Not Hitler’s Pope
October 2000
By Vincent A. Lapomarda
Rev. Vincent A. Lapomarda, S.J., is Coordinator of the Holocaust
Collection at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.
Hitler, the War, and the Pope. By Ronald J. Rychlak.
Genesis Press (662-329-9927). 493 pages. $26.95.
The arguments for and against Pope Pius XII’s role during the Holocaust
of World War II have been circulating since the publication of Rolf
Hochhuth’s play, The Deputy (1963), down through John Cornwell’s
polemic, Hitler’s Pope (1999). At this stage of the controversy, if
recent publications are indicative, it is clear that the debate on Pius
will not end quickly. This work by Ronald J. Rychlak, a professor at the
University of Mississippi Law School, is one of the most solid
presentations published by a scholar since Michael O’Carroll’s study on
Pope Pius XII twenty years ago.
Rychlak, of course, is no stranger to the controversy surrounding Pope
Pius XII. (In the Oct. 1998 issue of the NOR, he wrote a challenging
piece, “Why Pope Pius XII Was Right,” which readers may recall.)
Approaching his study as a lawyer and a historian, his primary concern
is to employ objective evidence as the fundamental criterion in dealing
with the issues relating to his subject. Whether or not readers
ultimately agree with Rychlak’s conclusions, the book is clearly a
carefully crafted historical analysis of the controversy. Unlike
Cornwell, Rychlak delves into sources favorable and unfavorable to Pius
XII. Thus, he establishes his credibility as a historian by gathering
and evaluating all the available sources before presenting his own
version of what actually happened.
The book begins with a Foreword by the late John Cardinal O’Connor of
New York, who offers a strong defense of Pius XII, and concludes with an
epilogue on Cornwell’s recent diatribe against the Pope. Rychlak sets up
a chronological analysis of the papacy of Pius XII and comes to grips
with the basic questions that have been raised, especially over the past
generation, regarding the Pope’s place in history. In doing so, the
author integrates significant primary sources, including the works
published by the Holy See, and authoritative secondary sources,
including works by Jewish historians Pinchas Lapide and Jeno Levai, in
addition to Catholic historians such as Pierre Blet, Robert Graham, and
Margherita Marchione. What is particularly enriching about Rychlak’s
study, when compared to Cornwell’s book with its 25 pages of notes, is
that it contains more than 170 pages numbering in excess of 2,000
endnotes. In this respect, then, Rychlak’s is a very serious,
systematic, scholarly study in contrast to what the English journalist
Cornwell has produced.
“To evaluate properly his performance,” Rychlak writes of Pius XII, “one
must begin by looking at all the evidence in context.” To this end, 18
chapters concentrate on the background of Eugenio Pacelli, the future
Pope Pius XII, and the world into which he was born during the 19th
century. The author then shows the relationship of this papal diplomat
to the Vatican, and of this state to the world powers in the 20th
century. Such chapters help the reader understand the complexity of the
problems that confronted Pacelli during his papacy, especially during
the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Unlike many historians who have studied the period, Rychlak does not
lose sight of the struggle for survival in which the Church was engaged
against the Nazis, who were bent on wiping out Christianity itself. In
this way, the author gives a balanced presentation of what the Church
under Pius was able — and unable — to do in confronting Hitler’s reign
of terror. While Rychlak’s statistics on what the Church suffered during
the war might differ, documents show that some 4,000 priests were killed
by the Nazis, including at least 850 Poles at Dachau, about 780 from
various nations at Mauthausen, not to mention another 120 shot in
France. At the same time, one cannot overlook the more than 230 women
religious who were murdered and many more who were imprisoned in
concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Ravensbruck, including almost
400 nuns at Bajanowo. And all this does not include the Nazi harassment
of the Catholic clergy, laity, and religious as well as the closing of
Catholic schools before World War II, violations which occasioned the
rebuke of Pope Pius XI in Mit Brennender Sorge (March 14, 1937), an
encyclical composed under the direction of Pacelli as Papal Secretary of
State.
With such an appreciation of the depth and breadth of the struggle
between Catholicism and Nazism, which included the destruction of
churches, convents, and schools during the war, Rychlak confronts the
major issues that relate to Pope Pius XII. On the one hand, he shows
that Pius (1) was not anti-Semitic, (2) was not a blind anti-Communist,
(3) was not a creature in the hands of Hitler, (4) was not an appeaser
in the pursuit of peace, and (5) was not afraid to risk his life for the
Church. On the other hand, the author establishes that the Pope (1) was
knowledgeable of the Final Solution during the war, (2) was wise to
avoid issuing a public condemnation of the persecution of the Jews, (3)
was convinced that the best way to help the Jews was to avoid a public
display of his actions, (4) was more helpful than any other
international agency, person, or state in helping the Jews during the
Holocaust, and (5) was correct in not excommunicating the Nazi leader.
