errors because that would never end—they are too numerous. We have to teach the truth." He told me truth has a grace attached to it. Anytime we speak the truth.... an internal grace of God... accompanies that truth. The truth may not immediately enter in the mind and heart of those to whom we talk, but the grace of God is there and at the time they need it, God will open their heart and they will accept it. He said, error does not have grace accompanying it.[5]

Remember that Truth, with a capital T, "is a person, Jesus Christ."[6] And Christ is not some lawyer, CEO or community organizer. He is God. Cardinal Avery Dulles described three foundational principles: "that there is a God, that he has made a full and final revelation of himself in Jesus Christ and that the Catholic Church is the authorized custodian and teacher of this body of revealed truth."[7] The Catholic faith is not a set of doctrines. It is a lived encounter with Christ, who lives in, and teaches through, the Church.[8]

The Magisterium, or teaching authority of the Church, is a great gift, not only for Catholics but for others to whose conscience it appeals "on the basis of reason and natural law."[9] The forces of evil concentrate their fire on the Vicar of Christ, who is the authoritative interpreter of the moral law. We must respond with loyal defense of him and of the Church. We are not, to borrow Fr. Euteneuer's phrase, the Church Impotent. We are part of the Church Militant. Our job is to fight for the Truth. Don't be conned by their lies:

1). The first lie is secularism: There is no God or he is unknowable. They say that is what the First Amendment means, but that, too, is a lie. On September 24-25, 1789, the First Congress approved the First Amendment and called on the President to proclaim a day of "thanksgiving and prayer... acknowledging... the many ... favors of Almighty God."[10] President Washington proclaimed that day of prayer. The First Amendment required neutrality on the part of the federal government among religious sects while recognizing the power of the state and federal governments to affirm the existence of God. The Supreme Court has now imposed a duty on all governments to maintain an impossible neutrality between theism and non-theism. The words "under God," according to Justice William Brennan's still accurate description of the Court's approach, may remain in the Pledge of Allegiance only because they "no longer have a religious purpose or meaning." Instead they "may merely recognize the historical fact that our Nation was believed to have been founded 'under God.'" [11]

At all levels of government, the suspension of judgment on the existence of God has evolved into an establishment of secularism. Today, affirmations of God are considered non-rational, and are generally excluded from the public discourse which is shaped by utility and power rather than right or wrong.

The existence of God is not self-evident. But it is unreasonable, even stupid, not to believe in God, an eternal being that had no beginning and always existed. The alternative is that there was a time when there was absolutely nothing. But that makes no sense. St. Thomas Aquinas said, "if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence--which is absurd."[12] As Julie Andrews put it in The Sound of Music, "Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could."

The only basis for transcendent rights against the State is the creation of the immortal person in the image and likeness of God. Every state that has ever existed, or ever will exist, has gone out of business or will go out of business. Every human being that has ever been conceived will live forever. That is why you have transcendent rights against the State. The person does not exist for the State. The State exists for the person. And for the family.

2). The second lie of Satan is relativism. To say that all things are relative is absurd, for that statement itself must be relative. The jurisprudence of relativism is some form of legal positivism, which asserts that there is no higher law that limits what human law can do. A law of any content is valid if it is enacted pursuant to prescribed procedure and is effective. Hans Kelsen, the leading legal positivist of the 20th century, said that Auschwitz and the Soviet Gulags were valid law. He could not criticize them as unjust because justice, he said, is "an irrational ideal."[13] Kelsen claimed that relativism is the philosophy of democracy. John Paul II said relativism leads instead to totalitarianism: "If one does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over, and each person tends to ... impose his own interests ... with no regard for the rights of others."[14]

In your personal and professional lives you will be pressured to be a relativist, to lie, cheat or steal. As John Paul put it, the negative prohibitions of the Commandments, which are a specification of the natural law, "allow no exceptions."[15] But you will pay a price for your fidelity.

