Note from the Managing Editor:

Unexpectedly, a good friend remarked that as a Catholic one thing she just couldn't get over was the fact that during World War II, Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church remained largely passive and hadn't raised serious objections or resistance to the attrocities of Hitler and the Nazis.

That assertion was a perfect platform for me to speak up because the statement is an utter calumny and easily refuted.

After the war numerous Jewish leaders, including Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Moshe Sharett, and Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog expressed their public gratitude to Pius XII, praising him as a "righteous gentile" who had saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.

By issuing false baptismal certificates to Jews, disguising some in cassocks and hiding others in cloistered monasteries and convents it is estimated that somewhere between 700,000 and 800,000 Jewish lives were saved by the direct intervention of Church authorities under the guidance of the Pope.  Hundreds were taken into the Vatican itself where they were hidden from Nazi authorities.

No one did more to save Jews during World War II than Pope Pius XII.

Albert Einstein, himself a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, paid tribute to the moral "courage" of Pope Pius and the Catholic Church in opposing "the Hitlerian onslaught" on liberty with this statement:

Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced.  Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom: but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks.  Only the Catholic Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth.  I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom.  I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly.

Pope Pius XII didn't speak out as boldly as some think he should have, but there were good reasons why he preferred to work behind the scenes and speak only when it would do more good than harm.  See here.

To read more about this, go here and here. - J. Fraser Field

New Resources

		The Last Condition Is Worse Than the First - Father Alfred Delp, S.J. - from Advent of the Heart: Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings There are moments in every person's life when we are filled with self-disgust.
		Richard Wilbur Remembered - James Matthew Wilson - The Weekly Standard Until his death on October 14, Richard Wilbur had spent nearly half a century as America's greatest living poet.
		Talk to Your Father - Anthony Esolen - Crisis In a recent article for Crisis, I took to task Fr. James Martin, S.J., for calling it a cause for celebration, when a teenage boy declared to his father, on Thanksgiving, that he was a homosexual.
		Which Reformation? What Reform? - George Weigel - The Catholic Difference There were, in short, multiple Reformations.  Their sometimes-violent interaction created much of what became the modern world, for good and for ill.
		Blessed John Henry Newman - John Janaro - Magnificat John Henry Newman was not without the witness and companionship of others in his own conversion.
		Why Nothing is Sacred Anymore - John Horvat II - Crisis Magazine Recently, the word "sacred" was in the news.
		When spiritual desolation hits, here's how to fight back - Father Robert McTeigue, S.J. - Aleteia Difficult times are also opportunities for us to strengthen the musculature of our faith.
		A history not ardently pursued - Father George W. Rutler - From the Pastor Celebrating the bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989 was awkward and unlike our nation's festivities of 1976, because the American Revolution did not have a Reign of Terror.

Editorials of Interest:

Editorials of Interest