Friday, April 18, 2008

What's worse than genocide?

The pope is in NY, so in his honor let's play a little guessing game.

Benedict's predecessor, the very far from great Pius 12, excommunicated every single communist in the world. He did this with one stroke of his pen in 1949.

Pius 12, as you know, was also Pope during the Nazi years. Many of the highest ranking Nazis were themselves confessing Catholics, but, with one exception, the pope never excommunicated a single one of them -- even after 1942 when he, and his palace city were safely in Allied hands. Who was the exception? Joseph Goebbels. Can you guess what Goebbels did to offend the Pope? What was the crime Goebbels committed, the crime that, in the eyes of the Holy See, invited a response and a punishment even genocide did not demand.

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