The Silence of the Vatican And the Plight of the Jews

Open your mouth, and speak up for the dumb,
Against the suit of any that oppose them; open your
Mouth and pronounce just sentence, and give
Judgment for the wretched and the poor.

--Proverbs 31:8, 9

John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope* is an intellectual, political, and also a moral biography of Eugenio Pacelli, who, elevated to the papacy in March 1939, became Pius XII. It is, however, a biography whose substance is an indictment: Pacelli is indicted for his silence about the destruction of most of European Jewry by the Nazis. His resistance to speaking out and to denouncing the atrocities committed by the Nazis are thoroughly documented. The Pope's "failure to utter a candid word about the Final Solution [then] in progress proclaimed to the world that the Vicar of Christ was not moved to pity and anger. From this point of view, he was the ideal Pope for Hitler's unspeakable plan. He was Hitler's pawn. He was Hitler's Pope." The book's title reflects no sensationalist intent by the publisher. It is its argument.

It is an argument fuelled by the author's wrath, yet at times contradicted by his political and historical insights. No Pope, Pius XII included, was ever a secular ruler's Pope. There have always been institutional and ideological boundaries whose transgression by secular authorities the Vatican resisted. The Holy See retained sufficient autonomy in choosing what it could say or would not say. All the worse its moral failure, all the more incomprehensible its silence under Pius XII.

Cornwell attempts to shed light on the reasons for this silence by citing various indications of "Pacelli's long-standing anti-Jewishness" (p295-6). But the instances he mentions do not suggest the virulence, let alone the fanaticism, that would otherwise justify the broader question he raises, "whether in some shocking way [the papacy] was hospitable to Hitler's plans as early as 1933" (294). The question is purely speculative and is not pursued. A more pertinent characterization of the Vatican's attitude is a passage from a February 1964 Commentary article by Guenter Lewy (author of the authoritative work The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany), quoted by Cornwell: " . . . [O]ne is inclined to conclude that the Pope and his advisers -- influenced by the long tradition of moderate anti-Semitism so widely accepted in Vatican circles-did not view the plight of the Jews with a real sense of urgency and moral outrage . . . For this assertion no documentation is possible, but it is a conclusion difficult to avoid" (295).

Cornwell sets the tone of his book by prefacing it with a quote from Thomas Merton, who wrote, "Pius XII and the Jews . . . a silence which is deeply . . . in complicity with all the forces which carry out oppression, injustice, aggression."³ Indifference is here equated with complicity in crimes against humanity. It is a measure of morality, also used, if in a vastly different context, by Zygielbojm. I am unconcerned with the complexities this measure gives rise to. Our interest here is why high moral leadership should be attributed to Pius XII if, as Cornwell argues, this Pope did not and would not live up to the test the measure poses.

That such leadership was attributed to him, by both his followers and apologists, as well as implicitly by his critics and adversaries, cannot be doubted. Cornwell's very book attests it. Rolf Hochhut's famous play, The Deputy (i.e., the Vicar of Christ), was first performed in Berlin in the early 1960's, arousing a storm of disputes for decades thereafter. The pressures exerted upon the Holy See by the representatives of the British and American governments, as well as by Jewish organizations, built upon the same assumptions. (The mission of Myron Taylor, President Roosevelt's envoy, was in part intended to mute American Catholics' opposition to American aid to the Soviet Union in its struggle against the German invaders.) It is almost universally believed that the moral power presumed to be inherent in the papacy, if used to denounce Nazi atrocities, would stir the conscience of its flock and put the Nazi criminals on guard. Let us cite an instance of how the episcopate construed this power.

