Bridgettine rescuers in Rome do not need apologetic polemic!

William Oddie is a regular writer for The Catholic Herald.  He also writes for a number of conservative-Catholic journals such as Crisis Magazine: a voice for the faithful Catholic Laity.

In a recent article published in The Catholic Herald, Dr Oddie began what looked to be a review of a new book by Joanna Bogle. However shortly after giving the reader a taste of what Bogle's book holds, and from what I have read by Oddie and Bogle, it looks like a book worth getting, Oddie launches into a a re-hash of many of the old chestnuts that apologists for Pius XII have used for decades.  Bogle's book concerns two English Bridgettine sisters who were active in rescuing Jews in Rome during the German occupation (September 1943-June 1944).  The story on its own looks to be a compelling one. It doesn't need to be turned into a propaganda item by those who wish to use any story of rescue for political ends.  I fear this is what Oddie has tried to do.

The insertion of a lengthy quote from David Dalin and recycling the long-debunked claims of Pinchas Lapide, lends aid to my fear that Oddie is more interested in keeping alive the dying flames of an old argument that most mainstream historians have long since walked away from.  The "vilifiers' of Pope Pius XII are not those who disagree with the ahistorical arguments of Dr Oddie and company, but rather the apologists themselves who dabble dangerously close to denialism and a reckless disregard for the truth.  It is Oddie and those who believe his version of events who insist on making the arguments for and against Pius XII a litmus test of Catholic orthodoxy.  Historians will keep on with the business of history.

Nonetheless, I look forward to reading Joanna Bogle's book.

Here is William Oddie's review:

Joanna Bogle has written prolifically and devotedly on a wide variety of subjects, always defending and proclaiming the values of the Catholic Church and aimed at nourishing in her readers the capacity to live the Catholic life; and her writings are undoubtedly an important part of what led recently to her deserved elevation to the rank of Dame of the Order of St Gregory. I have just read another of her books, shortly to be published by Gracewing, which everyone should read when it is published later this month: Courage and Conviction, the story of how two English Bridgettine sisters, Mother Riccarda Hambrough and Mother Katherine Flanagan, sheltered Jews in their convents during the German occupation of Rome. This account is invaluable, as a vivid insight into one small part of the much wider effort by religious houses and other Catholic institutions throughout Rome and the whole of Italy to shelter Jews from the Germans after the fall of Mussolini in 1943.

On the general question of Pius XII’s part in the shelter of Jews throughout Italy, Dame Joanna’s book is a useful guide, especially in the face of the persistent propaganda attempting to show that Pius XII was, to quote a particularly disgusting book title, “Hitler’s Pope”. As she points out, the majority of Italian Jews – some 80 percent – survived the Second World War, during the years when, across Europe 80 per cent of Jews died. She quotes J Lichten’s book [sic] A Question of Moral Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews,(1963) one among many accounts of what until recently was widely known and accepted by everyone (especially by leading Jews like Golda Meir), that “The Pope sent out the order that religious buildings were to give refuge to Jews, even at the price of great personal sacrifice on the part of their occupants; he released monasteries and convents from the cloister rule forbidding entry into these religious houses to all but a few specified outsiders, so that they could be used as hiding places. Thousands of Jews – the figures run from 4,000 to 7,000 – were hidden, fed, clothed, and bedded in the 180 known places of refuge in Vatican City, churches and basilicas, Church administrative buildings, and parish houses. Unknown numbers of Jews were sheltered in Castel Gandolfo, the site of the Pope’s summer residence [according to Rabbi David Dalin, at least 3,000 found refuge there], private homes, hospitals, and nursing institutions; and the Pope took personal responsibility for the care of the children of Jews deported from Italy.”

As Dame Joanna points out, the scale of the rescue operation was huge. In the City of Rome itself 155 convents and monasteries sheltered around 5,000 Jews. Sixty Jews lived for nine months at the Gregorian University, and a considerable number in the cellar of the Pontifical biblical institute. One could go on at wearying length.

The story of the English Bridgettines, Mother Riccarda Hambrough and Mother Katherine Flanagan, is one small and typically courageous part of the huge operation that Pius set under way. What emerges vividly is not only the vital part played by the Pope himself; but the indispensable part played by the faith and courage of so many individual Catholics who obeyed his call.

