The case against Pius 12

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There's been some loose Twitter talk lately about how Pius 12 is again on the verge of being canonized. The Church, of course, can do what it likes, but canonizing Pius 12 would demonstrate that the stain of Jew hatred that the church wore for nearly 2000 years remains intact and is perhaps indelible. 

Read on for the case against Pius 12 in brief.

Scholars have documented that Pius 12's crimes include an overeadiness in 1933 to negotiate a Nazi-legitimizing Reichkonkordat. They include his 1939 cancellation of his predecessor's encyclical condemning Nazi anti-Semtism, and his failure to mention the Jews - or even the Nazis - in his Christmas message of 1942. They include his many meetings with Ustashi leaders, including at least one - the mini-Hitler Ante Pavelic - who was given sanctuary in the Vatican after the war.

And even that's not all!

As Daniel Goldhagen has famously asked:

• Why, as a moral or practical matter, did Pius XII excommunicate all Communists in the world in 1949, including millions who never shed blood, but not excommunicate a single German or non-German who served Hitler-- or even the Catholic-born Hitler, Himmler and Goebels themselves?
• Why did the Church hold a special memorial service for Adolf Hitler?
• Why did Pius XII encourage the clergy to speak out against the Nazis' murder of the mentally ill and yet remain silent about the killing of Jews?
• Why did Pius XII intervene in Germany on behalf of Catholics who had converted from Judaism but not on behalf of Jews?
• Why did Pius XII protest the Germans' 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 not the Germans' slaughter of the Jews?
• Why didn't he ever instruct preists and nuns to give sanctuary to the Jews?
• Why didn't he ever instruct local parishes to destroy the baptismal records the Nazis used to identify Jews

In a nutshell, Pius originally viewed Hitler as a reactionary Catholic who would put the Jews back in their place, an outcome Pius desired. Yellow stars, ghettos, the removal of Jews from public life -- these were all originally Church practices, practices that were finally abolished by enlightenment era liberals. Of course, Pius wanted them restored, and he thought Hitler was the man to do it.
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