From: Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Killer Bs Discussion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mussolini asked Pope to excommunicate Hitler Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 08:33:04 -0500
At 08:02 AM 9/29/03 -0500, The Fool wrote:<<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$G2QVPZSCUP2LZQFIQM GSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2003/09/27/wpope27.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/09/27/ ixportal.html>>
Mussolini asked Pope to excommunicate Hitler By Bruce Johnston in Rome (Filed: 27/09/2003)
The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini asked the Pope to excommunicate Adolf Hitler days before the German leader went to Rome to seal the Axis in 1938, according to a newly discovered Vatican document.
The only other way of stopping Hitler was to wage war, an option that was "not wanted", Mussolini is reported as saying.
<snip>
I'm not sure what the point of the article is supposed to be. Is the author claiming that excommunicating Hitler would have stopped WWII and the Holocaust (something I have doubts about), and so those can be blamed on Pope Pius XI instead, or that Mussolini knew the Pope well enough to ask him to do that (not necessarily surprising, given the location of the Vatican), or is it something else?
Sin of omission: the author completely ignored the 3 million Catholics who were killed by the Nazis in order to make his point.
The way I read this article: By not excommunicating Hitler, the Pope was (and through his example all Catholic Christians were) demonstrating passive support for him.
IMO, this is a very important point. The Church has defended Pope Pius recently each time someone accuses him of being silent on this issue and not speaking out or taking action against the Nazis. (Most recently when the new Holocaust Museum in downtown NY criticized Pius.) The Church's defenders point to an address the Pope gave in 1938 explaining that Christians are spiritually Semites and therefore should not partake in anti-semitism. They point out that the Pope was afraid of retaliation by a Nazi party that tolerated no dissenting statements. IIRC, various papal bulls were even ignored by the Germans when they were released.
Yet why didn't the Pope go further when he had the opportunity? He is the spiritual leader and example to millions of Christians. Wouldn't stopping the outright slaughter of millions of people be a worthy cause for the Church to rally behind? It seems to me as if they dropped the ball.
I do recognize that there is a certain ease in playing armchair quarterback 60 years later. The reality of the situation during WWII was probably much more complex and precarious for the Church than I'm implying.
Jon
Le Blog: http://zarq.livejournal.com
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