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PIUS XII AND THE JEWS: The
War Years, War on the
Church Following the publication of the pastoral letter by the German Catholic bishops who met at their annual conference in Fulda in 1939, “which was one of the sharpest attacks ever made by Catholics against Nazis”, Nazis seized Catholic presses and closed printing facilities used in production and distribution of the pastoral letter. (N.Y. Times, January 14, 1939, p. 5, 3) The
Times reported that among recent Nazi measures “against the Roman
Catholic Church” in German held territories, was the billeting of soldiers
in convents, one of which, the convent and girls school of St. Francis de
Sales in Vienna, was to house 150 soldiers for two years. (N.Y. Times,
Jan 21, 1939, p. 4, 6) These
and other measures were part of the organized “war on Christianity” waged
throughout the Reich territories by the Nazi regime, according to a letter
written in June, 1941 to Pope Pius XII by the Catholic bishops of the Third
Reich. During their annual
meeting in Fulda, at the tomb of St. Boniface, they related to the pontiff the
severity and depth of the systematic war against the church by the Third
Reich. They informed the pope
that Catholic organizations were disbanded, pressure was brought to bear on
influential men in German society to deny their faith, schools and Catholic
institutions closed, printing houses closed, monasteries and religious closed
and confiscated, holy days canceled in favor of work days, priests and
religious sisters arrested and sent to concentration camps.
“In this and in other ways freedom of conscience is repressed to a
degree that is simply intolerable for man made to the image of God and for
Christians.” (N.Y. Times, October 20, 1945, p. 4, 2-5)
The pope responded in September, lamenting the attempt to destroy the Church in Germany. He then put the sufferings of the Church in the context of grace, “In congratulation, allow Us to address you and our beloved children who at your side are fighting the battle of our Lord, in the words of St. Cyprian: "‘Your
present confession of faith is more illustrious and honored because of your
greater strength in suffering. As
the combat waxed in intensity, the glory of the combatants grew.
If the battle calls you, if the day of your struggle has come, fight
bravely, fight constantly,
knowing that you are battling beneath the gaze of our Lord who is ever
present, that you
are by your confession of His name attaining to His glory who not
merely watches His warring servants but Himself joins
battle, Himself crowns and is crowned by the decisive
contest of our trial.’” Christ
had predicted that the world would seek to destroy the Church.
This was but the most recent in a long history of that prophesied
struggle. (N.Y. Times, ibid.) This is how the pope and the bishops saw
World War II: a fundamentally religious war, fought for the very soul of
humanity. Michael
Cardinal von Faulhaber issued a similar report to the Holy See in 1942.
This reported the confiscation of church property, arrest of bishops,
priests, and religious, the closing of Catholic printing houses, labor
organizations, and other Catholic institutions, the pressure upon Catholic
workers and students to absent themselves from Mass, the characterizing of the
Church as a “super-national organization” which Germans loyal to the Reich
and to the new world order should shun. (N.Y. Times, May 9, 1942, p. 1,
2+3; p. 5, 2) The Reich even published a hymnal under the auspices of the “Institute for the Examination of Jewish Influence on the Church Life of Germany.” Much of the traditional hymnody was replaced by songs touting Nazi themes of race and homeland, such as a baptismal hymn entitled, “Tender Child of German Blood.” There were, as well, reports that Hitler would establish his own national church. (N.Y. Times, May 10, 1942, p. 14, 3) Nothing
brought home the reality of Hitler’s systematic war against the Catholic
Church in particular, and against Christianity in general, so much as did the
pastoral letter signed by all the Roman Catholic bishops in the Reich
territories, issued on March 22, 1942 and read from every Catholic pulpit
throughout the Third Reich. They asserted “that Hitler would blot out from
the entire earth every vestige of Christianity, if he should find it advisable
in his military undertakings.” (N.Y. Times, June 9, 1942, p. 12, 6)
The bishops condemned Hitler’s policies of official murder of the innocent
and of those judged “unproductive citizens.” (N.Y. Times, June 7, 1942, p. 12, 1-5)
The Times observed that, since Germany’s population was
ninety-five percent Christian, “this, then, means that the Nazi dictatorship
is waging war on its own people.” The editorial continued, “Indeed, the
bishops specifically call it a war and publicly protest its continuance.
Step by step they traced the Reich’s broken promises to protect the
church, the restriction of both worship and religious education, the
expropriation of church property, the expulsion and internment of priests for
no other crime than the practice of their faith.”
It went on,
“They [the Catholic bishops] go on to show with irrefutable logic
that this assault on the church is only part of a broader attack on all human rights,
human freedom and the human spirit. . . . Nobody’s life is safe, they [the
bishops] assert, if the state assumes the power to kill at will.