Let me tell you a story. Captain James Mulligan, of the United States Navy, spent seven years, half of them in solitary confinement, in the Hanoi Hilton after his plane was shot down in 1966. He was a cell-mate for a time of later Senator Jeremiah Denton. He, as were the others, was tortured severely and often to try to make him betray his fellow prisoners and his country. Captain Mulligan put his reliance on prayer, especially the Rosary. Under torture, he laid it on the line in a prayer he composed that we ought to make our own: "Lord, give me the strength and the guts to see this thing through to the end, one way or another. No one else knows, Lord, but you and I know, and that's all that's necessary. You suffered for your beliefs, and I must suffer for mine. Right is right if no one's right; wrong is wrong if everyone's wrong."[16] That is the answer to relativism.

3). The third lie you will confront is individualism. Social contract theories denied the social nature of man. They postulated a state of nature in which each person was an autonomous, isolated individual with no relation to others unless he consents. That is the origin of pro-choice as we know it today. Planned Parenthood didn't think it up. The mother has no relation to her unborn child unless she consents. The husband and wife have no continuing relation unless they continue to consent. And so on. The autonomous individual is his own god. Conscience is not a judgment about the objective rightness or wrongness of an act. It is the individual's unfettered decision as to what he wills to do. Whatever he chooses is, for him, the right thing to do. That is portrayed as the way to freedom. But "authentic freedom" cannot be separated from the truth.[17]

You are "free" to choose to put sand in the gas tank of your car. But you will no longer be free to drive your car because you have violated the truth of the nature of your car. You are "free" to choose to lie, to fornicate, etc., but you will diminish yourself because you have violated the truth of your nature. You have chosen the moral equivalent of putting sand in your gas tank. And there is one thing the autonomous individual of liberal mythology can never do. He can never put himself out of existence. He is going to live forever and will spend eternity someplace. Where, is up to him.

It is time for us to shed our inferiority complex. We allow ourselves to be conned into thinking that the smart guys are the academics who think that something can come from nothing, who are sure that they can't be sure of anything and who think that freedom means, without limit, the power and right to do whatever they want. This culture has lost not only its faith but also its mind. They need to hear the truth, especially about the right to life.

But there we have a problem. Our prolife efforts are compromised by our timidity on contraception. The Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930 was the first time that any Christian denomination had ever said that contraception could ever be objectively right. The Magisterium teaches the truth, that contraception is wrong, first, because it deliberately separates the unitive and procreative aspects of sex; second, by so changing the nature of the conjugal act, the man and woman make themselves, rather than God, the arbiters of whether and when life shall begin; and third, contraception frustrates the total mutual self-donation that ought to characterize the conjugal act. If man makes himself the arbiter of whether and when life shall begin, he will make himself the arbiter of when it shall end as in abortion and euthanasia. John Paul II described abortion and contraception as "fruits of the same tree."[18] If it is man's decision whether sex will have any relation to reproduction, why can't Freddy and Harry get a marriage license? In 2004, Pastor Donald Sensing of Trinity United Methodist Church in Franklin, TN, wrote that opponents of same-sex marriage are "a little late. The walls of traditional marriage were breached 40 years ago" with the general acceptance of the contraceptive pill.[19]

God has chosen to depend on human cooperation for the creation of new citizens for the kingdom of heaven. The contracepting couple alter the conjugal act to prevent that creation. What they say to God is something like this: "For all we know, God, it may be your will that from this act of ours a new human person will come into existence who will live forever. For all we know, that may be your will. And we won't let you do it." That is awesome. "Contraception," said John Paul II, "is so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God."[20]

Catholics practice contraception at the same rate as everyone else. One reason is that they have not been adequately informed. Many Catholic churches and schools are closing or consolidating for lack of parishioners and students. A fair response would be respectfully to say: "Most Reverend Bishop (or Father), you would not have this problem if you and your predecessors had been doing your job, over the past four decades and still today, of educating your people about the evil of contraception and about the entire positive teaching of the Church on marriage and the gift of life." Christendom graduates know the score on this. Don't be afraid to live it. And teach it, by word and example.

