Dateline: December 01, 1999
Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell. (1999 Viking/Penguin Group). Reviewed by Jim Baysinger.
The Legacy Of Pius XII
John Cornwell, bestselling author on Catholic affairs and Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, has provided us with a biased but well-written account of how Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, became the Pope accused of aiding and abetting both the rise of Adolf Hitler to power in Germany and the subsequent Holocaust perpetrated against the Jews. Through a combination of personal ambition, pursuit of unbridled power for the papacy, anti-Semitic tendencies and a fatal attraction to fascist ideology, Pacelli became a man remembered by many as the Pope who failed to speak out against Axis aggression and the persecution of the Jews in World War II.
Hitler's Pope is more than a biography of Pius XII and a history of the Church's authoritarian trend since the mid-nineteenth century. It is also a polemical work by a collegialist Catholic writer who deplores the "infallible" despotism of our recent modern Popes.[1] Cornwell points out that the authoritarian papacy has cost the Catholic Church dearly in terms of lost or defiant followers, eroded prestige and lessened influence in world affairs.
It is important to emphasize three points. First, that Pius XII's authoritarian tendencies must be viewed in the context of the policies of his immediate predecessors starting with Pius X, as Cornwell does quite ably. Second, that Pacelli's despotic style of rule over the Church was subjected to an unprecedented stress test by World War II, which brought the shortcomings of both Pacelli himself and the development of centralized Church rule into a glaring spotlight on the world stage. Third and finally, that the strengthening of Papal absolutism, and the negative effects of papal authoritarianism, has continued under Pacelli's successors.
| Quote of the week: The thesis that the universe has an originating divine cause is logically inconsistent with all extant definitions of causality and with a logical requirement upon these and all possible valid definitions or theories of causality. Quentin Smith, "Causation and the Logical Impossibility of a Divine Cause" |
John XXIII and Liberalization
After Pacelli's death in 1958, there was a grass-roots movement within the Church to elect a Pope more malleable to the popular will. Despite the opposition of the authoritarian "old guard," a comparatively liberal Pope was elected, John XXIII. The most significant act of his short lived (four years) papacy was his calling together of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) which, although conservative in some respects, succeeded in liberalizing certain aspects of Catholic liturgy and inspired a degree of renewal in Church intellectual life. Although John XXIII had some limited success in curbing the influence of the papal-supremacists, his small steps toward liberalization were largely undone by his successors.
Unfortunately, the popes following John XXIII were unable to "let go" of the papacy's authoritarian tradition altogether. When their wishes were frustrated by popular opposition, they proved themselves as capable of ruling by fiat as his immediate predecessors had done.[2] Thus the real-world result of Vatican II's version of liberalization is that the Popes are required to surrender no more of their total power than they themselves choose to.
Paul VI and Waffling
In 1963, Paul VI succeeded John XXIII. Although a "liberal at heart,"[3] Giovanni Montini as Pope found himself pulled right and left by the collegialist and authoritarian factions. Regrettably, Montini proved to be an indecisive personality prone to "agonizing" endlessly over difficult decisions, to the detriment of his prestige and day-to-day Church affairs. David Yallop, in his book In God's Name, describes this basic pusillanimity in Paul VI's character and it's unhappy results.[4]
More than counterbalancing Montini's perceived relative liberalism, the authoritarian backlash struck with a vengeance, and the "old guard" of the Curia successfully sustained the primacy of the papacy. Their success was in part due to the jagged course Paul VI weaved between the right and left wings of his Church, a course that ultimately benefitted the reactionary faction. His liberal tendencies were virtually negated at a stroke by his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which upheld the Church's backwards-looking stance on birth control. This alienated a substantial portion of the lower clergy and laity and widened the gulf between doctrine and practice among many Catholics. It also confirmed the ability of an absolutist Pope to force his will upon the flock against their wishes. Due in part to Humanae Vitae, the trend to absolutism regained momentum and has continued to do so under John Paul II.
Next page > John Paul II & Eliminating Dissent > Page 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
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