JCC Pope watch MMXIII (MMXXV Edition)

If the Vatican was afraid of reprisals against people under its aegis -- its own priests and monks -- then how could Pius XII justify to himself speaking out against the Holocaust? I mean, the man was not a saint or an ascetic, and the priests and monks had no way of realistically defending themselves or getting out of the country en masse, any more than the Jews did. Reading intentions is always a first cousin to astrology, but I could see him regarding that as abandoning the flock which he would have believed was entrusted to him. It would've been like asking Churchill to condemn the Nazis and say that Britain was their enemy while there were hundreds of unarmed Britons with big Union Jacks painted on their backs wandering around Germany.

The other thing is that if the Vatican was complicit in the Holocaust, then really a number if not most other Western nations were complicit in it as well. A speaker I saw once described the UNHCR as "the world's apology to the Jews," the implication being that many nations knew knew or at least had some suspicions about the things Jews were suffering in Germany but still did nothing about it, before or during the war. The Polish intelligence networks had fed information about the concentration camps back to England; a Polish spy -- Witold Pilecki -- infiltrated Auschwitz and then escaped as early as 1941, but the general belief is that the Allies didn't know about the camps until they were liberated in the closing stages of the war.

The Voyage of the SS St. Louis is perhaps the most damning indictment on the West regarding this issue, given pretty much every nation this cruiseliner-full of Jews went to was refused refugee status -- including at the US and Canadian borders. I think roughly half of those refugees, when grudgingly resettled in European countries, later died in the concentration camps.

 

Calm the **** down, dude.

I am trying to read motives, which absent being a magician is kind of hard fifty-odd years down the line. I am not saying it was wrong right to not condemn the Holocaust -- but I am saying that hindsight is always 50-50 20-20 and it's a dangerous exercise trying to condemn people out of context. And, one post along, I might point out that the entirety of Western civilisation also lacks sufficient fig leaves on this issue, not just the Catholic Church. And I would have thought Western nations had a much more potent capacity to do something about the Holocaust than the Church did. Hitler's economic policy, if not his entire mode of thinking, was wrapped around the extermination of Judaism. You really think one old guy in a filigreed Church was going to meaningfully impact on that?

EDIT: I shouldn't use double negatives, so I crossed out the relevant word which doesn't reflect what I was trying to say.

EDIT: I also shouldn't confuse probability with vision impairment, or lack thereof.

 

It's a bit more nuanced than that. In fact the Vatican had been saying "Hands off the Jews" for a good thousand years or so:

--Sicut Judaeis, 1120.

 

Yup.

And I suppose I should have clarified that I wasn't saying the Pope should have condemned the Holocaust (it really wouldn't have done much at that point anyway). Your overblown defense is what I took issue with.

 

Walter la Feber made the point that anti-Semitism hit its peak during WWII in the USA>

 

Let us assume you are absolutely correct. That this not just speculation, but a guarantee of Hitler's actions. Why should we care at all?

No church was raised to be a site of "massive treasure houses." I was under the impression that the one Catholics proclaim as God had commanded "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give you a crown of life."I had thought that one of the major innovations of Christianity was dispensing with the need for worship that tied sacredness to specific geographic locations like temples. I guess I missed the part where spoiling your pretty buildings was a valid reason not to attempt doing the right thing. Most especially when such wealth was gathered in considerable part through outright corruption, practices the institution itself no longer considers valid, and by its role as a passive beneficiary of a horribly oppressive, exploitative sociopolitical system that had a vise-grip on Europe for centuries.

 

Do you take a rock hammer to Michelangelo's David in order to pay for the sins of those who funded it three hundred odd years ago? Because it seems to me that's the line of argument you're taking.

I was referring to "treasure houses" in a metaphorical sense, not a literal one. Like it or not, by the point Pius XII assumed the Papacy he also assumed responsibility for caring for what amounted to a pretty decent chunk of the world's great art, and a pretty decent chunk of historical source documents. You can argue asceticism for the Papacy, certainly: that complaint has been made right back to Martin Luther. But in trying to ascertain his motives, his duty as custodian of those "treasures" could well have loomed large were the invasion of the Vatican a risk.

But as I said further up, sneering at Pius XII from 2013 is fraught with convicting him out of context and out of the historical time he lived in. As an analogy, science -- only sixty-odd years ago -- accepted eugenics as valid, and there are many, many scientists whose biographies quietly excise their contemporary (EDIT: contemporary for 1939, not contemporary for 2013) support for this degenerate (pardon the pun) branch of knowledge. You would be out of place supporting eugenics at our point in history, certainly, but you probably wouldn't have been so out of place back then. Indeed eugenics only disappeared in a big way off the scientific scene once Mengele's experiments came to light. (Let's not talk about how the experiments on air pressure and cold tolerance against Jewish prisoners were subsequently used by America to help win the space race). And in the case of Sir Cyril Burt, father of modern educational psychology, they continued for another 30-odd years in a pastel form.