Mother Riccarda hid about 60 Italian Jews from the Nazis in her Rome convent, the Casa di Santa Brigida. She was baptised at St Mary Magdalene’s, Brighton, at the age of four after her parents converted to the Catholic faith. She was guided towards the Bridgettine Order by Fr Benedict Williamson, who was the parish priest of St Gregory’s Parish, Earlsfield, between 1909 and 1915. Sister Katherine Flanagan, too, was guided by Fr Williamson and also joined the Bridgettine sisters.

What is striking is the way in which, as far as possible, the Sisters made it possible for those they sheltered, not simply to cower in hiding, but to live normal and dignified lives. One refugee remembered that they had asked for refuge, but without saying at first they were Jews. They went to Mass, copying what the Catholics did. They were soon told that “we must live our own beliefs, that we should not feel any need to pretend, and that we must live and pray as Jews”. The same refugee told Dame Joanna last year (this book is not a scissors and paste job), that “I was even able to continue my education: a lady professor, a Jewish lady, came in and gave me lessons. She taught me Latin. We studied Tacitus and I became really engrossed in it. It was particularly important for me because earlier the Jews had been kicked out of all the schools, and I could have missed out on the chance of an education. But because of this tutoring, when the Allies arrived and we were liberated, I hadn’t missed a year of my schooling”.

The present Mother superior of St Birgitta’s, Mother Thekla, who knew Mother Riccarda well, remembers that she was “was truly very beautiful. She was a wonderful person — an angel on the earth. And she was humble—she had this spirit of service, of simply wanting to serve and help people”. This is an inspiring story, simply but powerfully told. “Above all”, remembers Mother Thekla, “[Mother Riccarda] had a profound respect for these Jewish guests. It was important not to let them feel humiliated by their situation—they were vulnerable, and it was crucial to let them know that they were welcome and that the sisters wanted to help them in any way they could.”

By concentrating on the Bridgettines in Rome, Dame Joanna has vividly brought to life a microcosm of what was happening wherever there was German occupation after the fall of Mussolini. Multiply this account by a thousand, and you have some idea of what the Catholic Church in Italy, directly inspired by the Pope himself, believed it had a vocation to accomplish.

By no means all Jewish writers today have uncritically accepted the torrent of anti-Pius propaganda, the contents of which over recent decades have generally been assumed by the secular media (and even by some Catholics) to be well-founded. As Rabbi David Dalin has written in a lengthy and important article, well worth reading carefully and in full, though Pius has had his defenders recently,

…. it is the books vilifying the pope that have received most of the attention, particularly         Hitler’s Pope, a widely reviewed volume marketed with the announcement that Pius XII was “the most dangerous churchman in modern history,” without whom “Hitler might never have . . . been able to press forward.” The “silence” of the pope is becoming more and more firmly established as settled opinion in the American media: “Pius XII’s elevation of Catholic self-interest over Catholic conscience was the lowest point in modern Catholic history,” the New York Times remarked, almost in passing, in a review last month of Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword.

Curiously, nearly everyone pressing this line today — from the ex-seminarians John Cornwell and Garry Wills to the ex-priest James Carroll — is a lapsed or angry Catholic. For Jewish leaders of a previous generation, the campaign against Pius XII would have been a source of shock. During and after the war, many well-known Jews – Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Moshe Sharett, Rabbi Isaac Herzog, and innumerable others —publicly expressed their gratitude to Pius. In his 1967 book Three Popes and the Jews, the diplomat Pinchas Lapide (who served as Israeli consul in Milan and interviewed Italian Holocaust survivors) declared Pius XII “was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,00 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.” 

In the end, that truth will once again become generally accepted. When it is, Joanna Bogle’s important new book will have played its part.

The Apologists' Pius Wars – the rest of us do history.

