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"Hitler's Pope'' Revisited By Msgr. George G. Higgins The Yardstick November 22, 1999  British journalist John Cornwell, author of a sensational diatribe against Pope Pius XII, "Hitler's Pope," has lashed out at his critics in a fit of anger. In an interview in Jewish Week magazine he says he is "the victim of a mud-slinging campaign orchestrated by the extreme right wing of the Catholic Church.... They want to kill the messenger, because they don't like the message, which they have scaled as a sacrilege." Mind you, the man now in a bit of a rage against his critics is the same man who, starting with his book's nasty title and its deceptive cover jacket, puts the worst possible interpretation on almost everything Eugenio Pacelli said or did during his long career as papal nuncio to Germany, papal secretary of state and then as Pope Pius XII. He portrays Pacelli throughout the book as Hitler's anti-Semitic pawn. It boggles the mind to find a man of such crude insensitivity crying foul against his critics. Cornwell doesn't mention any critics by name, but let's look at some who dared to criticize "Hitler's Pope." The list includes reviews in Newsweek's European edition, the London Tablet and the Jesuit weekly America. It is ludicrous to charge the writers of these reviews with being part of a mud-slinging campaign orchestrated by the Catholic Church's extreme right. To begin with, the writer of the Tablet's measured review is not a Catholic. And Newsweek, needless to say, is not a Catholic publication. The writer of America's review is indeed a Catholic, but given his scholarly credentials, to say he is in cahoots with the extreme right wing of the Catholic Church suggests, to me at least, that Cornwell is incapable of dealing rationally with criticism. The review of "Hitler's Pope" in America by Jose M. Sanchez is the best I have seen thus far. Like Sanchez, professor of history at St. Louis University, I find it "difficult to know where to begin to criticize this work because it is replete with innuendo, guilt by the most tenuous association, cleverly phrased nonsequiturs and blatant use of any work critical of Pius." I also agree when Sanchez says that "Cornwell's agenda extends beyond Pius. (Cornwell) has a bone to pick with the church of John Paul II, and he uses Pius XII to do so." In the book's last sentence -- referring to both Pius XII and John Paul II -- Cornwell says, "It has been the urgent thesis of this book ... that when the papacy waxes strong at the expense of the people of God, the Catholic Church declines in moral and spiritual influence to the detriment of us all." In short, his book is an angry theological tract complaining about the centralization of church authority in the papacy and what he perceives as the lack of collegiality in church life. This complaint is nothing new. It has been voiced by many others, but never before, to my knowledge, as such a disingenuous pretext for savaging the reputation of Pius XII and, by inference, that of John Paul II. Lastly, as America's editors point out in their editorial on "The Contested Legacy of Pius XII," no pope is above or beyond objective criticism, and thus a scholarly investigation of Pius XII's record, including his alleged "silence" about the Holocaust, is perfectly in order. Such an investigation by a joint committee of highly respected Jewish and Catholic scholars soon will be under way. It is a pity Cornwell didn't wait for its findings instead of rushing into print with a superficial potboiler which fouls his own nest and which he will predictably come to regret once all the hoopla about the book has dissipated and gone with the wind.   Papal Social Encyclicals   Other Catholic Social Teachings General Articles of Interest  Catholic Worker Connection Msgr. George Higgins  Home Page E-Mail: Fr. Sinclair Oubre