More bad news for Clark University's historical revisionist Deborah Dwork (and others like her)

Recently released documents from the so-called "closed period" of the Vatican Archives are once again revealing the heroism of Pope Pius XII and his care for Jewish people who were persecuted during the Second World War.  The Telegraph's Nick Squires writes, "The document to cast Pius in the most flattering light is a letter from October 1944, after Italy signed an armistice with the Allies and switched sides, in which former inmates expressed their gratitude for his support during their imprisonment. 'While in nearly all the countries of Europe we were persecuted, imprisoned and threatened with death because we belong to the Jewish people and profess the Jewish faith, Your Holiness not only sent notable and generous gifts to our camp through the apostolic nuncio...but also showed your fatherly interest in our physical and spiritual well-being,' they wrote in German.

'(You) intrepidly raised your universally venerated voice against our enemies – still so powerful at that time – to openly support our rights to human dignity. When in 1942 we were under the threat of deportation to Poland, Your Holiness extended your fatherly hand to protect us and prevented the deportation of the Jews imprisoned in Italy, thereby saving us from almost certain death.'

This is more bad news for historical revisionists such as Deborah Dwork, Director of Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.  In a previous post I refuted her asinine assertion that that Pope Pius XII "failed Europe's Jews miserably, unconscionably."  And I explained here why her accusation is so damnable.

I would ask Ms. Dwork to apologize for her slander of Pius XII.  But what would be the point?  Some people are prisoners of their own deeply-held bias.  And no amount of historical proof will ever penetrate her wall of conviction.  But honest people will be moved at Pius XII's efforts on behalf of the Jewish People.

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Deborah Dwork, Pope Pius XII and the "Voyage of the Damned."

While historical revisionists like Deborah Dwork of Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies like to slander Pope Pius XII, whose heroic efforts saved somewhere between 850,000 and 1.5 million Jewish lives, they often have little if anything to say about others who were in a position to save Jewish lives but decided not to.  One example is President Roosevelt's response to the plight of the St. Louis, a German transatlantic liner which sailed from Hamburg, Germany on May 13, 1939 carrying 938 passengers, most of whom were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich.

As this article from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum relates,  "..sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, some passengers on the St. Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge. Roosevelt never responded. The State Department and the White House had decided not to take extraordinary measures to permit the refugees to enter the United States. A State Department telegram sent to a passenger stated that the passengers must "await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States...


Quotas established in the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924 strictly limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted to the United States each year. In 1939, the annual combined German-Austrian immigration quota was 27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least several years. U.S. officials could only have granted visas to the St. Louis passengers by denying them to the thousands of German Jews placed further up on the waiting list. Public opinion in the United States, although ostensibly sympathetic to the plight of refugees and critical of Hitler's policies, continued to favor immigration restrictions. The Great Depression had left millions of people in the United States unemployed and fearful of competition for the scarce few jobs available. It also fueled antisemitism, xenophobia, nativism, and isolationism. A Fortune Magazine poll at the time indicated that 83 percent of Americans opposed relaxing restrictions on immigration. President Roosevelt could have issued an executive order to admit the St. Louis refugees, but this general hostility to immigrants, the gains of isolationist Republicans in the Congressional elections of 1938, and Roosevelt's consideration of running for an unprecedented third term as president were among the political considerations that militated against taking this extraordinary step in an unpopular cause.

Roosevelt was not alone in his reluctance to challenge the mood of the nation on the immigration issue. Three months before the St. Louis sailed, Congressional leaders in both U.S. houses allowed to die in committee a bill sponsored by Senator Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.) and Representative Edith Rogers (R-Mass.). This bill would have admitted 20,000 Jewish children from Germany above the existing quota. ...

Following the U.S. government's refusal to permit the passengers to disembark, the St. Louis sailed back to Europe on June 6, 1939. The passengers did not return to Germany, however. Jewish organizations (particularly the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) negotiated with four European governments to secure entry visas for the passengers: Great Britain took 288 passengers; the Netherlands admitted 181 passengers, Belgium took in 214 passengers; and 224 passengers found at least temporary refuge in France. Of the 288 passengers admitted by Great Britain, all survived World War II save one, who was killed during an air raid in 1940. Of the 620 passengers who returned to continent, 87 (14%) managed to emigrate before the German invasion of Western Europe in May 1940. 532 St. Louis passengers were trapped when Germany conquered Western Europe. Just over half, 278 survived the Holocaust. 254 died: 84 who had been in Belgium; 84 who had found refuge in Holland, and 86 who had been admitted to France."

