Martin Rhonheimer, an Opus Dei priest, writes in First Things:
What is at issue, then, is not the question of guilt or innocence of individuals but recognition that the Catholic Church contributed in some measure to the developments that made the Holocaust possible. The “official Church,” to be sure, was certainly not one of the causes of the Holocaust. And once the trains started rolling toward Auschwitz, the Church was powerless to stop them. Yet neither can the Church boast that it was among those who, from the start, tried to avert Auschwitz by standing up publicly for its future victims. Given the undeniable intellectual and moral quality of the German episcopate of that era and the bishops’ impressive ideological opposition to Nazi persecution of the Church, their failure with regard to the Jews can only be described as tragic.
The real problem is not the Church’s relationship to National Socialism and racism, but the Church’s relationship to the Jews. Here we need what the Church today urges: a “purification of memory and conscience.” The Catholic Church’s undeniable hostility to National Socialism and racism cannot be used to justify its silence about the persecution of the Jews. It is one thing to explain this silence historically and make it understandable. It is quite another to use such explanations for apologetic purposes.
Rhonheimer offers and extensive analysis of Catholic actions before and during the Holocaust, managing to be reasonably even-handed. He points out where the Vatican did something right, but he doesn't flinch from pointing out why and how those "right things" often weren't enough, even by Catholic standards of the time. I don't think that he is always right - for example he draws a sharp distinction between religious anti-Judaism of historical Christianity and racial Antisemitism of modernity when, in fact, a move from one to the other occurred as early as the 16th century in Catholic Spain. There is more of a continuum, and hence more of a Catholic responsibility, than Rhonheimer quite acknowledges - but his article is still better than most out there.
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