Forget Ratzinger, PiusXII WAS a Nazi enabler!

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/pius.html

<snip>
"Numerous documents demonstrated that the Pope was well-informed about the full extent of the Nazi's anti-Semitic practices. A letter from Konrad von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin, that proved that the Pope was aware of the situation as early as January of 1941, particularly caught the attention of the commission. In that letter, Preysing confirms that "Your Holiness is certainly informed about the situation of the Jews in Germany and the neighboring countries. I wish to mention that I have been asked both from the Catholic and Protestant side if the Holy See could not do something on this subject...in favor of these unfortunates." The letter, which was a direct appeal to the Pope himself, without intermediaries, provoked no response. In 1942, an even more compelling eyewitness account of the mass-murder of Jews in Lwow was sent to the Pope by an archbishop; this, too, garnered no response."
<snip>

opposed the "final solution." They did nothing to try to stop it.

Just wondering.

Thats all!

so yeah, all of the world didn't know but the Pope magically did. God must have told him.

against Kerry and thos who vote for him.
The Man had a lot of power in mainly-catholic Europe and he could have made a difference.

I am not talking about the other crap the Catholic church pulled. I am saying there was nothing he could have done and he certainly didn't know Germans were killing Jews on a regular basis; nobody around the world did.

Mussolini, Hitlers butt-boy, ruled Italy and was a major force in the church and their policies at that time.
He knew!

Come on people, lets get real here. The world, which has much better intelligence collecting didn't know, I don't know how it is reasonable to think the Vatican knew and did nothing.

a Vatican apologist.
MANY knew exactly what the Nazis were doing.

That I am not.

However, I am a defender from unfair, biased, Hannity-like criticism.

Ratzinger's letter to the U.S. Bishops actually helped Kerry. The Vatican did not consider it a sin to support him, which the repukes desperately wanted the Vatican to say. Bush went to the Vatican trying to get the Pope's backing and the Pope instead lectured him on the evils of the war.

The twisted interpretation of Radzinger's letter was used by some of the Catholic leadership, but not all. The Vatican's position was "if a Catholic thinks a candidate's positions on other issues outweigh the difference on abortion, a vote for that candidate would not be considered sinful."

Most priests misinterpreted this message (as did the yahoo story that has been all over the threads in the last couple of days). That was not Ratzinger's or the Vatican's position.

Cardinal Ratzinger's note underlined the principles involved for the Catholic voter.

"A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia," Cardinal Ratzinger wrote.

"When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons," he said.

http://www.jknirp.com/thavis3.htm

In other words, if a Catholic thinks a candidate's positions on other issues outweighed the difference on abortion, a vote for that candidate would not be considered sinful. (eg voting against Bush because of the war, his stance on capital punishment, his lack of support for social programs that help the less fortunate survive, his lack of health care for those in need, his support of torture and his endorsement of those that crafted the torture policy, et cetera.)

After I read it all the way through it became clearer because I really didn't know if the current pope actually tryed to influence an election or not.

Perhaps Cardinal Ratzinger should have included the sins of the BFEE in his statement as well as long as he was bringing up the presence of proportionate reasons.

There were more reasons to vote FOR Kerry and AGAINST Bush, proportionately speaking.

Had his good and bad points regarding his relationship with Nazi Germany. At least in 1943, when the Germans were starting to deport Italian Jews, the Vatican finally got involved.

Hell, it only took them 4 years and the deaths of several million non-Italians Jews, to finally jump into the fray.

I am not so sure it was the Italian Jews being deported that caused Pius XII to change his tune or the sound of footsteps?

Don

wrong is right. The pope was supposed to be God's spokesman on earth. If he said nothing, can it be inferred that God approved of the death of his chosen people? The pope cannot be excused from inaction. He is there to do right, to lead right and do justice. He cannot be a man of god and ignore what is happening no matter the cost. Jesus supposedly died for our sins and for our lives. The pope should have done something, damn the cost to his art collection and his churches. Are things more important than people? Apparently so.

I am impressed when someone can do that.

Don

Despicable

The Catholic Church's primary goal during WWII was to avoid interference by the Nazi's in the Church's affairs. They were willing to even tolerate some priests being taken off to concentration camps.

The Catholic Church's rare bravery was in speaking up against the Nazi's killing of retarded persons -- they did that because some of the retarded persons were from Catholic families. The Church felt that if they spoke up for the Jews and other persecuted people, the Nazis would start closing down Catholic churches and organizations. They felt that the persecution would eventually stop, but that the Catholic Church must be there for centuries.

I'm sure there was chatter throughout Europe.

Jews in Italy. They did issue public statements condemning Nazi ideology. But they did not excommunicate Hitler or the other Nazi leadership. They did not take steps that may have resulted in the hierarchy themselves being put into the camps. The Catholic Church as well as the Protestant Churches cooperated with the Nazis by supplying baptismal records (necessary for establishing membership in the Aryan race), although some bishops resisted.

The West (Chamberlain in particular) also did not move to stop the Nazis, when it would have been much easier to do so. When the Nazis moved into the Czech Republic, the Czechs were willing to fight, they had a modern army and the benefits of a mountainous terrain to defend. But the West decided to avoid a general war and refused to defend the Czechs. After the end of WWII, German generals testified that had the British and French entered the war, they were not in a position to prevail. Such a failure would have brought down the Nazis. During the war, the West did not divert any resources (bombers) to destroying the camps, when they were well-understood to be killing factories.

At least the machinery of death would have been slowed. But oil fields & ball bearing factories were more important.

And how many Jewish refugees were refused admittance to the US--even after the beginning of the war in Europe?

I have just finished reading the following post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3522882&mesg_id=3522882

It would seem that virtually every prominent Jewish leader and spokesman in the world holds or held an opinion to the contrary.

FDR was closer to a Nazi enabler than Pius XII was. Let's look back at the times to judge him. Everyone from the Nazis to the Americans thought Pius XII was against the Nazis.

Hitler himself said, " is the only human being who has always contradicted me and who has never obeyed me."

Goebbels wrote, "It's a dirty, low thing to do for the Catholic Church to continue its subversive activity in every way possible and now even to extend its propaganda to Protestant children evacuated from the regions threatened by air raids. Next to the Jews these politico-divines are about the most loathsome riffraff that we are still sheltering in the Reich. The time will come after the war for an over-all solution of this problem." (Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, 1948, p. 146)

You are judging Pius based on faulty information and the fact that some cardinals and bishops happened to support the Nazis out of fear of the Communists. However, Pius was not responsible for their actions. Pius denounced all the violence in Europe, but when he denounced the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands, the deportation to the camps just sped up.

Rabbi David Dalin
http://www.catholicleague.org/pius/dalinframe.htm

Catholic archival evidence
http://www.catholicleague.org/research/pius_archival_evidence.htm

at the time, religious or secular, that saved more Jews from the holocaust. Make your list so we can all see it.

"His speech is one long attack on everything we stand for…he is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews…he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals."

what you get from some people concerning accusations or generalizations. There are always people around you that know what the truth is.