THE POPES AND THE DICTATORS

...Why did he not times distressed people who lived pressures of the various groups at the protest against men so manifestly evil, through the anguish of those years...

...force to political points which have finally appropriate attitude which The best way to consider them is as nothing to do with fiction and they tell neither Trowbridge nor I know how to testimony, the affidavits of three young stories which never quite add up to name...

...He The FATbER were hostile to the Nazis...

...This is an under- regime ever pronounced by the VatiOffice, and the German documents statement of the Vatican's attitude to can...

...Given greatest aggressor in history, was, at say nothing that might inflict greater its traditions, personalities and geoleast overtly, equated at the Vatican, suffering upon them...

...Its strengths and weak- of comforting, if obscurely expressed, government of Italy would not have nesses, consistency and anomalies were platitudes...

...8713 1 chine seems to have functioned in a cial, and other settings of scientific vacuum for most of the war, generating development and endeavors...

...One of the limitations of Mr...

...Professor Dubos suggests that in the Return coupon from page 44 What equally compounded the Vati- present book he has opted to deal can's problems were the many national with the problems of subjectivity and Churches, whose members differed in diversity in the field of life on this their opinions and shared the attitudes planet as distinguished from the priB45y0 06 9 04*6 of their non-Catholic compatriots...

...Their style was negotiation of the Concordat of 1929 the Dictators (1922-1943) very different: Pius XI was, in the by which the Papacy became once ANTHONY RHODES words of one observer, "an obstinate, more a territorial power...

...What abruptly changed his attitude what the Vatican could have done they were all treated as errant nations was the Allies' resolve to fight until otherwise, and Mr...

...Rhodes calls "one of terial newly available from the archives pletely repugnant to a pontiff who is the greatest condemnations of a national of the Vatican, the British Foreign himself an autocrat...

...wild miscalculations and exercising lit- In his extraordinarily brief Preface, 17-Issue Trial, $3 tle influence...

...in Germany intellectual tradition, and he adopts many Catholics were Nazi supporters, the title phrase from classical Greek nnxKy 'b y others resisted Nazi encroachment on sources, including Plato's conception the Church's rights and property, a of "divine madness...

...which Roosevelt communicated to the even if he does not make its policies The key to this, as the author stress- Pope in September, 1942...

...still sent cordial birthday end of World War I. knew we could do business...

...Axis Europe, lacking the means of ac- field of medico-biological science, has $7.95 at all bookstores quiring information which would have for many years been one of the most or direct from enabled it to form realistic judgments "humanistically" oriented scientists UNIVERSITY OF with respect to the larger cultural, soNEW MEXICO PRESS on events, the Vatican diplomatic maALBUQ UERQUE, N.M...

...The Pope would do or Vatican could not easily reflect...

...Nazi Germany, palpably the in the world...

...The faithful, the largest Catholic community mentioning no country or people by wartime history of the Vatican is name...

...Sand in the Wind and Body men who went to see for themselves...

...explicable by human enslavement to While the Pope lamented that he self-interest, habit and hesitation...

...Pius XII now more attractive...

...by Robert Coles could bring to the Jews "no help other than Our prayers," he was A God Within sheltering them in the Vatican and urging his bishops to do likewise...

...greetings to Hitler, gave Ribbentrop The book covers the pontificates of The "business" was, of course, the presents, received high-ranking Nazi Commonweal: 41 bosses...

...They tions it elicits are never drawn together...

...His papal court...

...To a whole generation the sight of The Vatican in the Age of the Dicta- Rhodes' book is that he confines him- Mr...

...aggression so naked, atrocities so fiendpurpose is to examine motives and On dictatorship in general, the au- ish...

...Rhodes illuminates which had somehow strayed from the unconditional surrender, a decision the dimensions of its predicament, straight and narrow paths of the peace...

...I do not reached only after frequent digressions them from using what they found for mean simply that it ends lamely, which into matters which are absorbing but the purposes of mere art...

...self largely to diplomatic history and of the anguished dismay with which The author passes no moral judg- tells us little about the structure of the the world waited for Pius XII to dements on papal attitudes that some- Vatican administration or the rival nounce the Nazis...

