That there is something very wrong with the ethics of the Vatican is yet again coming to global attention with the latest wave of revelations of priestly pedophilia and higher level cover ups that some contend extends all the way to the Pope. But this sort of episodic spike in concern represents a chronic practical failure to appreciate the greater scale of the problem that is allowing the church to get away with claiming that it - despite the occasional flaw - is a moral beacon to the world. The grave failings of the Roman church are not isolated to a few items or times. It is a many faceted, systemic set of issues that extend back to the founding of the male dominated autocracy as a state power, first by the Roman emperor Constantine, and more recently by the fascistic dictator Mussolini. A classic example of the repeated moral incompetence of the church is how it made the critical contribution to making Hitler the dictator of Germany, and instead of rebuking the cleric who made a leading contribution to the uber mistake, wants to reward him with the highest honor the church can bestow.
The Vatican continues its program to elevate Pious XII to sainthood. Catholic apologists for Eugenio Pacelli claim that "there is overwhelming evidence which proves beyond doubt that he labored without pause for peace, that he sought to assist in every way possible the victims of war, especially Jews, hundreds of thousands of whom were spared in every way possible the victims of war, especially Jews, hundreds of thousands of whom where spared through his efforts, and that he constantly warned the world of the horrors of Nazism" (http://www.piusxiipope.info). This over the top hyperbolic claim of deity level perfection beyond any human level shows that those who say are far detached from objective reality. They are instead far down the path of crude propaganda carefully crafted to avoid revealing the many reasons sainthood for this incredibly flawed man is a very bad proposition that it constitutes a big lie. The truth is that overwhelming evidence shows that in 1933 Pacelli could have without great difficulty have taken common-sense steps that would have prevented the Holocaust from ever happening, and that the amoral knave instead made critical contributions to giving Hitler the power he would use to slaughter millions. Pacelli's ethics in dealing with the budding Fuehrer make Tom Delay look good. Pacelli's later actions were a mixed moral bag that did not come close the cleaning up the disaster he helped bring upon the world. It is no exaggeration to say that there are janitors working in the Vatican basement more deserving of sainthood. You could have done a better job than he did. Seriously.
I know why the sainthood project is ill advised because some years ago I got fed up with there not being a well presented explanation of what Hitler and EuroChristianity was really up to back then opinion ranges from Adolf being a devoted Catholic who happily schemed with Pious XII to wipe out millions of Jews, to the Nazis being atheists who hated the Christian churches for valiantly opposing their evil schemes. I published the inevitably historically and morally complex results in a two part article (http://www.secularism.org/index.php?section=library&page=paul_23_4; http://www.secularism.org/... It is not at all hard to come up with and present the information that damns Pacelli. Those who want to confer honors upon him should be ashamed of themselves. That includes Pope Benedict.
The early Catholic church invented classic anti-Semitism, forcing Jews to live in ghettos and to wear identification, limiting their economic options, force converting many and killing others. In the 1800s the emergence of political, press and religious freedom in the United States and parts of Europe caused and incensed and frightened Rome to issue the hyper reactionary Vatican I doctrine that condemned such freedoms in favor of divine rule by God ordained autocracy to the extent that it banned direct opposition of tyrants. The dictatorial church demanded absolute fealty from members, no continental EuroCatholic who took the church seriously would not obey its political instructions (that many English and AmeroCatholics were more independent chronically vexed Rome). The replacement of the German monarchy after the Great War by democracy appalled the churches Catholic as well as Protestant. They were bought off when the Weimer constitution directed about a tenth of income tax revenues to the church that a given taxpayer belonged to. The objections by the churches suddenly lessened as Germany became a cash cow for Rome. Since Catholics made up a third of the population their institution got about a third of the income, amounting to about a billion per year in current dollars (still running, the system currently delivers about six billion per annum). But repeated and ardent attempts, lead by the envoy Pacelli, to persuade the Weimer democracy to agree to a nondemocratic concordat that would ensure special church privileges never went anywhere.