This post was prompted in part by the article written by William Doino in First Things which is a thinly veiled attack on the scholarship of Kevin Madigan, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard.  Somehow, I doubt Madigan has remained in his position for want of historical ability and skill.  Doino's article is a clever mix of slightly twisted fact with a heavy handed bashing of historians with whom he disagrees.  Doino engages in just enough smokescreening of historical fact to leave a lay audience seriously wondering if Madigan's take on the post-war trials and the Vatican's responses is a poor attempt at smearing the good name of the Catholic Church.  For the reader who wishes to make up their own mind, I suggest bypassing First Things and go straight to the books Madigan mentions - David Cymet History vs Apologetics and Gerald Steinacher Nazis on the Run. I have read Steinacher's excellent work and do not understand how Doino cannot accept the fundamental thesis, namely that elements within the Catholic Church were active in helping Nazi war criminals escape justice.  But that is part of what I believe is simply another form of denialism.

The phenomenon of denialism is predicated upon the need to denigrate as fiction an historical reality.  It stems from a world-view that is fundamentally uncomfortable with empirical history, proven fact and the discipline of scientific rigour, which includes as part of its process, flexibility, reason, loyalty to the historical record and honesty.  In short, the denialist is at pains to prove by whatever means, that the received record is not only wrong, it is deliberately false and those who propose it are liars.

In recent years there has arisen a disturbing movement that seeks to apply the above criteria to the pontificate of Pope Pius XII.  Beginning from the premise that Pius is innocent of all charges levelled against him by those who hold that his war-time record is problematic, the apologists for the pope have conducted a campaign of misinformation, selective documentation, uncritical acceptance of all positive statements, regardless of the historical provenance of the statements, and uncritical rejection of all contrary positions.  And while some apologists may well act from honourable motives, chiefly a belief they are defending the integrity of the Catholic Church, it remains that their methods fail to meet even the most basic tests of historical reliability. 

It is also a matter of record that the centre of this movement lies in the English-speaking world, and in the United States in particular.  The group that has pushed the campaign into “top gear” has been Gary Krupp’s New York based Pave The Way (PTW).  What began as a genuine philanthropic effort to work for the resolution of differences between particular groups, has, in this instance, become the fundamentalist vanguard of a group of Jews and Christians determined to see Pius XII declared one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem.  The parallel movement is to indirectly support the Catholic process of beatification that would see Pius declared “Blessed”, the penultimate stage before canonisation.

Indeed, much of the success of the Pius XII apologist movement has derived from sources close to and inside the Vatican.  Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI had given vocal support to PTW, which is consistent with their public statements praising Pius XII as a great saviour of the Jews during World War Two.  Senior curial officials, such as Cardinal Bertrone, have also lent considerable support to PTW, praised their work and written statements expressing the hope that their work would help promote the cause of Pius XII. 

Surrounding PTW, and not necessarily with PTW’s endorsement, is a gathering of extreme right-wing Catholic groups and individuals who have a very vocal agenda that does not hesitate to criticise anyone with whom they disagree, including bishops and theologians.  The CatholicLeague and EWTN are two groups who have regularly pilloried or down-played efforts by historians to research Pius XII and whose conclusions do not match their own, that is, that Pius is a saint.  Associated individuals such as William Doino, Ronald Rychlak, Margherita Marchione and David Dalin, are ideological allies of the larger groups and enjoy considerable media coverage of their platforms. Their understanding of history is reductionist – it is either white/true or black/false.  The nuances that form the greater part of the work of historians are not important. 

Despite their protestations of loyalty to the Magisterium and what they believe are the orthodox traditions of the Catholic Church, both organisations represent a small section of world Catholicism. And though the comments that follow are mostly directed at PTW they are applicable to the other groups mentioned above, and a considerable number that are not.

Groups such as these praise the work of PTW because it is an example of Jews speaking in favour of Pius XII.  This creates a very dangerous perception.  Who better to speak the “truth” about Pius than Jews?  If Jews are saying Pius rescued Jews, how can Catholics suggest otherwise?  Quite apart from the simple fact that the number of Jews actively involved in the study of Pius XII is tiny, it allows the perception to develop that there are Jews who are actively in favour of the canonisation of Pius.  This is not the stated position of PTW, but perceptions crafted by others often have an insidious power of their own to shape opinion.

The next crucial issue related to PTW lies in its presentation of the “facts” about Pius.

PTW has assembled an impressive collection about Pius XII from many different sources and invested considerable time, energy and funds in making this material readily available to anyone wishing to use it.  This is a generous act that should be acknowledged. 

