Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews (121 page)

7. Ibid., 123. The Auschwitz registration numbers do not jibe with the totals given, so perhaps the log was not that meticulous. Morley,
Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews,
puts the number arrested at 1, 259, the number sent to Auschwitz at 1, 007 (180).

8. In late 1999, a joint Jewish-Catholic commission was established to study those archive documents to determine what Pius XII did and could have done about the Holocaust. The Jewish commission members were Michael Marrus, Robert Wistrich, and Bernard Suchecky. The Catholics were Eva Fleischner, Gerald Fogarty, and John Morley. In October 2000 the commission released a "preliminary report," saying its "investigation of the eleven volumes has generated many significant questions." Until further archives are opened, those questions remain unanswered. See
http://www.bnaibrith.org/cpp/randa/vatican.html
.

9. John Paul II,
Spiritual Pilgrimage,
62.

10. "We Remember," n. 16.

11. The Vatican official Father Peter Gumpel, S.J., quotes the Jewish diplomat and historian Pinchas Lapide as writing, "Pius XII, the Holy See, the Vatican nuncios and the whole Catholic Church saved between 700,000 and 850,000 Jews from certain death" ("Justice for Pius XII,"
Inside the Vatican,
June 1997, 22). See Pinchas Lapide,
Three Popes and the Jews
(New York: Hawthorne Books, 1967). István Deák, citing p. 214 of Lapide's book, renders the quote as "the Catholic Church, under the Pontificate of Pius XII, was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000, Jews." Deik comments, "Ever since the publication of Lapide's book, his figure of 860,000 has been used by practically every defender of Pius XII ... Lapide did not give any factual basis for his estimates" ("The Pope, the Nazis, and the Jews," 48; see also Flannery,
The Anguish of the Jews,
226). The 1998 Vatican document "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah" leaps from Lapide's crediting the "whole Catholic Church" to crediting the pope. Here is Robert Wistrich's assessment of that "unconvincing and inflated" claim: "In no instance did the Pope's intervention result in much more than a temporary respite in the killing. On even the most favorable reading of the historical record, his actions over the course of the Shoah were prudent to a fault. We may never know exactly how many Jewish lives he was responsible for saving, but the number is almost certainly far smaller than that implied by the Vatican." Wistrich, "The Pope, the Church, and the Jews," 26.

12. Giacomo Saban, "Address," in John Paul II,
Spiritual Pilgrimage,
72.

13. Eugene J. Fisher, in Foxman and Fisher, "Should the Vatican Beatify Its World War II Pope?," 49. Like Fisher, Margherita Marchione portrays this event in a light most favorable to Pius XII, describing it as "an official, personal protest through the papal Secretary of State." Marchione,
Memoirs of Jews and Catholics,
16.

14. Richard Freiherr von Weizsäcker served as his father's defense attorney at Nuremberg, but in 1985, as president, he delivered a speech to the German parliament in which he confessed that Hitler, in accomplishing his act of genocide, "made the entire nation the tool of this hatred." See Donald W. Shriver, Jr.,
An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 110.

15. Quoted by Morley,
Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews,
181.

16. John Morley, "Pope Pius XII in Historical Context," unpublished paper presented at "Building on 'We Remember': A Consultation on the Vatican's Reflection on the
Shoah,
" Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, March 30, 1999, 20.

17. Cornwell,
Hitlers Pope,
314.

18. Morley,
Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews,
184.

19. Fisher, in Foxman and Fisher, "Should the Vatican Beatify Its World War II Pope?," 49.

20. Morley,
Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews,
186.

21. Cornwell,
Hitler's Pope,
310.

22. Deäk, "The Pope, the Nazis, and the Jews," 48. The pope "did nothing. He sent no warning messages to the Jewish community, messages which, unlike messages from German diplomats, would surely have been believed; nor did he try to address the SS command."

23. Morley,
Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews,
209.

24. Graham Greene, "The Pope Who Remains a Priest,"
Life,
September 24, 1951.

25. "We Remember" points out, for example, that Golda Meir sent a message of condolence: "When fearful martyrdom came to our people, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims." In 1958, the world had barely begun to confront the history and meaning of the Holocaust. The play based on Anne Frank's diary, the beginning ofthat process, was only recently on Broadway. The Eichmann trial had yet to occur. The word "Holocaust" hadn't entered the discussion (it first appears in the
New York Times
index in 1980).

