The “Lies” of Pope Pius XII
One thing about paleocons—they’re not predictable. When I mentioned in a previous article the fact that Pius XII helped save Jews and Serbs from genocide through (among many tactics) ordering priests to issue fake baptismal certificates, it never occurred to me that readers would write in denouncing me for slandering that pope. Would the great Pope Pius countenance deceit, even in such a cause? They demanded proof. It exists, in the form of two papal nuncios (the pope’s special ambassadors to countries) who each issued such life-saving forgeries by the thousands, and claimed that they did so on Pius XII’s direct orders: Angelo Rotta, nuncio to Hungary, and Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII, since beatified—and hence on the fast-track to sainthood), who worked in Turkey. Pius XII never contradicted their accounts, or disciplined them in any way, so there’s no reason to claim (as one commenter did) that these two archbishops were lying.
However, some folks really have seemed scandalized at this great pope’s willingness to wield deceit, and I really shouldn’t dismiss their concerns so lightly—given that Christians have agonized for centuries over the biblical injunction not to “bear false witness,” and have sometimes given their lives rather than tell a fib. Since I’ve already written an article in on just this question, I won’t re-invent the wheel. Here it is:
“You Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Your Neighbor.”
This commandment seems innocuous enough. On its face, it only prevents us from telling malicious falsehoods damaging to others. Okay, we’re not really thrilled about that—especially if we’re active in politics—but we can understand it, and grudgingly agree. But like most other elements in Divine Revelation, it has grown over time and extended its reach into all sorts of analogous situations, as rabbis, then bishops and popes, strove to explore all its implications for human life. It’s as if each commandment were a pebble dropped into a pond, and our job were to trace all the ripples. But that metaphor doesn’t quite work, because it makes things too easy. Ripples from a pebble flow in clear, predictable waves, and a freshman physics student should be able to account for them. The pieces of Revelation that have fallen on us from space are not inert but active, and the pool in which they plop—human life—is murky and full of dark, swimmy things. And some of them have claws. So perhaps a better image is a giant Alka-Seltzer, dropped in a swamp: Plop-plop, fizz-fizz, Oh what a morass it is!
This commandment especially fits that description. On the one hand, the Catholic Church teaches us in the new Catechism (#2467):
Man tends by nature toward the truth. He is obliged to honor and bear witness to it: “It is in accordance with their dignity that all men, because they are persons . . . are both impelled by their nature and bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth once they come to know it and direct their whole lives in accordance with the demands of truth.”
Theologians point out that man is hardwired both to seek and speak the truth, and it’s on the assumption that people’s words are trustworthy that communication is predicated. Think what it would be like if that weren’t true: recall that really annoying example you had to study in Philosophy 101—where a man from Crete tells you “All Cretans lie,” and you have to figure out whether or not you should believe him? Remember how you reacted? (“Screw this! Let’s go get a keg.”) Imagine every encounter with other people turning into that kind of tedious brain-twister, and you’ll appreciate Yahweh’s point. Or let’s view this thing in terms of dollars and cents. Societies which don’t value straight dealing and honest business waste enormous resources on bribes, wire-tapping, bulletproof auto glass, and personal body guards named Ivan, impoverishing everyone except a tiny, corrupt elite. And if you don’t believe Yahweh, you should visit New Jersey yourself.
(It was telling that in 2004, when the stench of his corruption began to crowd out the reek of the Meadowlands, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey dodged investigation for his actual malfeasances by resigning over a sex scandal. In a press conference, McGreevey dabbed his eyes and said, “My truth is that I am a gay American.” As if anyone cared. What mattered was his orientation as a “corrupto-American.” Now there’s a persecuted minority: Even today, thousands of these fellow-citizens languish in minimum security cells all across America.)
On the other hand, there’s also such a thing as “too much information.” For instance, when a D.A. questions a priest about the contents of a confession. Or when women arise at romantic dinners and excuse themselves by announcing, “I gotta pee!” In each case, the speaker is under a solemn obligation to withhold this information—if need be, by throwing people off the scent. The priest can say, “I do not know.” Or the woman could say “I need to wash my hands,” and let you finish your lemon sorbet in peace.