After the Concordat between the Nazi regime and the Holy See had been concluded in the summer of 1933, Cardinal Faulhaber sent a handwritten note to Hitler, stating, "What the old parliaments and parties did not accomplish in 60 years, your statesmanlike foresight has achieved in six months. For Germany's prestige in East and West . . . this handshake with the papacy, the greatest moral power in the history of the world, is a feat of immeasurable blessing." These words were written -- other German "princes of the Church" expressed themselves similarly -- some time after the Nazi regime had abolished virtually all civil liberties, had dissolved all political parties other than its own, and had decreed the removal of "non-Aryans" from public service as well as from pastoral functions, all clearly steps toward the deprivation of citizenship rights of the Jews. These actions were never protested by members of the hierarchy, and expressions such as Faulhaber's could only bolster the regime and help sustain its policies. The Concordat was the price the German episcopate paid for the surrender of whatever moral leadership it could have laid claim to.

It is probable that Hitler, who aimed at abolishing "political Catholicism" as endangering Nazi rule and ideology, agreed to the Concordat on condition that the Center Party vote for the Enabling Act, introduced in the Reichstag in March 1933. This act suspended constitutional government and legalized the dictatorship. In addition, the Center Party was to be dissolved in line with the regime's goal of a one-party state. The dissolution of the party occurred a few weeks prior to the signing of the Concordat. The clergy was also advised to reverse its denunciations of the notions of racism. All these conditions were met.

The Center Party, founded in the mid-19th century, represented the political and educational interests mainly of lay Catholics. Intellectually and ideologically, it was widely diverse, and it invariably adhered to parliamentary standards. The demise of the party was a price which the Vatican was all the more willing to pay for the Concordat with Germany inasmuch as this would eliminate the challenges, actual or potential, from lay Catholic interests. The Vatican had nearly always resisted "political Catholicism" as practiced by Catholic parties. Pius X had been instrumental in breaking up the Italian lay movement in the early 20th century. Pius XI, under whose auspices the Concordat with Germany was to be concluded, "discouraged" the Popular Party of Italy, led in the mid-1920s by Luigi Sturzo, who strongly believed that Christian social ideals should be propagated by his party, and kept separate from the sacramental hierarchy of the Church.⁴ Pius XI, desirous of an accommodation with Mussolini that would restore the Vatican's territorial sovereignty (granted by the Lateran treaty of 1929, and yielding an important lesson to Hitler), dissolved the Popular Party. Sturzo went into exile.

The Concordat with the Reich, like other such agreements, provided for certain rights of the clergy, including the appointment of bishops. The Nazi regime conditioned this right upon the acceptability of the appointee, who was also required to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler. The Catholic (parochial) educational system was to be "protected"; the rights of parents wishing to send their children to such schools was not to be interfered with. Lay disputes were to be resolved by negotiation.

The ink wasn't dry on the concordat when the Nazi regime began to violate some of its key provision, particularly those relating to education. Eventually, the Vatican issued the famous encyclical Mit brennender Sorge ("With Burning Anxiety"). The encyclical was signed by Pius XI, had been drafted by Cardinal Faulhaber, and was edited by Pacelli. Published in March 1937, it was printed in Germany, and distributed not through the mail but by way of the parish network. The Nazis reacted vigorously, considering the publishing and the reading of the encyclical from the pulpits a subversive act. They closed the firms that had printed it, jailed many of their personnel, and re-opened trials of religious and laypersons accused of morals and foreign--exchange offenses.

Cornwell does not much discuss the encyclical, his focus being on Pacelli's attempt to soften its more assertive features -- in other words, to appease the Nazi regime. But I do not believe there can be any question that he was in harmony with the document's essential message of the ideological inclusiveness that the Church upheld. His own first encyclical as Pope (see below) would confirm this. Guenter Lewy devotes more space and thought to Mit brennender Sorge, but concludes that it does no more, no less than condemn neopaganism and the denial of religious freedom.⁶ This is not quite so. The Church did not uphold religious freedom (except its own) until Vatican II in the mid-1960s. The encyclical indeed denounced the near deification of race and nation by the Nazis. What it did uphold, and this remains central to its message, was "natural law, written by the Creator's hand on the tablet of the heart, and which reason not blinded by sin or passion, can easily read . . . Human laws in flagrant contradiction with the natural law are vitiated with a taint which no force, no power can mend."⁷ And the universality of natural law is inherent in God's commandment: "As God's sun shines on every human face, so His law knows neither privilege nor exception."

