The Pope and the Papers
Pachter, Henry
WHAT SHALL we call the new Pope when he dies? That will be something of a problem, since the recently-deceased Pius XII was so regularly hailed as "the greatest" in the American press....
...I suppose "greatest in 200 years" or "one of the greatest" are phrases which the stream of semi-consciousness produces in a good politician at the drop of a dead...
...To its flourishing condition Pius 'XII contributed enormously and in all likelihood will rank in history as one of the greatest" (New York Daily News) . That at least has the virtue of placing Pacelli in the political context where he belongs...
...WHAT SHALL we call the new Pope when he dies...
...This practice of shunting aside was not new to Pius XII...
...We can gain some insight into this new type by glancing at the life and work of Milovan Djilas, as it has been sketched out in his autobiography, Land Without Justice...
...He also informed some close associates that visions of strange bodies had been granted to him— angels, Christ and the Virgin...
...Had not Pius XII gone so far as to use a typewriter, a telephone, an airplane and an elevator...
...Phrases, however obbligato, obligate...
...ITEM: "He was coolly correct in his dealings with Franco" (Shannon) . The truth is that one of his first acts as Pope was to send a special apostolic blessing to Franco...
...He had to cope with the Fascist dictators...
...All of which may prove nothing but the undisputed fact that Catholics also vote and advertise...
...Here, for the liberals, was an opportunity to praise while suppressing the blame...
...rigidity Great Powers of every kind have gone down in the past...
...with bloody vendettas between clans continuing from generation to generation...
...Honorable exception: Mr...
...A proud, independent people living in a remote barren mountain coun...
...Pius XII seems in general to have been concerned more with bodies than with souls...
...He grew up in a society which was basically tribal in its organization, with the king little more than the chieftain of the most powerful tribe...
...Harry Truman at least tried to qualify it: "The greatest statesman in the Vatican in 200 years" he obituarized—which takes us back to the undistinguished Benedicts and Clements of the 18th century but leaves out the great social Pope, Leo XIII, who undid some of the damage done by Pius IX—that infamous reactionary from whom the late Pacelli Pius XII took is name...
...The remarkable fact about the Papacy is that it has not...
...As Nuncio Pacelli in Munich, he helped organize the separatistic, monarchistic Bavarian People's Party (which by a hair's breadth escaped being Hitler's ally in the beer hall putsch) . Promoted to the post of Berlin, Pacelli helped reshape the Catholic Center Party, replacing in its leadership the trade unionist, Stegerwald, by the monarchist reactionaries, Prelate Kaas and (later) Bruening, the gravediggers of the Weimar Republic...
...so the editorialists had to find out why Pius XII was great...
...Has he not, in his own pontificate, suppressed all Christian-socialist movements which sprang up after the war, such as the Dominican socialists and the "working priests" in France...
...This remarkable announcement ought to have been a newsman's feast, but only the New York World-Telegram congratulated itself—tongue in cheek—on having lived with the first Pope to receive such visitations...
...His native land, Montenegro, probably the most backward part of Yugoslavia, was at the time of his birth in 1911 an independent mountain princedom...
...with Robin Hood outlaws roaming the mountain fastnesses...
...Through...
...By unanimous stream of semi-consciousness, again, the word "modern" invites itself...
...It was left to Adlai Stevenson to come up with the sickliest piece of verbiage: "All of mankind feels, with the oneness he helped give it, an overpowering loss at this saintly man's being gone...
...One of the dogmas he proclaimed was that of the bodily ascension of the Virgin into Heaven...
...And though we were not told so explicitly, we suppose a flush toilet, too...
...but the day after the concordat had been signed, Mussolini submitted to the King the elevation to princely honors of the Pacelli family...
...Thanks to the constant wars and political upheavals between 1910 and 1930, these feuds, brigands and partisans sometimes adopted a political coloring, but this seemed little more than an accidental veneer over the underlying tribal bond or enmity...
...But let's look at Pius XII's "flexibility": he forbade widows to remarry, he instigated mob violence against a couple who had married outside the Church, he declared it a dogma for every believer that the Church is the body and soul of Christ—a doctrine which excludes individualism and mystic religiosity among the faithful, and forces them to surrender their will to the Church itself rather than to the spirit of Christ...
...Pius XII receives due credit for "encouraging" and promoting them "whenever they emerged in the natural course of events" (the "leftist" columnist, William Shannon) ; the trouble is that these right-wing leaders did not "emerge in the natural course of events" but had to be helped to win out against the more liberal wing in the Catholic parties whose leaders, indeed, had "emerged in the natural course of events...
...Likewise in Italy, as Secretary of State, Pacelli dissolved the Catholic "Popolari" party under Don Sturzo's liberal leadership—the price the Church paid for the concordat Mussolini did not keep...
...but the writer might have done a little further research so that the precise nature of Pius XII's contribution might be known...
...A great light has been dimmed now—yet can never, for it was so great, go out...
...A Distance of Centuries George Eckstein A NEW TYPE of political leader has developed in the last few decades...
...ITEM: "The socially-minded Christian Democratic movements and the progress toward a united Europe both owe much to his intelligent and tactful support" (New York Post...
...instead -ITEM: "He strove to keep the Church clear from involvement with fascist re gimes" (Shannon again) . The truth is that, while Pacelli was the power behind his throne, Pius XI blessed Mussolini's arms in the Ethiopian war, concluded a concordat with Hitler, and also blessed the "volunteers" that went to fight against the Spanish Republic, including the Basque liberal-Catholic government...
...Quoting from one paper for many, "the church is communism's.., most powerful ideological opponent...
...Next to being modern, Pius XII's most conspicuous qualification seems to have been his anti-Communism...
...Their honey-drooling pundit, the great Max Lerner was so eager to set the tone that his eulogy appeared on the newsstands before the Pope was dead...
...And the 20 years of Pius XII's tenure of the Holy See are an indication of why it has not...
...He is a figure both fascinating and ominous, at times attractive for his raw vigor and at other times frightening in his distance from modern assumptions...
...A neat trick—if little good can be said of the man, talk about the greatness of the institution...
...Did not the Church, at the time when Pacelli was its Secretary of State, sanction the authoritarian DollfussSchuschnigg regime in Austria and the bloody suppression of the Vienna socialists in February 1934...
...Moreover, he had cautiously approved hypnosis and psychoanalysis (catching up with the Jesuits) , permitted the use of English in administering the Last Rites (bowing, of course, not to the expiator's need to understand but to the American clergy's ignorance of Latin) , and allowed the mass to be shifted from morning to evening hours...
...But if nothing "controversial" is fit to print, must the hollow space be filled with even hollower words...
...similarly, New York Herald-Tribune) . These "socially-minded Christian Democrats," of course, are Adenauer, Schuman and de Gasperi...
...Of all this, not a word in the American press...
...The ultra-orthodox Spanish hierarchy, though, did get into trouble with the Falange, and the concordats with the Axis failed to work out...
...That will be something of a problem, since the recently-deceased Pius XII was so regularly hailed as "the greatest" in the American press...
...However, let's not quibble...
...Murray Kempton alone among Rome correspondents reported that the American cardinals were unpopular at the conclave and that the election of John XXIII may signify some change in policy in the Vatican...
...In backward countries he quietly encouraged the revival of relic worship...
Vol. 6 • January 1959 • No. 1
