From Peace & the Papacy, Whittaker Chambers, 1943
    [ Notes, editing not marked. ]

The beginning of wisdom about the Pope is to know that whatever else he may be doing he is always for peace. Peace rumors all over Europe last week might or might not be well founded. But there was no doubt that Pius XII was busily trying to act as grand pacificator.

Catholics would understand his position and his motives at once.

Non-Catholics might find it hard to draw the line between the Pope's diplomatic and his apostolic roles.

 

Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, who today is one of the world�s most hardheaded statesmen, was born in 1876.

Both Eugenio Pacelli's grandfathers were Vatican functionaries His father was dean of the Vatican law corps. Young Pacelli practically grew up in church. As a boy he played in the piazza of Rome�s Santa Maria della Pace, from whose wall he took his personal motto: Opus justitiae pax (The work of justice is peace).

In 1899 Pacelli was ordained a priest.

In 1917 (the Russian Revolution had just begun) Pacelli went as Papal Nuncio to Munich, tried (and failed) to talk the Kaiser into a peaceful frame of mind. After the Kaiser fled, Pacelli lived through the Bavarian Soviet Republic. On one occasion he faced down a band of armed revolutionaries who had broken into the Papal Embassy, intending to loot the building.

In 1925, Archbishop Pacelli* concluded a Concordat with Bavaria. Franz Ritter von Epp's forces had overthrown the Soviet, and a police spy named Adolf Hitler was snooping in revolutionary circles for the new government.

    * Eight years earlier Benedict XV had made Pacelli Titular Archbishop of Sardes (an ancient See in Asia Minor).

In 1929 Pacelli negotiated a Concordat with social-democratic Prussia. When Lutherans objected, Pacelli suggested calling the Concordat a �solemn convention.� Everybody was pleased.

In 1929 Pacelli was called to Rome, made a Cardinal and two months later Vatican Secretary of State.

In 1936, he sailed to North America, visited Manhattan�s Empire State Building, the Liberty Bell, Mount Vernon, innumerable U.S. Catholic hierarchs. He also traveled 8,000 miles by plane and lunched with the Franklin Roosevelts at Hyde Park. Said Pacelli: �I enjoyed lunching with a typical American family.� This trip was an eye opener to American travelers who saw the statesman of the church riding in a plane break out his portable typewriter and vigorously go to work in midair.

Other trips took Pacelli to Hungary, Switzerland, France, South America.

But Pacelli did not neglect Vatican City. About the time that Pius XI appointed Pacelli Prefect of the Reverend Fabric of St. Peter�s (guardian of Vatican buildings), Mussolini banned the Catholic Boy Scouts and started to wipe out Catholic Action in Italy. The Pope wrote an encyclical (Non abbiamo bisogno) attacking the Fascist action, but since the Fascists controlled all the telegraph lines and cables to the outside world, Mussolini was in a position to read and reply to the encyclical before the world read it.

Cardinal Pacelli got out of this dilemma by having his great friend, Monsignor (now New York�s Archbishop) Francis Spellman, hustle copies of the encyclical to France by plane. But the incident made a deep impression on Pacelli. Soon he had equipped the Vatican with a sort-wave radio station (�for research and propaganda�), a new electric powerhouse, a fleet of modern automobiles (gifts of the manufacturers) to replace the old carriages, electric elevators, 800 telephones, a telephoto apparatus, an electric device to replace the bell ringers at St. Peter's.

In 1939 Cardinal Pacelli came face to face with the event which was to climax his ecclesiastical career. Pope Pius XI died. From all points of the compass Cardinals rushed to Rome to elect his successor. Cardinal Pacelli personally wired the Italian Line to ask that the Neptunia make an extra fast trip so that the Latin American Cardinals would arrive for the voting. In his haste one Cardinal was compelled to fly from Portugal over the battle lines of the Spanish Civil War. For the first time in history U.S. Cardinals also were present at the conclave to elect a Pope.

Cardinal Pacelli was chosen Pope on the third ballot. No Pope had been chosen so quickly since 1623. Pacelli was the first papal Secretary of State to become Pope since 1775. He was elected on his 63rd birthday.

 

Cardinal Pacelli�s prepontifical travels were facilitated by the fact that he talks fluently in eight languages.

�Politics,� said Cardinal Manning, �is a part of morals.� Whether the morals of Pacelli�s diplomacy were good or bad morals is a violently debated issue.