The Pope also bitterly objected to the "systematic antagonism raised between education and religious duty," and demanded that youth organizations (the chief means by which the Nazis indoctrinated young people with their myths of race and nation, as well as their aggressive militarism) be "purged of all manifestations hostile to the Church and Christianity."⁸ About anti-Semitism and "manifestations hostile to" the Jews, the encyclical was silent.

The silence of the Vatican and of the German episcopate was not confined to anti- Semitism and the plight of the Jews. Neither the one nor the other protested the murder of several leading Catholic laymen and intellectuals by the Nazis in 1934 (when Hitler also had the leading ranks of his storm troopers shot); or the incarceration of hundreds of priests in concentration camps during the 1930s. During the occupation of Poland by the Germans, beginning in September 1939, representatives of the Polish episcopate vainly entreated Pius XII to raise his voice in protest against the "most horrible crimes being committed, assassinations, stealing, rapes . . . The Jews are the first victims . . . The whole country agrees that the German regime is evil, almost diabolical, and perhaps even more so than the Bolshevik regime."⁹ Cardinal Hlond, later the primate of Poland, reported (in 1941) that the Poles are complaining that the Pope does not protest against crimes when the Germans have three thousand Polish priests killed in concentration camps . . . " Addressing Cardinal Maglione, then the Vatican's secretary of state, another bishop wrote (in 1943), " I wonder just which bishops have asked the Holy Father to remain silent . . . According to Your Eminence, they did so out of fear of aggravating the persecution. But the facts prove that with the Pope being silent, each day sees the persecution becoming more cruel . . . [T]he inexplicable silence of the supreme head of the church becomes for those who do not know the reason . . . a cause for spiritual downfall."¹⁰

No public condemnation of German actions and crimes against the Church in Poland was spoken by Pius XII. If it were done, the Vatican said, "the German government would . . . increase its persecution of Catholicism in Poland and it would use every means to hinder the Holy See from having contact with the Polish episcopacy and from performing its works of charity . . . "¹¹ Instead of the public condemnation of the Nazi's crimes in Poland, desired by the very bishops who had the most reason to fear the Germans' reaction to such condemnation the Vatican sent a diplomatically worded protest to the German foreign ministry, detailing the disabilities imposed upon the Church by the Germans. The protest was rejected as being beyond the competence of the Vatican.¹²

The German episcopate's silence concerning Nazi crimes against its own members -- let alone against the Jews or political and non-Catholic religious opponents or social "undesirables" -- was part of its policy of accommodation with the regime, "the most recent striking example of the Church's inability to transcend her institutional interests and to be a guardian of human morality," as Guenter Lewy has written.¹³ The Pope's public silences stemmed unquestionably from a similar definition of the Church's interest. Moreover, any breach with the Germans during the twelve-year period of the Nazi regime (which public protests would have entailed) might well have tested the attachment of the faithful to the Church -- defections in Germany rose during this period -- and such attachment was surely judged to be precarious. This, too, would counsel against taking the "risk of an open clash with a state trampling upon human dignity and freedom."¹⁴

A few paragraphs preceding his accusation that Pius XII was Hitler's Pope, Cornwell writes that, while the Pope was determined not to appeal on behalf of the Jews at the level of international politics, "[t]his did not prevent him from issuing instructions to alleviate their plight at the level of basic charity" (296). The Pope's aid to Jews has been fairly well documented and acknowledged; it need not be detailed here.¹⁵ If, as Cornwell argues, Pacelli shared the anti-Judaism of much of the Curia; if he was guilty of "failure to utter a candid word about the Final Solution"; if, as Vicar of Christ, he was not moved "to anger and pity about the fate of the Jews"; and if he was "the ideal Pope for Hitler's unspeakable plan"; how is all of this to be reconciled with his evident willingness to exercise "charity" toward those Jews whom it could reach? You cannot simultaneously be pitiless and charitable toward the same victims. There is a conflict here, possibly one of conscience, between the obeisance of Catholic teachings to the ideas of natural law and natural right, and the adversus Judaeus burden of those same teachings. Pacelli, expert in the law of the church (he had been assigned with codifying and modernizing canon law in his younger days), likely perceived the conflict but was incapable, perhaps unwilling, to resolve it.

