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Defamation Of Pius XII (Key Texts (South Bend, Ind.).)

Average customer rating:

A blow to the enemies of the True Faith!
Worth the Read- one of the best
Waste of time
Flawed but Good
A First Draft Does Not A Book Make

Defamation Of Pius XII (Key Texts (South Bend, Ind.).)
Ralph Mcinerny
Manufacturer: St. Augustines Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Modern | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace
The Myth of Hitler's Pope: Pope Pius XII and His Secret War Against Nazi Germany
Hitler, the War, and the Pope
Eugenio: (Pope Pius XII) True Hero of the Holocaust
Consensus and Controversy: Defending Pope Pius XII

ASIN: 1890318663

Book Description

Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII, was one of the few unalloyed heroes of World War II. At great personal risk, he saved some 800,000 Jews from extermination by the Nazis. Jewish refugees were given asylum in the Vatican, swelling the number of Swiss Guards. No Allied leader can match his glorious record. Golda Meir lauded Pius XII after the war, and the chief rabbi of Rome became a Roman Catholic, taking the name of Eugenio in tribute to Eugenio Pacelli.

Why then has such a man been vilified and all but accused of being responsible for the Holocaust? Rolf Hochhuth's infamous play, The Deputy, marked the turning point. The outrageous distortions of this play turned the greatest friend the Jewish people had during World War II into an anti- Semite. This book restores Pius XII to the rank of hero, demolishes the ludicrous charges against him, and identifies the true target of this infamous calumny : the Church, the papacy, and the Christian moral teaching which confronts and condemns the Culture of Death.

Customer Reviews:

A blow to the enemies of the True Faith!.......2004-09-11

Congratulations are due Professor McInerny for a masterful rebuttal of all those vile, horrid, nasty, depraved, vicious, disgusting, cruel, evil, false, base, and not-nice rumors about the Church during the Second World War. He has undertaken a Herculean bout of cut-and-paste research, presenting the results with a winning literary style compounded of querulousness and bile. The good professor wisely avoided consulting unreliable works by secular academic historians such as Saul Friedlander, Guenter Lewy, and Walter Lacquer; (What should those names tell you?) not to mention libels from turncoats such as John Morley, Michael Phayer, and Susan Zuccotti. (It would have been the stake for them in the good old days!) This current campaign of defamation is, of course, a vast secret conspiracy masterminded by dissident Catholics, adherents of a certain non-Christian religion, Freemasons, liberals, and--worst of all--sodomites! The ranks of the Nazis, of course, were pervaded with sodomites so it should come as no surprise that there should be an attempt to shift the onus for their atrocities onto the One True Church.

Why, only last night I saw perverts prancing about in Nazi-style garb at the local leather bar where I often repair to once my wife, six children, and grandchildren are all safely asleep. (I am studying sexual immorality in order to denounce it, I'll have you know!) There I sat, nursing my usual Shirley Temple while filthy and obscene acts unfolded before my fascinated gaze. Finally, overcome with longing--er, loathing--I abandoned my emission--uh, my mission--and fled the sordid scene for home. (Must remember: Aquinas says self-pollution more heinous than rape!) But I digress.

Professor McInerny would surely agree that anyone raising the least question about any of our church's actions--past, present, or to come--is a dangerous degenerate who should be horsewhipped. But not just with any whip, mind you. No. It must be a new, freshly oiled leather whip, one of the sort with bits of metal woven into it; well laid on in clean, even strokes across their backs until they shriek for mercy, and the blood streams down their glistening bodies and (...)

ADDENDUM: Any correspondence sent to Professor Hatteras pertaining to this review will be returned to the sender until he is again permitted to deal with his mail.--Madelyn Murray O'Harelip, Secretary to Professor Hatteras, Tomas de Torquemada Center, 714 Radcliffe Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556-5629.

Worth the Read- one of the best.......2004-04-04

IN response to the recent trash novels about the role of the pope in WWII, this excellent book is a welcome arrival.

The author shows with great accuracy how the pope saved directly or indirectly the lives of some 860,000 Jews.

But why has Pius XII been so defamed? What has motivated the untruths? It has been the result, the author argues, of the Church's stance on sexuality. In fact, it can be easily argued and defended that as soon as the Church changes its teaching on sex and abortion, the "faith" would be welcomed with open arms by the left.

