Monthly Archive for March, 2010

Pedophilia is just the latest and most visible in a long list of transgressions from the Catholic Church. These days the Vatican is facing legal action in Kentucky for child abuse cases by Catholic priests, and the ensuing cover up from the Catholic hierarchy including, allegedly, by Cardinal Ratzinger (today’s Pope Benedict).

I believe enterprising attorneys could and should widen the scope to include previous transgressions, particularly those that lead to the commitment of heinous crimes during the Holocaust. In my book “Six Million Crucifixions” I make a legal analysis of the various counts a potential indictment against the Church, the Vatican and members of the clergy might have looked like, had the Allies set up an international trial styled after Nuremberg and put any clergy guilty of crimes on the dock. In particular, an indictment might have included the following charges:

* Defamation

* Incitement

* Complicity in human rights violations

* Accessory or complicity in crimes against humanity

* Failure to warn/act

* Obstruction of Justice

* Profiting from stolen property

* Abuse of diplomatic privileges

* Crimes against humanity

I think it’s time to revisit the role of the Church in the Holocaust and its aftermath, and do it quickly as Pope Benedict is attempting to whitewash history by canonizing Pope Pius XII, while the Vatican Secret Archives covering the Nazi era remain closed and will continue to remain closed for another five years.

The Vatican did not see the foundation of the State of Israel “with mixed feelings”, as Mordechai Lewy is quoted to have said in a Jerusalem Post article. The Vatican had a clear position, and that was in opposition to the Zionist movement in principle, and the establishment of a Jewish state in the Holy Land in practice. Even at the beginning of the Zionist movement, when the father of the movement Theodor Herzl met with the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry del Val in 1904 asking for Vatican help to establish a Jewish homeland, the Cardinal told Herzl: “I do not quite see how we can take any initiative in this matter. As long as the Jews deny the divinity of Christ, we certainly cannot make a declaration in their favor. Not that we have any ill will toward them . . . The history of Israel is our own heritage, it is our own foundation. But in order for us to come out for the Jewish people in the way you desire, they would first have to be converted.” Herzl then met with Pope Pius X, who did not recognize the right of the Jews to exist as Jews: “The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people . . . The Jewish religion was the foundation of our own; but it was superseded by the teachings of Christ, and we cannot concede it any fur-ther validity.”

Justifying Vatican opposition to Jewish emigration to Palestine during the Holocaust, Undersecretary of State Tardini reveals in an internal Vatican memo: “The Holy See has never approved of the project of making Palestine a Jewish home . . . [because] Palestine is by now holier for Catholics than for Jews.” In the midst of the exterminatory campaign against European Jews, Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione said in opposition to the possibility of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine that Catholics had a right to the holy places, and that their “religious feelings would be injured and they would justly feel for their rights if Palestine belonged exclusively to the Jews.”

Even after the war, when the extent of the genocide became widely known, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano published an article opposing the formation of the secular, Jewish State of Israel: “Modern Israel is not the true heir of Biblical Israel, but a secular state . . . Therefore the Holy Land and its sacred sites belong to Christianity, the True Israel.” Also, perpetuating the deicide charge, a high Vatican official is reputed to have said at the time of the founding of the state that “it is unthinkable that the Holy Land finds itself in the hands of Christ’s murderers.”

The Vatican would continue in its refusal to recognize the State of Israel until 1993, 45 years after its founding and 14 years after its greatest foe, Egypt, had recognized its right to exist in 1979. The Vatican was one of the last states in the world to do so.

At a time in which the Vatican refuses to open the files of the Vatican Secret Archives containing the documents covering Pius XII’s pontificate, it’s impossible for scholars to assess with any level of accuracy what the Pope’s role really was during the war. The Pope’s apologists claim he was a man devoted to saving all the people opressed and persecuted by the Germans, including Jews, while many more claim the Pope was aloof, more preoccupied with avoiding a bombardment of Rome during the war and preserving the concordat with Germany after it, than with protecting the lives of six million Jews. Maybe the documentation in the Secret Archives will show otherwise, but of the eleven volumes of documents of the war period the Vatican published a few decades ago precisely to counter claims that Pius XII did not do enough, scantly any really show him doing so. Until this matter is settled any attempt of the Church to canonize the wartime pope will be rightly seen as a further attempt to whitewash the role of the Church during the war.