What is truly illuminating about Rychlak’s study is that he focuses on
the significance (in a section he calls “The Real Answer”) of the Pope’s
first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus (October 20, 1939), and how it told
the world about the papal plan of action during the war. In particular,
with respect to the Jews, his paragraphs dealing with race (nos. 45 to
50) show that the Church is open to all nationalities and races
according to the teachings of the New Testament, as expressed by St.
Paul himself (Col. 3:10,11). In light of the controversy over the “lost”
encyclical on anti-Semitism, which Jesuits such as John LaFarge and his
European colleagues had drafted for Pope Pius XI, readers may be
surprised to learn that Pius XII actually integrated parts of that draft
into his own first encyclical, excluding, understandably, its racist and
anti-Semitic statements that characterized the position of many
Catholics at that time. In this way, the Pope was demonstrating the
Vatican’s regard not only for those who were Catholic but also for those
who were not. In fact, a closer reading of the encyclical reveals that,
contrary to Pacelli’s detractors, Pius was very concerned with the way
in which both the Communists and the Nazis had carved up Poland (nos.
101-106). And, with respect to the Nazi leader himself, to use Rychlak’s
own words about Summi Pontificatus, “This encyclical shows that Pius XII
did not waiver in his approach to Hitler and the Nazis.”
Despite the Pope’s critics, it is clear that the Nazis did not think
that the Pope was silent about the fate of the Jews. Even though Pius
avoided an explicit public condemnation of their actions, they got the
message of his implicit condemnation when the Pope spoke in defense of
those who were being persecuted because of their race or nationality in
his 1941 and 1942 messages at Christmas. Even the priests imprisoned at
Dachau felt the reprisals for the Pope’s words in more severe treatment
at the hands of SS agents in the concentration camp. No less a witness
that Bishop Jean Bernard of Luxembourg, a prisoner at Dachau, gave such
testimony in his personal memoir of those years. If Cornwell’s book
makes Pacelli out to be a pawn in the hands of Hitler, Rychlak’s
analysis of the evidence and its relationship to the issues raised by
the controversy over Pope Pius XII finds no basis for such an
interpretation.
In fact, to strengthen his own study of Pius XII, Rychlak brings
Cornwell’s work under close scrutiny and demonstrates conclusively that
its author is totally lacking in credibility. “To reach his
conclusions,” he states, “Cornwell disregards much recent scholarship
and provides quirky interpretations of well-known facts.” While Rychlak
carefully demonstrates the various ways in which Hitler’s Pope has not
proven its case against Pius XII, he uses his skill as a professor of
law to expose the many shortcomings of Cornwell’s alleged research into
the many pages available from the transcripts in the Vatican office of
Fr. Peter Gumpel, S.J., the deputy postulator in the cause of Pius XII.
Thus, with a chart in his concluding chapter, Rychlak shows how
Cornwell’s allegation of “explosively critical material” is a distorted
reading of Vatican depositions about Pacelli and how these transcripts
are objectively quite contrary to the picture of Pius XII that one finds
in Hitler’s Pope.
Consequently, with his legal expertise, Rychlak has proved to be a
formidable historian by skillfully refuting those who have gained
headlines by attacking Pius XII without solid evidence. The style of
Rychlak’s book might seem too polemical for some readers, but they need
to remember the explosive nature of the controversy and the seriousness
of the issues that have surrounded Pius XII during these last forty
years. Anyone who reads Hitler, the War, and the Pope will find that it
moves along swiftly without the distraction of footnotes; instead, the
reader may refer to the endnotes at the back of the book.
Certainly Rychlak’s study can be regarded as one of a handful of
essential studies on the role of Pius XII during the Second World War.
If Lapide was able to show that the Pope saved from 700,000 to 860,000
Jews, Rychlak must be recognized for providing solid evidence from
Jewish and non-Jewish sources contemporaneous with the Second World War,
in addition to those published afterwards, acknowledging the efforts by
the Church under Pius XII to help persecuted Jews. Therefore, Rychlak’s
study should help to defuse the uproar which has intensified during the
past year over Pius XII and the Holocaust and to introduce more reason
than emotion into the discussion of the major issues of his papacy and
the cause for his beatification.
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