Which is More Valuable: A Fetus or a Jew?

In the contest over which is more valuable, a fetus or a Jew, the results are in and the fetus wins hands down.

Just as Catholic Bishops across the United States clamp down on Catholic politicians who support a woman’s right to choose abortion (which as different from supporting abortion as supporting a Nazi’s right to march is from supporting Nazism), the Vatican brings Pope Pius XII (twelve) one (I) step closer to sainthood.

This fun loving Pope, dubbed The Holocaust Pope, was recently declared a person of “heroic virtue.” Let’s see how the Vatican defines heroic virtue.

First, Pius XII knew early on that Hitler planned to murder every Jew he could find. Heroically, the Pope remained silent. Second, as more than one thousand Jews were taken from the Roman Ghetto within sight of the Pope’s apartments in the Vatican to die in Auschwitz, our hero did nothing. Third, at the close of the war when some senior Catholic Church officials ran the “rat line” that scurried Nazis like Adolf Eichmann out of Germany and into Latin America, the Pope acted virtuously and did nothing.

But then again, Jews aren’t fetuses. Which may be why our heroic Pope Pius XII never even threatened to withhold communion from Hitler or German Catholics and Catholic Nazis if they participated in the slaughter of Jews. “Eat a Jew on Sunday, kill a Jew throughout the week” may have been his motto.

So the Church will soon have a saint whose only claim to fame is that he heroically and virtuously did nothing while 6,000,000 Jews were slaughtered under his nose.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at this. After all Pope Benedict who is pushing the sainthood of Pius XII belonged to Hitler Youth, and recently welcomed the return of Bishop Richard Williamson who is notorious for his anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

But maybe Pope Benedict knows something we do not. After all the Vatican refuses to open its archives to allow independent scholars access to the records relating to Pope Pius XII, so maybe there is something in those records that proves he was both heroic and virtuous. But, if there was such evidence, you would think the Church would stop keeping it secret.

Until we know better, we Jews must be reminded that the Church, for all its insistence to the contrary, is not now and has never been a friend to the Jews. This is in no way a blanket condemnation of Catholics. Many risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, but they did so independently of Pius XII, who, if he had his way, would have preferred them to be heroic and virtuous, following his lead and remaining silent and inactive, and allow themselves and thousands more like them to be slaughtered. Ah, what a saint!