The need for discretion arises not just from the sacramental obligation of secrecy, or the queasy demands of courtesy. The Church sees a duty in charity sometimes to withhold or even cloud the truth. For instance, when one is tempted to spread ugly facts about a third party without grave and sufficient reason. Dishing the dirt about somebody just for the fun of it can actually amount to a serious sin, even—and here’s the weird part—if what you’re saying is true. I know, I know….
It’s hard for modern readers of the press to wrap their heads around this one—accustomed as we are to hidden cameras poking into the bedrooms of Hollywood starlets, and congressional probes into the president’s pants. But this prohibition on “detraction” is reiterated in the most recent Catechism, with certain exceptions made for journalists. (Because of the nature of their profession, these wordsmiths are considered essentially subhuman, and are bound only by “journalistic ethics,” which are modeled on the rules governing bonobos. No throwing turds inside the troop.)
Theologians have argued for centuries about how to reconcile these two principles, truth-telling and charity, and have come to a wide variety of conclusions. Church Fathers Origen and St. John Chrysostom each believed that sometimes outright lying might be acceptable, if keeping silent wasn’t an option and telling the truth caused greater harm than the lie itself. Historians report that Martin Luther embraced this idea, once declaring: “What harm would it be if a man told a good lusty lie in a worthy cause; for the sake of the Christian Churches?” A curious quotation, which leaves Luther looking like a Protestant stereotype of a scheming Jesuit.
In fact, the Jesuits and other Scholastic Catholics wrestled mightily with the obligation to tell the truth, since they felt bound by the teaching of St. Augustine, who rejected as intrinsically evil every kind of fib. As the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia explained:
St. Augustine held that the naked truth must be told whatever the consequences may be. He directs that in difficult cases silence should be observed if possible…. If a man is hid in your house, and his life is sought by murderers, and they come and ask you whether he is in the house, you may say that you know where he is, but will not tell: you may not deny that he is there.
Augustine’s position here is elegant, clear, consistent—and I must add, kind of crazy. It holds up truth-telling as a higher good than life, and encourages the Christian to keep his conscience clean at the cost of another man’s murder. (Immanuel Kant would later adopt the same position, keen as he was to create a system of perfectly self-consistent human Reason as a replacement for the God whose existence he’d started to doubt.) This seems strange until we consider that Augustine also taught that killing—even waging wholesale war—could be perfectly moral, if done in self-defense, or defense of the innocent. This means that for Augustine, when faced with murderers at the door, a good Christian may never mislead them. Instead, he may shoot them.
Leading Christian thinkers lined up behind St. Augustine in subsequent centuries, making fine distinctions about the types and gravity of lies. St. Thomas Aquinas—the Henry Ford of our Faith who liked to break things down into tiny, interchangeable parts—divided lies into three categories:
· Injurious, the kind of lie that leads men to Hell or gets them killed. For instance, if one were to say that Mother Teresa was “a demagogue, an obscurantist and a servant of earthly powers.” (Christopher Hitchens.) Or that Saddam Hussein had by 2003 amassed weapons of mass destruction which he planned to transfer to terrorists. (Also Christopher Hitchens.)
· Officious, the sort of lie designed to cover one’s butt or other body parts, as in “I did not have sex with that woman.”
· Jocose, a statement which is meant as a jest, but could be taken seriously—for instance: “No, honey, you don’t look fat in that dress.” Which is clearly a joke. Sweetie, if you have to ask….
The need to balance Augustine’s stark position with the demands of discretion and charity grew more urgent over time. When the Protestant English kings began to persecute the Church—hunting down priests and torturing them to death—moral thinkers began to look for ways to permit laymen to effectively hide these priests when questioned. (Many old English homes contain man-shaped “priest holes,” of obscure origin. Since England is the land of “British liberties,” some have theorized that these holes are a naturally occurring phenomenon. Just like Mt. Rushmore, according to Cher. Or so Sonny Bono claimed she believed—but then he was bitter, and a congressman.)
