Back in the saddle.

I have been on study leave since mid-October 2013.  The time away from school was a great opportunity to re-charge the batteries, do some serious professional and personal development in areas of Liturgy, Christian art and architecture, history and travel.  Of the latter I did some pretty serious getting around.  Over the last three months I have spent time in different cities in Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Cuba and the United States.  Most of that time was engaged in various forms of "church crawling".  

I kept an eye on news concerning Pius XII but it has been pretty quiet.  The only significant piece of news has been the resurgence of hope that Pope Francis may speed up the opening of the archives for Pius' pontificate.  Much of the story appears to have been promoted by the visit to Rome by Francis' old friend, Rabbi Abraham Skorka of Buenos Aires.  And while Skorka was diplomatically reserved over the nature of his conversations with his old friend, he did suggest that Francis was keen to open the archives in order to "get it all out" about what Pius did and did not do.  Several articles appeared on 19 January and there has been a steady trickle over the last week.  Most appear to borrow from each other.

However, I tend to be rather sceptical having seen more than a few media reports that "it" was about to happen, would happen soon, that the new pope was committed to "it" and so on.  What I do think is solid fact is Francis' commitment to "hasten slowly" on the cause of Pope Pius XII.  His public statements demonstrate a much-welcomed caution that until all the relevant material is examined, Pacelli's cause for canonisation should wait.  This is good news.  For those who wish to read some of the news headlines I suggest these:


19 January: Gidon Ben-zvi writing in The Algemeiner,  Pope may open Holocaust era Vatican archives, possiblt shedding light on Pope Pius XII's role.

19 January: The Jerusalem Post picked up Pope Francis to examine Pius' wartime conduct before deciding on sainthood from the Sunday Times.

20 January: Catholic Culture, a conservative North American news service, reported Pope ready to open secret archives of Pius XII?

20 January: Andrea Tornielli writing in Vatican Insider penned Skorka and the Vatican archives on Pius XII.

25 January:  A very enthusiastic Vaiju Naravane writing for The Hindu informs us the "Pope Francis appears to have taken another bold decision in favour of inter-religious harmony and transparency in the affairs off the Roman Catholic Church.  It has been reported that he has decided to throw open the Vatican's archives on the Holocaust and the role played by Pope Pius XII during Hitler's third Reich when an estimated six million Jews were exterminated".

An interesting start.  However, just in case his readers think this is really what is going on, Naravane goes on to write: "However, the Vatican has still to confirm that Pope Francis has in fact decided to open the archives".  Indeed.  

Personally, I find reading Sandro Magister's column along with more "left of centre" journals, such as the National Catholic Reporter, gives me what may be the best picture of what is happening.

Ventresca's book continues to receive high praise.

Australia's CathNews recently published a compendium of review of Robert Ventresca's Soldier of Christ.  

Soldier of Christ: the life of Pope Pius XII by Robert Ventresca (Harvard University Press)

Pope Pius XII (1939-58) has become the most controversial pope of the twentieth century. His biography is the battleground for the so-called ‘Pius War’, waged largely over his decision to remain silent in the face of the Holocaust as reliable reports of Nazi atrocities against Jews reached the Vatican.

Rolf Hochhuth’s play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy), which cast the Pope as cold and calculating in deciding not to protest publicly against the plight of the Jews, unleashed a conflict of interpretations in 1963.

John Cornwell’s book Hitler’s Pope: the secret history of Pius XII stoked the fires of controversy again in 1999.

Robert Ventresca complains that the ‘war of words has done more harm than good to our understanding’ of Pius XII. Many previous studies ‘offered a distorted or highly selective picture’.

Ventresca’s biography is largely sympathetic, as the title suggests. It alludes to the pope’s first encyclical Summi Pontificatus, issued almost two months after the beginning of the Second World War. Pius hoped that Catholics as ‘Soldiers of Christ’ would feel inspired ‘to a more determined resistance by the sight of the ever-increasing host of Christ’s enemies’.

Ventresca ends at the same point as Cornwell by considering the cause for the pope’s canonisation. Unlike Cornwell, he is favourably inclined. Benedict XVI’s decree of 2009 that acknowledged the ‘heroic virtues’ of his predecessor simply means, as Ventresca explains, that Pius XII ‘lived as a virtuous man striving in extraordinary ways to be like God’.

Appreciation for the Pope accumulates in Ventresca’s survey of the post-war pontificate. Pius XII was a ‘modern pope’. Is this epithet a challenge to Peter Hebblethwaite, whose biography of Paul VI acclaimed him ‘the first modern pope’?

