God's Deputy in pursuit of absolute Rule

By Yehuda Bauer

(February 24) - HITLER'S POPE: The Secret History of Pius XII by John Cornwell. New York, Viking. 430pp. $29.95.
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This book has been discussed extensively but rather superficially since it appeared in 1999. Commentators have concentrated on Eugenio Pacelli's putative anti-Jewishness as Pius XII, and his silence during the Holocaust, as presented by Cornwell. Many of the critics seem to have missed what to me appears to be Cornwell's major point, namely Pacelli's policy of making the papacy the absolute ruler within the Church, and the sole arbiter of all external relations. This, Cornwell argues, was based on a theological premise of great importance, and not only to Catholics.

Cornwell places Pacelli in the context of the development of the papacy in the last 150 years, from the days of Pius IX (Pio Nono) after 1848. Within that context, the milestones are Pio Nono's Church absolutism and the 1870 Infallibility declaration at the First Vatican Council; the papacy of Leo XIII with its determined attack on modernism and all modern philosophies and ideologies; and the continuation of this policy through the papacies of Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI. Pacelli is presented as a further link in that chain, to be broken, at least temporarily, by John XXIII after Pacelli's death in 1958.

Cornwell discusses the basis of that policy - the theological ideologies of neo-Thomism and Marianism adopted by Pacelli as a result of his education in the hothouse of the priesthood and the Curia in the Vatican. The crucial element appears to have been Pacelli's success in producing a definitive version of Canon Law, binding on all Catholics, especially of course on the priesthood and the Orders, in 1917. This could be termed a kind of Gleichschaltung (not a term used by Cornwell), in the sense that all Catholics - about half a billion people in the world at the time - were expected to follow the same rules and regulations administered by the Vatican. In the public sphere, the central issue was the nomination of bishops, which until the 20th century had not been the sole privilege of the papacy. There were places and countries where the local clergy, and sometimes the secular authorities, had a say in the process. Pacelli, following the previous popes, was determined that that should stop, and that the pope should be the arbiter of all advancements in the Church.

On relations with other countries, Pacelli was determined to arrange for a series of concordats (agreements between the Vatican and the respective countries) that would guarantee the control of the papacy over the nomination of bishops, and the support of the secular state for a major expansion of Catholic education, both in parochial schools and in the general educational system. The Vatican - and not the local cardinals, archbishops, and bishops - was to have sole control over the negotiation and approval of these concordats. The concordat negotiated by Pacelli in June 1914 with Serbia contributed, Cornwell argues, to the outbreak of World War I.

Cornwell argues, further, that the concordat negotiated with Hitler by Pacelli, as Pius XI's cardinal secretary of state, was the cause of the destruction and disintegration of Catholic resistance to the Nazis led by the Catholic Center Party (Zentrum); in order to get the agreement with Nazi Germany, Pacelli knowingly, and with the active help of the priest who led the Zentrum, Ludwig Kaas, an admirer of Pacelli, sacrificed Germany's Catholics, and suppressed those bishops who disagreed with the surrender to Nazism. It is only against that background that the papal policies in World War II, and the attitude of Pius XII to the Holocaust tragedy, can be understood.

As regards World War II itself, Cornwell explains the overall policy of the pope as being guided by the megalomania of a cleric who believed that all secular rulers should submit to his guidance, as he was the vicar of Christ on earth - in other words, God's representative. The tension between that attitude and the careful diplomacy of the Vatican, based on the realization of its limited, though considerable, influence, provides the background to the policy.

Pacelli's effort to control the Church was in large measure successful. What Cornwell calls "social Catholicism," the attempt of many priests to become part of the people and share their problems and vicissitudes and turn the Church into a representative of the suffering multitudes, was rejected by almost all the popes of the last two centuries, including Pius XII. Pacelli's codification of Canon Law, and his attack on the autonomy of the bishops, were equally successful.

In the political sphere, and in Cornwell's view largely as a result of his successes, Pius XII was a disaster. Personally a saintly, ascetic (and hypochondriac) figure, a workaholic, intellectually extremely well equipped, but completely engrossed in his Vatican-centered world-view whose aim was to be the arbiter of world affairs in the name of pure spirituality as he understood it, Pius XII helped Hitler consolidate his rule over Germany. More than that - during the war his policy of silence paralyzed Catholic reactions to the horrors that the Nazis unleashed all over Europe, and rendered the Church politically impotent, despite the fact that Pacelli did recognize - too late - the dangers inherent in Nazi policies.

On the Jews, Cornwell is much more careful than his critics make him out to be. He does not claim that Pacelli was a conscious or radical antisemite, but that he had inherited a basic, traditional, Catholic anti-Jewish attitude; he seems to have shared the prejudices common among Catholic priests - the accusation that the Jews had killed Christ, the accusation that the Jews were corrupt, money-grabbing, and yet revolutionary, and pro-communist. On the whole, Pacelli did not consider the Jews as very important in his scheme of things. His policy was directed toward uniting all Christians - Eastern Churches and Protestants mainly - under the umbrella of the papacy; the Jews were really a minor headache. Cornwell's description of the experience Pacelli had with Jewish communists in Munich in 1919 has been discussed a great deal. It seems, though, that this was a confirmation of previously held views rather than a revelation that made him passive toward antisemitism.

Cornwell discussed Pacelli's policy toward the Jews, or the lack of such a thing, during the war years. The pope really seems to have believed that he had said something important in his Christmas message in 1942, when he deplored the suffering of those who had been persecuted solely on account of their nationality or race. He did not mention Jews, Nazis, or Germany, of course, and the Nazis were happy with his message.

