THE ARDEATINE MASSACRE:

...In 1944, the lawyer wisdom-to the inevitable neglect of its prophetic misexplained, Msgr...

...as a prisoner in the dock...

...There was the excited old gentleman who tried to attack Katz and called him a dirty liar...

...Though this version was clearly causes of the change which has taken place in the Church much more favorable to Dollmann himself, and the only during the last twenty years...

...The chamber would become It might be argued that Senator Buckley has so badly a 20th-century Roman Coliseum as performers are handled the most important issue facing American conthrown to the electronic lions...

...The device shows that Katz' case is not as strong as But, however mutely, a question has been asked, and he pretends...

...new and dangerous programs from which we may never The original Watergate burglary, he says, was a be able to extricate ourselves...

...and confident man who was just the sort to greet Unfortunately, he and his court of elderly Roman wealthy alumni and to speak to Rotary clubs...

...The Mezey Case...

...judge will ever grant such a request, nor that Pope Paul Robert Katz has every good reason to object that they would voluntarily step into the Ehrlichman-size shoes are none of his business...

...don Zahn and Guenther Lewy have been the mirror in He now says he has more trumps up his sleeve, and which we discovered what the Church had become...

...and there is no one who can stop the wheels, except the Until now, he has always maintained it is up to the S ~i pril1974: 100 Vatican to refute his charges...

...Montini had been Pius XII's closest sion, which belongs to a "kingdom not of this world...

...Obviously not the to do, and did well enough, was a historical account of noble, compassionate, Homer-quoting Kappler (who the partisan attack and the bloody retaliation, which, today is still in an Italian military prison for his part in strangely enough, had not been done before...

...What he needs is the exact eye to screenwide eye, even the untrained moviegoer counterpart of that other equally unbelievable character: knows they are involved in a "mute dialogue...

...what he set out seen enough to know the answer...

...proves that Father Pankratius Pfeiffer (the German Sal- But they have found a ready public and, while it is relavatorian, who acted as intermediary between the Pope tively easy to dispose of their caricature of Pius as a and the German authorities) did not inform the Pope greedy, cynical, calculating tyrant (which he decidedly of the imminent reprisal (a kind of Watergate argument, was not), it may be almost impossible to correct the but without the tapes...

...A Ph.D...

...Antonelli hops on a bike and hurries after the there was a priest, Pietro Pappagallo, an inmate of the German lorries to the caves, where he arrives just on German police-prison, on suspicion of "Communist time for his final meeting with Kappler...

...When Fresno State sought its fourth president in There was Agostino Greggi, a staunch defender of public the peaceful days of the mid-1960s, it selected Dr...

...Nixon the Christian servatives that there is real doubt he can ever again martyr...

...collaborator, and therefore he must have kept notes of Of course, it is our duty to defend Pius XII's honor the Pope's conversations during the crucial days of against unjust attacks, but it must not distract our attenMarch 23-24...

...This is probably the reason soldier killed by partisans the previous day, and 5 why only now, after the release of the film in Italy, Katz thrown in "by mistake...

...Because "public opinion knew of it, and who still brags about his Christmas would compel the proceedings to be televised" and "the bombing of Hanoi as if it were an act of heroism, has ruler of the mightiest nation on earth would be starred done anything wrong...

...HENRY TEN KORTENAAR to shift the burden of proof onto the Vatican, and what- (Henry ten Kortenaar is Commonweal's regular corever the outcome of the trial, he can always claim that respondent in Rome...

...distorted image they have created in the public mind...

...caves in Rome, SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Herbert Kap- To establish the Pope's "guilt," scriptwriter Robert pler (Richard Burton) and the imaginary priest Anto- Katz has obviously no use for a real priest, suspected nelli (Marcello Mastroianni) face each other, screenwide of Communist activities...

...morals and oldtime Catholicism, who tried twice, in Frederick W. Ness, whose credentials were impecvain, to be admitted as second plaintiff, on behalf of a cable...

...Personally, I am convinced that the reflecwarned Father Pfeiffer and told him to request the tion on the war-experience has been among the deepest Pope's intervention...

...No, they are all caught up in the has been charged, along with producer Carlo Ponti and "grinding wheels," as Kappler has explained to Antonelli, director Cosmatos, with defamation of Pope Pius XII...

...tion" that have destroyed the President's ability to Aside from stating that the captain is responsible govern...

...PIUS XII ACCUSED THZ ARDSATINS MASSACRZ When, in the last minute of George Pan Cosmatos' one man who in the film is never called by his name, but film Reprisal, on the 1944 massacre of the Ardeatine only by his title "the Holy Father": Pope Pius XII...

