Professor Bainbridge teaches:
In the latest Economist ($) we learn that John Cornwell has recanted the charges he made against Pope Pius XII’s conduct during the Holocaust:
As he admits, Hitler’s Pope
(1999), his biography of Pope Pius XII, lacked balance. βI would now
argue,β he says, βin the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler’s Pope,
that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to
judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under
the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.β
It would be nice if Amazon’s editorial content for the book had some acknowledgement of Cornwell’s retraction of the very serious charges the book makes.
This is good news. Cornwell finally got a clue. Of course, it’s not much of a clue in view of his current book savaging John Paul II, but it’s something.
(Cowboy hat tip: Gleeful Extremist.)
Will be interesting to see how much the “corrections” of the revisions of history will receive in the general press.
I’m not holding my breathe.
I can’t wait for the CBC to devote as much time on the air rehabilitating the Pope’s good name as they did besmirching it giving “Hitler’s Pope” hours and hours and hours of in depth coverage, using my tax dollars π
[sarcasm off]
*sigh*, unfortunately it is already “common knowledge” that the Pope was “silent” during the holocaust. Everyone who’s got the slightest bone to pick with the Catholic Church has a psychological need to believe that Pope Piux XII was in bed with Hitler for some reason.
If you actually go to the Amazon.com page, there’s a “Suggestion Box” field for submitting suggestions “[i]f you’ve found something incorrect, broken, or frustrating on this page.” Comments are limited to 1024 characters, and you need to be signed in as an Amazon customer or associate. I submitted the following request, which is just under 1024 characters; I don’t recommend using this text exactly, but feel free to paraphrase if you want.
Um . . . are we all reading the same statement? Doesn’t seem like much of a retraction for me. Cornwell still won’t ackndowlege the good that Pius did. He writes: “it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war.”
I’m not impressed.
Impressed isn’t the point, Eric. Nobody’s lining up to shake Cornwell’s hand here or nominate him ambassador to the Vatican. The point is, he seems to have admitted that the central thesis of his anti-Pius XII book is groundless — an important admission that some hay should be made of.
RULE 3 VIOLATION.
If you want to make criticisms, fine, but keep it *short.* (And use black spaces between paragraphs, please.)