Theologians, many of them Jesuits, developed the notion of a “mental reservation,” which permitted someone to tell only part of the truth, in a somewhat misleading way—leaving the listener to draw an untrue conclusion. For instance, you might say, “I haven’t seen any priests,” while mentally reserving the rest of the sentence, “in the last 30 seconds.”
This seems a squirmy kind of loophole through which to preserve a principle, and it certainly would not have satisfied St. Augustine. By the late-nineteenth century, some theologians tried to formulate exceptions to the duty to tell the truth in a less back-handed way. They admitted that it is always wrong to lie, but redefined a lie as an untrue statement made to someone who has the right to the truth. And a killer or priest-hunter at the door had no such right. (Sometimes the Church can only break through a conundrum using this handy method, as we once redefined “usury,” “religious liberty,” and “baptism.” But if you’re hoping some pope will one day redefine, say “porn,” don’t hold your breath.)
Back in 1917, this seemed a bold position, and the theologians editing the good old Catholic Encyclopedia dismissed it as having “made little or no impression on the common teaching of the Catholic schools.” Then something happened; a concrete historical change requiring the quick development of doctrine. Historians call it “World War II.”
With the rise of a murderous dictatorship that hunted down millions of innocents because of their race, Catholics all across Europe were faced with the same dilemma once posed, almost idly, by theologians. For yet another time in history, there were indeed thousands of armed state-sponsored murderers banging on the doors in search of innocents hidden inside. The thousands of Polish Catholics who sheltered Jews from the Germans—and Pope Pius XII himself, who arranged for some 800,000 or more persecuted Jews to be hidden in monasteries and convents—now faced the terrible choice between telling the truth and betraying the innocent. Inside the Reich, conspirators such as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (an aristocrat of noble Catholic ancestry) were forced to tell hundreds of falsehoods as they plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1944; instead of condemning their efforts, Pope Pius helped them transmit messages to each other. The Frenchmen who fought in the Resistance had to deceive their occupiers and their own puppet government—and so on. The unprecedented phenomenon of a totalitarian state bent on genocide helped sweep away the squeamishness of theologians, and show the primacy of justice in defending the innocent. In the 1994 edition of Catechism of the Catholic Church, this once-daring distinction found itself enshrined as follows:
Lying is the most direct offense against the truth. To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth. By injuring man’s relation to truth and to his neighbor, a lie offends against the fundamental relation of man and of his word to the Lord. (#2483)
Sounds fine to us. But then in 1997, Pope John Paul threw another Alka-Seltzer into the swamp. His revised, Latin edition of the text removed the phrase “someone who has the right to know the truth,” thus reopening the question. And raising a question for us: Did Karol Wotyjla get through six years of German occupation—and take part in the Resistance—without ever telling the SS a falsehood? Should the Catholics who hid Jewish children and “lied” through their teeth to keep them out of Auschwitz have confessed this “sin”? This issue remains unresolved. Perhaps what I seek is “too much information.” I’d like to continue this inquiry, but I need to go… wash my hands.
Excerpted by the author from The Bad Catholic’s Guide to Wine, Whiskey, and Song.
Comments
Thanks for your defence of the most slandered man of the
20th century.
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There is no such thing as a “good lie.” The question is what actually constitutes a lie. Does issuing a fake baptismal certificate constitute a lie? What do these fake certificates look like? Maybe they are made to look like baptismal certificates, but don’t actually say that the person named on them received baptism. Who knows?
The issue is not unresolved at all. Lying is a sin. But not all deception is lying - mental reservations are not lies. I recall a story recounted about the great St. Athanasius. There were some soldiers looking for him and they came upon a monastery where he was hiding out. And they asked him “Where is Athanasius?” His reply? “He is not far from here.”