...Whether such combative man" capable, in the early sovereignty has enhanced its spiritual Holt, Rinehart, $10 1930s, of conducting a personal feud authority or diplomatic influence, it was against as devout a Catholic as Lord the existence of this inviolate territory At once spiritual and shrewd, ecu- Strickland, the Prime Minister of that enabled the Vatican State during menical and parochial, timeless in Malta...

...Pius XII, on the other hand, the war to provide an asylum that strategy and often apparently time- seems to have been retiring and a saved lives of many fugitives...

...The body of the few became committed members of the book is an amazingly rich set of disate+' 4z...

...But Vatican policy depends the stable authority to make a Conrepeatedly exemplified during the period on more than the personality of the cordat...

...RENE DUBOS The main impression which emerges Scribners', $8.95 from Mr...

...Rhodes' book is that of a highly traditional bureaucracy over- TALCOTT PARSONS taken by an unprecedented maelstrom of events...

...But the For three years after the outbreak of places the controversy about Pius XII important point for the Vatican was war, Mr...

...XII and the Third Reich-is that it "the man sent by Providence...

...The the first dictator with whom it had to was directed against the Nazis' treatbook's merit-and its advantages over deal...

...In mary emphasis of the scientific tradiBelgium and Holland most Churches tion on objectivity and uniformity...

...dissected by Anthony Rhodes in his Pope...

...It Portraits of men and al Vatican policy of prudent diplomatic is a kind of philosophical testament by women whose way of action in the interests of the Catholic a senior citizen of the international life has brought them a community was utterly unadapted in scientific world, who, though making serene dignity and lasting respect in old age...

...but this was issued in 1937 and captured by the Allies in 1945...

...something of a cautionary tale reNevertheless, the picture of Vatican deemed by the magnificent individr diplomacy would be incomplete if it ual heroism of bishops, priests and THE OLD ONES omitted the frequent contrast between nuns in that dark Europe and only OF NEW MEXICO public reserve and private action...

...True, his predecessor, Pius XI, expose facts...

...books but no one is ever going to be do and they don't...

...whole novels...

...cussions of man-environment relationBE.b.COFrI PRE55 These were the differences which the ships and human orientations over a 15 March 1974: 42...

...The fact is that the tradition- This is certainly a notable book...

...Easy Victories has the Count reach conclusions but they are Since their talent is manifest perhaps tight structure and surface polish of a small and overly neat and they are it was a sense of decency which kept syllogism with no synthesis...

...They lend emotional They remain only fragments of some asked to read them in freshman English...

...Pius XI may well have regretted ment of the Roman Catholic Church Saul Friedlander's more scholarly Pius his public description of Mussolini as in Germany...

...Rhodes' title will evoke memories tors (1922-1945...

...And the serving in tactics, the diplomacy of the natural diplomat, with a natural diplo- Vatican was surely right in believing, Vatican is a unique and fascinating mat's dislike of plain speech and love as it did at the time, that a democratic phenomenon...

...Rhodes says, the Pope, "in and the Jews against an historical expressed privately by Secretary of spite of the Nazi persecution of the background of Vatican policy since the State, Gasparri, "With such a man I churches...

...in France grounds his position neatly in Greek the clergy were divided...

...and this he does with dis- thor observes that an authoritarian made in the encyclical Mit brennender cernment and clarity, drawing on ma- form of government cannot be com- Sorge what Mr...

...graphical position, it is difficult to see it seemed, with Germany's enemies...

...His book underscores es, is the Vatican's consistent principle realized that he must reckon with the a very tragic irony of history in which that the interest of Catholics comes total defeat of the Axis...

...And forthright than he had ever been, con- condemn the evil incarnate in an inHitler, at the height of his conquests, demning the worship of the State and sane state-system, whose barbarism ruled more than 110 million of the the extermination of the Jews-though engulfed so much of humanity...

...dealing with Hitler...

...8.9E organized resistance...

...In his radio the highest religious authority in Eufirst, regardless of the rightness or address that Christmas he was more rope had been slow to recognize and wrongness of national causes...

...Isolated within a major mark in the broadly defined Photos by Alex Harris...

...BOOKS THE POPES AND THE DICTATORS GABRIEL GERSH The Vatican in the Age of Pius XI and Pius XII...

...They're good whether they succeed as novels...