by Ronald Rychlak (Catalyst 5/2004) During World War II and for years after it ended, Pope Pius XII was heralded as a staunch opponent of the Nazis and a champion of their victims. Then in 1963, as the result of a piece of fiction written by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth, a controversy arose about whether the [...]
by Kenneth D. Whitehead (Catalyst 7/2003) Daniel Silva, The Confessor, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2003. HB; 401 pages. $29.95. What Notre Dame philosophy professor Ralph McInerny has aptly called "the defamation of Pius XII"—in his excellent book with that title—has unfortunately been so widely successful in the culture at large that many people simply take [...]
by Michael Novak (Catalyst 3/2002) The government of the United States, George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport in 1790, "gives to bigotry no sanction." But now The New Republic does. "The anti-Semitism of the intellectuals," Peter Vierek once shrewdly remarked, "is anti-Catholicism." In its January 21 issue, The New Republichas sunk into the swamp of bigotry [...]
by Bronwen McShea (review of Daniel Goldhagen's A Moral Reckoning, Catalyst 1/2003) Daniel J. Goldhagen’s latest book, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, purports to be a much-needed “moral philosophical” contribution to a troubled field of scholarship. Standing on the shoulders of other critics of [...]
by Richard C. Lukas (Catalyst 7/2002) Nowhere is the politicization of history and its practitioners more evident than in the recent writings of a number of historians of the Holocaust era. The temptations of glitz, glamour and money seem to have influenced some historians to sensationalize their subjects to get noticed by the media. Instead of [...]
by Sr. Margherita Marchione, M.P.F. (Catalyst 1/2002) An extraordinary new book, a scholarly compedium of vital historical documents, Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican (Paulist Press, 1999) by Father Pierre Blet, S.J., greatly expands our knowledge of what Pope Pius XII did to help victims of Nazi oppression in Europe [...]
by Ronald Rychlak (Catalyst 12/2001) A couple of years ago, when critics charged that Pope Pius XII had shown a callous indifference to the plight of the Jews, the common refrain was that if only he had been more outspoken on behalf of the Jews, like his predecessors, thousands of more lives might have been saved. [...]
by Ronald Rychlak (Catalyst 12/2001) A couple of years ago, when critics charged that Pope Pius XII had shown a callous indifference to the plight of the Jews, the common refrain was that if only he had been more outspoken on behalf of the Jews, like his predecessors, thousands of more lives might have been saved. [...]
by Ronald Rychlak (Catalyst 9/2001) The self-destruction of the Catholic-Jewish Pope Pius XII study group came as little surprise to those who had been following its progress closely. From the very beginning, several members of that group rejected their mandate and instead sought to force a change in Vatican archival policy. When the Vatican stood its [...]
by Robert P. Lockwood (5/2001) In recent years there have been a series of books that have dealt both directly and indirectly with the accusation that Pope Pius XII bore responsibility for the Holocaust in World War II. Beginning with John Cornwell’s “Hitler’s Pope,”1 through Garry Wills’ “Papal Sin”2 and concluding – at least at this point in [...]