Pius XII favoured a global Church that looked beyond Europe. He counts as ‘the real spiritual father’ of Vatican II.

In light of the encyclical Humani Generis (1950), a critique of ‘some false opinions threatening to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine’, Ventresca rejects the caricature of Pius XII as ‘the architect of an arch-conservative, reactionary, and monolithic church culture’.

Far from ‘retreating into a reactionary obscurantism’, the Pope aimed at a reconciliation of Catholic faith and modern science. Nevertheless, ‘he allowed a reactionary, inquisitorial culture to fester – to the personal and professional detriment of some of the Church’s most intelligent, creative, and faithful servants’. 

Most readers will gravitate to the story that takes the biography of Eugenio Pacelli/Pius XII to the end of the Second World War and its aftermath.

Ventresca’s focus on the diplomatic side of his subject’s life is much stronger than his recognition of the pastoral and spiritual dimensions of the post-war pontificate. As Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli genuinely believed in the utility of the concordat expeditiously concluded with Hitler’s regime in 1933. But Ventresca concedes that his protest in 1936 against Nazi violations of the Church’s rights assured in the Reichskonkordat ‘shows the futility of a diplomatic protest without teeth’.

During the war, Pius XII pursued a policy of neutrality, or impartiality, as he called it. Such a policy necessitated a ‘supreme rhetorical restraint, which Ventresca equates with ‘prudence’.

By responding to aggression with balanced and complex diplomatic language the pope sought to avoid provoking greater harm. His impartiality often exasperated Germany’s enemies, including Polish churchmen who wanted a clear papal condemnation of the invasion of their country. ‘But,’ Ventresca insists, ‘the Pope was not silent during the war.’

Such a claim competes with Ventresca’s critical comments…

Full review in The Tablet: 

Review on Catholic World Report: 

Review on Times Higher Education Report:  

Review on The Lay Catholic.com: 

Review on NCR On Line: 

Buy this book: 

From the National Catholic Reporter

Polish history throughout the 1930s through to the late 1940s was a bloody and violent narrative that saw over 3 million Polish Jews and an equal number of Polish non-Jews murdered.  To its shame the Catholic Church was a contributor to the widespread cultural acceptance of Judeophobia and even antisemitism.  But, to its credit, the Church also had the highest number of "Righteous among the Nations" who rescued and saved Jews.  The role of Pope Pius XII and the war in Poland is long and very complex, requiring ongoing serious study to disentangle the many layered webs.

In 2005 I visited Poland and Lithuania as part of Yad Vashem sponsored graduate field trip to places of Holocaust significance.  It was one of the most significant journeys I have taken.  One of the things I learned was of the growing number of young(ish) Poles who have come forward over the last ten or so years who have discovered Jewish ancestry and who need to know about that part of their identity that has existed only as a vague memory, if it has existed at all.

The Jagiellonian University in Krakow has one of the largest departments of Jewish studies in Europe with a growing graduate research program that aims at getting students who have discovered Jewish ancestry to uncover, discover and recover the Jewish history of Poland's towns, shtetls and cities.  As far as I am aware, the department's program in this area continues.

This provides an introduction to the article I read on the National Catholic Reporter entitled "Educators revive history of Poland's Jews".   It is very much a "good news" read, even if some of the comments are somewhat indicative of minds that could do with a little opening.

After a few weeks away ...

John Allen is a regular columnist with the Kansas-based National Catholic Reporter, a left-of-centre English language journal.  He is widely regarded as one of the best Vaticanistas around. His column this week is of interest from my perspective because of the unnecessary blunders caused when time is not taken to get facts right and express them in such a way they are easily understood.  Benedict XVI's PR disasters are not stand-alone incidents.  The 1999 International Christian Jewish Historical Commission fell foul of a similar information disaster when the Vatican effectively shut down the work of the commission.  No amount of "spin" takes away the impression that there are things to hide or conceal.  And impressions are what many remember - not convoluted statements attempting to justify or "put the record straight".

Allen's column adds to the reasoned arguments why the archives for Pius XII and the war years must be opened as soon as possible and with complete transparency.  They must not only be fully open, but they must appear to be fully open. 

Read the column here: 'Attack on Ratzinger': Italian book assesses Benedict's papacy

The section on the mess around the lifting of the excommunication of Richard Williamson is worth copying here:

It concerns the affair of Bishop Richard Williamson, one of four traditionalist prelates whose excommunications were lifted by Pope Benedict XVI in January 2009. Williamson infamously gave an interview to Swedish television in November 2008, repeating statements he had made two decades earlier in Canada, to the effect that Nazis did not use gas chambers and that only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews had died in Nazi camps during the Second World War. The interview was not broadcast in Sweden until Jan. 21, 2009, but its contents were anticipated in a piece in the German weekly Der Spiegel the day before, on Jan. 20.


