Pope rehabilitates Holocaust denier

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Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. Yet another reason why I'm not Catholic.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Disgusting.

[Joe Republic]

Hey, he was just lending a hand to a brother in arms.


*runs away*

[minionofmidas]

I suppose they had some arcane theological reason that the article doesn't hit upon, and that is nothing whatsoever to do with the Holocaust.

Certainly, being a disgusting idiot is no reason to be expelled from a church? Can we agree on that much?

[Keystone Phil]

I'm sorry but while I obviously disagree with Holocaust deniers, I'm not sold on the idea that they ought to be excommunicated from the Church for that reason.

[Lunar]

The Pope also has his own Youtube channel starting a couple days ago.  Didn't make a thread about it, but yeah.

[12th Doctor]

Belief in the holocaust is not an issue of doctrine.  The only reason someone can and ought to be excommunicated is for doctrinal issues.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

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Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. Yet another reason why I'm not Catholic.

Because he un-excommunicated them or because they were excommunicated in the first place?

[Associate Justice PiT]

    As bad as denying the holocaust is, no sane person would want people to be excommunicated over non-religious views.

[12th Doctor]

The best part about this issue is that the fact that he is a  Holocaust Denier is completely incidental.  It had nothing to do with the reason behind the excommunication.  The reason they were excommunicated was because of extreme anti-Vatican II views.  He recanted and was allowed back in.

You have to want it to think this is some endorsement of his non-religious views on the Holocaust, and, of course, plenty of people do want it.

Just like idiot stick above me wants the Pope to be a Nazi even though all records indicate that his participation in the Hitler Youth and the Germany army was unenthusiastic, and came about because he was forced into it.

That is disgusting, as much so as this guys views, but you aren't going to hear anyone complaining about that.

[afleitch]

Another example of how the current Pope is a very poor communicator.

There were dogmatic reasons for rehabilitation. However there is no denying holocaust deniers are odious individuals. However the Pope and the Vatican just 'say' rather than explain.

So we end up with furore over Islam, Pope Pius, Spanish clerical fascists, gender theory and numerous other pronouncements.

[12th Doctor]

Another example of how the current Pope is a very poor communicator.

There were dogmatic reasons for rehabilitation. However there is no denying holocaust deniers are odious individuals. However the Pope and the Vatican just 'say' rather than explain.

So we end up with furore over Islam, Pope Pius, Spanish clerical fascists, gender theory and numerous other pronouncements.

I'll agree with that, but let me ask you, if he had gone out and given this long explanation, would anyone have cared?  Would they be saying anything different?

[Keystone Phil]

Another example of how the current Pope is a very poor communicator.

There were dogmatic reasons for rehabilitation. However there is no denying holocaust deniers are odious individuals. However the Pope and the Vatican just 'say' rather than explain.

So we end up with furore over Islam, Pope Pius, Spanish clerical fascists, gender theory and numerous other pronouncements.

I'll agree with that, but let me ask you, if he had gone out and given this long explanation, would anyone have cared?  Would they be saying anything different?

Of course not!

[Associate Justice PiT]

Another example of how the current Pope is a very poor communicator.

There were dogmatic reasons for rehabilitation. However there is no denying holocaust deniers are odious individuals. However the Pope and the Vatican just 'say' rather than explain.

So we end up with furore over Islam, Pope Pius, Spanish clerical fascists, gender theory and numerous other pronouncements.

I'll agree with that, but let me ask you, if he had gone out and given this long explanation, would anyone have cared?  Would they be saying anything different?

Of course not!

     This is right. Most people are only interested in totally discrediting Catholicism. Things such as facts couldn't hope to persuade them out of their prejudices.

[minionofmidas]

So we end up with furore over Pope Pius, Spanish clerical fascists.

I don't think that's ever going to go away with "better communication".

[12th Doctor]

So we end up with furore over Pope Pius, Spanish clerical fascists.

I don't think that's ever going to go away with "better communication".

Utterly amazing how Pius XII went from one of the world's great heroes in the 40's and 50's to this horrible, Jew killing, friend of Hitler.  Hitler certainly didn't see Pius as a friend, but if ultraliberal intellectuals want to start to rumor that Pius was Hitler's ally, in order to discreadit his opposition to communism, why not... and why shouldn't the world believe the lie, right?