When a priest says “I don’t know” rather than break the seal of the confessional, he is making a mental reservation - “I don’t know [anything I can tell you].”
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Telling the truth can amount to a sin also. The motive of the truth teller is at issue. How often is the excuse of not lying no more than cover for cowardice or even maliciousness? Unfortunately the way the world works the decision can come down to choosing a lesser evil. Tell the truth out of cowardice (or worse) or tell a lie to save someone’s life even at risk to yourself.
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Pope John XXIII, since beatified—and hence on the fast-track to sainthood
I thought beatification was part of the ordinary track toward canonization (following designation as “Servant of God” and then as Venerable).
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</i>· Injurious, the kind of lie that leads men to Hell or gets them killed. For instance, if one were to say that Mother Teresa was “a demagogue, an obscurantist and a servant of earthly powers.” (Christopher Hitchens.) Or that Saddam Hussein had by 2003 amassed weapons of mass destruction which he planned to transfer to terrorists. (Also Christopher Hitchens.)</i?
LOL!
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I thought one of the central messages of the Gospels was to honor the spirit of the law? Be not like the Pharisee who claims to be justified because he follows the letter of the law and then some but does not have follow God in his heart. Adultery is a sin punishable by death and Jesus stopped a stoning and asked the accusers to examine their own hearts and told the woman to go forth and sin no more.
Protestant evangelicals cite Mark 16:15 as a demand by God to nag people until they become “Christians.” But we should move others by love and example. Matthew 23:15 is all about converts becoming Pharisees themselves. They don’t live in the Spirit of God which is love, especially for others including and especially your enemies. Legalism and Bible literalism turn Christians into the people that crucified Jesus for not adhering to the literal rules.
“Christians” and “Conservatives” these days need to read the Gospels and St Paul’s epistles to the Ephesians and Romans.
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Good ‘un! “Do whatever you can to save lives.” Pius XII’s instructions to bishops.
And they and their priests did.
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When the going gets tough, the lies of a Christian are his acknowledgement that his God is imaginary.
When the going gets tough, the tough become Professionals. And there is no more Professional Christian than the Pope.
2491 Professional secrets - for example, those of political office holders, soldiers, physicians, and lawyers - or confidential information given under the seal of secrecy must be kept, save in exceptional cases where keeping the secret is bound to cause very grave harm to the one who confided it, to the one who received it or to a third party, and where the very grave harm can be avoided only by divulging the truth. Even if not confided under the seal of secrecy, private information prejudicial to another is not to be divulged without a grave and proportionate reason.
IOW, the Pope did not sin.
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While the Pope’s kin were doing the dying in the Ukraine, his tormentors or their fathers; whether spiritual or blood, did no protesting about Christian Slavs who died in numbers greater than Jews did under Hitler. Unfortunately this fact disturbs many in the media and is considered repugnant.
Far more Chinese were killed during this period than Jews. An inspired guess would be the number of Indians dying in the Bengal famine would be about equal.
You must take the offense against these people.
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The Compendium:
#523:The eighth commandment forbids:
- false witness,
perjury, and lying, the gravity of which is measured by the truth it deforms, the circumstances, the intentions of the one who lies, and the harm suffered by its victims…
At the very worst, the “sins” were venial, IMO.
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I was taught that was comes out the mouth must conform to the idea in the mind. World War II didn’t change that principle.
And no, you can’t “do whatever you can to save lives,” at least nothing immoral, as the end never justifies the means.
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IOW, the Pope did not sin.
Keeping professional secrets, especially the secret of the confessional and the Pontifical secret, really have nothing at all to do with lying. For example, if a priest is asked about the contents of a penitent’s confession, he can say nothing, he can make a mental reservation, or he can lie about it. The first two are not sins, the last is.
Lying to save someone’s life is probably only a venial sin but it is always better not to sin.
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This “mental reservation” thing just sounds like what kids do when they cross their fingers while lying. Bill Clinton’s attempt to parse the word “is” also comes to mind.
