THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 176, August 14, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
DEFENDING POPE PIUS XII AGAINST THE CHARGES
OF ANTI-SEMITISM & PRO-NAZISM
By Alan Caruba
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH & EUROPEAN ANTI-SEMITISM: POPES, JEWS, & THE HISTORICAL RECORD -- REFUTING
THE ACCUSATION THAT POPE PIUS XII WAS ANTI-SEMITIC & PRO-NAZI: DOCUMENTATION THAT, DURING THE NAZI
OCCUPATION OF ROME, POPE PIUS XII WAS PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR SAVING THE LIVES OF NEARLY FIVE THOUSAND
ROMAN JEWS, FOLLOWING A PAPAL TRADITION THAT DATES BACK TO THE SIXTH CENTURY -- IMPLICATIONS FOR
CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE ISLAMIST JIHAD THAT IS CURRENTLY BEING WAGED AGAINST
WESTERN CIVILIZATION & AGAINST ALL NON-MUSLIM PEOPLES & THEIR RESPECTIVE CULTURES
FULL STORY:
It is counter-intuitive for many Jews to regard the Roman Catholic Church as its friend, given the weight of history that records the
many expulsions of and attacks on European Jews over the centuries. However, there is another historical record — that of the
Roman Catholic popes, a record which tells of the popes' continued efforts to protect Jews and save their lives.
This history is recounted in The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis, a book written by
Rabbi David G. Dalin ($27.95, Regnery). He wrote this book because Pope Pius XII has been under attack for a very long time by
dissident Catholic authors. It should escape no one’s notice that the author’s faith is Judaism, this fact lending particular weight
to his carefully documented rebuttal. Rabbi Dalin notes: “There has been a tradition of papal support for the Jews of Europe since
at least the fourteenth century.”
“It is an abominable slander to spread blame that belongs to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to a pope who was a friend of the Jews,”
says Rabbi Dalin. For example, during the Nazi occupation of Rome, there is ample documentation that Pope Pius XII was
personally responsible for saving the lives of close to five thousand Roman Jews, sheltering them in the Vatican and in the
numerous monasteries and convents throughout the city. He did much more, however.
He was following in a tradition that dates back to Pope Gregory I (590-604), who issued an historic decree, Sicut Judaeis, affirming
that Jews “should have no infringement of their rights…We forbid to vilify the Jews.” This decree was taken up by Pope Calixitus
(1119-1124) and reissued at least twenty-two times by successive popes between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. During the
Black Plague, Pope Clement VI (1342-1352) was the only European leader to defend the Jews against the charge they were
responsible for the Plague. Renaissance popes were instrumental in collecting and protecting 116 Hebrew books and manuscripts.
Pope Leo X (1513-1521) repealed the obligation of Jews to wear badges, a precursor to the Nazi requirement of the infamous
Yellow Star.
In the twentieth century, both Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII vigorously condemned the Nazis. Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, who
had spent his years of service to the Church as one of its greatest statesman, regarded Hitler as “the greatest enemy of Christ and
of the Church in modern times.” Pacelli was the Papal Nuncio in Germany from 1917 to 1929 and, during this time, delivered
forty-four speeches, using forty of them to denounce some aspect of the emerging Nazi ideology. Elected Pope in 1939, just
months before the beginning of World War II, the College of Cardinals deliberated just one day and selected the Vatican's
Secretary of State for General Affairs to the office of Pope.
Thus, the creation and maintenance of the slander of Pius XII needs to be examined for its true purpose. Rabbi Dalin identifies it
succinctly. “The Liberal culture war against tradition — of which the Pope Pius XII controversy is a microcosm — must be
recognized for what it is: an assault on the institution of the Catholic Church and traditional religion.”
This book is particularly timely, coming as it does when one of the world’s religions, Islam, has declared a holy war against the
West and, seen in its wider implication, against all other religions.
The leaders of the Islamist Jihad understand, far better than more moderate Muslims, that Islam is not likely to sustain itself in the
twenty-first century and beyond, being in conflict with a world that recognizes the rights of one half of its population, women,
and advocating a legal system, Sharia, that opposes human rights, constitutional democracy, and the capitalism that leads
inevitably to the spread of prosperity and freedom throughout the world.
Pius XII and the late Pope John Paul II are great examples of those whom Jews identify as “righteous gentiles” -- those who
never failed to act and to speak out in the defense of Judaism and Jews. This is the highest honor they can bestow. Together,
Jews and Catholics today are brothers in arms against the war being waged against them and the West by Islam.
Perhaps no one better exemplifies the Jihad than Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem “whose anti-Jewish
Islamic fundamentalism was as dangerous in World War II as it is today,” says Rabbi Dalin. Al-Husseini, a Palestinian, was
Hitler’s collaborator, a man who never ceased to incite anti-Semitic violence and whose cause was taken up by Yasser Arafat,
the late father of modern terrorism, for whom al-Husseini was a mentor.
The record of al-Husseini’s collaboration, his pre-World War II and post-WWII attacks on Jews, is well documented. The
historian, Kenneth R. Timmerman, wrote that al-Husseini’s and Arafat’s Jihad --
“provides the common thread linking past to present. If today’s Muslim anti-Semitism
is like a tree with many branches, its roots feed directly off of Hitler’s Third Reich.”
Today, the demand for Palestinian nationhood is led by Mahmood Abbas, Arafat’s chief deputy, and the author of a 1983
book denying the Holocaust that killed six million Jews and five million Christians and others. The war initiated by the virulently
anti-Semitic Nazi Germany, and joined by Fascist Italy and the Empire of Japan, killed an estimated sixty million people worldwide.
If for no other reason, Christians and Jews, together, must remain resolute in the defeat of the Islamist Jihad. The stakes could not
be higher.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Jews & Anti-Semitism
Europe, Europeans, & Anti-Semitism
The Israeli-Arab Conflict
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
The Middle East & the Arabs
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a
clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly commentary, "Warning Signs," posted
on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center, which is located at
www.anxietycenter.com.
© Alan Caruba 2005
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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