Above all, they repel the sickening charge that refusal to submit to
this brutal creed is lack of
patriotism.” The editorial
ends, “The measure of Nazi madness is to have precipitated a civil war in
the midst of an effort to conquer the world.” (N.Y. Times, June 8,
1942, p. 14, 2) Anne O’Hare McCormick summarized the systematic protest against the Nazis by the Churches of Europe. In her weekly column “Abroad”, she had this to say about Hitler’s war on Christianity and the Churches’ response: “When
the history of this new Reign of Terror is written, it will appear that the
strongest centers of opposition to the
claims of the God-State were not universities, trades unions, political
parties, courts or organized business. In
Germany and the occupied countries the institution that stands up most stoutly
against the pretensions of the Nazi New Order is the church. “The
Protestant pastors of Norway dared to go on strike rather than accept orders
from Quisling [Nazi
head of the government]. The [Catholic] Primates of Holland and Belgium have
defied the Nazi authorities as boldly as Cardinal Mercier did in the last war. Resistance to the collaborationists in France has been
nourished by the parish priests, whose influence among their people has never
been so strong, according to all reports, as it is today. “Judging
from the open resistance offered by the churches in Hitler’s Europe, one
might infer that of all human freedoms, freedom of conscience is the most
cherished. “Year
after year the [Catholic Bishops’] Fulda Conference has issued statements
denouncing the systematic attempts of the regime to destroy the last vestiges
of religious liberty in the Third Reich. But the letter read in the churches
on March 22, this year, goes farther than any previous pastoral.
The Bishops have taken the unusual step of circulating among the people
the official protest they have addressed to the Government.
Thus the document is not an underground report or a picture drawn from
isolated incidents but a detailed disclosure of the actual situation of the
church in Germany.
“The indictment confirms reports that the Catholic Church has succeeded the Jews as the scapegoat of the Nazis. This is a logical consequence. A regime that starts by oppressing one group must find another when the first is exhausted. A nation acquiescing in the persecution of one minority cannot expect any minority to escape the same fate, and since the majority is only the sum of minorities, eventually the policy of proscription will extend to the whole population. “The
Nazis, the bishops say, ‘wish to destroy Christianity in Germany during the
war before the soldiers return home.’” “All
we know for certain is that religion plays a vital part in this war.” (N.Y.
Times, June 10, 1942, p. 20, 5) Throughout
June, 1942, the Times published a series of articles entitled,
“Churchmen who defy Hitler”, offering brief biographies of Catholic and
Protestant clergy who had stood up to Hitler within the Reich.
Bishop Eivand Berggrav, Lutheran Bishop of Oslow, and Professor Karl
Barth were two Protestants noted; Patriarch Gaurilo of Yugoslavia, the Greek
Orthodox prelate, and Bishop Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Muenster,
Archbishop J. De Jong, Archbishop of Utrecht, and Cardinal van Roey,
Archbishop of Malines, the three Catholics noted. The Times observed that the church leaders “are virtually the only Germans still speaking up against the Nazi regime.” (N.Y. Times, June 8, 1942, p. 6, 2) Bishop von Galen of Muenster repeatedly condemned Himmler and the Gestapo as “tyrants and murderers.” (ibid.) During the summer of 1941, Bishop von Galen preached three sermons denouncing Nazi racial and anti-religious principles. The immediate outcome of the Bishop’s first sermon was that the Nazi government dissolved all Roman Catholic religious orders in the Province of Westphalia, and a number of prominent Roman Catholics were imprisoned. The next week, the Bishop mounted his pulpit to decry the injustices within the country that “‘cried aloud to heaven for redress.’” The Times stated that the bishop “in outspoken terms has condemned unauthorized killings of invalids and the insane, and Nazi racial doctrines.” (N.Y. Times, June 8, 1942, p. 6, 2-3) On
August 3, 1940, a pastoral letter by the Catholic bishops of the Netherlands,
secretly prepared and sent to all parishes, was read in every Catholic pulpit.
Archbishop de Jong was the force behind the condemnation of Nazi
policies, and forbade Catholics from joining any Nazi organization, without
the explicit denial of Nazi ideology, under pain of being refused the
sacraments. In 1941 the bishops
issued a fresh protest: “We
raise our voices in protest against the injustice inflicted upon tens of
thousands--to force them to accept a conception of life which is contrary to
their religious convictions.” (N.Y. Times, June 10, 1942, p. 10, 4-5) Joseph Ernst Cardinal van Roey, Archbishop of Malines in Belgium, voiced continued protests as well. The Times observed that he “insists on heeding the voice of the Pope rather than the precepts of National Socialism.” (N.Y. Times, June 12, 1942, p. 10, 2) Any member of the Belgian Fifth Column, a Nazi military group, was refused the sacraments. Van Roey instructed his priests to refuse communion to any pro-German or German in uniform; men in uniform were forbidden even to enter Catholic churches in Belgium. The Cardinal and his priests repeatedly denounced the Nazi theories of blood and soil from their pulpits, recounting Nazi wrongs. After the reading of the Cardinal’s pastoral letter condemning Nazi policies, the government closed all Catholic churches throughout Belgium for three days, newspapers attacked the Church, and the Cardinal’s residence was smeared with abusive graffiti. “It is true,” the Cardinal had written in his pastoral letter, “that the Catholic Church adapts itself to all governments that safeguard her liberty of conscience, but as for adapting herself to governments that oppress the rights of conscience and persecute the Catholic Church, Never!” (N.Y. Times, June 12, 1942, p. 10, 2) In