[afleitch]

So we end up with furore over Pope Pius, Spanish clerical fascists.

I don't think that's ever going to go away with "better communication".

Utterly amazing how Pius XII went from one of the world's great heroes in the 40's and 50's to this horrible, Jew killing, friend of Hitler.  Hitler certainly didn't see Pius as a friend, but if ultraliberal intellectuals want to start to rumor that Pius was Hitler's ally, in order to discreadit his opposition to communism, why not... and why shouldn't the world believe the lie, right?

Don't oversimplify things. Cheapening the concern that some have over the canonization of Pius is not appropriate. Pius X and his Vatican before and during WWII is a complicated and often contradictory matter

[12th Doctor]

So we end up with furore over Pope Pius, Spanish clerical fascists.

I don't think that's ever going to go away with "better communication".

Utterly amazing how Pius XII went from one of the world's great heroes in the 40's and 50's to this horrible, Jew killing, friend of Hitler.  Hitler certainly didn't see Pius as a friend, but if ultraliberal intellectuals want to start to rumor that Pius was Hitler's ally, in order to discreadit his opposition to communism, why not... and why shouldn't the world believe the lie, right?

Don't oversimplify things. Cheapening the concern that some have over the canonization of Pius is not appropriate. Pius X and his Vatican before and during WWII is a complicated and often contradictory matter

Well, it would be a complicated matter indeed, since Pius X died 30 years before the war.

That being said, you think I am over-simplifying things and not the anti-Catholics who have made quite a bit of hay out of Pius XII supposed approval of Hitler?

What is even better is that Pius XI gets tarred with the pro-Hitler brush now, too, when he did, in fact, speak out very clearly against the Nazis.

[afleitch]

So we end up with furore over Pope Pius, Spanish clerical fascists.

I don't think that's ever going to go away with "better communication".

Utterly amazing how Pius XII went from one of the world's great heroes in the 40's and 50's to this horrible, Jew killing, friend of Hitler.  Hitler certainly didn't see Pius as a friend, but if ultraliberal intellectuals want to start to rumor that Pius was Hitler's ally, in order to discreadit his opposition to communism, why not... and why shouldn't the world believe the lie, right?

Don't oversimplify things. Cheapening the concern that some have over the canonization of Pius is not appropriate. Pius X and his Vatican before and during WWII is a complicated and often contradictory matter

Well, it would be a complicated matter indeed, since Pius X died 30 years before the war.

That being said, you think I am over-simplifying things and not the anti-Catholics who have made quite a bit of hay out of Pius XII supposed approval of Hitler?

What is even better is that Pius XI gets tarred with the pro-Hitler brush now, too, when he did, in fact, speak out very clearly against the Nazis.

Actually a few Catholic historians have tackled this subject and very few Catholic or otherwise think he approved Hitler. Pius' problem was that he spoke out against the Nazi's...then sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he had concern for the Jew's...othertimes he didn't, particularly when the scale of their destruction was becoming apparent. He was pressed by the Allies and by Myron Tyler the US representative to the Vatican in 1942 only to be met with the Vatican saying calims of genocide were 'unproven.' He was very reluctant to speak out against massacres ordered by Nazi's and indeed by Soviets in Poland during the war. He was also reluctant to denouce the persecution of Catholic's in the Eastern Bloc post '45. This has nothing to do with the Nazi's - it's to do with his period silence as the world caught aflame, regardless of who the perpetrators were.

Pius is characterised rather by what he didn't say rather than by what he did.

As for changes in historical perception, that tends to happen over the course of years are more documents and sources come to light. It's nothing new or unexpected.

[7,052,770]

The bishop is an idiot, but if that were excommunicable, then we'd have a lot fewer Catholics.

I swear, this board just likes to pile on Catholics/the pope without good reason.

[minionofmidas]

Uh... while "ally" he was not, it's not as if that particular pope's *relative* closeness to fascist positions (as in, closer to that than to anything approaching Democracy. And as in, closer to that than the average paranoid Vatican functionary) was a secret during the war or even before.

He did, sometimes, make frustratingly tiny noises on behalf of the Jews (frustrating to many within the Vatican itself, that is; and to the Western powers' liaisons there) but not on a scale with what he said on behalf of the Poles during the war, or what he was to do for individual Nazis after. And he seemed really to think that he had done not only all he could but all he had to do - the problem being that he was an Antisemite.

