Since the Broadway run of the play “The Deputy,” and since libelous novel Hitler’s Pope by John Cornwell, Pope Pius XII has been criticized for remaining silent toward the Holocaust — Even the Holocaust Museum in New York unjustly criticized Pope Pius XII for being silent during World War II. Many insinuate that this alleged silence make the pope complicit in the Nazi crimes.

The fact of the matter is that the pope was far from silent, speaking out against Naziism on more than 55 occasions. He directly played a role in saving more Jews — several hundreds of thousands — than any other person during the Holocaust, more than Raoul Wallenberg or even Oskar Schindler of the acclaimed Schindler’s List.

Many Jewish leaders at the time payed homage to the pope for his heroic effort:

“The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe.”

New York Times, Christmas Day 1941

“A study of the words which Pope Pius XII has addressed since his accession leaves no room for doubt. He condemns the worship of force and its concrete manifestations in the suppression of national liberties and in the persecution of the Jewish race.”

London Times, October 1, 1942

“When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict.”

Golda Meir, then Israeli delegate to the UN

“The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion, which form the very foundation of true civilization, are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world.”

Rabbi Isaac Herzog, chief rabbi of Israel

“I told [Pope Pius XII] that my first duty was to thank him, and through him the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public for all they had done in the various countries to rescue Jews�?�. We are deeply grateful to the Catholic Church.”

Moshe Sharett, later Israel�??s first foreign minister

Perhaps the most eloquent statement comes from Albert Einstein:

“Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks….

“Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”

Albert Einstein, Time Magazine, December 23, 1940

In his new book The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis (Regnery, 2005), Rabbi David G. Dalin presents extensive documentation culled from Church and State archives throughout Europe that demonstrate how the “anti-papal polemics of ex-seminarians like Garry Wills and John Cornwell (author of Hitler’s Pope), of ex-priests like James Carroll, and or other lapsed or angry liberal Catholics exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today.”

For those interested in reading truth and fact rather than misinformation and slanderous accusation:

1. The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis (Dailin)
2. The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII (Doino)
3. Hitler, the War and the Pope (Rychlak)
4. Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace (Marchione)
5. A Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Jews (Catholic League)
6. Did Pius XII Remain Silent? (Catholic Educator’s Resource Center)
7. Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust (A Catholic Response)

Modified from Zenit: Benedict XVI Promotes Biblical Meditation

Benedict XVI believes that the recovery of the practice of lectio divina, prayerful meditation of Scripture, will bring a “new spiritual springtime” for the Church. When meeting with more than 400 experts attending a congress in Rome on “Sacred Scripture in the Life of the Church,” the Holy Father recommended this ancient practice which literally means “divine reading.”

“Assiduous reading of sacred Scripture accompanied by prayer makes that intimate dialogue possible in which, through reading, one hears God speaking, and through prayer, one responds with a confident opening of the heart,” the Pope said. “If this practice is promoted with efficacy, I am convinced that it will produce a new spiritual springtime in the Church.”

“One must never forget that the Word of God is a lamp for our steps and a light on our path,” he said.

The first to use the expression “lectio divina” was Origen (circa 185-254), who affirmed that to read the Bible profitably it is necessary to do so with attention, constancy and prayer. Later on, lectio divina became a mainstay of religious life. The monastic rules of Sts. Pacomius, Augustine, Basil and Benedict made the practice of diving reading, together with manual work and participation in liturgical life, the triple base of monastic life. Around 1150, Guido, a Carthusian monk, wrote a book entitled “The Monks’ Ladder,” where “he set out the theory of the four rungs: lectio (reading), meditatio (meditation), oratio (prayer) and contemplatio (contemplation),” according to the Pope. “This is the ladder by which the monks ascend from earth to heaven.”

To promote lectio divina, Benedict XVI suggested “new methods, attentively pondered, adapted to the times.”

See also: Beginning lectio divina; Lectio Divina Online.

Around the year 200, the pretty severe theologian Tertullian wrote glowingly of marriage to his wife:

How shall we ever be able adequately to describe the happiness of that marriage which the Church arranges, the Sacrifice [of the Eucharist] strengthens, upon which the blessing set a seal, at which the angels are present as witnesses, and to which the Father give His consent.

In the seventeenth century, St. Francis de Sales added a practical note based on long pastoral experience:

The state of marriage is one that requires more virtue and constancy than any other; it is a perpetual exercise of mortification.

The Christian vision of marriage, sanctified by Christ who performed his first miracle at a wedding, is unique in the world and so it is threatened by the assumptions of much of that same world. A Cardinal Archbishop of a European city expressed to me surprise at the comparative vitality of marriage in our country. In his land, marriage is increasingly rare, and the majority of couples seek no blessing in the Church. We are heading along the same track, with nonchalant divorce and attempts to redefine marriage as other than the bond between a man and a woman. The chaos after Hurricane Katrina was in part due to the breakdown of marriage in New Orleans, where nearly three-quarters of the children have no father. […] Even well-intentioned young people are easily confused by the wrong assumptions about marriage they absorb in an unstable culture. One of those misunderstandings is that cohabitation has no moral consequences.

As an example of the significant differences between the Novus Ordo text and the traditional ‘Tridentine’ Latin Mass, consider this, from Catholic Answers’ Karl Keating:

When changes were first made to the Mass, nearly forty years ago now, they were of two kinds. The most obvious was the switch from Latin to the vernacular. More subtle were changes in the underlying prayers. The text of the Mass was simplified in some ways, adjusted in others. While many prayers stayed the same, many were modified–and some even disappeared.

I never have met a layman who said that changing the prayers of the Mass was something that was high on his wish list in the 1960s, but I have met countless older laymen who liked the change from Latin to English. I suspect that had the old Mass simply been put into the English that was found on the facing pages of missals, very little of the subsequent liturgical turmoil would have occurred.

That English was not old-fashioned. It was a twentieth-century translation that did not use “thee” or “thou.” It was dignified but not stiffly formal. At times it even was poetic. It certainly surpassed the current translation. In the official Latin edition of the new Mass, many of the prayers are identical to those in the old Mass. It is instructive to compare their current translations to the ones found in the old missals. Sadly, often there is no comparison. It is as though in the space of a generation translators developed tin ears.

The best example of this, I think, is not actually from the prayers of the Mass itself but from one of the readings. Psalm 23 used to say that God “refreshes my soul.” Now he “revive[s] my drooping spirit.” Clunk….

I do not want to imply that the English that we now have in the Mass is everywhere inferior to the English that used to be found in the missals. That is almost universally the case, but only almost. There is at least one improvement. In the third Eucharist prayer the priest says, “From age to age you gather a people to yourself so that from east to west a perfect offering may be made to the glory of your name.” The central words are a revision of what used to be “from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof.” The older translation certainly seems more evocative, but I suspect in most people it evoked the wrong idea. The underlying Latin text is talking about a sacrifice that is made everywhere throughout the world. “From east to west” covers that. “From the rising of the sun to the setting thereof” also covers it — if you understand that the phrase is referring to geographical extent and not to the time of day….

No doubt the industrious can find other improved renderings in the current text of the Mass, but none come to my mind at the moment. In any case, the number cannot be large, which is one reason we are getting a better translation in a few years. (Yes, one is in the works–and has been for much longer than most of those working on it ever expected. Present indications are that the English will be improved considerably.)