May, 1943, the Nazi-controlled Paris radio blamed the Catholic Church for
having unleashed the war. (N.Y. Times, May 25, 1943, p. 6, 6) The
Vatican responded, as the Times observed, “recalling the Nazi charges
that the Catholic Church in Germany had invited oppression by opposing Adolf
Hitler’s theories of ‘racialism’. . . “ (N.Y. Times, May 28,
1943, p. 4,5) In September, the Nazi-controlled Paris newspaper, Aujourd’hui
said that “Pope Pius XII was responsible for the hostile attitude of the
French clergy toward German authorities and that his last speech had a
particularly disquieting effect.” This
was the second attack against the Pope by the French press and radio in just a
few months. ( N.Y. Times, October 2, 1943, p. 3, 6) The
German Bishops repeated their protests again in their annual pastoral letter
of August 29, 1943, expressing grave regret that even “in this dangerous and
costly period of our fatherland” the battle against the Church continues
within the Reich. (N.Y. Times, September 5, 1943, p. 7, 7) The persecution of the Church by the Nazis resulted also in the incarceration of thousands of Catholic priests, religious sisters, and brothers. A report circulated by the Catholic International Press Agency of Freiberge, Switzerland in 1943, claimed that Protestant and Catholic clergy were systematically being starved to death in the death camp at Dachau. It claimed that at least 1,500 Polish priests interned in Dachau had died of starvation. German clergy met the same fate. The report claimed that 3,000 Catholic priests were still confined in Dachau, (N.Y. Times, April 26, 1943, p. 6, 5; May 22, 1943, p. 2, 7)1,200 of whom were German. “The arrests are linked,” the Times reported, “with strong anti-Nazi and anti-war movements in the preponderantly Roman Catholic section of Germany, in which Catholic students as well as priests are said to be active.” (N.Y. Times, August 13, 1943, p. 4, 3) By
October, 1943, the Times reported that the Nazis had tortured to death
a Catholic Bishop and Archdeacon of the diocese of Plock, both over 80 years
of age. “The German slaughter of Catholic priests is raging through all
Poland. . . . The Nazi concentration camp at Inowroclaw is filled with priests
awaiting execution. . . . In West Poland alone more than 1,600 priests have
already lost their lives.” (N.Y. Times, October 6, 1943, p. 4, 6)
In
February, 1944, the Times provided a partial list of Catholic church
property confiscated by the Reich. Reported
by the British Broadcasting Corporation, it was claimed that by May 1, 1943,
more than 3,400 Catholic monasteries and clerical institutions in Germany had
been confiscated by the Nazis. 16,495 Catholic priests and seminarians were
inducted forcibly into the German Army. Of
these 1,597 were killed at the front, 593 were missing, and about 100 were so
seriously wounded that they could not resume their priestly tasks. (N.Y.
Times, February 29, 1944, p. 9, 1) The arrests of priests continued
through the year, especially in Bavaria and in the more industrialized areas
of Germany. (N.Y. Times, November 19, 1944, p. 24, 6) In November, the Times
claimed another 400 priests had been seized by the Reich in Germany since the
beginning of October. (N.Y. Times, November 19, 1944, p. 24, 6) More
priests were reported imprisoned in Dachau by the summer of 1945. (N.Y.
Times, June 24, 1945, p. 27, 7) As the Reich unraveled by the spring of 1945, the extent of the Reich’s war on the Church became more evident. In May, a photograph of the beer cellars of the Burger Brau Haus in Munich showed Nazi paraphernalia used by the Brown Shirts. “Statues of Jews hanging from gallows, a saluting Nazi and desecrated Catholic crosses with swastikas hanging from them” were shown. (N.Y. Times, May 7, 1945, p 3, 2-3) In
June, 1945, the pope addressed the Sacred College of Cardinals. His intention
was to set the record straight concerning the conduct of the Church in Germany
during the war, Hitler’s attempt to destroy the Church, and to warn against
Soviet aggression. Despite having entered into diplomatic relations with the
Vatican, which afforded the Church some temporary
juridic protection from the government, the Hitler government had inflicted
severe injury upon the Church. The
pope stated, “The
struggle against the church did, in fact, become ever more bitter: there was
the dissolution of Catholic organizations; the gradual suppression of the
flourishing Catholic schools, both public and private; the enforced weaning of
youth from family and church; the pressure brought to bear on the conscience of citizens and
especially of civil servants; the systematic defamation, by means of a clever,
closely organized propaganda, of the church, the clergy, the faithful, the
church’s institutions teaching and history; the closing,
dissolution and confiscation of religious houses and other
ecclesiastical institutions; the complete suppression of the Catholic press
and publishing houses.” There was also the arrest, deportation, and murder of thousands of priests and religious in the camps. (N.Y. Times, June 3, 1945, p. 22. The full document takes all of pages 1 and 22) Reports about the bombing of the Vatican by the Nazis on November 5, 1943 emerged (N.Y. Times, July 2, 1945, p. 5, 3). In September, 1945, documents were uncovered in Berlin revealing what the Times called “A secret struggle between the German Gestapo and the Catholic hierarchy which lasted from the rise of Nazism to its fall.” The Times said that Gestapo agents stole, bribed and worked to get access to messages from the Holy See to Catholic bishops in Germany and western Europe during the war years. The churchmen were seen as enemies of Hitler’s new order. (N.Y. Times, September 26, 1945, p.10, 4) This late revelation made sense of the earlier attempts to vilify the pope and the Catholic hierarchy by the Nazi regimes and, later by the Soviets. The Pope as
Traitor to Humanity. Origins
of his alleged “silence”: Since
the pope and the Church had worked to save the Jews during the war, where did
the charges claiming the contrary arise?