In Italy the once powerful church was shocked and devastated after losing the Papal states and being reduced to property in Rome. The nonpious Mussolini was not in the good graces of the Vatican, but the Catholic monarch endorsed his dictatorship. Wanting to further suppress political opposition, El Duce cut a deal via the Lateran Treaties and Concordant of 1920 that made the wee Vatican property an actual nation immune to control and investigation, and lavished the church with subsidies, plus a bonus direct payment equal to about a billion current dollars. In exchange Catholic political opposition to the tyrant was dropped. Hitler took note of this cynical arrangement of mutual convenience.
Hitler grew up in a devout Catholic family with a father so physically abusive that he contributed to the world war and Holocaust his mentally damaged son would create. Hitler admired the authoritarian priesthood at the religious school he attended. By the time the war hero and lover joined the Nazis he had evolved into an Aryan Volk Christian whose world view melded hard right, Jew hating Christianity with some paganism, occultism and a dash of the perverted Darwinism that had descended from Christian race bigotry. Only Aryans were the children of God with immortal souls, most others were inferior soulless subhumans suitable for slavery, while Jews were the diabolically clever creations of Satan. Hitler's writings and talk private and public make it clear he felt he was doing the will of the true Aryan God whose son Jesus was sent to fight the Jews. The atheist hater Hitler saw unbelievers as godless Bolsheviks needing destruction. The hyper nationalist despised the Roman church. Yet Hitler never left the organization, and paid his church taxes to the end --Himmler in contrast officially resigned from the church as he went fully pagan. Nazis support was largely Protestant, but included numerous Catholics. In the 1920s the church paid limited attention to the party despite Hitler's heresies because they did not see his fringe party as a serious problem until the Depression made the Nazis a potent sociopolitical force.
In Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism (Oxford U Press) Derek Hastings explains how the German form of fascism got its start in Catholic Bavaria with the approval of hard right clerical elements. Later the morally unreliable church opposed the rising Hitler. Not because he openly hated and attacked democracy -- the freedom hating church happily backed the papist Catholic dictator Dollfuss in Austria, and the ruthless believer Franco in Spain. As Vatican Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli endorsed this policy, which encouraged those German Catholics opposed to Hitler. But the church got nervous in the early 1930s. They were in a bad bind. If and when the political sin of democracy was at long last overthrown the Protestant majority obviously was not going to tolerate a papist ruler who would endorse a concordat, and a Protestant tyrant might even cut off the flow of tax revenues to Rome as well as cause other problems. And increasing numbers of German Catholics were proNazi. It was perceived that Hitler for all his flaws was the best solution. As a member of the church and hopefully would not disrespect Rome, but not being a papist he would not freak out the Protestant majority. The fanatical anti-communist socialist Hitler was going to do something about the true threat to Eurocivilization, those Godless Bolsheviks. Hitler's minions let the church know he, like Mussolini, was favorable to the concordat Rome and Pacelli craved. Hitler told his advisors the truth about his church (from Guenter Lewy's extensive failings of the institution during the era, The Catholic Church and Nazis Germany).
"We should trap the priests by their notorious greed and self indulgence. We shall thus be able to settle everything with them in perfect peace and harmony" They will swallow anything in order to keep their material advantages."
The Hitler who grew up in the church knew exactly what he was talking about, Pacelli and company would walk right into his trap.
Franz von Papen was not a Nazi, but he was hard right German nationalist and devout papist Catholic who did not disobey Rome who reviled democracy and often worked with Pacelli. After his inept grab at power at the top failed, it was he who made Hitler chancellor in an attempt to gain a degree of control over the author of Mein Kampf (you can see a well known video of the happy event at http://www.youtube.com/... the fool at the front right chatting it up with the proud and thrilled to actually be running Deutschland Hitler and Goering is Papen). German Catholic bishops with the agreement of Rome issued a statement that explicitly dropped their prior opposition to Hitler, shocking and dismaying some Catholics as others flocked to the party now that they were freed by their "moral" leaders to do so.
