As the old saying goes, 'Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.'
Upon opening the latest Columbia mag, I found his interesting letter to the editor....
A letter to the editors in the Fall 2014 Columbia University magazine:
"Luanne Zurlo’s letter to the editor (Summer 2014) could not have been better timed, as yesterday I finished reading "Absolute Monarchs," a very well-written history of the entire papacy by the well-respected historian John Julius Norwich.
Lord Norwich writes with specificity on the way Pope Pius XII remained silent time after time when a vigorous word would have made a significant difference in the plight of the Jews under Hitler.
He quotes the pope as referring to Judaism as a cult, and gives repeated evidence of the pope’s anti-Semitism. He also notes that the pope considered communism to be a greater threat to the papacy and himself personally than Nazi Germany was to the world, so he declined to raise a finger against the deportation of Roman Jews, lest in doing so it somehow might encourage a communist takeover of Rome.
Norwich notes that for the entire period after the war, “not one word of apology or regret, not a single requiem or Mass of Remembrance was held for the 1,989 Jewish deportees from Rome who had met their deaths at Auschwitz alone.”
Later, in describing the twilight of the pope’s life, he notes, “The old anti-Semitism was still in evidence: to his dying day he was to refuse recognition to the State of Israel.”
Andrew Alpern ’64GSAPP
New York, NY
Letters Fall 2014 Columbia Magazine
Wow.
Looks like "Absolute Monarchs" should go on a future reading list.
Upon opening the latest Columbia mag, I found his interesting letter to the editor....
A letter to the editors in the Fall 2014 Columbia University magazine:
"Luanne Zurlo’s letter to the editor (Summer 2014) could not have been better timed, as yesterday I finished reading "Absolute Monarchs," a very well-written history of the entire papacy by the well-respected historian John Julius Norwich.
Lord Norwich writes with specificity on the way Pope Pius XII remained silent time after time when a vigorous word would have made a significant difference in the plight of the Jews under Hitler.
He quotes the pope as referring to Judaism as a cult, and gives repeated evidence of the pope’s anti-Semitism. He also notes that the pope considered communism to be a greater threat to the papacy and himself personally than Nazi Germany was to the world, so he declined to raise a finger against the deportation of Roman Jews, lest in doing so it somehow might encourage a communist takeover of Rome.
Norwich notes that for the entire period after the war, “not one word of apology or regret, not a single requiem or Mass of Remembrance was held for the 1,989 Jewish deportees from Rome who had met their deaths at Auschwitz alone.”
Later, in describing the twilight of the pope’s life, he notes, “The old anti-Semitism was still in evidence: to his dying day he was to refuse recognition to the State of Israel.”
Andrew Alpern ’64GSAPP
New York, NY
Letters Fall 2014 Columbia Magazine
Wow.
Looks like "Absolute Monarchs" should go on a future reading list.