The Times reports and editorials gave some idea, even before the
war in Europe ended. During
his Christmas address in 1942, the pope reaffirmed the Church’s teaching on
the dignity of the human person, and its denunciation of Marxist socialism,
while calling on the world to reestablish the international rule of law.
The Times reported that “He also castigated the authoritarian
form of government for its denigration of the human
person, and he called upon all those who recognized Christ to join the
crusade for a new social order based on the Christian precept that to serve is
better than to dominate.” (N.Y. Times, December 25, 1942, p. 1, 7)
The pope said, “He
who would have the star of peace shine out and stand guard over society should
cooperate for his part in giving back to the human person the dignity given to
it by God from the beginning; he should oppose the excessive herding of men;
as if they were a mass without a soul; their
economic, social, political, intellectual and moral inconsistency; their
dearth of solid principles and strong convictions, their surfeit of
instinctive sensible excitement and their fickleness.”
“He should favor, by every lawful means, in every sphere of life, social institutions in which a full personal responsibility is assured and guaranteed both in the earthly and the eternal order of things.” (N.Y. Times, December 25, 1942, p. 10, 2-5) The
error of today’s life, he said, was to believe that civil life was based on
the principle of gain. It was here he reiterated the Church’s stand against
Marxist Socialism. He ended by
castigating a large part of humanity, including Christians, who
“collectively bore the responsibility for the present universality of
war.” He continued, “Did
the peoples of the world wish to remain inert before the development of these
disastrous events or should not the best of them unite against this ruin of
the social order? “A
new and higher order must soon be born. It was demanded by the sacrifices of
those who had lost their
lives in this war, by the mothers, the widows, and the orphans, by the
countless refugees in flight, by the thousands of men who through no fault of
their own but for reasons of nationality or race had been doomed to death or
decay.” (ibid., p. 10, 2-5) The Times was quick to applaud the pope. “This Christmas,” the Times wrote, “more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent. “No Christmas sermon reaches a larger congregation than the message Pope Pius XII addresses to a war-torn world at this season.” The Times understood what the pope said, whom and what he condemned, even if the proper names were not pronounced. The Times wrote, “But
just because the Pope speaks to and in some sense for all the peoples at war,
the clear stand he takes on the fundamental issues of the conflict has greater
weight and authority. When a
leader bound impartially to nations on both sides condemns as heresy the new
form of national state which subordinates everything to itself; when he
declares that whoever wants peace must protect against ‘arbitrary attacks’
the ‘juridical safety of individuals’;
when he assails violent occupation of territory, the exile and persecution of human beings for no reason other than race or political opinion; when
he says that people must fight for a just and decent peace, a ‘total
peace’--the ‘impartial’ judgement is like a verdict in a high court of
justice.” The editor ends, echoing the pope’s words that these new
states “must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom
the state disposes as if they were lifeless things.” (N.Y. Times,
December 25, 1942, p. 16, 2) Both
Hitler and Stalin blamed the pope and the Catholic Church as responsible for
the war and for the sufferings of millions, including Jews and Catholics.
These accusations were repeated by both Nazis and Communists during the
remaining years of the war in an attempt to weaken the loyalty of the peoples
of Europe to Pius XII and to the Roman Catholic Church.
This is the origin of the numerous unfounded accusations, the
“silence” of Pius XII, as reported by the Times, which are repeated
even today. On January 30, 1943, Hitler broadcast a speech in which he tried to revive the myth that Nazi Germany was the last barrier against the conquest of Europe by Bolshevism. (N.Y. Times, January 31, 1943, p. 37, 2) In the April number of the Fascist periodical Regime Facista, Roberto Farinacci accused Vatican Radio of “inciting the people of Poland to make common cause with the Russian Army.” (N.Y. Times, April 26, 1943, p. 9, 1) In May, the Nazi controlled radio, Aujourd’hui reported that the Catholic Church had “a crushing responsibility in unleashing the present war.” The Nazis charged that the Catholic Church had invited oppression in the Reich by opposing Hitler’s racialist theories. (N.Y. Times, May 28, 1943, p. 4, 4) Clearly, Pius XII had not been silent. The
February 1, 1944 number of the Soviet government newspaper, Izvestia
asserted that Vatican foreign policy had disillusioned Catholics throughout
the world, and earned the contempt of the Italian masses because the Vatican
had supported fascism. The paper charged that the Vatican had pledged its
support to Italian fascism following the conclusion of the Lateran Treaty in
February, 1929. However, “the Vatican’s support for fascism wasn’t
limited solely to Italy, Izvestia continued.
It approved many acts of aggression by fascism although the true
meaning of these aggressions was no secret.” (N.Y. Times, February 2,
1944, p. 1, 6) The Vatican, according to the Izvestia article,
supported Italy’s aggression into Abyssinia, and had played a “disgraceful
role” in Hitler’s and Mussolini’s intervention in the Spanish civil war.
The Church had supported
Franco’s Spain which was “the image of the clerical States of post-war
Europe” which the Vatican wanted to emerge.