The Catholic Centre Party or Zentrum was run by Father Kaas, a head over heels papist who along with his sometimes opponent Papen and close ally Pacelli was willing to trade the existence of the political party for the greater goal of a Catholic friendly autocrat ordained by God. After the Reichstag fire Hitler demanded the Enabling Act to give him "temporary" dictatorial power. Because the Nazis were a minority they needed the votes of compliant political blocs, otherwise it would have been impossible for Hitler to execute his plan to take over Germany. Both fearing the consequences of failing to support the thuggish Nazis, and hoping to exploit the situation, the entire Zentrum voted for the Enabling Act. It cannot be overemphasized that the vote for Adolf could not have occurred if Rome objected. Had the church that claims to represent the perfect and morally pure Christian God had the basic decency and common-sense to order the party to bravely vote no, then the Holocaust that only Hitler could have brought would never have happened, and the next world war might have been avoided. Instead the Roman Church, whose secretary of state Cardinal Pacelli was actively involved, played the critical political role in bringing these events to pass.
The church, with seeing-his-chance-to-finally-get-that-splendid-concordat Cardinal Pacelli in direct charge of the events under the higher aegis of Pious XI, sprung to action. In an extraordinary exhibition of they-just-did-not-care-that-it-was-unethical-conflict-of-interest, the believing Catholics von Papen and Kaas representing fellow church member Hitler traveled to Rome to negotiate the Concordat with their church, the Pacelli who had spent years trying to get the Germans to sign on to a concordat being in charge at the Roman end of the talks. Up in Germany Hitler frequently involved himself in the negotiations. In a birthday message to his boss Hitler Kaas offered the following.
"Sincere good wishes for today and assurances of unswerving collaboration in the great work of the creation of a Germany united within, socially at peace, and outwardly free."
Hitler was cynically delighted not only with the above message, but an agreement with Rome would give him the infamous fascist corporal the same badly needed international creds it had given to his inspiration, Mussolini. The Pacelli that Rome now wants to make a saint signed the finished document for Rome while Papen did so for Hitler, you can see the photo at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R24391,KonkordatsunterzeichnunginRom.jpg (with Papen again at the scene of the calumny). Here is the opening of the agreement that Cardinal Pacelli signed.
"His Holiness Pope Pious XI and the President of the German Reich, moved by a common desire to consolidate and enhance the friendly relations existing between the Holy See and the German Reich.....have agreed to the following articles."
An article the church insisted be included.
"It is understood that the Church retains the right to levy church taxes."
An article Hitler insisted upon in exchange.
"Before the bishops take possession of their dioceses they are to take an oath of loyalty either to the Reich governor of the State (Land) concerned [one of Hitler's Nazis subfuehrers] or the President of the Reich [Hitler] respectively."
Here is what the perpetually wise and saintly Pacelli said at the occasion.
"Something has been created by a determined use of the general situation under God's benevolent and gracious help. If it is implemented in an equally loyal way it will prove to be a blessing to the church as well as to the state, and can protect immortal souls from the infinitely many dangers which we have all faced, even yesterday, with trembling hearts."