The link is clear between the premises of the Enlightenment and of contraception and such evils as pornography, promiscuity, divorce, in vitro fertilization, cloning and others.[21] Scientists at Newcastle University, in England, announced last month that they had created a "designer embryo" with the DNA of one man and two women, a child with two mothers.[22] Our scientists are probably not far behind.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, addressed this point in 2002. He discussed the description in Genesis 3 of the posting of angels east of Eden with flaming swords to keep man, after the Fall, from eating of the Tree of Life. After the Fall, man was forbidden to eat of that tree which gave immortality, "since to be immortal in this [fallen] condition would... be perdition." People are now, Ratzinger said, "starting to pick from the tree of life and make themselves lords of life and death, to reassemble life....[P]recisely what man was supposed to be protected from is now... happening; he is crossing the final boundary....[M]an makes other men his own artifacts. Man no longer originates in the mystery of love, by... conception and birth... but is produced industrially, like any other product.... [W]e can ... be certain of this: God will take action to counter an ultimate crime, an ultimate act of self-destruction, on the part of man. He will take action against the attempt to demean mankind by the production of slave-beings. There are indeed final boundaries we cannot cross...."[23]

This is serious business. Nineveh repented, prayed and was spared. Sodom and Gomorrah did not and were destroyed.[24] Those options could be ours.

If we look at all this in merely human terms, our cause is hopeless. But we don't depend on our own strength. And we don't know everything. Don't be discouraged when bad things happen. "God permits everything," said St. Maximilian Kolbe, "in view of a greater blessing."[25] Trust God. Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J., who spent 23 years in Soviet prisons, said what God wants, especially in times of adversity or danger, is "an act of total trust," demanding "absolute faith: faith in God's existence, in his providence, in his concern for the minutest detail, in his power to sustain me, and in his love protecting me."[26]

Trust God. And pray, especially, to Mary, his Mother and ours. At Lepanto in 1571, the odds against the Christian fleet were so great that Las Vegas would have taken that bet off the board. But they prayed the Rosary and Mary gave the victory. She can take care of our problems today. This really is a great time for us to be here. We know we are on the winning side. God is not dead. He isn't even tired.

Thank you for the privilege to be with you. God bless you, your families and Christendom College. And God bless the United States of America.


-----------------------------------

ENDNOTES:

[1]Eliot Barculo Wheaton, The Nazi Revolution: 1933-35 (1969), 286-93; William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, (1959), 88, 276-79.


[2] LifeSiteNews.com, Jan. 6, 2010.


[3] Catholic Eye, Dec. 10, 1987, 2.


[4] Homily, April 18, 2005.


[5] Lay Witness, March, 1990, 6-7.

[6] Pope Benedict XVI, Address to Youth, April 19, 2008.


[7] Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., "Catholic Colleges and Universities Today," Assumption College, Oct. 11, 2007.

[8] Ecclesiam Suam (1964), nos. 30, 55.


[9] Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est (2005), no. 28 (a).


[10] Annals of Congress, I, 949.


[11] Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 304 (1963).


[12] S.T., I, Q.2, art. 3.


[13] Hans Kelsen, "The Pure Theory of Law, Part I," 50 Law Quart. Rev. 474, 482 (1934).


[14] Veritatis Splendor, no. 99.


[15] Veritatis Splendor, no. 52.


[16] James Mulligan, The Hanoi Commitment (1981), 48, 93-94.


[17] Veritatis Splendor, No. 87.


[18] Evangelium Vitae, no. 13.


[19] Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2004.


[20] Pope John Paul II, Discourse, Sept. 17, 1983.


[21] See Charles E. Rice and Theresa Farnan, Where Did I Come From? Where Am I Going? How Do I Get There? (2009), 141-164.

[22] Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com, April 14, 2010.


[23] Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World (2002), 133-135.

[24] Genesis 19:1-28; Jonah 3:1-10.


[25] St. Maximilian Kolbe, Writings, 1205.


[26] Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me (1973), 77.

DVD Marks Pius XII's Role in "Great Rescue"

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 18, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Marking the anniversary of Pope Pius XII's death in October 1958, a new documentary looks into the Pontiff's role in saving Jews from the Nazis.

"Pius XII and the Holocaust: The Secret History of the Great Rescue" is being sold by the Vatican Television Center.