The Vatican’s “silence” when France was attacked in 1940, and its
swift support of the Vichy government were typical of its policy, Izvestia
charged. (ibid., p. 11, 5) The Vatican, Izvestia trumpeted, despite the
pope’s claims to neutrality, had worked to support the Nazi regime, and for
the destruction of other states. This
is the first report in the Times in which the pope and the Church are
attacked as cooperators of Hitler, and falsely condemned for the supposed
“silence” of the pope. It is
significant that the Times reported reported the
Izvestia charges, gave them no credence, and, in later pieces,
expressed consternation that anyone could believe the charges as anything
other than Communist propaganda against the Church. An earlier U.S. Foreign Policy Report had stated that the pope supported neither the modern dictatorships nor modern democracy. “. . . but is just what he claims to be--indifferent to political forms, accepting any government which will meet the minimum demands of the church.” (ibid.) An
American rebuttal of these charges was swiftly made by Monsignor Fulton J.
Sheen on the same day the Izvestia article appeared.
He stated that the report was an attempt to confuse the political
atmosphere in Europe in preparation for a separate peace by Moscow with the
German Army after the expected overthrow of Hitler.
Sheen predicted an alliance between Communist Russia and the Nazis,
minus Hitler, for the “bolshevization” of Europe, and declared that the Izvestia
article was designed to help destroy religion as the one great obstacle to the
achievement of this objective. “The
Vatican within the last six months has been called Communist by the Nazis,
Nazis by the Communists and anti-Fascists by the Fascists.
And they all mean the same thing, namely, the Vatican is opposed to
every anti-religious ideology.” (ibid.)
Sheen observed that Russia’s plans were to control Europe after the
war. The only outspoken obstacle to Russia’s plan in Europe was the Catholic
Church. Sheen continued, “As
Soviet Russia has already served notice that America and Great Britain may not
interfere in the question of Poland, so now it serves notice on religion that
it may not interfere in the question of Europe.” (ibid., p. 11, 6)
The first attacks claiming that the Church had endorsed silently the atrocities of the Nazi’s came from Communist Russia. Soon to control Poland, and other vast areas in eastern Europe, Russia saw the need to break the loyalty to the pope of Catholic majorities in those countries. The plan was a simple one: convince all that the pope supported the hated Nazis during the war, and, therefore, neither he nor the Church could be trusted after the war. The destruction of the Church would leave the field wide open for Russian influence and control. The
Times published an angry editorial: “Of all the incendiary literary
bombs manufactured in Moscow. . . and thrown with such light-hearted
recklessness into the unity of the Allied nations, none is likely to do
greater damage than Izvestia’s unjust and intemperate attack upon the
Vatican as “pro-Fascist.” (N.Y. Times, February 4, 1944, p. 14, 2)
The Vatican is a neutral state, the editor continued, with which Russia’s
two allies, the United States and Great Britain have “confident
relations.” The United States
and Great Britain “have
no doubt where the real sympathy of the Vatican lies in this struggle.
They recognize the inescapable neutrality of the Pope’s position; but
they have had no difficulty in finding in his eloquent declarations clear
evidence of his detestation for those who have violated the rights of the
little nations who have committed bestial acts from one end of Europe to the
other and who have attempted to elevate the dogma of Totalitarianism to the
dignity of a new religion. Izvestia’s
attack is damaging to the unity on which victory depends.” American protests were not limited to those by churchmen or by the Times. Politicians made protests in local and state assemblies throughout the country, denouncing as false the accusations that the pope was pro-Fascist or Nazi. (N.Y. Times, February 8, 1944, p. 7, 1) The New York State Legislature voted on March 18, 1944, unanimously to deplore the action of Izvestia, recognizing it as an official act of the Soviet government against the Vatican. The Legislature pointed out in its resolution that both Pius XI and Pius XII had condemned Fascism and Nazism and “all other forms of totalitarian government in both public and private pronouncements dating back to 1931.” (N.Y. Times, March 19, 1944, p. 32, 1) The
Russians continued their accusations. On
February 8, the Times related that the Russian Army newspaper, Red
Star, printed extracts from a pamphlet on Vatican policy in Europe.
Written by a Leopold Mannaberg, a German businessman, the pamphlet was
a criticism on “the constant interference of the Vatican in other lands’
policies and the Vatican’s intrigues on “the international arena.”
According to Mannaberg, the Vatican played a leading role in the rise of the
Nazi and Fascist regimes in Europe. A
strong peace in Europe was impossible unless the Vatican was completely
deprived of its political power, the pamphlet argued. (N.Y. Times,
February 9, 1944, p. 3, 8) Monsignor
Sheen was quick to reply. He said it was only natural that the Catholic Church
be opposed by a government “that has between eight and ten million political
prisoners doing slave labor in Russia. No democratic nation has charged the
Vatican with ‘lack of sympathy’.” (ibid.) Hanson
W. Baldwin penned an interesting article in the March 8, 1944 number of the Times,
“Dual Policy of Russia Traced: Soviet Union Demands Voice in Western
Europe’s Problems While Pursuing Unilateral Course in East.” (N.Y.
Times, March 8, 1944, p. 5, 2, 3, 4) “Since
Teheran there have been many disturbing trends,”
he wrote. “Some of these
stemmed from Moscow. The Pravda
article rumoring that Britain was feeling out the Germans on a separate peace,
the Izvestia denunciation of the Vatican as pro-Fascist, the virtual
insistence of Russia upon settling her boundary dispute with Poland on her own
terms and without Anglo-American mediation and the companion piece to this--
establishment by Moscow of a Polish National Council, which obviously
might be
groomed to replace the Polish Government in Exile, are all straws in
the wind.” He continued, “Russia
plainly holds many of the cards in Europe and is playing them aggressively.