Such perception is surely suggested by passages in his first encyclical as pontiff (October 1939) where he bemoaned the "pernicious error, widespread today, [of] the forgetfulness of that law of human solidarity and charity which is dictated and imposed by our common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all men to whatever they belong . . . "¹⁶ And indeed, as Franz Neumann has written, "The recognition of every man as a rational creature, the recognition of the freedom of the soul and, above all, of human equality before God, were historic acts of Christendom." Neumann then quotes the apostle Paul as the most authoritative source: "There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, circumcision or uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian. But Christ is all, in all."¹⁷ Pacelli also quotes this passage, but he does so in the context of announcing the appointment of bishops "of widely different peoples and races." This at a time when some six weeks earlier the Germans had invaded Poland, had incited and partaken in pogroms against Jews, and driven them from most of Western Poland. Pacelli thus evaded the true sense of Paul's message by applying it in an innocuous context that had no relevance to the terrible fate to which Paul's own people were being subjected. The Jews, most at risk by the "pernicious error" Pacelli attacks, remain outside his field of vision.

The authors assert that "all men share a common nature," and this foundation of humanity's unity "can be discovered through our natural powers of understanding." From this essential unity of humanity, the equality of men and women before the law follows, and it is of the very essence of the state to recognize that all the members, without exception, have an unqualified right to equal protection of the law. The draft, in subsequent passages, leaves no doubt that this right extends to the Jews. The "present persecution of the Jews," the "flagrant denial" of their human rights, are strongly denounced, the human consequences of these injustices are vividly portrayed.

But the eloquent defense of the elementary human and civic rights of the Jews is largely vitiated by what the document's authors ascribe to the role of the Jews in secular life. The "Jewish Question," the authors say, is one of religion, not race, but it is the supposed role they play in the worlds of economics and politics, not so much religion, which is emphasized. Not only did the Jews, in collusion with pagan authorities, put Jesus Christ to death; not only are they (here the authors quote St. Stephen approvingly) "stiffnecked and uncircumsized in heart and ear"; not only have they "incurred the wrath of God because they have rejected the Gospel"; they have also been "blinded by a vision of material domination and gain"; and they "ally themselves with, or actively promote revolutionary movements" inimical to the Christian religion. Hence, given the "spiritual dangers" to which contact with Jews can expose souls, "the Church must safeguard her children against spiritual contagion," this need being "undiminished in our time." Hence also, "overfamiliarity with the Jewish community that might lead to customs and ways of thinking contrary to the standards of Christian life" must be avoided. The separation of Jews from Christians on grounds of "spiritual contagion," historically advocated by the Church and enforced by means of the ghetto by secular authority, is here advised, if in milder form than in earlier centuries.

The authors nonetheless condemn anti-Semitism. They do so on grounds of its "inefficacy" in preserving the faith and morals of Catholics and of society at large "against the corrupting influence of error." Also, such persecutory methods are at variance with the Christian spirit. No answer to the question of antisemitism is offered, although a section of the document is headlined so. The Church, it says, "is in no wise concerned with the problems concerning the Jewish people that lie within . . . purely profane spheres."

Thus, the Church washes its hands of all responsibility for abrogations of rights of the Jews which anti-Semitism spells, inasmuch as anti-Semitism, at the time the draft encyclical was composed, was intensely political, hence occurred chiefly in the "profane sphere." Yes, the Church "insists only that no solution is the true solution if it contradicts the . . . laws of justice and charity." The authors failed to realize that "solutions" as well as the "problems" they were to address have always been defined by the Jews' adversaries, to whose actions justice and charity have been irrelevant.