You know how on The Daily Show they run a clip of some pol or pundit making a claim as though it's god's truth, and then they run another clip of the same person just as ardently saying the opposite awhile back and you wonder how said person could be so dumb ass when it is so easy to show him up? How can the pro-Pacelli crowd be so dumb ass as to claim that Pacelli "constantly warned the world of the horrors of Nazism" when it is so easy to expose as a bald faced lie? According to Pacelli the future Vicar of Christ that many want to make a saint, thought that God thought the agreement was a good thing. Catholic apologists pretend that the church signed the treaty that Pacelli and his church had desperately strived for only with great reluctance. Actually, a celebratory mass was held at the Cathedral in Berlin, with Nazis and Church officials hobnobbing and making speeches, hymns and Nazis songs sung, and Catholic flags mixed with swastikas. Church defenders try to justify the perversion two ways. Sometimes they claim that the church and Pacelli did not fully realize the danger of Hitler -- but those who claimed to serve the one true God could read Mein Kampf like anyone else, and Hitler was as openly opposed to democracy as was the church. Apologists also, and contrarily, claim that the moves of Pacelli and company was a last ditch attempt by the church to protect itself from the vile monster their party had for some reason just voted to make dictator. Not only was the German Concordat the dream that Weimer had democratically denied Rome, its contents were dreadfully pathological. For the Concordat was a morally depraved deal with the devil. It explicitly stated that the church would continue to receive the tax revenue transfers from the Reich treasury that Hitler paid into every year of his rule, albeit on two conditions.
One was the disbanding of the Zentrum in the emerging one party state. Excusers pretend this was only done with the deep regret of Rome, and under the threat of Nazis brutality (apparently largely due to hyper-radical party elements Hitler would later purge to church approval as per below), but the actual opinion of many top Catholics is exposed by the verging on giddy statement issued by the party upon its demise at their new Fuhrer's command.
The political revolution has placed German civil life upon a completely new foundation which no longer leaves any room for party-political activity... Therefore the Zentrum is disbanding... in agreement with Reich Chancellor Hitler [which gives] its supporters the chance to make their energies wholly available for the national front under the leadership of the Chancellor, for positive co-operation towards the stabilization of our national, social, economic and cultural conditions, and collaboration in the restoration of law and order.
But wait, there's more moral perfidy and accommodation. A secret appendix excluded Catholic clergy from being drafted into military service, an odd request from the new Reich leader who kept saying he only wanted peace --unless the church expected the regime to go to war against the nonbelieving hordes to the east. And in exchange for the cash flow from Third Reich to church accounts and other favors from the Reich an article forced all Catholic schools to teach students patriotic loyalty to the new Reich, while the exact fealty oath all Bishops had to take was as follows.
"Before God and on the Holy Gospels I swear and promise, as becomes a bishop, loyalty to the German Reich and to the State (Land) of [fill in], I swear and promise to honor the legally constituted government and to cause the clergy of my diocese to honor it. With dutiful concern for the welfare and the interests of the German state, in the performance of the ecclesiastical office entrusted to me, I will endeavor to prevent everything which might threaten it."
This was a prominent article in the document Pacelli signed. Note that the bishop promises under God to go to great lengths to protect not the best interests of the German people, but the interests of the Deutsch state run by Hitler. This vile oath to the Nazi devil gutted the ability of Catholic leaders to openly and straightforwardly criticize much less oppose Nationalist Socialist policies aside from those that directly violated the 1933 concordat.
This helps explain the bizarre and sick events of the next year, 1934. The regime soon began to violate the Concordat, probably to varying levels of approval and disapproval of Hitler who delegated a lot of authority in his popular dictatorship (sometimes Hitler pulled back anti-church activities when he became aware of them, other times he did not). And even the democracy hating von Papen was distressed by how far the Nazis were going. He made a speech requesting a return of some freedoms, and demanding that something be done about the most obviously extreme and perverted wing of the Nazi party, the storm troopers and their homosexual leader Ernst Rohm. Hitler thought the second proposal was sound, so Rohm and many other Nazis were murdered during the notorious Night of the Long Knives. Also rubbed out were some of Papen's associates as a warning to the Catholic politician that he had gotten out of line. In response Pacelli, the Pope, and the rest of the church said absolutely nothing. So did the other German churches, they being similarly quite relieved that Hitler had gotten rid of all those nasty Nazis. This primitive moral calculation anticipated that not objecting would encourage Hitler to kindly live up to terms of the Concordat. As for von Papen, he soon served Hitler as ambassador to Catholic Austria which he treacherously helped his boss make part of greater Germany, and then Turkey according to Vatican I he had to be loyal to his God ordained autocrat after all.