Of those who believe them to be bad (radicals of all brands, most anti-Catholics, many non-Catholics and even some Catholics), almost none can prove his point because none but the Vatican knows all the facts and circumstances. In general the most serious charges against the Church concern the skill with which the Vatican and its hierarchs have fished and swum in the Fascist sea surrounding them. Vatican critics of various sorts point to various specific chapters of Pacelli diplomacy:

The Vatican�s support of General Franco during and after the Spanish civil War.
* The pro-Fascist sentiments of some Catholic prelates.
* The Lateran pacts and Concordat with Mussolini whereby the Italian Government agreed to pay the Vatican $39,200,000 in cash; to give it $52,300,000 worth of Italian Government bonds; to recognize Vatican City as a sovereign state; and to make Catholicism the state religion of Italy.
* The 1933 Concordat with Hitler �in spite of many serious misgivings.�
* The Vatican�s haste to embrace Marshal Pétain and Vichy.
* The Vatican policy toward Russia, which pleases scarcely anybody. The papacy�s unflagging crusade against Communism in & out of Russia has long infuriated Leftists. Its recent broadcasts to Russia in Russian have worried: 1) radical, who fear Catholic propaganda; 2) conservatives, who wonder what the Vatican is up to now.

People who believe that Vatican politics are good morals (and these include most Catholics and a scattering of non-Catholics) defend papal diplomacy with pleas of necessity, adaptability, the ancient wisdom of the Church, and the long view, which in the case of Catholicism embraces eternity.

Vatican apologists also like to point to the fact that if Catholic-Fascist relations have been warm in the case of Spain, tolerable in the case of Italy, bearable in the case of Germany, Vatican relations with the democracies have been downright friendly.

But no matter what critics might say, it is scarcely deniable that the Church Apostolic, through the encyclicals and other papal pronouncements, has been fighting against totalitarianism more knowingly, devoutly and authoritatively, and for a longer time, than any other organized power.

( Time, 16 August 1943 )
Ghosts on the roof : selected journalism
of Whittaker Chambers, 1931-1959
Edited and with an introduction by Terry Teachout.
Washington, D.C. : Regnery Gateway, 1989, pp 66 ff.

From Stauffenberg, Joachim Kramarz, 1967

. . . Dr. Joseph Müller, on instructions from Beck, entered into negotiations with the British chargé d'affaires in Rome, the object being to discover what the attitude of the Western Powers would be in the event of a change of regime in Germany. Contact was established through the Vatican, Pope Pius XII taking a personal hand as intermediary. The Western Powers showed themselves ready to make considerable concessions in the hope that the change of a regime might come before the opening of hostilities in the west. Halder was given the report on these negotiations, which he laid before his commander-in-chief. Brauchitsch, however, could not be persuaded to take any further action. So this golden opportunity for Germany to reach an agreement vanished. On 10 May 1940 the offensive opened in the west.²⁴

    ²⁴ [ Waldemar Erfurth, Die Vollmacht des Gewissens, Europäischer Publikation, Rinn, Munich, 1956 ], pp. 436 et seq.

New York : Macmillan, 1967, pages 82-3, note p. 227.

Chambers, Whittaker. Title(s) Selections. 1989 Ghosts on the roof : selected journalism of Whittaker Chambers, 1931-1959 / edited and with an introduction by Terry Teachout. Publisher Washington, D.C. : Regnery Gateway ; Lanham, MD : Distributed to the trade by National Book Network, c1989. Paging xxix, 361 p. ; 24 cm. Notes Includes index.

http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2000/0003up.asp

http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9706/opinion/doyle.html

http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9805/public.html

Kramarz, Joachim, 1931- Uniform Title [ Claus Graf Stauffenberg. English] Title Stauffenberg, the architect of the famous July 20th conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. Translated from the German by R. H. Barry. Introd. by H. R. Trevor-Roper. Publisher New York, Macmillan [1967] { London, Deutsch, 1967 } Description 255 p. port. 21 cm. Language English Note Translation of Claus Graf Stauffenberg. Note Bibliography: p. 208-213.

Kramarz, Joachim, 1931- Title Claus Graf Stauffenberg, 15. November 1907-20. Juli 1944: das Leben eines Offiziers. Publisher Frankfurt am Main, Bernard & Graefe, 1965. Description 245 p. : facsims., ports. (1 mounted) ; 21 cm. Language German Note On spine: Stauffenberg. Note "Quellenverzeichnis": p. 227-235.