Yesterday the Holy Father delivered an address on the grounds of what used to be the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland. As an article from Reuters reported, the reception of the address was mixed.
Apparently some commentators applauded the pope for asking such questions as "Where was God?" and "God, why did you remain silent?" The Reuters guy described the asking of such questions on Benedict's part as a "bold decision." As if this is some new and unusual thing for committed and faithful Christians to ask the Lord questions. Course, Job did it. And um, Jesus did too. I don't think Benedict would say he was blazing some new trail. Still, it does create a connection and a sense of understanding with all the poor souls who lost faith in God as a result of the persecutions they and their loved ones suffered as a result of Nazi atrocities. That's always been a little-known strength of Benedict's, meeting people where they are.
Still, some critics just couldn't be satisfied with the Holy Father's words as long as he stopped short of incriminating himself, his Church, and in particular his predecessor Pius XII, who was the pope during World War II. Ever since the holocaust, Pius has been maligned for not speaking out with enough volume during the Axis' reign of terror. It is believed in some circles that His Holiness was indifferent or even complicit in the slaughter of six million Jews and millions of others during the war. People were upset because the pope did not so much as mention Pius or Pius' actions from that period.
One possible reason he would choose not to do so is because the accusations against Pius are utterly preposterous. Jimmy Akin has a nice article on this topic at Catholic Answers entitled "How Pius XII Protected Jews." I recommend the whole thing as it is lays to rest a lot of myths surrounding Pius XII's supposedly wimpish papacy. But here's my favorite passage which sums it up pretty well:
While the armchair quarterbacks of anti-Catholic circles may have wished the Pope to issue, in Axis territory and during wartime, ringing, propagandistic statements against the Nazis, the Pope realized that such was not an option if he were actually to save Jewish lives rather than simply mug for the cameras.
Looks like that armchair quarterbacking continues to this day. Some were dismayed that Pope Benedict wasn't strong enough in denouncing anti-Semitism specifically. From the Reuters piece:
Some faulted him for not clearly mentioning anti-Semitism, others for saying Germany was taken over by criminals in the 1930s, as if Adolf Hitler had not had any popular support.
First as to the matter of implying that Hitler had not had any popular support, Benedict never denied that he did have plenty of popular support. Benedict merely observed how he came to garner so much popular support--through "false promises." Not too much unlike today's "idelologies of evil" that John Paul II described in Memory and Identity. As Benedict put it:
[A] ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation's honor, prominence and prosperity, but also through terror and intimidation, with the result that our people was used and abused as an instrument of their thirst for destruction and power.
And as to the matter of anti-Semitism, apparently these words of the Holy Father weren't quite explicit enough:
The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth. Thus the words of the Psalm: "We are being killed, accounted as sheep for the slaughter" were fulfilled in a terrifying way.Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who called Abraham.
What more does anybody want? The admission of historical fallacies about as well grounded as the Da Vinci Load? Next time I feel like I can't please anyone, I'll take comfort in remembering that a good man named Pope Benedict visited the site where so many people were killed to express solidarity with them and their sons and daughters, and his words weren't good enough for some.
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