But while President Roosevelt and Congressional leaders in both U.S. houses were refusing to allow Jewish refugees into the United States (think of the 20,000 Jewish children denied entry to the United States because a Bill was allowed to die), and while other countries such as Great Britain were doing the same, the Vatican was issuing tens of thousands of false documents to allow Jews to pass secretly as Christians so they could escape the Nazis. In addition, the financial aid Pope Pius XII helped provide the Jews was very real. Lichten, Lapide, and other Jewish chroniclers record those funds as being in the millions of dollars -dollars even more valuable then than they are now.

As this article makes clear, "The papacy rescued Jews by channeling money to those in need, issuing countless baptismal certificates for their protection, negotiating with Latin American countries to grant them visas, and keeping in touch with their relatives through the Vatican Information Office. News of Pius XII's acts of charity spread. Nuncios, apostolic delegates, bishops, pastors, and priests offered their assistance and comfort to prisoners, to internees, to families.."

So here we are.  Pope Pius XII saved, even by the most conservative accounts, 860,000 Jews.  Some argue that the figure is closer to 1.5 million.  And this at a time when President Roosevelt and Congressional leaders in the United States were refusing refuge to Jews from Europe thereby ensuring the death of many - including children.

But for professor Dwork, it is Pius XII who "failed Europe's Jews miserably, unconscionably."

The voyage of the St. Louis has been, in my opinion, inappropriately described as the "voyage of the damned."  Many of those poor people may have gone to their deaths.  But if anything about that tragic voyage was damnable, it was the refusal of the Roosevelt administration to do the right thing by allowing those refugees entry into the United States. 

While the U.S. turned its back on innocent men, women and children, Pope Pius XII did not.  The Catholic Church did not.  And anyone who refuses to acknowledge this is not a real student of history.  Such a person is not interested in historical facts.  Only in anti-Catholic propaganda.

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Clark University's need to demonize any and all opposition to its ideology...

The Scarlet, a Clark University publication, wants its readers to believe that I am "angry." You see, it is much easier to dismiss honest criticism that way. But I'm not the one attacking the Natural Law and Catholic moral teaching while slandering the memory of a great Pontiff. It would seem that it is Clark University which has succumbed to anger and ideology.

As readers of this Blog know, I have documented Clark University's attempt to demonize moral opposition toward homosexuality and same-sex "marriage."  For Clark University, moral opposition to the radical homosexual agenda is equivalent to being "anti-gay." It is termed "heterosexism" and is put in the same category as rape and sexual assault. This is tantamount to saying that the Natural Law is "anti-gay," a position which is so absurd that it could only originate from a place like Clark University.

 Deborah Dwork, Director of Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, has slandered the memory of Pope Pius XII, suggesting that he "failed Europe's Jews miserably, unconscionably," a position which I have totally refuted.  See here.

Clark University's "Freethought Society" posted a message on Facebook saying that it is "okay" to mock Christianity.  See here. Before that, simply because I do not agree with the radical homosexual agitprop and Christianophobic ideology coming out of Clark University, members of the Clark University "Freethought Society" asserted [again on Facebook] that I am "a delusional nutter" who "appears to have some major persecution fantasies."  I was called an "ass...." who is simply "crazy."  See here.

And I am the angry one?

But even if I were "angry," such anger would be justified.  This point is not understood by many at Clark University who have replaced thought with slogans and knee-jerk responses.  It was Blaise Pascal who said that, "It is as much a crime to disturb the peace when truth prevails as it is a crime to keep the peace when truth is violated. There is therefore a time in which peace is justified and another time when it is not justifiable. For it is written that there is a time for peace and a time for war and it is the law of truth that distinguishes the two. But at no time is there a time for truth and a time for error, for it is written that God's truth shall abide forever. That is why Christ has said that He has come to bring peace and at the same time He has come to bring the sword. But He does not say that He has come to bring both the truth and the falsehood."


Because our age has succumbed to a cult of softness, it is fashionable to believe that any display of anger is due to a lack of charity or to some psychological problem. This cult of softness has, in turn, contributed much to an effeminate Christianity which is incapable of opposing the evils of our present epoch.