The irony being that Pius XII, as E_S pointed out, in one way condemned eugenics: he criticised the Nazi regime's treatment of the mentally ill and euthanasia. I wonder if that stance was sneered at by the scientific community of the time?

 

Sometimes I thank God I'm an atheist.

 

His blithe indifference to, and unwillingness to act to stop, the suffering of the Jews probably means people overlook this.

 

The former requires mindreading; the latter can be divined only from recordings of the person's own thoughts or from their lack of action. We've already been discussing in some detail the possible justifications and that motives are rarely entirely clear.

Can you honestly say that if asked you would put a good portion of your own family, or people in your care, in danger of torture or death for the sake of strangers to your creed? That is a fair characterisation to put on Pius's position if you take the view the Vatican was worried about reprisals against its priests and monks in Germany. Even the Allies themselves did not proceed to D-Day on that basis; they acted in self-interest and out of support for declared allies, not to save Judaism from extermination. And even then the US and Britain sold out the one nation they had actually gone to war over: Poland. As I said: it is very, very easy to convict out of context out of historical context, and doing so to Pius does may do him an injustice.

 

I do not care at all whether the Pope lives in wealth or in poverty. Nor do I spite the Vatican any of its collections.

My point is only this. They proclaim themselves to be the sole legitimate messengers of God on Earth. This is the primary responsibility that is supposed to define the entire life and actions of the Pope for the duration of his tenure. What value does any human art or history have by comparison? Even the whole weight of it throughout all of history should be utterly nothing. In light of this, I see it as deeply and unacceptably shameful that anyone could, with a straight-faced, simultaneously argue that destroying cultural produce would be an acceptable reason to shirk from doing what all parties would acknowledge is the right thing.

The primary duty of the Pope is not to be a museum curator. It is to be the exemplar and leader of an organization that is supposed the definitive moral authority on Earth. By its own standard, giving credence to such arguments as you have made would seem to mark it an abject, hypocritical failure.

 

Saintheart said:

Isn't that what Christianity is supposed to be in a nutshell?

 

Actually, they don't. The Nicene Creed says the Church only acknowledges one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, but catechism clearly spells out that God's grace does not prevent others from reaching salvation. Only one baptism is acknowledged because it's the only one the Church has been given.

Human art can touch the divine in all of us - because it is an act of creation; the nature of God after love. That's why the Church reveres it. Human history is, in the Church's own words, the history of salvation and is likewise sacred, because it records the way in which God saves his people. I am not saying you are required to believe that, but you asked what value the Pope puts on human art or history.

Would you? Look up a period in Polish history commonly called "The Deluge". It's the historical period in which Poland is invaded by the Swedes. It's also the historical period in which Poland lost a massive fraction of its libraries, art, and history - its very cultural heart - because those institutions were specifically targeted by the invaders. Little of that period now survives in history. The result was a cultural devastation of Poland, one that led into a very dark period of Polish history, one from which the country has yet to recover fully.

Killing a people is to destroy their bodies, certainly, but if you devastate their culture, you maul that people's essence. As Robin Williams' character says in Dead Poets' Society: "Medicine; science; law - these are all valid things, and necessary to sustain life, but art, music, poetry - these are what we stay alive for."

You have attacked one supposition I have made: the supposition that were the invasion of the Vatican a real threat, the Pope acting to protect the Papacy's store of cultural treasures would be a valid factor to enter on his thinking. That was probably not a likely outcome. Machine gunning a straw man does not take away from the fact that motives are much more complex than we make them out to be, and caricaturing a living person is no more intelligent than caricaturing a dead one.

 

"Love one another, as I have loved you" is Christianity in a nutshell.

More relevantly, "Greater love hath no man than that he should lay down his life for his friends." And one that people like St. Maximillian Kolbe went above and beyond for, it might be said.

Not hand over his own family's lives for what were, to Pius, strangers. Perhaps Pius could've offered to ransom himself in exchange for every priest and monk in Germany? Or better yet, perhaps he could have offered to make himself a hostage in exchange for every Jew in Germany? Yes, I can totally see that would have worked.

 

And this would all be a very moving, good argument, if it were weighed against anything but an organization which has a divine mission which is supposedly more importantly than the grand sum of all imaginable human endeavors. An integral part of that mission is for the Church as an institution (and its members as individuals) to act in a way that is holy; it has an imperative to do what is right. You now seem to argue that this can be waived if a lot if the "cultural heart" of some place is at stake. This is widely divergent from the attitude elsewhere taken about the relative importance of spiritual and earthly pursuits. One would think that, as with everything else, it would be the responsibility secular authorities to see to the things that are Caesar's, while the man who calls himself God's vicar might bother to actually make the spiritual and moral dimensions of all this the most important factor in his actions.