She has demanded, on the one hand, a voice in the affairs of Western
Europe; . . . But she refuses similar
representation to Britain and the United States in Eastern Europe. . .And her
cards are military power, international communism used to forward Russia’s
national ends and pan-Slavism. “One
part of the Russian pattern is plain. Russia’s
insistence on taking eastern Poland up to
the Curzon Line and the Baltic States, parts of Finland and Bessarabia may
represent the limits of her territorial ambitions. . .”
In
addition to the acquisition of territory, Russia established Governments
friendly to her in contiguous territories, or was laying the groundwork to do
so, according to the article: Tito in Yugoslavia, the establishment of the
Polish National Council in opposition to the Polish Government in Exile, the
continued support of the Free German National Committee and some communist
support for Greek factions. She
also made a treaty of mutual assistance with Czechoslovakia.
Russia was interested in most of the European area east of a line drawn
from Koenigsberg in East Prussia to Fiume on the Adriatic. (N.Y. Times,
March 8, 1944, p.5, 4) The Church and the Vatican were in the way. But it was in the way of Russia’s plans for an easy territorial conquest, not simply because the Catholic Church was so strong in those countries, but because the pope publicly opposed Soviet aggression and unconditional surrender for Germany. The reasons are not because of any alleged pro-German sentiments on the part of Pope Pius XII or of the Church. He opposed unconditional surrender on principles of Christian mercy. An eye for an eye had been replaced by Christian forgiveness, and the Pontiff applied this, not only to personal relationships, but also to the relationship of one state to another, one government to another: Christian morality was to form the basis for international law and relationships--a truly new world order after the war. He was opposed because of this, especially by Russia. On
June 2, 1944, two days before the Allies entered Rome, the Pope addressed the
Sacred College of Cardinals in which he deplored “‘reports of
ill-dissimulated violence or openly declared vengeance.’ He announced
himself to be against what he characterized as the alternative of complete
victory or complete destruction.” (N.Y. Times, July 6, 1944, p. 7, 1) The
Times reported that the Pope, in this address and “through other
channels” wants a “negotiated peace with as many elements of compromise in
it as possible.” This was in
opposition to the Allied demands for unconditional surrender, which would have
rendered Germany incapable of waging war for many years to come.
This did not endear the Pope to some Americans or British, either.
However, as Herbert L. Matthews closed his article, “
. . . the Pope’s feelings are unquestionably anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist.
There can be no doubt about his personal feelings so far as Hitlerites are
concerned. His only worry must
obviously be that of the danger of communism in Europe, and on that score the
Russians are understood to be giving assurances that religious feelings will
be respected.” (ibid.) Anne O’Hare McCormick commented in her column on August 21, 1944. Concerning the post-war period, McCormick observed, “The idea that the Pope does not want a complete and decisive victory is erroneous. What concerns him is the policy to be pursued by the victors after the decision has been won. As a spiritual ruler he can hardly be expected to take the same view as the military and political leaders.” (N.Y. Times, August 21, 1944, p. 14, 5) In
January, 1945, Harry Hopkins met with the pope and Myron Taylor, President
Roosevelt’s personal envoy to the Vatican.
“The Pope did most of the talking,” according to the report, and
set before the men his ideas concerning Poland, Germany, and war
rehabilitation. The two envoys promised to convey the pope’s thoughts to
“the Big Three.” The report
claimed that the pope had proposed three main points: 1) The Vatican backed
the plea of the Polish Government in London for a joint allied government in
Poland until a plebiscite was possible; 2) the pope felt that it was time that
the Big Three worked out a definite outline of armistice terms for the
Germans-- “possibly severe but consistent with his previous declarations on
the distinction between the more and less guilty Germans and his known
critical attitude toward the formula of unconditional surrender”; 3) The
Vatican wanted the post-war rehabilitation and relief program to be as broad
and comprehensive as possible throughout the distressed areas of Europe. (N.Y.
Times, January 31, 1945, p. 3, 5-6) The report said the pope had
“intense interest in the Polish question,” especially concerning
totalitarian government control of post-war Poland. The Vatican continued its swipes at Communism. In January, 1945, the Osservatore Romano issued a strongly worded condemnation of Communism to clarify that Communism and Catholicism were incompatible. The reason for the repeated condemnation was that the Catholic Communist Party in Italy, then renamed the Left Party, while its platform and ideology were Marxist, claimed to represent Christian principles and sought Catholic membership. The Vatican was justifiably anxious about the growth of Communism in post-war Italy and Europe. (N.Y. Times, January 3, 1945, 5, 4) On
February 9, 1945, and for some time thereafter, Moscow launched a series of
attacks on the Pope. The bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, gathered with
their newly-elected patriarch, Alexis, to broadcast a statement by Moscow
radio accusing Pope Pius XII of condoning Fascism by attempting to excuse
Germany for its crimes. The Vatican, so the argument ran, was attempting to
absolve Hitler and Germany “who drenched all Europe in the blood of innocent
victims,” and to continue Fascism in Europe.