The 30-minute documentary highlights the story of a Holocaust survivor who tells how he was hid in a convent in Rome.

It also includes firsthand accounts of Pius XII's clandestine efforts on behalf of the Jews.

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On the Net:

"Pius XII and the Holocaust": www.hdhcommunications.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=128&products_id=244



Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-27250?l=english

Luglio ’43, Hitler voleva eliminare Pio XII

16 Giugno 2009

Sono ormai molte e spesso contraddittorie le voci di piani nazisti per 'allontanare' Papa Pacelli dalla Santa Sede nelle ultime fasi del secondo conflitto mondiale. Ne aveva parlato nel ´72 l’ex-generale delle Ss Karl Wolf, scomparso nell’84 riferendo il contenuto del suo incontro con il Santo Padre avvenuto il 10 maggio del ’44. Poco attendibile il suo racconto, privo di riscontri. Più concrete le voci di un piano organizzato dal Reichssicherheitsamt (Quartier generale per la sicurezza del Reich) di Berlino dopo il 25 luglio ’43. Avvenire ha raccolto dagli eredi dei protagonisti testimonianze e visionato documenti. Una fonte diretta ci è arrivata dal figlio di uno dei personaggi chiave, Niki Freytag von Loringhoven, oggi lucidissimo 72 enne, che abbiamo incontrato a Monaco dove risiede e con il quale ci siamo intrattenuti a lungo. La vicenda si è svolta a Venezia e ha avuto come teatro il mitico l’hotel Danieli ed il Lido.

L’autorizzazione a recarsi in volo a Venezia era stata firmata dal responsabile del Comando supremo della Wehrmacht, generale Wilhelm Keitel, impiccato a Norimberga il 16 ottobre ´46. A bordo dell’Heinkel He 111 della Luftwaffe atterrato nel pomeriggio del 29 luglio ´43 nella laguna si trovavano il capo dell’Ausland/ Abwehr (controspionaggio) ammiraglio Wilhelm Canaris e due colonnelli della sezione II (sabotaggio), Erwin von Lahousen e Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven. Canaris aveva avanzato un’ottima motivazione per la 'gita' nella città lagunare: saggiare la fedeltà degli italiani al Patto d’Acciaio dopo l’arresto di Mussolini avvenuto 4 giorni prima. Ma non solo. A Venezia Canaris e i suoi due accompagnatori avrebbero incontrato il capo del Sim (Servizio informazioni militari) generale Cesare Amé. Tra Amé e Canaris esisteva da tempo un rapporto di reciproca stima. S’erano già incontrati sempre a Venezia all’hotel Danieli. Canaris arrivava in volo da Berlino e Amé in auto da Roma.

Ambedue nutrivano ben poca simpatia per i rispettivi regimi anche se si vedevano costretti a collaborare. Nel diario di servizio del colonnello von Lahousen si legge: «29.07.43: partenza in volo per Venezia con il Capo del Servizio (Canaris) e il colonnello Freytag per un incontro con il gen. Amé, capo del controspionaggio italiano». Ed ancora: «31.07.43: Ritorno dal viaggio di servizio a Venezia». Sia Canaris che von Loringhoven e von Lahousen avevano raccolto presso il Reichssicherheitsamt, sede della Gestapo a Berlino, voci concrete sulla volontà del Führer di vendicarsi degli italiani che avevano arrestato Mussolini colpendo il Re e il Papa. Deportazione o morte erano le parole che i tre esponenti del controspionaggio avevano sentito pronunciare. In una deposizione al processo di Norimberga il 1° febbraio del ’46 Lahousen ha fornito anche dei particolari riportati a verbale sotto il titolo Warnreise. Testimony 1330­1430. Lahousen ha riferito sempre a Norimberga anche la reazione di Freytag von Loringhoven: «Èuna vera vigliaccheria! Bisognerebbe avvertire gli italiani!». Infatti, sempre secondo Lahousen, lo scopo prioritario del volo a Venezia consisteva soprattutto in questo. Far sapere agli italiani i progetti di Hitler verso il re e papa Pacelli. L’incontro avvenne come sempre in una sala riservata dell’hotel Danieli. I due parlarono a lungo ma nulla è trapelato dei loro scambi d’opinione. Nel pomeriggio del 30 luglio Amé e i due colonnelli passeggiarono a lungo al Lido e qui l’avvertimento dei progetti nazisti nei confronti di Pio XII fu l’argomento centrale dei colloqui.