It is just as well that this draft encyclical disappeared in the Vatican archives. It is unlikely that Pacelli would have considered to publish what amounted, in part at least, to an adversus Judaeus document. But there can be no question that his thinking, his mind, were shaped by the teachings of the Church, including those with the adversus Judaeus intent or tendency. Cornwell cites a passage in a sermon delivered by Pacelli at an International Eucharistic Congress held at Budapest in 1938, in which he said: "As opposed to the foes of Jesus who cried out to his face, Crucify him! We sing him hymns of loyalty and our love. We act in this fashion, not out of bitterness, not out of a sense of superiority, not out of arrogance toward those whose lips curse him and whose hearts reject him even today" (185-186). His audience of thousands undoubtedly "understood" the reference, and may well have construed his remarks as a justification of the virulently anti-Semitic stance of the Hungarian government at the time. The future Pope had paraphrased a verse from the 19th chapter of the Gospel of John, who must be judged as one of the Jews' most vicious adversaries in his time.

THE ENORMITY OF THE HOLOCAUST gave rise to far-reaching reconsiderations of the Church's adversus Judaeus teachings. These reconsiderations go far beyond the relevant deliberations of Vatican II, but here I will sketch only the latter. The Council was summoned by Pope John XXIII (1958-63) to "update" the Church's (i.e., the hierarchy's) thought and practices concerning dogma, pastoral duties, liturgy, ecumenism, religious freedom, and attitude toward non- Christian religions. The Council stated (or restated) the inerrancy of Scripture and Gospel, but allowed for interpretations that would mitigate Gospel passages designed to dull their adversus Judaeus edge. Thus, the crucifixion of Jesus was no longer to be attributed to all the Jews then alive, nor to the Jews living today, but only to the Jewish authorities who supposedly pressed for it, and to those who followed their lead. Words like "deicide" and "Christkiller" were to be proscribed from the Christian vocabulary altogether. Most important, perhaps, guidelines for Catholic-Jewish relations were issued for the promotion of dialogue between representatives of the two faiths. All thought of segregating Jews lest they spread "spiritual contagion" was dismissed.¹⁹

Let it be understood that the fundamental tenets of the Church and of Christianity in general remain unchanged -- except insofar as historical criticism creates doubt, skepticism, questioning. The Church's teachings cannot but conflict with the teachings of the Jews even though the Jews remain the Church's "elder brother" (i.e. Esau!). The Church will continue to be the "New Israel," and Jesus to be the Christ (Messiah), both having been prophesied by the Hebrew scriptures. "The Jews should not be presented as rejected by God, or accursed," but "the Church is the new people of God."²⁰

Has the adversus Judaeus tradition of Christian teachings -- conveyed not least by the sculptures and paintings exhibited in medieval churches -- lain at the root of the Shoah? Many a deeply disturbed Christian scholar has brooded over the question.²¹ Yet, " . . . Christianity never called for the extermination of the Jews. Had this been its official policy, the Jews would hardly have survived the Middle Ages," writes Ismar Schorsch, one of the great German-Jewish scholars.²² The Vatican tends to evade the question altogether, notwithstanding the sorrow that Pope John Paul II has expressed. A key example is the Vatican document We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, published with John Paul's endorsement in March 1998. It admits in somber tones to the guilt of Christians in standing by while the Shoah occurred, and seeks to grapple with the questions of why "the Shoah took place in Europe, that is in countries of long-standing Christian civilization"; and what the relation was "between Nazi persecution and the attitudes down the centuries of Christians toward Jews." Like variations on the same theme, the Vatican document repeats essentially the same question, e.g., what have the anti-Jewish prejudices "imbedded in some Christian minds and hearts" had to do with the Nazis' persecution of the Jews. It will not, perhaps cannot, confront the role of the Church's teachings in "embedding" those prejudices.

