Controversies, as is known, exist in many areas of dispute.   Many times a consensus, among reasonable and unbiased people, can be achieved on particular agreements on certain subjects or, perhaps, regarding historical personalities.   Regarding the moral and righteous pursuit of the truth, fair-minded thinkers and others seek out the facts, evidence, etc. to either support or deny certain matters.

Is Bigotry Morally Good?

And yet, it is often the case that different people of, e.g., different religions may still look at the same evidence and come to completely opposite conclusions.   Many Catholics and people of the Jewish faith, thus, can disagree about many things.  And, of course, they can agree upon other matters.  But, the highly important philosophical question might be legitimately raised as to if there is really a basic unity in truth among all decent people, regardless of religious affiliations.

One wonders, however, if it is now an established article of the Roman Catholic Faith to definitively affirm the Holocaust and, moreover, to clearly specify exactly 6 million deaths?   No decent or rational person, of course, ought to ever deny that millions of Jewish people died as a result of deliberate extermination by the forces of Nazi Germany; the death toll could, perhaps, have been even greater than the conventional figure usually chosen; it is hard to absolutely know the true figure; and, millions of other people were, also, as viciously murdered, in terrible ways, that ought to, thus, rightly horrify all civilized human beings forever.   That is not, fortunately, the dispute here.

In the way that all Catholics are now morally obligated, one supposes, to acknowledge the Shoah (the Jewish name for what happened), can the same be then fairly expected for all or most Jewish opinion to be, now, equally in favor of Pope Pius XII as having been a truly Righteous Gentile?   An appropriate kind of logical, ethical, and moral reciprocity, some kind of (minimal) proportionality, is properly called for in this highly important matter, unless anti-Catholic bigotry is to be simply excused, unlike anti-Semitism.   But, it is contended that hatred is blinding people to the truth.

Ideological Uses and Abuses of History

As a most significant historical point, however, it needs to be always well noted that, prior to the 1960s, there was no special or separate case set aside for the particular extermination, by the Nazis, of the Jews before and during World War II; if, in the 1940s or 1950s, e.g., one would have used the word Holocaust with a capital “H” in the presence of, say, Golda Meier, she would not have understood the matter that way at all; the deaths of many different kinds of people, inclusive of the Jews, at the brutal hands of the evil, nihilistic Nazis was, back then, only generalized as a collective and undifferentiated horror. 

The unique historical specification, as a then preeminently to-be-noted horror specially denominated as the “Holocaust,” was a later ideologically-based creation to make it appear that there ought always to be a separate designation regarding the Jewish side of the obviously deliberate exterminations.   Regarding what happened, the consideration of cognate matters pertaining to Pope Pius XII will forever be intimately linked, associated with, this particular destruction of the Jewish people.  

Many Jewish leaders, as well as non-Jews, still unfairly condemn the memory of this good pope, even though mountains of evidence testify to the fact that he was intimately involved, due to his position, in truly saving hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives. 

While many tens of thousands of Jews are perfectly free to denounce the historical record of Pope Pius XII, in terms of a terrible and false defamation of literally staggering proportions crying unto high Heaven and low Hell for justice, the same is never permitted regarding Holocaust denials.   There is a tremendously disproportionate situation that definitely exists which, thus, results in an obvious double standard.  

Good relations between the Jewish community and the Roman Catholic Church do revolve, of course, around many issues; one among the chief issues concerns total and mandatory affirmation of the Shoah that is to be done completely and without any possible question whatsoever.  And, this is meant to pertain to the noble defense of truth.

And, yet, the reverse matter of Pope Pius XII’s defamed memory is not made a mandatory issue as to the rejection of any such completely wrongful defamation concerning him.   This is then a most grave injustice that is, however, supposed NOT to ever interfere, in any really major way, with fairly good relations between Jews and Catholics; and, veracity, as a consequence, is endangered.   

The Moral Need to Stop the Double Standard

In truth, nonetheless, the repeated and evil heaping of wrongful scorn upon Pope Pius XII done by many Jewish people, regardless of the massive historical evidence to the contrary, greatly provokes the noting of a clear double standard.   It has been said that no good deed ever goes unpunished.  Can it be the awful and terrible case that, now, it is to be immorally said that no good deed involving the Jews ought to go unpunished?  

As long as the memory of this good pope, this Righteous Gentile, is vilely dragged very mercilessly in the stinking mud of heartless derision and contemptible disrepute, Adolf Hitler will be laughing in his cursed grave.   For interested readers, good reading for the honest and proper defense of Pope Pius XII can be readily found at:  http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/piusxii.htm