Throwing down the gauntlet

Shmarya,

In your most recent comment on my blog, you are maddengly brief: "You really need to recheck your facts, DB," you say. But which facts?

On both your blog and mine, I've provided a long list of facts about Pius 12. What follows are brief summaries of some of the more pertinent and damning points:

* Pius 12 played host to the mini-Hitler Ante Pavelic on several occasions, and ultimately gave this master of genocide santuary within the Vatican.

* He negotiated a treaty with Nazi Germany in 1933 as Vatican Secretary of State, a treaty which legitimized Hitler and contained an annex that granted some small protections to Jews who had converted to Catholicism but explicitly defined the fate of unconverted Jews as Germany's "internal affair," about which the Church would have nothing to say.

* He threw a holy fit about the German euthenasia program, and I've quoted to you from the official Vatican statement that unequivocally condemned the killing of “life unworthy of life.” This decree went into every diocese in Germany, and was favorably and publicly commented on by the German bishops, but nothing like it was ever offered by the Vatican or the German bishops on behalf of the Jews.

* He publicly protested the German invasion of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, with separate telegrams to the sovereigns of each (and printed in large type on the front page of the Vatican's official daily newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano) but no public protest at all was ever uttered about the slaughter of Jews.

* He excommunicated all Communists in the world in 1949, including millions who never shed blood, but never excommunicated a single German or non-German who served Hitler-- or even the Catholic-born Hitler, Himmler and Goebels themselves.

* And most damning of all, he sat quietly during one horrible October night while 4000 Jews were taken from within sight of his bedroom window. The very best that can be said Pius's conduct during this affair is that his Secretary of State Luigi Maglinoe delivered a weak and simpering message* to the German ambassador, but what good was that? After the meeting 1000 more Jews were taken!

Tell me Shmarya which of these facts are in dispute?

XXOO
DovBear

PS: Additionally, it somehow escaped my memory during our previous correspondance that Pius 12 also instructed the Catholic church in France not to return baptized Jewish children to their families after the Holocaust, according to a letter dated November 20, 1946.

* Would you like to read Maglione's own notes of this meeting? They are published on page 525 and 526 of Constantine's Sword by James Carroll. You can read them using Amazon.com's "Search Inside the Book" function.