Why not just say that even if a lie to save someone’s life is, technically, a venial sin, it’s certainly one that will be forgiven readily?
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dsc The Pope is also the ruler of the Vatican City State, so,…
Professional secrets - for example, those of political office holders, soldiers, physicians, and lawyers ..
seems to me to include The Pope
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Obviously (Vatican 1 and Canon 16) he is also The Legislator…
I could go on (I usually do)
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Frankly, folks, I don’t really buy the whole “mental reservation” thing. Do we really believe that Almighty God, author of the Creation and Redemption, Who said in the flesh that “The Sabbath was made for man, not Man for the Sabbath,” is deeply exercised over such distinctions. Concretely, let’s look at a scenario such as occurred throughout occupied Europe:
A Polish family sheltering a Jewish child--for which the penalty was death--is approached by an SS officer rounding up children for deportation to Auschwitz. He’s standing at the door, fully armed, in uniform, demanding to know if the child tugging at the mother’s leg is her own, or a Jew she is hiding.
If the mother is clever, she can come up with a “mental reservation” that would satisfy a professor of logic at Heidelberg as technically capable of being construed as true. But the statement will be designed to mislead, confuse, deceive and frustrate this representative of a tyranny who intends to kidnap a child so he or she can be murdered. If she tells this misleading “truth,” it will be pleasing to God.
However, if the woman is not so clever, and cannot think of a way to throw off the SS officer that would satisfy the logic professor, she must simply remain silent, allowing him to deduce the truth, seize the child, and drag it away screaming to its death by typhus or poison gas. This also is pleasing to God, rather than that the woman say something which is TECHNICALLY untrue rather than utterly misleading.
If, on the other hand, she does tell a formal untruth, it will be a venial sin--which most of us commit every day (indeed, St. Augustine believed that after the Fall, every sexual act within marriage was venially sinful).
Nevertheless, in the latter case, God would be best pleased if she kept her conscience clean and allowed the child to be dragged off.
LADIES AND GENTS, if that is the kind of God with Whom we’re dealing, we’re all in deep, deep trouble.
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Is there a difference between the definitions of “fact” and “truth”? How would this affect what a lie is?
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Non-dilemma: WWJS? He’d grab the questioner by the lapels and preach the Gospel, informing the audience that He is aware of the evil motive behind their question. Then He’d recommend they repent.
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“Though shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Nothing about not bearing false witness for your neighbor.
“Revelation 21 [8] But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
I would be hesitant to make a judgment of the meaning of “liars” without knowing what term was used in the original Greek.
Rahab clearly lied in Joshua chapter 2, and is actually lauded for doing so in the New Testament (Heb. 11:31, James 2:25).
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The father of lies, who does exist, may revel in this discussion about the Holocaust.
If John XXIII would lie about a baptismal certificate, would he also lie about by Pius XII telling him to do it? Once some one lies he can never be believed again. The whole massive life saving saga could be just one big lie to make Catholics look good to Jews.
Have you heard any stories about Russian Jews hiding Christians from Kaganovich?
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Here’s the Old Catholic Encyclopedia on LYING…
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09469a.htm
As one who clearly been educated way beyond his intelligence, it seems to me the Pope skates on this matter…
That is, unless, one thinks they too have a Doctorate in Theology and scores of years of Orthopraxis as a Priest, Bishop, Papal Nuncio, and Pope.
But, we Catholics love to ape protestants when it comes to judging Popes.
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Well, we could just apply real, old-fashioned paleocon non-universalist morality: Gentiles
have less obligations to Jews, who are members of an out-group. And we should always
favor the in-group. For Gentiles to save Jews might lead people to attribute value to
human beings as such instead of to specific peoples constituted by particular historical
conditions. Then there’s the “dangerous precedent”—if we protect Jews today, tomorrow
we might be defending those flaming liberals on the Underground Railroad (those
Yankee abolitionist so-and-sos! if only Longstreet had . . .). We might also empathize
with Bosniak Moslems being run out of their villages and shot, even if we don’t justify
military intervention on their behalf (but that’s coming). All this talk of protecting
members of an out-group, frankly, smacks of illegitimate, Enlightenment-era, universalistic
morality. And you call yourself a paleocon!?