As the regime continued to give the church trouble its top clerics increasingly protested violations of their precious concordat. In retaliation the regime deployed a favorite general tactic of targeting clerics with legal charges of immorality which considering recent history may have contained an awkward degree of truth. If you are wondering why German Catholics did not get more upset it is because their oath bound clergy kept telling them to remain loyal to the Third Reich despite the unpleasantries. Pacelli grew more distrustful of Hitler, and privately denounced him to western leaders while not letting his own followers fully in on the secret. But had the dictator ensured his regime stuck to the accord the loathing of Pacelli would have been much less. In 1939 Pacelli became Pious XII. He sent Hitler the following salutation -- this was after Kristallnacht.
"To the Illustrious Herr Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer and Chancellor of the German Reich! Here at the beginning of Our Pontificate We wish to assure you that We remain devoted to the spiritual welfare of the German people entrusted to your leadership... During the many years we spent in Germany, We did all in Our power to establish harmonious relations between Church and State. Now that the responsibilities of Our pastoral function have increased Our opportunities, how much more ardently do We pray to reach that goal."
Again one cannot help asking how those who loudly proclaim the Pacelli perpetually warned the globe about Hitler and fought him at every step can allow themselves to be seen in public. Really, I'd like to know. About the same time, Hitler celebrated his 50th birthday. Cardinal Bertram in Berlin sent greetings apparently at the behest of Pious XII, who did not put a stop to the solicitations as they continued until the end of the war.
"Warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany with fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars."
It's a reasonable bet that Pious XII wanted to ensure that the money from a cash strapped Reich fighting a super war would not dry up.
During the war the Vicar of Christ was an exemplar of conflicted and contradictory policies and thinking. He played with opposing Hitler to the point of dabbling in a plot against him with the British a violation of the canon against directly opposing tyrants -- while agreeing with the main Nazis project to destroy the Soviet Union. The self inflated Pious XII imagined he as God's main man on earth could negotiate with Hitler and the allies to end the war at least in the west, perhaps on terms that would allow the godly war against atheistic communism to continue. Despite his heavenly connections, he did not understand that the increasingly crazed Hitler was so pathological that he and his regime of horrors could only be stopped by an extermination campaign of counter conquest via brute military force of the kind Stalin was deploying against him. How could the future candidate for saint be so obtuse to think that Hitler would agree to willing end of the war when doing so would put the great dictator at high risk of be deposed, exposed and executed? Or did Pacelli see a post war Hitler remaining unpunished and in control of Germany -- like Franco in Spain -- after the war came to a negotiated end? Someone else not deserving sainthood either but much more grounded Roosevelt, knew the score -- he demanded for unconditional surrender at Casablanca as the similarly realist Churchill happily went along.
By the norms of the time a standard anti-Semite -- except for those who converted to the one true faith -- Pious XII did not approve of the genocide he knew was underway to at least some extent via the extensive church intelligence network (likewise most Germans would have objected to the scale of the Holocaust if they entirely knew, that's one reason the regime hid it the project). In 1942 he issued a Christmas statement against Nazis atrocities that perturbed Hitler and company and gave some encouragement to the victims, but it was too bland, indirect and nonspecific to have the needed impact. Far from constantly warning about Nazis terror, to the dismay and anger of many further statements were not released in 1943 and 44 as the Holocaust reached its fantastic heights. When Germans began to remove Jews from Italy to send to the death camps the reaction of Pacelli was again mixed. Many Jews were successfully hidden by Catholic clerics and civilians some in the Vatican -- but over a thousand were deported without the Pope publicly protesting, or showing up at the train station to try and put a stop to the deadly transport.
Defenders of Pious XII fall back on two defenses to try to explain the mediocre performance of their saint-to-be. He would have been under direct threat if he had more directly opposed Hitler, and the Fuhrer would have targeted Germans Catholics like he did the Jews et al. Concerning the direct threat to the Pope, so what? One hopes the Vicar of Christ was not afraid to risk his freedom or even life in the defense of others.
