“A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, ‘Where have they taken him?’ “
-Pope Pius XII
Prophetic words from a great man, a great Pope who was lionized by the Jews in the waning days and years after World War II. Not until the calumny against him began in the early 1960’s did anyone regard him as anything less than a prophetic voice in the Church. I’m happy to have been a part of restoring the truth about Pope Pius in recent years.
We look around us today, and often I hear people longing for the days of the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s. It’s a romanticized period, a romanticism that made its way into my life in the eighth grade when the hit T.V. series “Happy Days” made its debut. It was an iconic time in American life. Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, Bing Crosby in “Going My Way” and “The Bells of St. Mary’s”.
From speaking with those in my parent’s and grandparent’s generations, it definitely was as simpler time in many respects. But in that nostalgic and idealized world, Pope Pius XII uttered that dread prophecy. So what was going on, really going on? Consider the following quotes from contemporary sources in World War II:
Albert Einstein- Time Magazine, December 23, 1940:
“Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks…Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”
The New York Times editorial on December 25, 1941 (Late Day edition, p. 24):
“
The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas… he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all… the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism… he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace.
”
Also The New York Times editorial on December 25, 1942 (Late Day edition, p. 16) states:
“This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent… Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were lifeless things.”
The New York Times on the liberation of Rome:
“Under the Pope’s direction the Holy See did an exemplary job of sheltering and championing the victims of the Nazi-Fascist regime. I have spoken to dozens of Italians, both Catholics and Jews, who owe their liberty and perhaps their lives to the protection of the Church.”
Chief Rabbi of Rome:
Rabbi Israel Zolli in 1945 converted to Catholicism with his wife, and in honor of all the Pope did for the Jews during the War took Pius XII’s name, Eugenio and had the Pope as his Godfather.
Chief Rabbi Herzog of Palestine:
“The people of Israel will never forget what his Holiness and his illustrious delegates are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history.”
FDR –August 3, 1944:
“I should like to take this occasion to express to His Holiness my deeply-felt appreciation of the frequent action which the Holy See has taken to render assistance to the victims of racial and religious persecutions.”
Pius was pope during the most convulsive period in all of human history. Eighty percent of his priests, brothers and nuns in Eastern Europe perished at the hands of the Nazis, virtually all of whom were baptized Catholics and Protestants who turned their backs on their Christian faith and followed the bloodlust of one of humanity’s greatest tyrants.
Some fourteen million people, including six million Jews perished in Hitler’s camps. Between 3.17% and 4% of the world’s population (62.5million-78.9 million humans) perished in that war.
Pius saw the turn of Protestantism to the embrace of contraception in the 1930’s, the rise of eugenics in the first four decades of the century, and the beginnings of Nazi atrocities developing first in the corrupted medical community. Pius eyed the thirty-plus states in America that had forcible sterilization laws on the books and was no doubt appalled by the U.S. Supreme Cout’s upholding of those laws in its 8-1 decision in Buck v. Bell. Margaret Sanger, a once devout daughter of the Church rivaled Pius for the hearts and minds of Catholic couples.
Racism flourished in the Twentieth Century, and there were more man-made famines because of those intolerances than in any period before. Then came the perfection of annihilating humans by the millions with the atomic and hydrogen bombs.
Happy days, they were not. Yet many long for those “simpler” times. In so doing, they overlook the challenges faced by Christians in those darkest hours of human existence.
It has never been a good time to be a Christian. The Apostles, save John, all met a martyr’s death. The first few centuries saw Christians hunted down, fed to wild beasts in the Colliseum, doused in oil and used as torches. They met in catacombs, in the shadows.
When I was confirmed, the Bishop tapped each person’s cheek as a symbolic reminder to be prepared to die for the faith. We’ve had twenty centuries of martyrs. We live today during the pendulum swing back toward eugenics, but we also live in great times as well.
We no longer institutionalize the handicapped. They are integral parts of their families’ lives. We’ve developed miraculous therapies that teach them to speak, excel academically and vocationally. We now have sonogram technology that convinces 9/10 women contemplating abortion that there is a baby, marvelously fashioned, in her womb.
We have cures for cancers, antibiotics, vaccines, abundant and inexpensive food. The list goes on and on.
But we have our own challenges. We face a darkening world not unlike the darkness that enveloped Europe all those years ago. Like Einstein, we can no longer look to the newspapers or the universities for truth. Like Pius and the priests/religious/laity who heeded his call and paid with their lives, we are expected to stand and resist this evil, even at the cost of our own lives.
Those days weren’t as happy as the 70’s sitcom would have us believe. The world wasn’t as naive as we would suspect. Carly Simon got it right in the 70’s while Happy Days was enjoying its popularity,
“These are the good old days.”