He was certainly not a "hero" in the 50s (except among those Catholic conservatives who wrongly believed the Catholic church to have been in much greater danger than it was during the Nazi reign, and then wrongly credited its unscathed emergence to his stewardship. Anticommunism enters here, too, but is hardly a prime mover. The traditions of paranoia - siege mentality if you prefer - that emerged thanks to Italian Unification are far more relevant.)... the election of John XXIII would hardly have been possible otherwise.

It was during Pius' lifetime that people inside the Vatican joked about the last three popes of that name....
Pius X was a saint and knew it not.
Pius XI was no saint and knew it.
Pius XII was no saint and knew it not.

It's probably quite accurate (if you accept that Pius X was a "saint". Or, as a nonbeliever, just substitute "a good man" or something like that.)

Anyways, the difference between this issue and the Pius XII issue is the difference between non-excommunication and canonization. The one should be self-evident, the other can never be.

EDIT to take one claim out that I wasn't too sure about on reflection.

[minionofmidas]

Or to quote Goebbels' diary on one of those papal pronouncements, "the pope is closer to our position than is commonly perceived."

[minionofmidas]

He certainly didn't *like* Hitler or his views, quite on the contrary.

If that wasn't clear enough from the above.

It's just that he patently - absurdly obviously - had a horribly wrong set of priorities and was a net force for evil as a result. Or at least not nearly enough of a force for good. He's like so many Germans who had misgivings and didn't act on them but later felt they had... a normal psychological reaction of course. The only difference is that he could have made at least a little bit of a difference; most others could not. He was no Nazi (though he wasn't a Conservative in a modern postwar sense either; he was lightyears to the right of that); he just failed his people and the people of the world due to a lack of courage and moral fibre. It's not... right... to *condemn* that if you haven't been in the same situation... but it's certainly wrong, and very much so, for a church to venerate him. (Incidentally, the process for beatification of Pius XII was begun, decades ago under Paul, on the same day as that of John XXIII. Vatican politics at its finest...)

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

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Who said that catholic church was archaic? Doesn't it just shows here it is able to follow the world trends? In that sens Benedict XVI is as "fashion" as was John-Paul II...

[afleitch]

He certainly didn't *like* Hitler or his views, quite on the contrary.

If that wasn't clear enough from the above.

It's just that he patently - absurdly obviously - had a horribly wrong set of priorities and was a net force for evil as a result. Or at least not nearly enough of a force for good. He's like so many Germans who had misgivings and didn't act on them but later felt they had... a normal psychological reaction of course. The only difference is that he could have made at least a little bit of a difference; most others could not. He was no Nazi (though he wasn't a Conservative in a modern postwar sense either; he was lightyears to the right of that); he just failed his people and the people of the world due to a lack of courage and moral fibre. It's not... right... to *condemn* that if you haven't been in the same situation... but it's certainly wrong, and very much so, for a church to venerate him. (Incidentally, the process for beatification of Pius XII was begun, decades ago under Paul, on the same day as that of John XXIII. Vatican politics at its finest...)

The whole position of the Vatican, and to an extent that of many of the bishops in Europe, was that the trend towards authoritarianism, whether fascistic or not in 1930's Europe, seemed to these Catholics as coterminous. Hence support for regimes in Hungary, Spain and later in Vichy France. The focus on order, the family, society, religion, the civil service (i'll explain that to anyone if I have to) over democratic and socialist traits which were seen as 'degenerate.'

You are very correct in noting the 'inwardness' of the Vatican given it's relationship with Italy and Italian nationalism prior to that. The Vatican was the Vatican and it did not have an internationalist outlook. There was also a desire for self-preservation; Italy could have walked into St Pauls and dissolved the Holy See as a geographic and political entity. What was the alternative to Mussolini? At that time it wasn't democracy (which was been given it's premature last rights) but 'Bolshevism' - a threat of revolutionary unreligious and 'degenerate' socialism (and it's unexercised power in Italy was evident after the war) Caught between the two, particularly as the Soviets advanced in 1943-44 led to an awkward silence. Unfortunately this co-incided with the implementation of the Final Solution.