Defamation Of Pius XII (Key Texts)
Why do John Cornwell inHitler's Pope(1999) and Gary Wills inPapal Sins[BKL Ap 1 00] say such nasty things about Pope Pius XII? McInerny's fact-crammed response to those best-sellers presents Pius as the best friend Jews had during the Holocaust, responsible for the rescue of 860,000 of the 2 million European Jews who survived. Moreover, Pius' good offices were well known at the time and praised by Jewish political and religious leaders. Cornwell and Wills are reviving the anti-Catholicism of Rolf Hochhuth's hit playThe Deputy(1963), which cast Pius as Hitler's anti-Semitic accomplice. Hochhuth slandered Pius, McInerny postulates, to displace Germany's collective guilt--a guilt that Catholic theology, McInerny points out, doesn't acknowledge. Cornwell and Wills are differently motivated. Disaffected Catholics, they despise church teaching on sexual morality and attack Pius and his successors to undermine papal authority. One needn't be Catholic to find McInerny's argument most compelling. Unless the events and statements he cites really didn't happen and weren't written, the memory of Pius XII deserves an apology.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved