Is Author John Cornwell a Historian or a Conspiracy Theorist?
Review
of Hilter's Pope published at amazon.com April 5, 2000
Is Cornwell a historian or a conspiracy theorist?
Reviewer: Roseanne T. Sullivan from California, USA
After reading "Hilter's Pope" through twice, I think you would not have much of a book left if you took out Cornwell's criticisms of Pius XII and other popes for trying to ensure that Catholic doctrine is correctly taught and for trying to ensure that Church practice is universally consistent.
Disdain for the teaching authority of the Catholic Church and the papacy is on every page.
Even if you hate the idea of a central teaching authority or the fact that the Church isn't run as a democracy, it does not follow, as the author implies over and over again, that someone who believes that a central authority is necessary is the same as a vicious murdering dictator who has dreams of world dominion and will stop at nothing to carry it out.
Cornwell tries to yoke these two disparate figures together in every way possible, trying to tar Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII, with the brush of Hilter's guilt. Cornwell's main thesis is that Pacelli/Pius XII was power-hungry, and everything he did throughout his career, including his concordat with Hilter, had that single motive.
The rhetorical techniques Cornwell uses are impressive, even if reprehensible . A photo of the Pope blessing people in St. Peter's Square is shown on the same page as Hilter on a balcony in front of a huge crowd.
A paragraph documenting an action by Pacelli during his diplomatic career will be followed by a paragraph about an unrelated atrocity by a Nazi official, even there is no evident connection between the two.
Readers who read through this long book too fast may find these things blurring together to achieve the author's sought-for impression. It is obvious from the title and book itself that the author was trying to prove that Pius XII, collaborated with Hilter and hated Jews both before and afer he became pope.
My understanding is that the pope did not try more directly to stop Hilter because of the very real danger that Hilter would respond with more violent action against Catholics and Jews. Religious practice had been exterminated in countries under Communist rule. The same prospect was hanging over the German church with the rise of the Nazis, even though Hilter gave lip service to the Christian churches.
In spite of Hilter's being born Catholic, no one could accuse Hilter of remaining a Catholic. He was a neo-pagan; his fantastic man-made religion built upon the notion of survival of the fittest to conceive of a super race to be achieved by destroying all genetically inferior members of the human species, Jewish and Polish people included, and anyone else who stood in his way.
A lot of Catholic clergy who spoke out died in concentration camps, including the priest St. Maximillian Kolbe, who volunteered to die instead of a Jewish family man in one of the camps.
As Pacelli, the Vatican diplomat, and Pius XII, the pope saw that a oncordat with Mussolini succeeded in buffering the Church in Italy to some degree, and that a concordat with Hilter could have the same effect in Germany.
Behind the scenes, the Catholic Church and many individual Catholics
did all that they could. The Vatican itself was engaged in efforts
to hide Jews
during the war. Hollywood even made a movie called The Scarlet
and the Black that's still available at amazon.com, in which Gregory Peck plays Monsignor Flaherty, who
harbored Jews and allied POW escapees in the Vatican. John Gielgud plays
Pope Pius XII! It's on record that many Jews later praised the Catholic
Church for helping them during that time.
Cornwell writes scornfully even about things that wouldn't seem evil in someone else's eyes. For example, Cornwell cricizes Pacelli/Pius XII for his asceticism, his dedication to personal prayer, his hard work, and his devotion to St. Therese, who taught a "little way" to God through love of God expressed through love of the people around us.
And from what he writes, Cornwell apparently sees the fact that people loved this pope whenever they got to meet him as due to the pope's evil genius rather than his holiness. Cornwell described the decay of Pope Pius XII's body after death in horrifying detail (but didn't quote any sources for his information).
This final indignity leaves me with an impression contrary to make his point. Cornwell starts this book saying he got access to secret archives because he told the Vatican archivists about his desire to defend Pius XII, but then he got disillusioned by what he discovered.
[However] Cornwell's previously published words show his disdain for the Church dated from before the date of his research on this book, which makes me think that when Cornwell told the Vatican that he wanted to defend Pius XII that Cornwell was not really sincere.
In Cornwell's previous book about the death of John Paul I after a little over a month as pope, Cornwell claimed he had been asked by the Vatican to dispel rumors about the pope's early death, and then he was disillusioned by what he found out after doing his research on that topic.
If you believe what Cornwell writes in these two books, his respect for the
Church has risen at least twice until it was deflated twice by his research
for two books that coincidentally turn out to be scandalous exposes. It
also strains one's credibility that the Vatican would have asked a former
seminarian and outspoken critic of the Church to investigate the death
of a Pope. Perhaps Cornwell has proven his ability, not as a historian
but a skilled writer of conspiracy theories?
END --This text refers to the
Hardcover edition.
Last Updated: December 19, 2003