(For the dense among you, this is called IRONY and SARCASM. And yes, I think that an
easy disregard for natural law and common humanity plagues paleoconservative thinking
on “universalism.")
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Excuse me: “have less obligations “—i.e. “fewer obligations,” or “less of an
obligation”
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> Nevertheless, in the latter case, God would be best pleased if she kept her conscience clean and allowed the child to be dragged off.
Doubtful in light of Matthew 18, especially the following:
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and [that] he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!”
The trick is in discerning the intent of the SS guard. He’s not truly interested in the lineage of the child as such. He is asking for your permission to murder a child.
It seems that Pope Pius got it right: You have the right and the duty to withhold that permission.
Being as wise as snakes, in addition to being as gentle as doves, is highly advisable for sheep amongst wolves.
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What a novel way to get us thinking about the Holocaust, and at the same time questioning the virtue of great Catholics.
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To any poster here who seriously seems to think that Pius’ alleged “lies” were justified: I hope your wife never asks you whether she looks fat in some outfit.
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Oops - that was, of course, meant to be “unjustified.”
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Fletcher. To the question..
“Do this outfit make me look fat?”
Answer:
“Not as fat as you look when you are not wearing it”
I guarantee that’ll be the only time she asks you that question.
(Oh, and as you are saying that, her, remember to pivot a bit and turn your head to the side as she slaps you. That way, it won’t hurt as much)
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[Rahab] said, “True, men came to me, but I did not know where they came from” - this is not a lie, it is a mental reservation. Remember that Rahab was a harlot! This statement could apply to lots of men.
But, we Catholics love to ape protestants when it comes to judging Popes.
I am not judging anyone. I am not convinced that Pius XII lied or suborned lies. I only know that lying is a sin, that there is no such thing as a good lie, and that there is never a circumstance in which one could be obliged to lie.
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Teu: 1) Because Christians don’t abandon even their enemies to be murdered unjustly.
2) Because that whole “Khazar” thing is a myth. I’ve never seen anyone prove that
assertion. The bulk of Ashkenazic Jews came to Poland from the *West,* namely from
France and the Rhineland. Yiddish means Jude *Deutsch.* If the Ashkenazim are Khazars
who moved to Poland, why the hell do they speak a German dialect?
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And yes, I know that a good number of Khazars converted to Judaism. That’s not a myth.
The myth is that that’s where the bulk of the Ashkenazim came from. What’s the evidence?
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The devil is the father of liars. Jesus is the truth. The devil is a spirit; Jesus is more than this. So, what is a lie? So the truth has a material nature in so far as He resides in the Mystical Body of Christ. How does the the connection differ between these elements? No matter what the devil says, it is a lie; no matter what Jesus says, it is truth because He is not fragmentable, not divisible between what He says and what He is. “Not just bread, but every word”: Was the Pope following the father of lies when trying to save a material nature sought by God? That is, was the Pope lying in his effort to enact his vicarage? Would it matter what the Pope said to the devil or to someone whose father was the devil? To think so would be to think the devil to be the neighbor to the Pope. To think so is to fall for the error that there is some neutral seat of judgment outside nature and God. There is none. In this case, there is no way the Pope could have betrayed God with a lie.
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There is an excellent example of how to serve God during times of occupation and war in chapter IV of the Book of Judges. It is revealed to thoughtful, deliberate readers via the interactions of Jael and Sisera.
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Dr. Zmirak, is this true?
http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20328
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RE Mr. Pater:
I have no power to remove comments or ban posters. Any user who thinks a post inappropriate can report it to the site’s editor, who decides whether to delete it. As I recall, the exchange cited in that link you post was left untouched--except for one comment that had been placed on an unrelated article, and hence was irrelevant and distracting.
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