Waste of time.......2003-10-06

This book is very weak. What is wanted is a book of historical scholarship to make the case that Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) was not what his detractors have said about him, but there is no such scholarship here. (The dust jacket says McInerny is the author of 100 books of philosophy and fiction; I don't know which of those genres this book purports to be, but it is NOT historical scholarship.) The author cites either to secondary sources, or more frequently to no sources at all, in making his defense of Pius XII. Here are a few examples of the shortcomings of the book: First, relying on Catholic bishops' actions in speaking out against Nazi atrocities as evidence of Pius's actions on behalf of the Jews, McInerny weakens his own case. Is this the best defense he has? Why not more direct evidence of the Pope's actions? Are they so few and subtle that he must rely on the heroic or courageous actions of others (not least, the actions of his predecessor, Pius XI, and those of his successor, John XXIII) which McInerny seeks to attribute to Pius XII? Second, McInerny's failure to understand the most damning indictments of Pius XII made by John Cornwall (author of Hitler's Pope) make the book particularly weak. Cornwall shows how Pius ignored the warnings of the German bishops when he negotiated the Reich Concordat with Hitler (1933) that forced Catholics to abdicate political activity in Germany. The Catholic Central Party polled 14% of the vote consistently in Germany before this time. Removing this opposition to Hitler undoubtedly (although surely unintentionally) assisted the Nazis' hold on power. And for what? So Germany could promise to support Catholic schools (a promise that Hitler soon repudiated anyway) and could acknowledge the primacy in Church affairs of the Code of Canon Law (prepared by Pacelli before he became Pope) that was a key building block of the hierarchical papacy? Was Pacelli the kind of man so taken with his own abilities, work product, and world vision that he would take the actions he did in the face of warnings from those much closer to the actual events than he? To what extent did the "top-down" world view held by Pacelli (based, not incidentally on the hierarchical papacy) lead him to ignore these warnings? What lessons (if any) are there in the resulting history? Where is McInerny's discussion of any of these points? Third, his argument that all the anti-Pius literature is motivated by animus against the strong papacy of which Pacelli was a major architect is not only unpersuasive but it is also extremely disjointed. For example, McInerny launches a broadside attack on Gary Wills who, I gather from McInerny's book, has disputed Vatican II's position on contraception. (I didn't see the relevance but gave McInerny the benefit of the doubt as I read on.) How does he introduce Wills? By citing to his "fawning" introduction to Lillian Hellman's Scoundrel Time. His not very subtle references to the "pro-Stalinist" Hellman are intended to make us think the worse of Hellman (and therefore, presumably, of Wills, by association). Still unsatisfied with this obiter dictum, in a further effort to discredit Hellman, he diverts us into a brief discussion of the libel lawsuit between Hellman and Mary McCarthy over Hellman's book Pentimento. None of this is even remotely related to Pius XII! Rather, all of this is to get us to think poorly of Wills who is the secondary subject of McInerny's attack--the primary subject being those, like Wills, who dislike the strong papacy and seek to bring it down through attacks on the actions of Pius XII. (Are you following McInerny's line of thought here?) Needless to say, like the rest of the book, this argument is unpersuasive. Do not misunderstand. I do not believe Pius was anti-Semitic. I do not believe he is guilty of taking no action to help the Jews. I understand the Hobson's choice with which he was presented: by speaking out more forcefully, he risked even harsher treatment of those within Hitler's grasp. But this book is not the treatment of those topics that you want to read. And on top of that, the book is repetitious and poorly edited.

Flawed but Good.......2002-01-14

Dr. McInerny starts out slow, but builds to a nice rollicking finish. As an ex-Catholic I have little sympathy for his support of dogma, but I don't appreciate seeing th Church get bashed for things it didn't do either.

A First Draft Does Not A Book Make.......2001-12-24

When Ralph McInerny takes off the gloves and pounds away at Garry Wills and other apostates and dissidents; calumniators of Pius XII; haters and enemies of the Papacy and of the Church and of the absolute moral law and immutable truths she represents...when he does this, he's unbeatable. Unfortunately, only a few pages are devoted to this bulldog attack. The rest of the book reads like the first draft of a college freshman's essay -- very badly written and the editing is pretty much non-existent. McInerny is right, of course -- Pope Pius XII has been outrageously defamed by Wills and others of his ilk. The mystery is why such an intelligent, informed and able writer (do read his work on Vatican II) has written such a terribly clumsy book -- and on such an important topic. Ah, well.

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