As for the supposed threat to Catholics, it is hard to overemphasize how just plain ignorant this proposition is. Many imagine Hitler was free to do whatever he wished, but being a dictator is such a perpetually dangerous business that tyrants must carefully watch their every step lest it come back to harm or kill them. Hitler could pick on German Jews because the classic "others' made up a mere1% of the population -- they were vulnerable and expendable. For the Austro-German Catholic Hitler to go after his fellow Austro-German Catholics would have been ethno-suicide directly contrary to his own beliefs and schemes. The two main points of his regime were too elevate all Deutsch Aryans Catholic and Protestant to the near godhood inherent to the race -- not to oppress or eliminate a big chunk of them -- and to use the limited numbers of Germans to conquer an super slave empire extending from the French frontier to the Urals. How was this supposed to work in practical logistical terms if the around 20 million German Catholics were somehow corralled and dealt by the 50 million followers of Luther? All the more so because many Protestants would not have gone along with targeting Catholics; an ecumenical Catho-Lutheran coup more effective than the nearly successful 44 plots would have been a serious possibility. Bad treatment of the third of Germans who were Catholics would have shrunk Hitler's desperately pressed army by the same amount and wrecked his dreams of conquests while leaving the nation vulnerable to attack, and would have risked an outright civil war because Catholic officers and soldiers had lots of weapons. Once the USSR was defeated Adolf needed every German to keep the huge Slavic population in their place as slaves (the central element in Hitler's inane scheme was its fatal flaw, Russia/Ukraine would have been Germany's Vietnam-Afghanistan on a vast scale). The need for as many Aryans as possible was why Hitler banned abortions and favored big German families Catholic and Protestant. Even going after the Pope down in Rome would have outraged the Catholic portion of his nation and army, crippling military moral at best and risking mutiny (the BBC and Soviet broadcasts would have made sure Germans knew what was happening), and gutted his war project. Socio-political historians have shown that Hitler ran a "popular dictatorship' that depended upon a high level of popular support to survive (as it was he barely lived through a long series of assassination attempts). The myth that a small Nazis clique captured a nation and forced an oppressed population to do things against popular will is bogus. The Gestapo was small by the standards of totalitarian states, surviving records show it relied on casual civilian informants to keep malcontents in line. Hitler was far less free to do what he wanted than most think, and he had to be very careful not to go to far against his fellow church members.
Protected by German Catholic and world opinion, Pious XII was much freer to take on Hitler than the reverse. We will never fully know what would have happened had Pacelli issued ringing denouncements of Hitler, and it is true that the Fuehrer would not have personally cared if he were excommunicated for wiping out Jews and the like. But a stark rejection by Pacelli and exposure of the Holocaust machine would have done grave and perhaps crippling damage to the Nazi regime. This may help explain why Pious XII avoided being too explicit -- doing so would have demoralized the Catholic soldiers fighting atheistic Stalinism. Apologists argue that the Nazis really were close to seizing the Pope if he dared go to far. But Hitler never actually dared touch the Pope because Adolf understood that doing so would have shortened the war by speeding up the collapse of Germany, forcing Hitler to kill himself in 43 or 44. It is in that sense it is too bad Pacelli was probably unable to get himself seized by Hitler even if he tried, doing so could have saved a few million.
Again it comes to the money. If Hitler did not need to keep Germany's and the world's Catholics and the international community thinking that the Pope accepted the existence of his regime, then why didn't he cut off the church megapayments when he desperately needed all available cash for the war as it went bad and the noose tightened around his neck? Because Hitler did fear the condemnation of the man he not only could not touch, but had to buy off. In other words, keeping the Papal criticism sufficiently low was less costly to the war and extermination efforts than sending the churches all the money. And why did Pious XII never reject the transfers of tax revenues from Hitler's treasury -- much of which was looted from the Jews and conquered peoples, and made upon the backs of slaves who suffered under deadly circumstances -- as a moral protest? He did quite the opposite, being careful to never say or do anything that would cause his financial benefactor Hitler so much discomfiture that he cut off the funds. Instead the birthday greetings continued. Whatever the exact motives of both, it was craven mutual back scratching.