26. O'Mikle,
Pope Pius XII.

27. Ibid., 25–26.

28. Ibid., 42.

29. Ibid., 59.

30. Deak, "The Pope, the Nazis, and the Jews," 49.

31. Peter Gumpel with Antonio Gaspari, "Justice for Pius XII," in
Inside the Vatican,
June 1997.

32. Peter Gumpel, "Pius XII as He Really Was,"
The Tablet,
February 13, 1999. Quoted by Morley, "Pope Pius XII in Historical Context," 11.

33. Lewy,
The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany,
309.

34. Zuccotti,
Under His Very Windows.

35. John Paul II,
Spiritual Pilgrimage,
72.

36. Kornberg, "Döllinger's
Die Juden,
" 239.

37. Goldhagen,
Hitler's Willing Executioners,
110.

38. Lewy,
The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany,
282.

39. Goldhagen,
Hitler's Willing Executioners,
164.

40. Cornwell,
Hitler's Pope,
243.

41. Ibid., 297.

42. Quoted by Kornberg, "Döllinger's
Die Juden,
" 239.

43. Flannery,
The Anguish of the Jews,
226.

44. Lewy,
The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany,
303.

45. Wills,
Papal Sin,
33.

46. Lewy,
The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany,
304.

47. Flannery,
The Anguish of the Jews,
225.

48. Quoted by Lewy,
The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany,
304.

53. Edith Stein and Catholic Memory

1. Fabrégues,
Edith Stein,
11.

2. Sawicki,
Body, Text, and Science,
188.

3. Ibid., 90.

4. Fabrégues,
Edith Stein,
52.

5.
L'Osservatore Romano,
October 14, 1998.

6. See, for example, "The Convenient Saint,"
The Guardian,
September 26, 1998; "A Martyr—But Whose?,"
Time,
October 19, 1998; "Disharmony Swirls Around Future Saint,"
Boston Globe,
October 10, 1998; Gordon, "Saint Edith?," 17–20.

7. "Vatican Official Criticizes Jews,"
National Catholic Reporter,
December 11, 1998.

8. John M. Oesterreicher,
Walls Are Crumbling: Seven Jewish Philosophers Discover Christ
(London: Hollis and Carter, 1953).

9. See O'Hare,
Enduring Covenant,
7–32.

10.
L'Osservatore Romano.
October 14, 1998.

11. Wills,
Papal Sin,
52–53.

12. See Morley,
Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews,
147–65.

13. I interviewed the two doctors responsible for the ill child's treatment and the Church official in charge of the investigation (see Carroll, "The Saint and the Holocaust," 52; see also Wills,
Papal Sin,
59). Wills calls the Church's manipulation of its own canonization procedures in this case one of the Vatican's "historical dishonesties." He observes that the Church's determination to push this canonization through served a larger purpose: "Stein is very useful for maintaining the argument of We
Remember
..., that the church was more with the persecuted than with the persecutors during the Holocaust" (54).

14. Brenan,
St. John of the Cross,
91–94.

15. See Kertzer,
Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.
Kertzer reports that Pius IX fumed at a delegation of Roman Jews who complained of his having taken the child: "Take care, for I could have done you harm, a great deal of harm. I could have made you go back into your hole" (159). This is surely a reference to his assumption that the Roman ghetto was his to establish or disestablish.

16. Knickmeyer, "John Paul Beatifies Scorned, Beloved Popes,"
Boston Globe,
September 4, 2000.

17. Herbstrith,
Edith Stein,
64. See also Baseheart,
Person in the World,
25–26.

18. Baseheart,
Person in the World,
26; Herbstrith,
Edith Stein,
65; Sawicki,
Body, Text, and
Science, 197.

19. Author interview with Susannah Heschel.

20. Sawicki,
Body, Text, and Science,
195.

21. Herbstrith,
Edith Stein,
65.

22. Rachel Feldhay Brenner, "Ethical Convergence in Religious Conversion," in Cargas,
Unnecessary Problem of Edith Stein,
79.