It is forgotten that sometimes anger is the proper response to value. In the words of Fr. Bede Jarrett, O.P., "Not only may I sin by being angry when I should not, but I may sin by not being angry when I should be. If my reason tells me that it is right to be angry, then I disobey God when I refuse to give place to wrath; for, as the New Testament teaches, it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4:26). Our Lord Himself, when need arose, roped together a bundle of cords and drove from the Temple those who trafficked in the House of Prayer, and down the front steps He flung the tables of the money-changers. Perhaps for most of us, the fault is not that we are too angry, but that we are not angry enough. Think of the evils that are in the world, that are known to all, admitted to exist by public press and on public platform. Would they have survived thus far, had folk all shown the indignant anger of Christ? Hypocrisy, cant, and the whole blatant injustice that stalks naked and unashamed in national life - may not our own weakness and silence have helped to render impotent all efforts to reduce these terrible things?....I have got to make myself realize that anger is itself neither evil nor good, and that it can be either. Hence I must pledge myself to see how far I allow anger to rule me when it should not, and how far I overrule it when I should give it a free hand." (Classic Catholic Meditations, p. 168, Sophia Institute Press).

There is then just and unjust anger.  Is it an expression of just anger to slander a great Pontiff?  To mock Christian beliefs simply because you do not share them?  To label another an "ass...." and a "delusional nutter" because he is personally opposed to the radical homosexual agenda?

Here again we see that Clark University is not interested in authentic dialogue and free thought.  It is more concerned with placing opposing views in an intellectual ghetto and in demonizing those who refuse to embrace its secular humanist ideology as "crazy" and "hateful."

What a shame.

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Clark University's Deborah Dwork: Why her slander of Pius XII is so damnable...

In a previous post, this Blog examined how Deborah Dwork, Director of Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, has engaged in historical revisionism, insisting that Pope Pius XII "failed Europe's Jews miserably, unconscionably."  This asinine accusation was thoroughly refuted.  What makes this slander all the more damnable is that Hitler and the Third Reich desired "to trample the Catholic Church as one does a frog." It was on September 9, 1943 that Hitler said, "I'll go into the Vatican when I like. Do you think the Vatican worries me? We'll grab it. Yes, the whole diplomatic bunch is in there. I couldn't care less. That bunch in there, we'll drag them out, the whole swinish pack of them. What does it matter? We can apologize afterwards, that's nothing to worry about."

Contrary to what some may believe, the Nazis and the Italian Fascists knew that the Catholic Church and Popes Pius XI and Pius XII were their enemies. For example, Benito Mussolini told his foreign minister Count Ciano (on August 8, 1938): "I do not underestimate [Pius XI's] strength, but he must not underestimate mine either....A sign from me would be enough to unleash all the anti-clericalism of the Italian people who already find it hard enough to swallow a Jewish God." And Roberto Farinacci, the editor of Italy's official Fascist newspaper, Regime Fascista, wrote the following in October of 1942: "The Church's obstruction of the practical solution of the Jewish problem constitutes a crime against the New Europe."

Reflect carefully on those words and what they mean: "The Church's obstruction of the practical solution of the Jewish problem."  We all know what the Reich meant when it referred to "The Final Solution" of the "Jewish problem."  And it was the Catholic Church which, as Farinacci acknowledged, opposed this "practical solution."

In 1998, Cornell University released documents from the Nuremberg Trials which revealed that Hitler planned to end Christianity at the end of World War II.  See here. Furthermore, General William Donovan, a senior member of the U.S. prosecution team at Nuremberg, as part of his work documenting Nazi war crimes, compiled copious amounts of documentation which show that the Nazis planned to systematically destroy Christianity.  See here.

As this EWTN article notes:

"In a March 6, 1939 editorial, "Leadership for Peace," the Palestine Post in Jerusalem said: "Pius XII has clearly shown that he intends to carry on the late Pope's [Pius XI] work for freedom and peace... we remember that he must have had a large part to play in the recent Papal opposition to pernicious race theories and certain aspects of totalitarianism..."


In praising Cardinal Pacelli's election, the Jewish Chronicle in London on March 10, quoted an anti-Nazi speech he delivered in Lourdes in April 1935 and the hostile statements expressed about him in the Nazi press. "It is interesting to recall... on January 22 [1939], the Voelkischer Beobachter published pictures of Cardinal Pacelli and other Church dignitaries beneath a collective heading of 'Agitators in the Vatican against Fascism and National Socialism,"' the Jewish Chronicle noted.