However, it is the way the material is used that causes concern.  Gathering material is one part of the historical process; interpreting it is quite another.  PTW’s considerable archive on Pius XII lacks serious analysis.  Much of the material is already available in the public domain and has been analysed by historians.  And while there is always room for new analysis and interpretation, that work needs to be done according to the general accepted norms of historical research.  A lot of the material is “stand alone”, that is, it does not have corroborative evidence or contextual data to support the claims made.  An interview with an elderly Italian bishop who makes a series of claims to the effect that the pope ordered or attempted to get visas for Jews to enter a Caribbean country has to be supported with evidence from other sources.  There is no suggestion that the bishop is doing anything other than speaking what he believes to be the truth, but historians do not accord objective reliability to one source alone.

This problem of establishing context, is consistent throughout much of the work of PTW with regard to Pius XII.  The New York Times is a valuable source, but it cannot stand without support from other sources.  There is a wealth of published and unpublished material from many archives that have helped the historian establish credible paradigms with which to examine Pius XII.  Establishing the conclusion before examining all the available material is a dangerous way to proceed, but this is what PTW has done on more than one occasion.

Historians are craftsfolk trained to study, interpret, analyse and record the human story.  They are a diverse group and see the world using multiple matrices.  The common thread that unites them is a process of scientific and disciplined treatment of evidence working towards a sustainable and honest conclusion.  Studying Pius XII and the history of the Catholic church during World War Two requires a familiarity in several disciplines that include, church history, diplomatic history, ecclesiastical diplomatic history, theology, the history of theology, Italian history, fascism, national socialism, German and European history, communism, military history, languages and so on.  The point is laboured to emphasise the complex layers that lie within any serious attempt to come to grips with any moment in human history.  Unfortunately, PTW has a history of relying on people whose historical credentials appear to be less than adequate.  This has been seen on several occasions over the last few years.

PTW’s reliance on historians of dubious academic qualification is a serious problem the organisation either does not appear to understand or is not willing to address.  In July 2011, Michael Hesemann PTW’s German representative, published the story that Pius XII was responsible for saving for 200,000 Jews after the November 1938 pogrom.  Quite aside from the fact that the number was simply impossible, there is not one shred of evidence to support it.  Hesemann used “newly discovered documents” from the Vatican archives to back his claims.  The problem lay in the simple fact that the “newly discovered documents” had been available in published form since 1972 in Actes et Documents Volume 6.

Another example were the claims made by the Israeli diplomat, Pinchas Lapide.  Lapide claimed that Pius XII was responsible for saving the lives of 860,000 Jews.  He provided no evidence to support this “fact”, yet it has entered into the mythology of Pius XII and is accepted uncritically.  PTW is by no means the only group that endorses Lapide’s story.

It is poor historical effort such as this that weakens PTW as a reliable agent in the study of Pius XII.  It opens PTW to criticism that it has an agenda more concerned with finding material that agree with its core aim, namely to see Pius XII named one of the Righteous.

Finally, it is important to recognise that organisations such as PTW enjoy no endorsement from mainstream historians in the fields of study mentioned above.  They have not published any academic histories, peer-reviewed journal articles or worked with any recognised tertiary institutions.  They have a large number of Pius apologists, fellow-travellers who see Gary Krupp’s organisation as a vehicle they can use to suit their own neo-conservative agendas, but no recognised historians from any creditable university or institute of higher learning.  That more than a few of these fellow-travellers appear to delight in publicly denigrating and sneering at qualified and trained historians further erodes their credibility.  PTW does not help in this regard because it does not appear to be willing to even entertain the possibility that Pius XII could have made mistakes or been quite simply wrong in some of the decisions he made or did not make during the war.  Such refusal to allow the possibility of error on the part of the pope does no service and prevents PTW from being taken seriously as a participant in the historical debate. 

Gary Krupp is an unfailingly polite and courteous man, unlike some of the more strident apologists who think a McCarthy approach to their version of history is appropriate, but his unwillingness to accept that there are points of view contrary to his own, that the record on Pius XII is far from complete, that historians are wrestling with the issues surrounding his papacy and conduct through the war, that his archive while impressive is lacking in serious analysis and historiography, that he is quite possibly being used by neo-conservative factions within the Catholic church to push their own world-view, will prevent him from ever being a serious contender in the work to establish the record on Pope Pius XII.