The Latest From the “Pius Wars” Front

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The Latest From the “Pius Wars” Front

The Latest From the “Pius Wars” Front | Michael Coren | Catholic World Report

The new book, Soldier of Christ , published by Harvard University Press, is a definitive biography of Pope Pius XII

There’s a running joke in Canada about our charming sense of delicate hubris. A
Toronto newspaper headline wryly proclaims: “Man Lands on Moon. Boots made in
Montreal!” In other words, we’re only 30 million strong and we’re invariably
mistaken for quiet Americans, and so when we do achieve something remarkable,
even of a minimal variety, we like people to know.

Which is why the world needs to know that what will now be
the standard life of Pope Pius XII—the definitive biography of the wartime
pontiff at least for the present—has just appeared. And it was written by a
Canadian academic. It’s true that Harvard University Press published the book,
but Robert
A. Ventresca is a professor at King’s College at Western University in
London, Ontario. And his new volume, Soldier
of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII is
a splendid work.

It won’t be the last word in the “Pius wars”, of course, but it is one of the
best. It depicts a profoundly good and devout man who, contrary to what the
critics have claimed, had absolutely no personal animus against Jewish people,
was active in the struggle against Nazism, and was clearly and transparently
the victim of a concerted attempt to libel him and by extension the Papacy, the
Church, and serious Catholicism. Ventresca does agree that were times, both
before and during the war, when Pius could have been more specific in
mentioning Jewish targets of Nazi eugenics and oppression, but that’s about as
severe as the censorship goes.

I’ve obsessed about this issue for some years, partly out of familial and
emotional necessity, in that I am a Catholic whose father was Jewish. He was
not only Jewish but also from a Polish family.