Quello stesso giorno Mussolini era già prigioniero a Ventotene ma la sua eventuale liberazione, tanto anelata da Hitler, non sembrava interessare nessuno dei tre. E infatti Amé non ne parlò. Sarebbe rimasto in carica solo ancora per una paio di settimane (fino al 18 agosto ´43) per essere quindi sostituito dal generale Giacomo Carboni. Siamo nel mezzo dei famosi 45 giorni di incertezza e ambiguità (25 luglio - 8 sett. ´43). Amé rientrato a Roma fece spargere la voce sui nefasti progetti di Hitler verso il re e Pio XII. Voci che giunsero ben presto anche all’ambasciatore del Reich presso la Santa Sede Ernst von Weisäcker, che si precipitò a chiedere informazioni a 360 gradi. Come riferisce nel suo libro Erinnerungen (Ricordi) del 1950, iniziò con il feldmaresciallo Kesserling, quindi con Kappler a Roma, con Wolf a Milano, a Berlino presso l’ufficio di Martin Bormann, capo della segreteria di Hitler, ed infine chiese spiegazioni allo stesso Canaris. Probabilmente il capo del controspionaggio tedesco non poté non sorridere a tale richiesta. Tutti si dissero all’oscuro di tali piani ma ormai le voci erano pubbliche e i progetti segreti per colpire il re ed il Santo Padre ormai di dominio pubblico e quindi da abbandonare. Tutto finì lì. Dei tre passeggeri atterrati a Venezia il 29 luglio ´43, solo von Lahousen è sopravvissuto al terrore nazista.

Trasferito sul fronte orientale al rientro da Venezia, il 1° agosto del ’43, riuscì a sfuggire alle retate contro i congiurati del 20 luglio ´44 (attentato fallito di von Stauffenberg contro Hitler) e fu fatto prigioniero dagli americani. Il servizio segreto inglese lo interrogò per alcuni mesi e quindi fu liberato. Canaris fu arrestato 3 giorni dopo l’attentato di von Stauffenberg e impiccato nel campo di concentramento di Flossenburg il 9 aprile ´45. Il terzo passeggero, il barone Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven, il 26 luglio ´44, avvertito che la Gestapo stava venendo ad arrestarlo e ben conoscendo i metodi di interrogatorio a cui sarebbe andato incontro, preferì suicidarsi con la pistola d’ordinanza. Aveva 45 anni a lasciava quattro figli in giovane età. A fianco, una foto dell’incontro di Venezia: Cesare Amé (a destra) assieme a Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven. Le foto furono scattate da Erwin von Lahousen (in alto al centro) con la sua Leica, ma sviluppate solo molti anni più tardi. In alto a destra in divisa ancora von Loringhoven all’epoca dei fatti di Venezia, sulla sinistra invece Wilhelm Canaris, capo del servizio di controspionaggio tedesco.

Da Monaco di Baviera Diego Vanzi
Avvenire

More Proof of Hitler's Plan to Kill Pius XII

Son of German Intelligence Officer Comes Forward

ROME, JUNE 16, 2009 (Zenit.org).- New evidence published today by the newspaper of the Italian bishops gives more credence to the belief that Adolf Hitler had planned to either kidnap or kill Pope Pius XII.

It has long been conjectured that Hitler had ordered the SS commander in Italy, General Karl Wolf, to seize the Vatican and take the Pope.

Dan Kurzman wrote about it in his 1997 book "A Special Mission: Hitler's Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius the XII," which is based on interviews with Wolf himself. Wolf's accounts, however, could never be verified.

New evidence published today by Avvenire now points to the role of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (the Third Reich's main security office) in devising a plot to take out the Pope.

The newspaper cited the testimony of Niki Freytag Loringhoven, 72, the son of Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven, who during World War II was a colonel in the High Command of the German Armed Forces.