Also on March 10, the Canadian Jewish Chronicle commended the College of Cardinals for resisting Nazi attempts to influence the election and prevent Cardinal Pacelli from becoming Pope. "The plot to pilfer the Ring of Fisherman has gone up in white smoke," the editorial quipped.

Many Jewish organizations also expressed their enthusiasm for the new Pope. According to the Jewish Chronicle in London (March 10), the Vatican received congratulatory messages from "the Anglo-Jewish Community, the Synagogue Council of America, the Canadian Jewish Congress, and the Polish Rabbinical Council."

Pius XII's decision to appoint Luigi Cardinal Maglione as the Vatican's new Secretary of State also brought favorable reactions. The March 16, 1939 Zionist Review in London said that the Cardinal's appointment "confirms the view that the new Pope means to conduct an anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist policy."

Certainly, such statements made by Jewish newspapers and organizations show they considered the newly elected Pope Pius XII a friend of democracy and peace, and an enemy of racism and totalitarianism. Cardinal Pacelli's role in negotiating the concordat with the Nazis did not cause any concern. Instead, many Jews cited his anti-Nazi speeches, and his role as Vatican Secretary of State, which helped produce the 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge, and numerous protests against the persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany.

Less than two months after World War II broke out, on October 27, Pius XII issued his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus. On the same day, the New York-based Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the equivalent of the Associated Press, reported that, "the unqualified condemnation which Pope Pius XII heaped on totalitarian, racist and materialistic theories of government in his encyclical Summi Pontificatus caused a profound stir... Although it had been expected that the Pope would attack ideologies hostile to the Catholic Church, few observers had expected so outspoken a document..."


...On January 26, 1940, the Jewish Advocate in Boston reported, "The Vatican radio this week broadcast an outspoken denunciation of German atrocities in Nazi [occupied] Poland, declaring they affronted the moral conscience of mankind." Exiled Polish Cardinal August Hlond of Gnezo and Poznan had given the Vatican detailed reports about the Nazi persecution of the Church in Poland. On the Pope's orders, Vatican Radio broadcast the cardinal's reports. The front-page story quoted one Vatican Radio broadcast as saying, "Jews and Poles are being herded into separate ghettos, hermetically sealed and pitifully inadequate for the economic subsistence of the millions designed to live there." This broadcast was also important because it gave independent confirmation of media reports about Nazi atrocities, which were previously dismissed as Allied propaganda..."

Read the entire article at EWTN.  It is overwhelmingly clear, to anyone not crippled by hatred against the Catholic Church in general and Pope Pius XII in particular, that the Church stood squarely against Nazism and that Pope Pius XII of happy memory was a courageous Shepherd who conducted an anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist policy.

Deborah Dwork has slandered a truly great Pontiff.  Her attack on Christ's Vicar is an attack on the entire Catholic Church and on the Lord Jesus.  It is utterly vile and morally reprehensible.

Pray for Clark University, an institution which is constrained by secular humanist ideology, radical homosexual agitprop, and a bitter Christianophobia.

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Pope Benedict XVI: "Once more we see the need for an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity..."

Joining his voice with that of the U.S. Bishops, Pope Benedict XVI warned of "certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, freedom of religion."  And then the Holy Father said something most significant, something which most likely fell on deaf ears for the most part:

"..once more we see the need for an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture and with the courage to counter a reductive secularism which would delegitimize the Church's participation in public debate about the issues which are determining the future of American society...The preparation of committed lay leaders and the presentation of a convincing articulation of the Christian vision of man and society remain a primary task of the Church in your country; as essential components of the new evangelization, these concerns must shape the vision and goals of catechetical programs at every level.."

In a previous post, I noted that: "Vatican II, in its Decree on the Mission Activity of the Church (Ad Gentes), has this to say: 'The Church has not been really founded and is not yet fully alive, nor is it a perfect sign of Christ among men, unless there is a laity worthy of the name working along with the hierarchy. For the Gospel cannot be deeply grounded in the abilities, life and work of any people without the active presence of laymen. Therefore, even at the very founding of a chrch, great attention is to be paid to establishing a mature, Christian laity. For the lay faithful fully belong at one and the same time both to the People of God and to civil society...They also belong to Christ, because they were regenerated in the Church by faith and by Baptism, so that they are Christ's in newness of life and work (cf. 1 Cor 15: 23), in order that in Christ, all things may be made subject to God, and finally God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15: 28).' (Ad Gentes, No. 21).