23. Baseheart,
Person in the World,
25–26; Herbstrith,
Edith Stein,
64–65.

24. Quoted by Baseheart,
Person in the World,
26.

25. Herbstrith,
Edith Stein,
101–3; Sawicki,
Body, Text, and Science,
198. Marchione says that Pius XII intended to denounce the Nazi roundup of Jews after the Dutch bishops' letter, but he changed his mind. Of his statement, he was reported by his assistant to have said, "But if the Nazis find these sheets which are stronger than the bishops' letter, what will happen to the Catholics and the Jews under German control?" He is reported to have then burned the pages (
Yours Is a Precious Witness,
153). For an explanation of why this account of the pope's action is implausible, to say the least, see Wills,
Papal
Sin, 67–68. István Deák states, "Apparently, the Pope believed that 40,000 Catholic Jews were killed as a consequence of the Archbishop's pastoral letter. But there were not 40,000 converts in the Netherlands: rather it seems that only about one or two hundred Catholic Jews were arrested." Deak, "The Pope, the Nazis, and the Jews," 48.

26. Quoted by Herbstrith,
Edith Stein,
108.

27. Ibid., 106.

28. An example of the prevailing attitude is the report from Vichy's Vatican ambassador, Leon Berard, referred to above. Berard had sounded out Church officials on the subject of France's
Statut des Juifs,
the anti-Iewish legislation that paved the way for the deportations. Berard summarized the Church position: "A Jew who has been properly baptized ceases to be Jewish and merges with the 'flock of Christ.'" This amounted, he said, to "the sole point on which the law of 2 June 1941 [ the second
Statut de Juifs]
is in opposition to a principle espoused by the Roman Church." Marrus and Paxton,
Vichy France and the Jews,
201.

29. See Stein,
Self-Portrait in Letters,
238, 148, 163. See also Brenner, "Ethical Convergence in Religious Conversion," 99.

30. Quoted by Sawicki,
Body, Text, and
Science, 197.

31. Gordon, "Saint Edith?," 20.

32. Quoted by Sawicki,
Body, Text, and Science,
214.

33. On July 12, 1999, John Paul II, at a papal Mass in Warsaw, beatified 108 Polish Catholics, mostly priests and nuns who had died as martyrs during World War II, mostly in the death camps, including 15 who had been killed at Auschwitz.

34. Quoted by Herbstrith,
Edith Stein,
107.

54. The Broad Relevance of Catholic Reform

1. T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding,"
Collected Poems,
208.

2. I wrote about this encounter in
An American Requiem,
76–79.

3. "The often so misanthropic and bureaucratic Church must die," Hans Kung wrote, "and the philanthropic Church of Jesus must again and again resurrect in our hearts." Kung,
Reforming the Church Today,
163.

4. Quoted by Peter Hebblethwaite, "John XXIII,"
HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism,
709.

5. "I am not infallible," he said. "The pope is infallible only when he speaks
ex cathedra.
But I will never speak ex
cathedra
" Quoted by Kung,
Reforming the Church Today,
69.

6. Hebblethwaite, "John XXIII,"7io.

7. "Since women are becoming ever more conscious of their human dignity," he wrote, "they will not tolerate being treated as mere material instruments, but demand rights befitting a human person both in domestic and in public life." John XXIII,
Pacem in Terris,
in O'Brien and Shannon,
Catholic Documents,
134.

8. Quoted by Hebblethwaite, "John XXIII," 709.

9. Kung,
Reforming the Church Today,
66–67.

10. Reinhard Neudecker, S.J., "The Catholic Church and the Jewish People," in Latourelle,
Vatican 11,
283. When John XXIII was beatified in 2000, it was reported—as if to mitigate the negative publicity attached to Pius IX, with whom he'd been twinned—that John had "complained of a 'convoy of Jews' heading to Palestine and its holy sites, as if such a remark, however problematic, compared with the anti-Jewish record of Pius IX Knickmeyer, "John Paul Beatifies Scorned, Beloved Popes,"
Boston Globe,
September 4, 2000.

11. Arendt, Men
in Dark Times,
63.