The statement said that the Russian Orthodox Church was conferring its
blessings “‘both on the arms that are now winning liberty from the Hitler
tyranny for all peoples and on the great leaders of progressive humanity in
the post-war organization of the world which will be their to undertake.’”
(N.Y. Times, February 10, 1945, p. 3, 5) In an article by Herbert L. Matthews, “Stalin’s Hand Seen in Vatican Attack”, appearing in the February 12th number of the paper, it was reported that the Vatican had reacted to the attacks by Moscow. The Italian newspaper Quotidiano, an organ of Catholic Action, reported that Moscow attacked the Vatican because the Roman Catholic Church stood for liberty against dictatorship. The Times commented that “the fact that this attack came from the Patriarch and was addressed to the peoples of the world gives it a more serious aspect than the recent accusations in the Russian newspaper Pravda . . .” The Quotidiano continued that “‘The Church of Rome in Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Balkans represents freedom of spirit. It represents an obstacle to dictatorship. Hence it must be fought. Moscow intends to make use of ‘her’ [Orthodox ]church for gigantic imperialistic aims.’” (N.Y. Times, February 13, 1945, p. 11, 1) In
the midst of these European attacks against the Church by the Soviet Union, The
Protestant, a New York periodical, published a declaration issued by 1,600
Protestant ministers and religious leaders in America, stating that the
Vatican should not have any influence in the post-war deliberations, “since
the papacy has thrown its weight into the present human struggle on the side
of the enemies of democracy.” (N.Y. Times, February 10, 1945;
February 19, 1945, p. 22, 6) Addressed to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and
Joseph Stalin, the petition repeated what would become standard
misrepresentations of the pope’s actions during the war, demanding that no
religious body, especially not the Vatican, have any part in the post-war
deliberations. (N.Y. Times, February 28, 1945, p. 22, 6-7) Other
than the Izvestia articles, this is the first time such accusations
appeared. A similar action
against the Church had been taken following World War I.
The usual anti-Catholic rhetoric of nineteenth century America was
repeated then and now, as the second war came to a close. The
Soviet attacks, employing the Russian Orthodox Church to keep the Vatican out
of the peace talks, could only have enhanced Russia’s position at the table,
since, without the Vatican’s voice, Stalin could press his demands without
much opposition. The traditional anti-Catholic bias of Protestant America
unwittingly cooperated with Russia, lending its weight to the same goal,
resurrecting all the old Anglo-American anti-popery rhetoric in their petition
to the Big Three. The American
Protestant intervention raised another element, the Jewish claims to Palestine
and the Vatican’s lack of support for such a proposal.
One of the signatories of the Protestant document wrote, “these are
national, not ecclesiastical claims,” and the Vatican should be kept out of
the discussions. (ibid.) Another Russian attack on the Pope was issued February 10th, by the former Russian ambassador to Rome, Boris Stein, who claimed that the Vatican was a “tremendous danger to world peace and post-war security.” The Vatican had never been a purely religious institution, he charged, and favored only the winning side in any war. (N.Y. Times, February 11, 1945) In
an address to the Central United Russian War Relief, Inc. in New York City,
Metropolitan Benjamin, head of the Russian Orthodox Archdiocese of the
Aleutian Islands and North America, attacked the Catholic Church for its
“attitude of harmful leniency” toward defeated fascist nations.
The Russian archbishop enthusiastically endorsed Stalin and other
Soviet leaders since “they were doing everything possible to nourish the
resurgence of religion now sweeping the Soviet Union.”
The Russian Orthodox prelate continued, “And
speaking of politics, what must the world think of those Roman Catholics who
suddenly have become lovers of peace. These
are the same priests who were so silent when their fascist friends were
killing women and children in Spain, when Hitler was
ravaging all of Europe, murdering millions of human beings by the
foulest of means. But now that the Red Army has snatched victory from defeat,
when the Soviet Union and her allies have brought fascism to its knees, these
once so silent Roman Catholics suddenly clamor for what they call a ;just peace.” (N.Y.
Times, April 9, 1945, p. 3, 6) C. L. Salzberger, the former publisher of the Times rightly observed, “The Soviet attitude toward the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church in general strikes most Americans as rather amazingly caustic and perhaps somewhat ludicrous when one considers that this is the largest state in the world and Vatican City is the smallest.” He reported the contents of an article published in the Communist Party magazine, Bolshevik, which made fantastic claims about the Vatican having marshaled the world’s Catholics into an immense international army financed by unlimited funds, guided by the bishops and clergy who served as Vatican spies around the globe. The pope was not neutral, the argument ran, but had intervened in purely political affairs, especially his support for the Fascist and Nazi governments. The Bolshevik claimed that the present pope, a friend of Germany, approved of Hitler and his policies. (N.Y. Times, April 17, 1945, p. 5, 1) The Times, here and whenever these false charges were made against the pope throughout the war, decried these Russian accusations as pure fantasy. As
the European war neared its conclusion, important international meetings were
being held in San Francisco to consider plans for post-war Europe.
The major question was Poland. Compromise
between Russia, the United States, and Great Britain was thought to be at hand
when sixteen leaders of the Polish underground, gathered in Moscow to confer
with Red Army chiefs and others, were arrested.
What was becoming clearer was that “the liaison between the Soviet
official mind and ours [the U.S.A. and Britain] is still pretty tenuous,” as
Anne McCormick wrote. It all
boiled down to the relationship between the United States and the Soviet
Union. Keeping
up its own pressure, Russia sent out other attacks against the Vatican.