As for the performance of the Euroclergy under the rule of Pious XII before and during the war, it was all over the moral map. Some Catholic officials opposed the Nazis to varying degrees, others aided it the same amount. For photographs of clerics in smiling meet and greats with Hitler, getting his autograph, giving Nazi salutes, having the SS and SA in attendance at church events and the like see http://www.nobeliefs.com/... Catholic military chaplains encouraged the men to fight the allies western and Soviet - the soldiers' belt buckles proclaimed "God is With Us," and the tanks and aircraft bore the Teutonic Christian Cross. There is evidence that the German wing of the Roman church employed slave labor in accord with the Nazi norm (http://www.concordatwatch.org/showkb.php?org_id=858&kb_header_id=752&kb_id=10191), the high death toll included infants discarded when their mothers were forced back to work.
A particular issue that cannot invoke Nazis threats as an excuse is the little known Pacelli's apologists don't bring it up if they don't have to -- yet fantastically terrible Holocaust of the Balkans. The Catholic Church never accepted that much of the land just across the other side the Adriatic had come under the sway of the Orthodox Serbs and Muslims. During the war the Catholic Croats launched a genocidal campaign against Serbs, Muslims, Jews and leftists the out of control ferocity of which exceeded that of the more carefully crafted Nazis slaughter of the Jews. Hundreds of thousands were eliminated by the vicious Ustashe regime of the Fuhrer of the Balkans, Pavelic. There were even attempts to skip the gassing stage by pushing the victims directly into furnaces, it did not work. Unlike the nominally Catholic Hitler, Pavelic was a dedicated papist, and major Catholic clerics were members of his government and aided the killings. That the church bears considerable responsibility for this debacle is verified by an apology issued by John Paul II. When pressed apologists try to excuse Pious XII by claiming his ignorance and/or impotence. That the leader of the faith did not have a good idea of what was going on the other side of the little Adriatic is beyond the plausible, and if he could not control his own clergy he was incompetent.
After the war Pious XII was unable or unwilling to prevent the escape from justice of many notorious fascists, Pavelic, Barbie, Eichmann included, aided by Catholic clerics (it was no more moral than efforts to save Nazis for Cold War purposes by the allies, most prominently the rocketeer von Braun). Yet another pernicious concordat was arranged with Franco (who by then was also getting along with the western powers). Instead of allowing the infamous concordat he should have been ashamed to have signed back in 1933 drop, Pious XII remained so proud of his work that he followed the standard church practice of not acknowledging a mistake, and succeeded after great effort to integrate the agreement into the new constitution so it is impractical to revoke even as Germany deChristianizes (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html; http://www.epjournal.net/... The Pope did not turn over the great sums he received from Hitler to Germany, or better to its victims. Nor is the bulk of the money coming from Germany and elsewhere used for charity, most taxes and donations (almost 20 billion from Germany, the US and Brazil alone) are used for church operations and global investments. While Hitler and other top fascists were not excommunicated even after the war, Pacelli did exclude all communists from the church, including those who fought against fascism and for its victims. And the slander against the Jews continued to be a normal part of the Catholic liturgy when Pacelli was Pope.