Cornwell does not seem to be aware of the very considerable amount of information that the Vatican received about the murder of the Jews - from Eastern Galicia, from Slovakia (beyond that contained in the published Vatican documents), from Croatia, indeed from its own cardinals, such as Angelo Roncalli, the future John XXIII. But he says that had the pope spoken out, his message would have been transmitted by the Allies, and probably also by the neutrals, so that many in Germany and the occupied lands would have been aware of it. This may be so, but the conclusion that is implied, that the Nazis would have taken heed because they would have feared German Catholic opposition, seems far-fetched. Cornwell himself described the collapse of Catholic opposition in Germany, and a papal message transmitted by the Allies would hardly have made a difference in the killing fields. The problem is not the practical outcome of a papal statement; the problem is moral. Had Pius XII spoken out, he might not have saved a single Jew, but he possibly might have saved his soul.

The importance of Cornwell's book lies in the broad canvas he paints. Pacelli was a product of a Church which was losing its social importance, and which had found itself in sympathy with the authoritarian regimes that developed in Europe and South America. The Church was basically, and traditionally, anti-democratic; perhaps it could not be otherwise, because its claim over souls and even bodies was totalitarian. The attitude toward the Jews was a natural outcome of such a stance.

Cornwell, however, does not stop there. He implies that after John XXIII, and to an extent Paul VI, John Paul II returned to the Pacelli mode, as far as internal Church policies and claims of universal predominance are concerned.

With the acknowledged difference, of course, that Karol Wojtyla opened his arms to other Christian Churches, and to the Jews, trying hard to arrive at an understanding with them. Cornwell does not discuss in any detail the deep mutual misunderstandings, but he sees that the beatification of Pius XII will set up a major barrier between the Vatican and the Jews. While this is undoubtedly true, matters go deeper than that. Without an open acknowledgement of the role of the Church in fomenting Christian antisemitism since the second century, no real resolution of these misunderstandings is possible. His negative view of John Paul II, however, is not based on anything but the press and the pope's statements, hardly a sufficient basis for historical judgment.

In this matter there is a subtext to Cornwell's book. Cornwell, a Catholic himself, received access to the Vatican archives because he appeared to be a safe bet from the Catholic point of view - he wanted to write another defense of Pacelli. He did not receive full access - anyone who has any experience in archival research will immediately realize that he got very selective access.

Thus, for instance, he appears not to have seen the correspondence between the Secretariat of State and the nuncios during World War II, and of course not any of the correspondence that must have passed between the pope and his secretary of state, Luigi Maglione, or records of conversations in the Secretariat, and so on.

Recently, the Vatican approached Jewish representatives and suggested a solution to the insistent demands that the Vatican open its archives: Between 1965 and 1981 the Holy See published 11 volumes of selected documents on the Vatican and World War II; why not have a commission of three Jews and three Catholics examine these volumes and direct questions at the Vatican relating to possibly important missing documents? The Vatican would then try its best to make these available.

The Jewish organizations, for their own political and other reasons, were enthusiastic. They turned to three Jewish historians and asked them to be the Jewish part of the commission. All three declined. But, of course, they got other, equally competent, historians, and the commission is in business.

So what's the problem? The problem is that the Vatican offer paralleled exactly the kind of answer one used to get from the Communists: We published documentation, but if you find something specific that you want, tell us and we will consider it. This, on the face of it, does not look like an opening of the archives, and one only hopes that the new team will disprove such pessimistic conclusions. If all the Vatican wants is a whitewash, or a statement that they can issue - yes, we "opened" our archive; look, we have given them a couple of hundred more documents; and now, dear Jews, keep quiet - then we will be back at square one.

Even Cornwell, before he understood Pacelli, did not get much more - the rest of his considerable, but not comprehensive, documentation comes from non-Vatican sources. In the era of archival openness, the Vatican effort is at least problematic.

It is not as though Cornwell's book is free of mistakes - there are many, and some of them quite elementary, and that is a great pity. Here is a random selection: on the November, 1938 pogrom ("Kristallnacht "), he says the assassin of Ernst vom Rath was a "Polish student" - he was, of course, a Jew, not a Pole, Herszl Grynszpan; "eight hundred" Jews were murdered then, he says - the real figure is less than a hundred (p. 188). On p.198 he writes about the Nazi euthanasia program and says that many of the victims were killed "in the gas chambers that would be used later to kill Jews" - which is patent nonsense: they used euthansia personnel and methods of killing on the Jews, but the gas chambers of the euthanasia program were on German territory, whereas the gas installations to kill Jews were in occupied Poland.

Cornwell has a whole story on the secret negotiations between Josef ("Ochsensepp") Muller and the Vatican, in 1930/40, aiming at opening up secret negotiations with the British on behalf of anti-Nazis in the Abwehr, the military intelligence (p. 234, ff.). Cornwell obviously takes this very seriously, and thinks that there was a whole military conspiracy behind this. Had he consulted the material in the Munich Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, he would have discovered that the plot was an invention, at that point at least, of the Abwehr, which the Vatican fell for. The whole Muller episode was a sad comedy. On p. 278, Cornwell gives the date of Hitler's famous Reichstag speech, in which he threatened the Jews with annihilation, as January 3, 1939, instead of January 30, which may be a typo. On p. 281 he says information came from "eastern Europe" and the papal nuncio in Bratislava regarding 90,000 Jews who had been sent to camps in Poland. There was no nuncio in Bratislava, but a papal representative, Giuseppe Burzio, who wrote about 90,000 Slovak Jews (not from "Eastern Europe"), many of whom were being deported (actually there were 58,000). And so on - such inaccuracies could easily have been avoided.

However, these are, after all, unimportant minutiae. Cornwell has produced a volume that puts the Vatican, the pope and the Church and its policy toward modernity and the Jews in a new light, and in what to this writer at least seems to be a much more convincing, if sometimes problematic, perspective.

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