Let’s take renewed strength and inspiration from Pius XII’s example and do the work we are called to do, both in the Church and in the Public Square, in order to prevent his dread prophecy from coming to fruition.
More fun facts from “the good old days:”
Prescott Bush (father of George, grandfather of George W.) was a U.S. Senator — a conservative of the WASP Republican flavor — who represented Connecticut from 1952-1963.
Both sets of my grandparents lived in Conn. at the time, and didn’t support him. For one thing, they were all working-class Catholic Democrats, and for another, Bush was involved with the American Birth Control League — and he was the treasurer of Planned Parenthood’s first national capital campaign in 1947. In fact, the lingering unpopularity of this position (contraception was still illegal in Conn.) was probably what cost him his first attempt at a senate seat in ’50.
My Catholic grandmother believed in contraception (though implied she had never used it herself), but didn’t trust swarmy WASPs in general or the Bush family in particular.
Clarifying — both of my grandmothers were Catholic (and one was an active Daughter of Isabella).
Interesting on Prescott. I had no idea, but it explains a good deal.
I believe that people incorrectly romanticize the early part of the century.
There were many problems even within the Catholic church. One has only to read Mother Angelica’s biography to realize just how unjustly some people were treated in the church (and are still treated but not so openly).
She tells of being ridiculed by the nuns for her parents divorce – as if she were to blame. For shame. 😦
This attitude even showed up in The Bells of St. Mary’s with the way the nuns treated the young student Patricia.
Many things have changed for the better.
I once read that the church in the 1950s was already rotten from within with liberals but had a veneer of piety and faithfulness. This is why it fell so easily to secular humanism in the 1960’s and 70’s.
Our pastor in Tokyo says he felt stigmatized at times because his dad was a non-church-going Lutheran. He was made to feel that his family was inferior to the mass-going Catholic families.
Our Catholic school in San Francisco accepted the children of gay parents. It didn’t hold the children responsible for what the Church says are the moral failings of the children’s parents/guardians. Come to think it, the school also accepted all three of my kids, despite the fact that my partner and I aren’t in a Christian marriage, and I hold all these heretical opinions. I imagine that in another age, they would have shown me the door.
I don’t know much about this time period. I don’t know who Mother Angelica was, or what a daughter of Isabella is?
I’m a daughter of the living God~ You helped me with my history. I know parents (especially, today) set the tone for how the children learn attitudes & values for or against unborn life. (really what ALL their ideas of wrong or right are.)
Just as we don’t blame the children of today for their parent’s sins, so we should NOT blame Former Pres. George W. Bush, for his grandfather’s sins. Mr. Bush had become a regenerative man in the mid 70’s after a suffering from sin and alcohols’ bondage. He is a “brother in the LORD” and we are not to hold his grandparent’s faults onto him. We are no better if we do. . .
I was taught about Corrie Ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer during the HATEFULNESS of Hitler. My momma did say the Catholics (French & German) allowed the Jewish people to be taken to the extermination camps. Yet, I read the VonTrapp Story and knew those sisters (Maria) were truly obedient to rescuing many!
I just don’t understand why many, many, many, many, of the catholic church are misled by the democratic party. They are GRIEVING our LORD GOD. and I wonder if they truly have a real eternal faith in Christ as the All Sufficient-Holy One? All those who use the name of the Biblical Triune God, should be held to account and not be allowed the Lord’s Communion. If we love God, we stand for what GOD loves. He gives us the faith to obey. He is our Great Creator and the One we are to serve and to follow no matter what the cost.
We have to go contrary to the world and stay faithful & obey God’s standards, with His grace~! Thank you, Dr. Gerald
I don’t believe anyone blamed George W. for the “sins” of his grandfather. (I certainly don’t agree with my own grandparents’ stance).
The Daughters of Isabella was also founded in Connecticut, as the women’s auxiliary to the Knights of Columbus. I believe it is still an active group, but I suppose that depends on the parish.
L.,
I’m unfamiliar with the DOI, but the current auxiliary to the K of C is the Columbiettes.
At my grandmother’s funeral in 2008, there was a pew of women wearing their D. of I. sashes, and they all looked about my grandmother’s age (she was 90).
I just checked it out on Google, and D. of I. seems to still exist, as a national Catholic group:
http://www.daughtersofisabella.org/aboutus.asp
Julia, Mother Angelica was the foundress of EWTN which is a Catholic news and radio station.
Mother Angelica had a very difficult childhood. Her father abandoned her and her mother when she was very young and Mother Angelica as a child was the emotional support for her mother (instead of the other way around).
She was starting down the wrong road in her teens when God intervened in a special way in her life.
He took someone whom others viewed as low and almost worthless of concern and used her to create the first global Catholic news and programming network!
Check it out: http://www.ewtn.com/
God bless,
MC