In mid-May,
1945, Izvestia spoke of German war criminals it claimed the Vatican was
hiding or was treating leniently. “At
the head of these advocates stands the Vatican, which in the darkest years of
the war never raised its voice against Hitler’s barbarism.” (N.Y. Times,
May 14, 1945, p. 3, 1) In a radio broadcast inside Germany later in the month,
Moscow repeated its charge that “high standing officials connected with the
church are pro-Nazi.” Moscow
continued, “Pope Pius, in calling for mercy and a more forgiving attitude,
had not a word to say about the responsibility of those who had inundated the
world with blood and carried out the most monstrous of crimes.” (N.Y.
Times, May 26, 1945, p. 4, 5) On June 2, 1945, Pius XII addressed the Sacred College of Cardinals. It was time to set the public record straight, the pope told them. While the war had ended in one part of the world, grave perils still existed in Europe, not the least of them, a new communist tyranny. Among those perils were “. . . those mobs of dispossessed, disillusioned, disappointed, hopeless men who are going to swell the ranks of revolution and disorder in the pay of a tyranny no less despotic than those for whose overthrow men planned.” In
a clear reference to the control of the Soviet Union in eastern Europe, Pius
XII said that the people of smaller and medium sized nations “are entitled
to refuse to accept a new political or cultural system which is decisively
rejected by the great majority of their people.” (N.Y. Times, June 3,
1945, p. 1, 3) The pope reviewed the “sorrowful passion” of the Church
under Germany’s National Socialist regime, and hoped that Germany “can
rise to a new dignity and a new life after it has laid to rest the satanic
specter raised by National Socialism and the guilty have expiated the crimes
they have committed.” (ibid.) Speaking of the Church and the Nazi Regime during the war, the pope stated that, while the Church entered into a concordat with Germany, unable to avoid the invitation by Hitler, the Church did so in order to provide for itself some juridic protection from possible encroachment by the government. Despite this, the Church suffered great hardship as the Nazis pursued its plan to systematically destroy the Church. The
pope continued that the Church’s protests began with Pope Pius XI, who
constantly called for fidelity to one’s pledged word, after the concordat
had been broken repeatedly by Germany. Finally,
in 1937, his encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge” condemned the reality of
Hitler’s regime as “the arrogant apostasy from Jesus Christ, the denial of
His doctrine and of His work of redemption, the cult of violence, the idolatry
of race and blood, the overthrow of human liberty and dignity.” (ibid., p.
22) The world did not listen to the Church’s warning, the pope continued.
“But in any case nobody could accuse the church of not having denounced and
exposed in time the true nature of the National Socialist movement and the
danger to which it exposed Christian civilization.” (ibid.)
Pius XI was clear in his encyclical: “‘Whoever sets up race or
people or the state or a particular form of state or the depositaries’ power
or any other fundamental value of the human community to be the supreme norm
of all, even of religious values, and divinizes them to an idolatrous level
distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God.’”
Pius XII continued, “The radical opposition of the National Socialist State
to the Catholic Church is summed up in this declaration of the encyclical. When things had reached this point the Church could not
without foregoing her mission any longer refuse to take her stand before the
whole world.” (ibid.) “But by doing so she became once again ‘a sign that shall be contradicted’ (Luke 2, 34), in the presence of which contrasting opinions divided off into two opposed camps.” The year of the encyclical, 1937, began the violence against the Church in Nazi Germany. The next two years, and throughout the war, National Socialists”still flattered themselves with the idea that once they had secured victory in arms they could do away with the church forever.” Plans and more intense activity to destroy the Church continued, especially of late in Austria, Alsace Lorraine and, “above all, in those parts of Poland which had already been incorporated in the old Reich during the war: there everything was attacked and destroyed; that is, everything that could be reached by external violence.” The
pope wrote, “Continuing the work of our predecessor, we ourselves have during the war and especially in our radio messages constantly set forth the demands and perennial laws of humanity and of the Christian faith in contrast with the ruinous and inexorable application of national socialist teachings, which even went so far as to use the most exquisite scientific methods to torture or eliminate people who were often innocent.” (ibid., p. 22) Such
suffering alone convinced people to listen to the Church. The Christmas
message of 1942, in particular, was studied widely in Germany, “despite
every prohibition and obstacle.” The witness of thousands of Roman Catholics interned in
prisons and camps is before us, whose only crime was fidelity to Christ. Those
who suffered most were the Polish priests: From 1940-1945 approximately 2,800
Polish ecclesiastics and religious were imprisoned in Dachau.
By April, 1945, only 816 survived. Priests from dioceses in Bavaria,
the Rhineland, and Westphalia, as well as from the occupied territories of
Holland, Belgium, France, Slovenia and Italy had died in the death camps. Pius
XII concluded, “Poor world to which might be applied the words of Christ: ‘And the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.’ (Luke, 11, 24-26). “The present political and social situation suggests these words of warning to us. We have had, alas, to deplore in more than one region the murder of priests, deportations of civilians, the killing of citizens without trial or in personal vendetta. No less sad is the news that has reached us from Slovenia and Croatia.” |
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Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII The Moral Order and the Human Person War on the Church
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