Still, historically, there had also existed a "tradition of protection of Jews against drastic injury by the Pope and various ecclesiastical heads in their respective countries and by the emperors and princes," as the Jewish historian Ben-Sasson has written.²³ It is a tradition that also had its roots in Christian teachings insofar as these were imbued by natural-law ideas, and by the notion of the ultimate Salvationist redemption of the Jews, indispensable witnesses to the truth of Christendom as vouchsafed by the Scriptures. Popes had spoken out in denouncing accusations of ritual murder, forced baptism, cemetery desecration, and offenses and crimes against Jews. During the 12th to 15th centuries, popes regularly issued bulls (letters) admonishing good Christians against robbing or wounding them "or chang[ing] the good customs they have thus far enjoyed in the place of their habitations." In 1348, Pope Clement IV passionately rejected the accusation against the Jews that they had caused the plague then raging by poisoning wells, writing that "it is absolutely unthinkable that the . . . Jews have performed so terrible a deed," and that "certain Christians have been incited by the Devil" in bringing such accusations.²⁴ "Probably the greatest protection offered by the Church was its constant reminder of human decencies and its reference to the Jewish people as an integral part of the Divine Plan," writes Samuel Grayzel, also a Jewish historian. "Christianity's . . . retention of its heritage from Judaism thus contributed to the survival of the Jewish people."²⁵

We cannot deny Pacelli's charity rendered to Jewish refugees in reach of his office. But by his silence he betrayed the papal tradition of aiding the Jews when they are exposed to "drastic injury." "There are moments when, without any tangible utility, something has to be said for no other reason but that it is true. If is not said, the moral order of the world suffers a blow that is harder to overcome than its violation by brute force." Written in 1935, these were the words of a troubled German Jesuit.²⁶

* John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The secret Hisotry of Pius XII, New York: Viking, 1999. 430 pp. $29.95 cloth. return

1. David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 (New York, 1984). return

2. Wyman, 123 return

3. Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York, 1964), p. 104. return

4. Eric O. Hanson, The Catholic Church in World Politics (Princeton, N.J., 1987), p. 50. return

5. Prefatory note in Cornwell. return

6. Guenter Lewy, p. 159. return

7. Anne Fremantle, ed., The Papal Encyclicals in their Historical Setting (New York, 1959), p. 252. In Richmond Lattimore's translation, the passage reads as follows: "For when Gentiles who do not have the law do by nature what is in the law, they, without having the law, are their own law, and they display the work of the law engraved on their hearts, with their conscience bearing them witness . . . ." Acts and Letters of the Apostles (New York, 1982), p. 82. The passage had the polemical intention of downgrading the written law of the Jews. Even though directed against the written law, Paul no doubt drew on the Prophet Jeremiah's "dream," about God making a new covenant with Israel, not written on stone, as in Exodus, but, as He says, "I will set my law within them, and write it on their hearts . . . " (Jer. 31:33) return

8. Papal Encyclicals, p. 253. return

9. Pierre Blet, S.J., Pius XII and the Second World War, According to the Archives of the Vatican ( New York, 1997), p. 77. return

10. Blet, p. 84. Also Cornwell, pp. 232-234. return

11. Blet, p. 87. return

12. Blet, p. 90. return

13. Lewy, p. 338. return

14. Ibid. return

15. See the essays by J.L. Lichten and R. A. Graham in Pius XII and the Holocaust: A Reader (A Catholic League Publication, Milwaukee, WI, 1988). However, this publication is largely an apologia for the Pope's silence during World War II. return

16. Papal Encyclicals, p. 264 return

17. Franz Neumann, The Rule of Law: Political Theory and the Legal System in Modern Society (Dover, N.H., 1986), pp. 58-59. The passage from Paul's epistle represents a mix of translations. return

18. Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchesky, The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI (New York, 1997; Paris, 1995). Direct quotations stem chiefly from pp. 246-256. return

19. Arthur Gilbert, The Vatican Council and the Jews (New York), various Appendices. return

20. Gilbert, p. 288. return

21. See in particular, Rosemary Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (Minneapolis, 1974). return

22. Ismar Schorsch, "German Antisemitism in the Light of Postwar Historiography," in Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (1974), pp.257-71. return

23. H.H. Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People (Cambridge, MA, 1976; Tel Aviv, 1969), p. 647. return

24. Ben-Sasson, p. 487 return

25. Solomon Grayzel, " The Papal Bull Sicut Judeis," in Jeremy Cohen, ed., Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict (New York, 1991), p. 250. return

26. G. Lewy, p. 175. return

Contents of No. 30

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