By that stage, Benedict XVI had already decided (sometime in late 2008) to lift the excommunications of the four bishops -- seeing it, he would later insist, as the beginning of a process of reconciliation, not the end. A formal decree was presented to Bishop Bernard Fellay, leader of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, on Jan. 17, 2009, and it took effect on Jan. 21. The decree was not made public by the Vatican, however, until noon Rome time on Jan. 24, when it was published in that day's news bulletin.


Once that happened, headlines about the pope "rehabilitating a Holocaust denier" became the shot heard round the world. After weeks of controversy, Benedict XVI would eventually issue an agonizing letter to the world's bishops apologizing for the hurt caused by the affair.

All that, of course, is a matter of record. What Tornielli and Rodari add is that on Jan. 22, 2009 -- two days after Der Spiegel broke the story of Williams' interview, and two days before the Vatican formally announced the lifting of the excommunications -- a high-level meeting took place in the Vatican to discuss the presentation of the pope's decree. The meeting was convened by Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state. Also present were:

•Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, then president of the Ecclesia Dei Commission for relations with the traditionalists;


•Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith;


•Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, then prefect of the Congregation for Bishops;


•Cardinal Claudio Hummes, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy;


•Archbishop Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts;


•Archbishop Fernando Filoni, substitute in the Secretariat of State.


The gathering, in other words, brought together the Vatican's most senior brain trust. Tornielli and Rodario reconstruct the meeting on the basis of a previously unpublished set of confidential Vatican minutes.

Here's the mind-blowing point: During the meeting, there was no mention whatsoever of Williamson's explosive comments on the Holocaust, despite the fact that they had been in circulation for two full days. The minutes reflect a detailed discussion about whether, and how, the lifting of the excommunications applied to other clergy of the Society of St. Pius X, but there was apparently no consideration of how this move might go down in the broader court of public opinion.

Two key figures were not on the guest list for the Jan. 22 meeting: Lombardi, who had to explain the decision to the world's media, and Cardinal Walter Kasper, who had to explain it to the Jews. Instead, Filoni led a brief discussion about a proposed statement to the press, and the minutes reflect general agreement not to grant any media interviews. Coccopalmerio was commissioned to publish an article in L'Osservatore Romano explaining the decree, but only "after a few days."

The lack of any sense of urgency, or alarm, about public reaction is astonishing. The impression one gets is that the Vatican's best and brightest were acutely sensitive to the kinds of questions canon lawyers might ask, but either unaware of -- or, even more troubling, indifferent to -- how the decree might strike the rest of the world.

The rest is history. After being whipped around by a global tsunami for 10 full days, the Vatican's Secretariat of State finally released a statement on Feb. 4, calling Williamson's statements on the Holocaust "unacceptable." It clarified that by lifting the excommunications, Benedict XVI only opened a door to dialogue, and it's now up to the traditionalists to prove their "adherence to the doctrine and discipline of the church." The four prelates still have no authority to act as Catholic bishops, and their movement is still not recognized. If they want to be fully reintegrated into the church, they will have to accept the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.

Looking back, here's the thing.

Even if Williamson had never given his interview to Swedish TV, anyone looking at the situation from a PR point of view should have anticipated that once the Vatican announced these four bishops were no longer excommunicated, reporters would look into their backgrounds. Had anyone in the Vatican spent even five minutes on Google searching under the name "Richard Williamson," his troubling history on the Holocaust would have leapt off the screen, which was a matter of public record long before he spoke to the Swedes. (Indeed, all the Swedish journalist did was ask Williamson to repeat stuff he had already said.)

Armed with that information, the Vatican could have issued its detailed Feb. 4 statement along with the decree itself, to explain from the outset that these guys have not been "rehabilitated," but rather given an opportunity to clean up their act. They could also have organized a press conference, so there would be TV sound bites assuring the world that this decision in no way signified a rollback on Catholic/Jewish relations or anything else.

Under any set of circumstances, failure to take such common sense steps is hard to explain.

Yet Williamson did give that interview to Swedish TV, and in that light, the revelation that the pope's top aides assembled two days after it went public and still seemed oblivious to the train wreck hurtling towards them -- well, you'll never need additional proof that the Vatican has a PR problem.

Tolle legge, tolle legge!