*(Yes, I am being ironic. With the exception of this sky-pilot I consider myself a Polonophile).

“What a very nasty statement. I for one have no quarrel with Joe as a person. But when he persists in an intellectual lie and claims that he is a member of a religion which manifestly, on first principles, he is not, I and others are entitled to argue with him. Linking that to the murder of ethnic Jews, of whatever religious denomination, is the very epitome of mean-mindedness and nastiness.” – Gordon Bennet 9:25 am

Sorry: your stance is illogical: Joe is ethnically Jewish and claims to be a Jew and a Christian. You will not allow his claim. Edith Stein and many hundreds of thousands of other victims of the nazis were baptised Christians of Jewish descent, and in their martyrdom they are recognised as part of the six million. I am not mean-minded or nasty. I simply ask why you acknowledge the Jewishness of those victims, but will not recognise it for Joe?

Well true (with the obvious reservation that there was some aim – and as SU will no doubt say – some achievements- to communism whilst at a certain point the nazis woke up to the fact that all their promises were built on sand. Both killed millions however, but then inconvenient as it may seem so did the church.

anti-christian and anti-catholic bigots

Is this the church equivalent of ‘red-baiting’?

Any evidence for this slander (which would appear to be wilfully ignorant of the large number of Jews that were saved by church authorities, and by Christians, in all of the countries under Nazi occupation or rule) ?

Or is your approach exactly what it seems to be (along with that of many of the hate-filled number whose living is spent it criticising Pius XII: ie that the only good pope, or Catholic, is dead pope, or Catholic?), Chrisitanity is an inherently antisemitic religion yada yada yada?

And the idea that Stalinist Communism is not in every regard on exactly the same base moral level as Nazism is an obscene whitewashing and rewriting of history.

As has already been noted above, strange that none of the anti-christian and anti-catholic bigots who post here get round to mentioning Mit Brennender Sorge, for example (Pius XI, I know)

Well, plus ca change.

What a very nasty statement. I for one have no quarrel with Joe as a person. But when he persists in an intellectual lie and claims that he is a member of a religion which manifestly, on first principles, he is not, I and others are entitled to argue with him. Linking that to the murder of ethnic Jews, of whatever religious denomination, is the very epitome of mean-mindedness and nastiness.

Here is the point; Ultimately you agree that Eugenio Pacelli acted without moral courage in his response to NAZI atrocity. You believe that he was acting in the rational manor, protecting the interest of The Church and Catholics. I believe that as a “Man of God” he should have had been more forthright against the absolute Evil that was Hitler’s NAZIsm, and should have martyred himself in the name of God. Surely as a religious man, we should expect him to fear God and behave with moral clarity.

Of course I believe that Eugenio Pacelli did not act with Moral strength, because, ultimately, he agreed with the essence, if not the practice of NAZI policy. Fundimentally, he believed that in rejecting Christ Eugenio Pacelli believed that the Jews were unworthy of the church’s intercession. Ultimately he felt that a NAZI Germany that allowed Catholic faith was better than a Communist Europe that suppressed religion. In this Eugenio Pacelli was a moral coward and a fool.

2. Roosevelt’s failure to act prior to 1941 was due to American public isolationism and political division. Roosevelt did not have the political power to force America into the war. None-the-less he did do everything he could to ensure that Britain was not defeated, vis-a-vis Lend Lease.

3. The “ostensible cause of the war in the first place” was NAZI expansionism, and the failure of appeasement.

4. “However, you are examining the actual events that did occur and should not read those actual events in light of future possibilities.” Truthfully I am unsure what you mean here. But, to reiterate, NAZI war aim was to exterminate Jews wherever they could get their hands on them. In the case of Hungary the NAZIs diverted trains needed for military logistics, to move Jews to Death Camps, after the reversals in Russia began. They even forced a Regime change to achieve that single end.

5. “As to Churchill and Roosevelt – they allied themselves with another monster, Stalin..” No, I think Hitler made them allies. While the Catholic church would have liked to have seen the Western Allies join the NAZIs in fighting Stalinism, Roosevelt and Churchill had sufficient moral insight to recognize the difference between absolute Evil (in the form of NAZI Germany) and the relative evil of the USSR. The church, to interested in its own self interest missed this distinction. And evidently continues to today.