Pious XII was not "Hitler's Pope," nor did he match the fantastic level of evil of the Hitler he sometimes collaborated with when it seemed convenient and advantageous, and at other times opposed and despised when he thought that was a good idea. And he often faced difficult problems and choices that most would be hard pressed to deal with. But the historical evidence shows that he was nowhere near being a deeply moral or highly competent and strong leader deserving of honors. He was seriously compromised and weak man who often made foolish and harmful moral and practical decisions, usually in the perceived interests of his Papacy and church rather than the greater global good. The main moral reason he is being promoted for sainthood is that the church saved a number of Jews. This is equivalent to showering honors on the incompetent and ethically dubious architect whose defective construction collapses and kills almost all of the thousands inside, but he kindly provides instructions for rescuing the small minority who survived the implosion he helped come to pass. Had Pacelli been sufficiently moral and sensible to sabotage the project to make Hitler dictator the Holocaust could not have happened, and the need to save the Jews he is to be rewarded for would have been avoided in the first place. Instead he personally signed a treaty that bonded the clergy of his church to Hitler's regime while ensuring that his church received huge sums of cold cash. At best the Vicar of Christ saved only a small fraction of the millions of Hitler's victims -- any Pope could and should have achieved at least that minimum if not much more. As Hitler and his cronies killed millions Pious XII not only continued to accept the depraved tyrant's dirty money, he took careful steps to avoid terminating the stream of Nazis cash when he should have powerfully denounced the Nazi madness and refused the bank transfers. The Pope did nothing to revoke the Vatican I doctrine that contributed to his errors while he opposed democratic freedom and kept on excellent terms with Franco. Nothing about the famously and unjustifiably arrogant Eugenio Pacelli warrants great honors, the project to make him a beloved saint being a propaganda effort by conservative Catholics to bolster their own ideology and fortunes by boosting the reputation of past conservative church leaders while use the cover of political correctness provided by sainthood to hide their grave defects so that's why they have no shame in their hyperbolic praise and evasion of obvious facts. It will offend many Jews, as well as decent Catholics and others, who understand that sometimes people with power just have to do the right thing.
A number of those who oppose sainthood for Pacelli are making mistakes. Many tend to focus their criticism towards somewhat peripheral issues, such as whether he made the right moves concerning the Italian Jews in 1943. The defenders of Pious XII are often seen as merely overenthusiastic rather than grievously wrong. And critics are often too polite about censuring Pious XII. The more diffident critics are requesting that Benedict hold off the sainthood until Vatican records are fully opened for examination. Time for a reality check. The evidence needed to decide that Pacelli was no where close to being some sort of saint is already publicly available -- it is like asking that Huey Long not be officially honored by his admirers until newly found secret files are examined. On practical and especially moral grounds critics should concentrate on and boldly condemn the worst mistakes of Pacelli, especially his work to make Hitler a tyrant and then back up the great dictator with a mutually aggrandizing treaty while taking all that Nazi money. It should be made clear that those who work to make Pious XII a saint are committing an obscenity. This is unlike the effort to similarly honor John XXIII -- whether he should be made a saint can be challenged, but the idea is not a moral outrage.
It is also necessary to hold those promoting sainthood for Pacelli to account. Most especially the person most responsible for this travesty, the Pope. They all should be ashamed of themselves, and Benedict should issue an apology for fobbing this project on the world.
As for those hardcore Protestants who have not gotten the message that you are supposed to cooperate with right wing Catholics in the modern war on secularism, and instead still exploit the failings of the Roman Church to attack the sect, the Protestants of Germany were just as responsible for the Nazi disaster as I detail in the FI articles cited at the beginning of this piece. Likewise, some of the issues not dealt with above that critics may refer to in the comments are likely to have been addressed in the FI pieces.
The larger take away message is that the modern sex scandal is by no means the worst thing the Catholic Church has done. Among other items it invented oppressive theocracy and virulent anti-Semitism, wiped out the Cathars, mounted the brutal Crusades, approved of slavery, opposed modern democracy, sided with Fascism, and has been cozy with Mafia and other criminal elements. The institution requires a massive reform that would radically alter its configuration, including making it an open and democratic system with women sharing equal power, and the Vatican made subject to Italian law. Becasue this would gut core Catholic doctrine and theology, the likelihood of such a grand transformation cannot be ranked as high.