No, but this response strikes me as bizarre. You raised this defense of his actions, not I. The only thing I did in this thread is try to point out why such a defense is uniquely terrible in this case. I'm not "attacking straw men" or "caricaturing" anyone. I am responding what you just said. Minutes ago. On the selfsame page of this discussion forum. Come on.

 

I believe it is up to the discretion of each diocese, and I've read about it in a few articles talking about possible successors. I'm not an expert on Catholic doctrine so I'm not sure.

 

If you can provide an all-inclusive definition of what is morally right in any given circumstance for any given person, not to mention assure me that Popes always know what that is and always act according to that definition, you might have an argument. Even the Bible does not do that, and the Catholic Church does not say it does, either. Catholic catechism itself leaves many, many matters to individual conscience.

You characterise me as "waiving" what is right. That is a particularly juvenile caricaturing of my point.

EDIT: Sorry, that remark was uncalled for, so I've crossed it out. What I'm saying is that motives are far more complex than that, and the judgment to be made in that circumstance would be far, far more difficult than you seem to imagine it to be. I get the feeling you believe the Catholic Church believes itself infallible in all its dealings on Earth; nothing could be further from the truth. Someone once said "the Church is a hospital for sinners, not a house for saints" which probably touches on it a bit better -- the Church doesn't see anything but a very tiny minority of doctrinal decisions as infallible, and these under extreme conditions. I am not saying the Church is either perfect or that it necessarily would be guided by God to make the right choice: that's the burden of being human. "Man proposes; God disposes" and all that.

As I said: human art touches the divine, because it's an act of creation. That renders it sacred. That renders the value of a cultural heart much, much more than you seem to ascribe to it -- in spiritual terms, not earthly terms.

Like I said, you don't have to hold that view: the important part is that that's what a Pope might well be considering if it came to deciding between the utter destruction of every artwork in the Vatican and the lives of people who do not share his faith. A saint would make the "right" decision pretty easily. The rest of us, not so much. I think you would find most Popes in the modern age also regard themselves as much sinners as the rest of us.

 

P.S. While we're on the topic, there's a good fiction book, if obscure, called Crusade. Its premise is the election of a (American, woohoo) Pope who decides it's time to intervene on social justice matters chiefly by selling off the major artworks of the Vatican. Like I said, it's obscure and might not be around anymore, but I personally found it one hell of a good ride dealing with the implications of such a decision...

EDIT: Here it is. Crusade, by Peter Watson. I've linked the goodreads version because the Amazon site has lengthy spoilers. Thought-provoking stuff, as I said...

EDIT THE SECOND: ...aaaand I think I've wandered well off topic by now, so I'm off to get some sun. Maybe for a couple of days.

 

Saintheart, is this some new-fangled Catholic thing?

I have clearly laid out instances of Pius' stated indifference to the fate of Jews in German territory. By that, I mean, a direct quote. Please stop defending the actions of an unapologetic anti-Semite.

And you know what? The Pope's a leader. He claims moral authority. And by not being a leader, by not being courageous, he is little more than an immoral coward or complicit murderer.

Deal. With. It.

 

I would prefer to deal with the whole truth, not its caricature. As I said: Pius XII's stance, actions, and motives are a lot more complex in context than you make them out to be.

You are also resorting to intellectually dishonest debating tactics: you say "by not being courageous, he is little more than an immoral coward or complicit murderer." That is as repugnant an argument as "If you're not with us, then you're against us." Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

EDIT: More interestingly, would you like to lay out the stance of the International Red Cross, and its actions to save Jews under its banner? It seems from some light reading that they said nothing about the murder of the Jews for the simple reason they could help them better by subterfuge than by outright confrontation. Are they, too, immoral cowards and complicit murderers because they were not so brave to speak out on the subject?

 

You would prefer to hide from the whole truth by adding extras and declaring that it makes the circumstances "special" or "different." There's always some reason or some excuse as to why some action/statement that is normally abhorrent is somehow excused or okay when a particular religious figure does it or says it.

 

Hardly. Put yourself in the same position, with the same responsibilities, and then make the "right" call. That's what thinking people do before they judge the conduct of others. Not to mention that I didn't say it was right to not criticise the Holocaust.

 

Ah, the good old "my crappy decision is okay because PUT YOURSELF IN MY SHOES." That has never worked as an excuse. Never. It's a staple of protagonist-centered morality.

 

Sooooo, context has no bearing on history, is that the size of it?

 

I wonder if the new guy will be as good as the past two guys were at covering up for thousands of pedophile's across the globe.