Hitler’s Pope‘s Author Gets A Clue

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. “I would now
argue,” he says, “in 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.”

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.)

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

6 thoughts on “Hitler’s Pope‘s Author Gets A Clue”

  1. 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.

  2. 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 🙁
    [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.

  3. 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.

    I respectfully request that Amazon review and update its editorial description of this book now that the author has finally admitted, after years of cross-examination, that he has no case against Pius XII. As Cornwell now says, “I would now argue, in 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.” Please see the url below for more info. Cornwell’s groundless charges have had a devastating effect on public perception of this wrongly maligned Church leader, who was praised in his day for his actions during the Holocaust by Golda Meir, Albert Einstein, the chief rabbis of Jerusalem and Rome, and many Jews whose lives were saved by Pius XII and other Catholics. Now that Cornwell has recanted, Amazon should help to set the record straight. http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3471137

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

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