The Pope's Dilemma: Piusxiifaces Atrocities and Genocide in the Second World War (German & European Studies)

by Jacques Kornberg

Pope Pius XII presided over the Catholic Church during one of the most challenging moments in its history. Elected in early 1939, Pius XII spoke out against war and destruction, but his refusal to condemn Nazi Germany and its allies for mass atrocities and genocide remains controversial almost seventy years after the end of the Second World War. Scholars have blamed Pius's inaction on anti-communism, antisemitism, a special emotional bond with Germany, or a preference for fascist authoritarianism. Delving deep into Catholic theology and ecclesiology, Jacques Kornberg argues instead that what drove Pius XII was the belief that his highest priority must be to preserve the authority of the Church and the access to salvation that it provided.
In The Pope's Dilemma, Kornberg uses the examples of Pius XII's immediate predecessors Benedict XV and the Armenian genocide and Pius XI and Fascist Italy, as well as case studies of Pius XII's wartime policies towards five Catholic countries (Croatia, France, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), to demonstrate the consistency with which Pius XII and the Vatican avoided confronting the perpetrators of atrocities and strove to keep Catholics within the Church. By this measure, Pius XII did not betray, but fulfilled his papal role. A meticulous and careful analysis of the career of the twentieth century's most controversial pope, The Pope's Dilemma is an important contribution to the ongoing debate about the Catholic Church's wartime legacy.

• ISBN10: 1442650214
• ISBN13: 9781442650213
• Publish Date: 4 May 2015 (first published 1 May 2015)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 24 February 2016
• Publish Country: CA
• Imprint: University of Toronto Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 424
• Language: English

Reviews

[Lianne]

I was approved an ARC of this book by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This review in its entirety was originally posted at eclectictales.com: http://www.eclectictales.com/blog/2015/04/13/review-the-popes-dilemma/

One reason why this book caught my attention was because there’s been ongoing discussions whether or not to canonise Pius XII. It’s an interesting topic, and Professor Kornberg does consider different elements of what was going on in and around World War Two and how it affected Pius’ papacy and policy. There’s no easy answer, the politics of the time was very complex, tied in with the way that Catholicism was used and promoted in certain countries.

The book can be a bit of dry reading throughout at times, but it is nonetheless an interesting read. My sense though from reading some of his chapters was that some clerics operated outside of what the pope could say, which was indeed noted, but as a whole the Vatican had to operate as other states operated despite of its notable differences, that of its own survival being factored into the political equation.

The first time I finished reading the last chapter, I felt the conclusion was a bit generalised and a bit of a ump after such a meticulous look at the period and the issues that Pius XII faced. Rereading it, I was able to understand why the religious/institutional aspect was kept in its own chapter at the end, and explains much of why the conclusion made was what it was, but it still felt a wee bit disjointed, probably because of the last chapter’s focus on Vatican and Catholic doctrine and the segment on Catholic/Jewish relations and attitudes was introduced much, much earlier in the book as well as the overall political complexity of the period and of Europe as a whole.

Overall, I’m glad to have read The Pope’s Dilemma. It didn’t provide me with a solid answer at the end, of course, but it helped me understand a little more what was going on during this period and a sense of what Pius XII faced with the rise of Nazism and Fascism.