According to the son, days after Hitler's Italian ally, Benito Mussolini, had been arrested at the orders of King Victor Emmanuel III, Hitler ordered the Reichssicherheitshauptamt to devise a plot to punish the Italian people by kidnapping or murdering Pius XII and the king of Italy.

Hearing of the project, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German counterintelligence service, informed his Italian counterpart, General Cesare Amè, during a secret meeting in Venice from July 29-30, 1943.

Also present at the meeting were colonels Erwin von Lahousen and Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven, who both worked in Section II of German counterintelligence, which dealt primarily with sabotage.

Canaris, Von Lahousen and Freytag von Loringhoven had all been part of the German resistance against the Nazis.

Amè, upon returning to Rome, spread news of the plans against Hitler in order to block them, which proved successful. The plan was quickly dropped.

According to Avvenire, this testimony coincides with the deposition given by Von Lahousen during the Nuremberg war crimes trials on Feb. 1,1946 (Warnreise Testimony 1330-1430).

Canaris was later dismissed as the head of German intelligence in February 1944, put under house arrest, and then executed in 1945.

The two colonels participated with Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg in the failed July 20 Plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.

"Be Proud to Be a Jew!" Pius XII Told Visitor in '41

There is some myth circulating that Pope Pius XII was an anti-semite, or a Nazi sympathizer... this myth continues to exist despite soooooo many facts to the contrary, including praise by both Albert Einstein and the New York Times that the pope was the only one on the continent actually standing up to Hitler. Anyway, here is some more news....



"Be Proud to Be a Jew!" Pius XII Told Visitor in '41

Incident Was Published in Palestine Post

ROME, DEC. 3, 2006 (Zenit.org).- An article published in 1944 by a young German Jew in the Palestine Post, the future Jerusalem Post, points up Pope Pius XII's appreciation for the "Chosen People."

The article was published April 28, 1944, on Page 6 and headlined "A Papal Audience in Wartime." It was signed by a "refugee"; a footnote states that the article's author arrived in Palestine on the ship Nyassa.

The writer recounts that in autumn of 1941 he was received in audience along with numerous other people by Pius XII.

When the young Jew approached the Pope, he revealed that he was born in Germany but was a Jew.

The Holy Father responded, "What can I do for you? Tell me, my son!"

The young Jew told Pius XII about a group of shipwrecked Jewish refugees, saved by Italian warships in the Aegean Sea, who were then starving in a prisoner of war camp on an island. The Pope listened carefully and showed concern about the physical and health conditions of the Jewish prisoners.

According to the article, Pius XII then said to him: "You have done well to come and tell me this. I have heard about it before. Come back tomorrow with a written report and give it to the secretary of state who is dealing with this question. But now for you, my son. You are a young Jew. I know what that means and I hope you will always be proud to be a Jew!"

Then, the author of the article wrote, the Pope raised his voice, so that everyone in the hall could hear it clearly: "My son, whether you are worthier than others only the Lord knows, but believe me, you are at least as worthy as every other human being that lives on our earth! And now, my Jewish friend, go with the protection of the Lord, and never forget, you must always be proud to be a Jew!"

Archival find

The author goes on to say that, after having uttered these words in a pleasant voice, Pius XII lifted his hands to give the usual blessing, but he stopped, smiled and touched the author's head with his fingers, and then lifted him from his kneeling position.

Pius XII uttered these words during an audience attended by cardinals, bishops -- and a group of German soldiers.

Details of this incident were discovered in an archive in Tel Aviv University by William Doino, contributor to the magazine Inside the Vatican, and author of an annotated bibliography on Pius XII, published in "The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII" (Lexington Books, 2004).

According to Doino, "This testimony is significant because it shows the attention and great love with which the Pontiff regarded the Jews, in addition to reaffirming the rejection of the Nazi racial theories that pointed to the Jews as the last of the earth."

On this matter, Doino will publish a full-scale commentary in an upcoming issue of Inside the Vatican magazine, in which, among other things, he will evaluate the importance of this testimony for Pius XII studies.