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Title: The Defamation of Pius XII by Ralph M. McInerny, Ralph McLnerny ISBN: 1-890318-66-3 Publisher: Saint Augustine's Pr Pub. Date: February, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.67 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Worth the Read
Comment: The past few years have seen book after book critical of Pope Pius XII, and behind almost every one of them was a larger attack on the papacy and the Catholic Church. The culmination is Daniel Goldhagen's hate-filled A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair. Fortunately, there are also occasional books that offer more insight than hate. The Defamation of Pius XII is a fine contribution from Ralph McInerny, professor of philosophy and head of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame.
McInerny offers a vigorous "defense" (though neither he nor I like that word in this context) of Pius XII as a holy and courageous leader who was responsible, directly and indirectly, for saving 860,000 Jews from the Holocaust. He goes on to note that the evidence for this truth is massive, the testimonies are many, and the facts are incontestable.
For McInerny, then, the question is not whether Pius XII acted heroically during World War II. That is certain. The question becomes: Why is this good man being defamed? Who are the people devoted to besmirching Pius XII's reputation, and what are they really after?
McInerny makes abundantly clear that the real subject of attack is the Catholic Church and her unchanging moral doctrine, especially on all matters sexual. The animus of the (mostly Catholic) authors is directed as much against Paul VI and John Paul II as it is against Pius XII. McInerny calls these writers: "Catholic anti-Catholics" because they call themselves Catholic despite their denial of central dogmas of the faith. On this list, McInerny would place former seminarians John Cornwell and Gary Wills, Father John F. Morley, and former priest James Carroll.
McInerny is dismayed that some Jewish writers have also joined in the defamation. Analyzing this, he advanced a position that virtually all other supporters of Pius XII have avoided. He raises questions about what certain Jewish leaders, particularly Zionists, did or did not do to help save other Jews during the war. In fact, McInerny concludes that Jewish leadership today is not in a moral position to criticize the much bolder and more effective actions of Pius XII and the Catholic Church.
McInerny lays out his case clearly and convincingly, as his well-written book moves, year by year, through World War II. While he did not do new archival work, he refers to newspaper accounts of the time and stresses the importance of listening to the contemporaneous voices-many of them from within the Jewish community-that praised Pius XII during and after the war. He shows that no other person or group accomplished anything close to what Pope Pius XII and his nuncios did during the war.
I was not certain about McInery's observations regarding the defamation campaign until I read Goldhagen's Moral Reckoning, but that convinced me. The attacks against Pius cannot be explained by new evidence or honest variations in historical accounts. There is something else at work here, and it is very troubling. It is, in fact, nothing short of a campaign to defame the papacy and to portray the Church of Christ as the enemy of mankind. Read McInerny's book.
Ronald J. Rychlak
Rating: 1
Summary: Waste of time
Comment: This book is very weak. What is wanted is a book of historical scholarship to make the case that Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) was not what his detractors have said about him, but there is no such scholarship here. (The dust jacket says McInerny is the author of 100 books of philosophy and fiction; I don't know which of those genres this book purports to be, but it is NOT historical scholarship.) The author cites either to secondary sources, or more frequently to no sources at all, in making his defense of Pius XII. Here are a few examples of the shortcomings of the book: First, relying on Catholic bishops' actions in speaking out against Nazi atrocities as evidence of Pius's actions on behalf of the Jews, McInerny weakens his own case. Is this the best defense he has? Why not more direct evidence of the Pope's actions? Are they so few and subtle that he must rely on the heroic or courageous actions of others (not least, the actions of his predecessor, Pius XI, and those of his successor, John XXIII) which McInerny seeks to attribute to Pius XII? Second, McInerny's failure to understand the most damning indictments of Pius XII made by John Cornwall (author of Hitler's Pope) make the book particularly weak. Cornwall shows how Pius ignored the warnings of the German bishops when he negotiated the Reich Concordat with Hitler (1933) that forced Catholics to abdicate political activity in Germany. The Catholic Central Party polled 14% of the vote consistently in Germany before this time. Removing this opposition to Hitler undoubtedly (although surely unintentionally) assisted the Nazis' hold on power. And for what? So Germany could promise to support Catholic schools (a promise that Hitler soon repudiated anyway) and could acknowledge the primacy in Church affairs of the Code of Canon Law (prepared by Pacelli before he became Pope) that was a key building block of the hierarchical papacy? Was Pacelli the kind of man so taken with his own abilities, work product, and world vision that he would take the actions he did in the face of warnings from those much closer to the actual events than he? To what extent did the "top-down" world view held by Pacelli (based, not incidentally on the hierarchical papacy) lead him to ignore these warnings? What lessons (if any) are there in the resulting history? Where is McInerny's discussion of any of these points? Third, his argument that all the anti-Pius literature is motivated by animus against the strong papacy of which Pacelli was a major architect is not only unpersuasive but it is also extremely disjointed. For example, McInerny launches a broadside attack on Gary Wills who, I gather from McInerny's book, has disputed Vatican II's position on contraception. (I didn't see the relevance but gave McInerny the benefit of the doubt as I read on.) How does he introduce Wills? By citing to his "fawning" introduction to Lillian Hellman's Scoundrel Time. His not very subtle references to the "pro-Stalinist" Hellman are intended to make us think the worse of Hellman (and therefore, presumably, of Wills, by association). Still unsatisfied with this obiter dictum, in a further effort to discredit Hellman, he diverts us into a brief discussion of the libel lawsuit between Hellman and Mary McCarthy over Hellman's book Pentimento. None of this is even remotely related to Pius XII! Rather, all of this is to get us to think poorly of Wills who is the secondary subject of McInerny's attack--the primary subject being those, like Wills, who dislike the strong papacy and seek to bring it down through attacks on the actions of Pius XII. (Are you following McInerny's line of thought here?) Needless to say, like the rest of the book, this argument is unpersuasive. Do not misunderstand. I do not believe Pius was anti-Semitic. I do not believe he is guilty of taking no action to help the Jews. I understand the Hobson's choice with which he was presented: by speaking out more forcefully, he risked even harsher treatment of those within Hitler's grasp. But this book is not the treatment of those topics that you want to read. And on top of that, the book is repetitious and poorly edited.
Rating: 4
Summary: Flawed but Good
Comment: Dr. McInerny starts out slow, but builds to a nice rollicking finish. As an ex-Catholic I have little sympathy for his support of dogma, but I don't appreciate seeing th Church get bashed for things it didn't do either.
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Title: Pius XII and the Holocaust: Understanding the Controversy by Jose M. Sanchez ISBN: 081321081X Publisher: Catholic Univ of Amer Pr Pub. Date: February, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII by John Cornwell ISBN: 0140296271 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 03 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Consensus and Controversy: Defending Pope Plus XII by Margherita Marchione, Theodore McCarrick ISBN: 0809140837 Publisher: Paulist Press Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church by George Weigel ISBN: 0465092608 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965: by Michael Phayer ISBN: 0253214718 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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