...The flirtation between Ness and the the neighborhood cinema where I saw the movie, there college ended in 1967 in what has become known as was a big laugh at each mention of "the Holy Father...

...trial, failed to report the Watergate cover-up when he Why not impeachment...

...By then, the audience has against Pope Pius were only a sideline...

...so let's not waste too Katz has set out for him...

...Fontana ends his days at Auschtime to notice there is no Antonelli among them-though witz...

...In his book Death in Rome the accusations it sounds: "Who is guilty...

...He even ladies are unaware of what is going on around them...

...in English from Yale, Ness had been "Committee of Romans in defense of Pius XII," which executive vice-president of Hofstra University, vicehe claimed represented hundreds of thousands of Ro- president and dean of Long Island University, and man workers, whose lives and homes were saved by the academic vice-president of Dickinson College...

...Commonweal: 101...

...of the Church as a perfect society which, being on the Among the names of Dollmann, Kappler, Msgr...

...Right...

...Anyhow, it made a big splash, which added nicely to COMING the already colorful setting...

...of naive romance, regal rhetoric, distrust of the pe3ple, must step aside so that a new strong President can save a Nixonian hatred of the media, and blindness to the us from "a runaway Congress that could commit us to real moral crisis we face...

...activities...

...To many of us the questions witness who could contradict it, Father Pfeiffer, had in asked by Mauriac, Bernanos, Haecker and others, during the meantime died in a car-accident, Katz swallowed it and after the war, and the findings of scholars like Gorwhole, and based his accusations on it...

...On the screen to the Pope for intervention and, after receiving his reappear the names of the 335 victims, but we have no fusal, joins the victims...

...However, since Katz is now defendant in a libel-suit, But the worst is that all efforts in that direction tend the burden of proof is on him, and the evidence he has to blur the real issue, which is not that of the Pope's produced so far is not impressive...

...FurtherPope and who are "scandalized" by the book and the more, Ness looked like a college president-an erect film...

...It would have been more correct to say that for the ship, nowhere does Senator Buckley imply that the original burglary, far from being trivial, was an the President, who ordered illegal wiretaps, created the integral part of a whole network of unethical and "Plumbers," secretly bombed Cambodia, offered Judge criminal operations put in motion by the President him- Byrne the FBI directorship during the Ellsberg self...

...But in the the affair) ; nor the Jodls, Kesselrings, and Mackensens, film the prominence of Antonelli and his imaginary conthe whole long chain which Hitler's order has traveled, flict puts Pius XII's supposed refusal to prevent the to end' in the shooting of 335 Italians: 10 for each SS- massacre in the foreground...

...It is simply another attempt much energy on him, either...

...There are many hundreds of documents published in recent years on the causes for this, but Hochbuth and Katz are not among Vatican's activities in World War II there is none which them-they are at most one of the less savory effects...

...Maybe he "magnanimous act of sacrifice" of a guiltless man...

...The church authorities, Pope Pius, once fanatically venerated as "defensor civihe insists, never answered his questions, and among the tatis," has lost most of his popularity...

...What programs...

...Val- same level of dignity and power as the worldly states, lainc (former head of the Vatican press-office), also has to use their same weapons of diplomatic skill and figured that of the present Pope...

...The one was produced on the second day in court, when his experience struck at the root of the traditional doctrine lawyer presented the list of requested defense-witnesses...

...In smoked a pipe...

...After a Riccardo Fontana in The Deputy, an innocent believer few long seconds Antonelli turns his head, Kappler pulls who, shocked by the sudden discovery of evil, appeals the trigger, and the priest's body falls...

...He should resign...

...Indeed the proposed resignation is to be the provide proper leadership for his constituents...

...Judging "trivial and foolish" incident that has now swollen into from the Buckley record he probably means increased an "affair"-some kind of a vast, metaphysical his- Social Security and minimum wages, environmental torical force-a "crisis of the regime," a "trauma," with, control, government support of mass transit, arms limitaat its heart, "felt truths" and a "perception of corrup- tion, civil rights and consumer protection...

...His main witness is real or supposed personal guilt, but of the collective Eugen Dollmann, at the time SS representative at the guilt, or inadequacy, of the Catholic Church in the modGerman Embassy, who has always said he knew nothing ern world-of which, to be sure, its attitudes and actions of the reprisal until all was over, but in 1965 told Katz in World War II present the most significant and terrifythat not only did he know it was coming, he immediately ing parable...

...the Vatican silence is a confirmation of his own allegations...

...Of course, Katz does not expect that the tion from the real urgent questions, which lie elsewhere...

...There was the plaintiff, KENNETH SEIB writes in the Education Issue about an Contessa Elena Rossignani, daughter of Pope Pius' sister, academic freedom issue in California: Elisabetta Pacelli...