Interest on the Web of Pope Benedict and the Holocaust peaked earlier this year when he lifted the excommunication on an anti-Semitic bishop, though there hasn't been a lot of online buzz recently:
I want to call attention to this, from a Dec 23 article in the NYTimes:
"In an effort to calm growing tensions with Jewish groups, the Vatican said Wednesday that Pope Benedict XVI’s decision moving the wartime pope Pius XII closer to sainthood was not a “hostile act” against those who believe Pius did not do enough to stop the Holocaust." ...It's interesting that someone who was Hitler Youth and served in the Nazi Army is beatifying Pius and brought at least one anti-Semite and Holocaust denier back into the Catholic fold. In both cases, the Pope chose the interests of his Catholics over the wishes of the Jews.
"The decision by Benedict — a German who was an unwilling member of the Hitler Youth — to move Pius closer to sainthood was the latest in a series of controversies. It came less than a year after he revoked the excommunication of a schismatic bishop who had denied the scope of the Holocaust"
As I remember, the Jews* did not make a big case out of his membership in the Nazi Army. Nobody said, "out of all of the possible candidates, why did the Vatican have to choose someone with that background?" Which is not to say that Ratzinger was a bad choice for a Pope. It's not like he was an active Hilter Youth: "'He was very certainly not for Hitler,' Augerer said of Joseph Ratzinger. 'Absolutely not. They couldn't do anything about it. ... You can't forget the times.'"
When the Nazi issue came to bear during Ratzinger's selection, it was spun as though Ratzinger defied the Nazis. What did he do? He listened to Allied radio:
"Blinds drawn, windows closed, Joseph Ratzinger huddled with his father and older brother around a radio and listened to Allied radio broadcasts, volume on low. It was a small and risky act of defiance in this conservative Bavarian village deep inside Adolf Hitler's Germany."It is interesting that the process of beatifying Pope Pius comes just as he recounted his May trip to Yad Vashem. In a speech Monday at the Vatican, he said, "The visit to the Yad Vashem has meant an upsetting encounter with the cruelty of human fault, with the hatred of a blind ideology."
What does it mean that he had an upsetting encounter with "the cruelty of human fault" and "the hatred of a blind ideology"? That the fault that exists in man was what led the Nazis to exterminate Jews? It sounds like the Germans were led by an unconscious process. "The hatred of a blind ideology"? I don't know what that means, but is it an active enough stance against the actions of the Nazis?
So why is Pope Benedict beatifying the Pope who reigned from 1939 to 1958? He's beatifying him for his "Christian life" and not “the historical impact of all his operative decisions.” Is a Christian life separate from a life in reality? But for that matter, what did these "operative decisions" include? Quiet diplomacy ("the Vatican insists Pius used quiet diplomacy to try to save Jews"). This, according to the Jews, was not enough in the face of genocide.
So I don't take issue with the appointing of Ratzinger, a former constituent of Nazi Germany, to be Pope. Ratzinger was no matyr, and didn't actively defy the Nazis. But I'm not saying that the Pope has to be a matyr, a person who really laid down their well-being and transcended his time and place. The Pope doesn't have to be someone like Oskar Schindler. Though wouldn't it be amazing if it was? But the papacy isn't a democracy...
But for someone of Ratzinger's background to beatify the Pope seems wrongfully insensitive to the Jews.
* It's interesting to note that even the ADL, whose very namesake is to be "anti" and on defense, supported Pope Benedict's selection. Who didn't? Chief Rabbi of England, Jonathan Sacks (who received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Kings College London, to boot).
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