The Pope: Innocent or Pius?
Namely Pius XII, who presided over the Vatican duing the Holocaust, and is held responsible for the Church’s abysmal (lack of) response to the atrocities it knew were occurring.
[Ironic historical footnote: Italy, by virtue of its Axis relationship with Germany was able to hold off Hitler's demand that Italian jews be sent to concentration camps. It wasn't until after Italy surrendered and Germany overran the country that a significant number were deported to camps. Italy managed to save about 80% of their jewish population. Fascism, yes - genocide, no. Check out this book if you're interested in more.]
As usual, I digress.
The current furor over the Pope’s comments about Islam is put in an interesting context by Madeline Bunting of the Guardian Unlimited. So far, Benedict has been presented as completed baffled and (kinda) sorry about the fervor over comments he made supposedly innocently. After all, it was someone else’s words.
But remember the reports on him before he became Pope? They largely revolved around the fact that he was a shrewd hardliner, once involved in the Hitler Youth (though it can’t be said that he was a Nazi in any way), and among the most conservative of the options before the conclave.
Madeline Bunting reminds us that:
This is a man who has been at the heart of one of the world’s multinational institutions for a very long time. He has been privy to how pontifical messages get distorted and magnified by a global media. Shy he may be, but no one has ever before accused this pope of being a remote theologian sitting in an ivory tower. On the contrary, he is a determined, shrewd operator whose track record indicates a man who is not remotely afraid of controversy. He has long been famous for his bruising, ruthless condemnation of those he disagrees with.
In May, the Pope visited Auschwitz and whilst there:
He gave a long address at the site of the former concentration camp and failed to mention anti-semitism, and offered no apology - whether on behalf of his own country, Germany, or on behalf of the Catholic Church. He acknowledged he was a “son of the German people” … “but not guilty on that account”; he then launched into a highly controversial claim that a “ring of criminals” were responsible for nazism and that the German people were as much their victims as anyone else. This is an argument that has long been discredited in Germany as utterly inadequate in explaining how millions supported the Nazis.[...]
Even worse, in his Auschwitz address, he managed to argue in a long theological exposition that the real victims of the Holocaust were God and Christianity. As one commentator put it, he managed to claim that Jews were the “themselves bit players - bystanders at their own extermination. The true victim was a metaphysical one.” This theological treatise bears the same characteristics as last week’s Regensburg lecture; put at its most charitable, they are too clever by half. More plainly speaking, they indicate a deep arrogance rooted in a blinkered Catholic triumphalism which is utterly out of place in the 21st century.
To his supposedly innocent anti-Islamic comments:
- The Pope recently met with Oriana Fallaci, an Italian journalist known for her outspoken, anti-Islamic views. He said the meeting was “pastoral.”
- He stated that Turkey should not be granted entry to the EU because it is an Muslim nation. “The roots that have formed Europe, that have permitted the formation of this continent, are those of Christianity. Turkey has always represented another continent, in permanent contrast with Europe.”
Like all public officials, Pope Benedict should be aware of (and held responsible for) the impact his choice of words has on not only the people he is speaks to, but also the people he speaks about. I hardly think that was the only quote Vatican scholars could find about Islam. As such, how can it not be seen as reflective of the Pope’s views about Islam and the people that adhere to it?
Bunting’s article in the Guardian is here and the Pope’s quote about Turkey’s EU entry is from the Christian Science Monitor.
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