Picking on the Wrong Popes
Benedict XVI
There’s been a little controversy wending its way through the blogosphere about a Flash animation entitled “Old Habits Die Hard”. It shows the Pope giving the Blessed Mother a Nazi salute.
“Heil Mary!” It’s a cute pun. I won’t link to it.
Thing is, any sacreligion aside, Pope Benedict XVI is among the people least deserving of such a treatment. As Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, he was the friend who encouraged John Paul II’s historic rapprochement with the Jewish people, and was the theologian to whom the late Pope repeatedly turned to work out the details.
It’s not like it was an isolated thing, either. He has a long-standing reputation as a friend of the Jewish people, and his election to the Papacy was widely praised by (among others) the Anti-Defamation League and the Jerusalem Post [free registration required, unfortunately].
Well, yeah, but he was still a Hitler Youth, wasn’t he? That makes him fair game for a Nazi joke, surely.
Ehhhh…
I’m assuming most people didn’t want to jump through the registration hoops, so I’ll quote from the JPost article (titled ??Ratzinger a Nazi? Don’t believe it??):
Ratzinger has several times gone on record on his supposedly “problematic” past. In the 1997 book Salt of the Earth, Ratzinger is asked whether he was ever in the Hitler Youth.
“At first we weren’t,” he says, speaking of himself and his older brother, “but when the compulsory Hitler Youth was introduced in 1941, my brother was obliged to join. I was still too young, but later as a seminarian, I was registered in the Hitler Youth. As soon as I was out of the seminary, I never went back. And that was difficult because of the tuition reduction, which I really needed, was tied to proof of attendance at the Hitler Youth.
“Thank goodness there was a very understanding mathematics professor. He himself was a Nazi, but an honest man, and said to me, ‘Just go once to get the document so we have it…’ When he saw that I simply didn’t want to, he said, ‘I understand, I’ll take care of it’ and so I was able to stay free of it.”
I’d feel bad making Nazi jokes about the guy. He was hardly a willing participant, even if in his tender youth he never annoyed the Nazi authorities quite enough to earn him a place in the concentration camps.
Pius XII
But he’s not the only undeserving Pope to receive the Treatment.
I was rather shocked when I started learning about the things Pope Pius XII did to save Jews during World War II.
Eugenio Pacelli is often called “Hitler’s Pope” today.
He was anything but.
Through diplomatic pressure alone, he was able to end the Nazi manhunt for the Jews of Rome. Through his subordinates throughout Europe, he organized a vast escape network that saved many, many lives.
Jews were sheltered in monasteries and converts, churches and rectories, the offices of the Vatican, and even in the Pope’s own summer home.
Baptismal documents were drawn up to enable them to travel in the guise of Gentiles, and hundreds of thousands made their way to safety through the Pope’s Twentieth-Century Pan-European Underground Railroad.
After the end of the war, he was publically praised by Jewish leaders around the world.
In fact, the Chief Rabbi of Rome (Israel Zoller) was so deeply moved by the Pope’s efforts that he _converted to the Catholic Church and took the name Eugenio_.
And the criticism leveled at Pius XII today? Whilst the other things are forgotten? He refused to actually make a public statement against the Nazi atrocities.
In some cases (like in France) the public protests of bishops did serve to slow the Nazi machine, but in many cases it was less than successful.
For instance, when the bishops protested the deportation of Holland’s Jews to the concentration camps, Hitler responded by also deporting Catholic converts from Judaism (to make the point, Protestant converts were left alone).
I can understand why Pius XII might not have wanted to take that kind of risk.
Words are cheap. Sometimes it’s better to let your actions do the talking. I would certainly be hard-pressed to call him complicit in Hitler’s murder of Jews.
So, if someone out there is going to pick on a Pope for being anti-Semetic, could you please pick on one of the ones that actually deserved it?