And then I added, "One of the reasons for the rapid decay which is corroding the Catholic spirit in the United States and elsewhere is the spread of a so-called liberalism (neo-modernism) which fosters a secularist attitude in Christians, one that creates an animus against the Faith and works against evangelization. The lay faithful who remain committed to the Church's teaching and who take seriously their vocation to convert those outside the Church are most often not encouraged. Often they are discouraged (in the name of an unhealthy pluralism) from engaging in evangelization...Pope Paul VI, in an allocution given on July 2nd, 1975, warned against this attitude:

'In practice many people who call themselves Christians think so [that the field of faith can be separated from that of activity], believing that the adherence to religion does not involve other duties than some specific observances, such as Sunday Mass and the fulfilling of the paschal precept. We must note, in fact, a certain allergy on the part of modern Christians to action qualified by their own religious sentiments, owing to a misrepresentation of so-called pluralism, as if every doctrinal opinion were admissible, and therefore it was not worthwhile to propose as necessary one's own faith to others; or because of an exclusive authority attributed to subjective conscience, to the detriment of the objective principle that must inform conscience itself.'"

In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici (The Lay Members of Christ's Faithful People), Pope John Paul II reminded us that, "The voice of the Lord clearly resounds in the depths of each of Christ's followers who, through faith and the sacraments of Christian initiation is made like to Jesus Christ, is incorporated as a living member in the Church and has an active part in her mission of salvation." (No. 3).


Sadly, there are all too many clerics who haven't really embraced this authentic teaching of the Magisterium. For such clerics, the laity are second-class citizens who are tolerated but not really embraced fully as collaborators in the life and mission of the Church. This is most unfortunate. It was Pope Pius XII who said that, "The Faithful, more precisely the lay faithful, find themselves on the front lines of the Church's life; for them the Church is the animating principle for human society. Therefore, they in particular, ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the head of all, and of the Bishops in communion with him. These are the Church..." (Pius XII, Discourse to the New Cardinals, February 20, 1946: AAS 38 (1946), 149).

The truth of lay participation in the priesthood of Christ follows logically from the doctrine of the Mystical Body. Everyone who is incorporated into the Mystical Body participates in the dignities, honors, and offices of the Mystical Head (Jesus). "Because Christ is our head," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "that which was conferred upon him, was also in him conferred upon us" (Summa Theologica, III, q. 58, a.4, ad 1). Or, as Pope John Paul II put it: "Referring to the baptized as 'new born babes', the apostle Peter writes: 'Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God's sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ ... you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light' (1 Pt 2:4-5, 9).

A new aspect to the grace and dignity coming from Baptism is here introduced: the lay faithful participate, for their part, in the threefold mission of Christ as Priest, Prophet and King. This aspect has never been forgotten in the living tradition of the Church, as exemplified in the explanation which St. Augustine offers for Psalm 26: 'David was anointed king. In those days only a king and a priest were anointed. These two persons prefigured the one and only priest and king who was to come, Christ (the name "Christ" means "anointed"). Not only has our head been anointed but we, his body, have also been anointed ... therefore anointing comes to all Christians, even though in Old Testament times it belonged only to two persons. Clearly we are the Body of Christ because we are all "anointed" and in him are "christs", that is, "anointed ones", as well as Christ himself, "The Anointed One". In a certain way, then, it thus happens that with head and body the whole Christ is formed..'

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, at the beginning of my pastoral ministry, my aim was to emphasize forcefully the priestly, prophetic and kingly dignity of the entire People of God..." (Christifideles Laici, No. 14).

The Church's witness in the United States has been crippled because the laity, for the most part, have not been taken seriously.  It is pointless to argue this.  Why else would our Holy Father be speaking of the pressing need for "an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity" unless he felt that this was lacking in the United States?

The Church in the United States has failed to appreciate that every member of the Mystical Body of Christ has a vocation which involves more than simply sitting in a pew and dropping money in a collection basket.  It has been forgotten (if not denied altogether by some) that every member of the Church has a definite function to perform.

And the new evangelization has suffered because of it.

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