AN EXCHANGE ON SAINTHOOD, PONTIFFS AND "LEADERS"

 The Wonder of Wondering!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© May 20, 2015

A READER WRITES:

Jim,

I find your view of Paul fascinating.  He certainly was a lot of things but saint was not one of them.

He was like anyone else who thought he had the answer.  First he persecuted the Christians, and then he invented Christianity and pursued it with the same fervor.

In this he shares this sense of being with less exalted figures like Hitler, Napoleon, and Stalin.

These men all thought they knew the answer.  It appears one of the characteristics of humans who think they have found the answer is to try to convert others and many times when they don’t acquiesce force is the next option.

The Buddha is another example of a person who thought he had found the answer, and soon after his so called enlightenment sought to convince others to accept his answer.  The power structure of the time supported his efforts because it aided in the control of the population.

Klaus

DR. FISHER ANSWERS:

Klaus,

Your comments always stir my interest.  No, Paul was not a saint, but who is?  Reared strict Irish Roman Catholic, sainthood always meant a lot to me in my impressionistic years.

Pope Pius XII’s picture was on the wall of our modest home along with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  I would have a military audience with Pope Pius XII, along with other members of the US Sixth Fleet in 1957 in Rome only months before his death.  He passed by me in the regal chair held by four Swiss guards only inches from me.  I thought I would faint. 

Like books about Paul, I have read several books on or by the Pope Pius XII over the years, but have been most disturbed by those that have been written post-WWII.  For example, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (1999) by John Cornwell.

Cardinal Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, was Nuncio of Munich (Germany) for the Vatican and the pope (Pius XI) during Hitler’s rise to power after 1933, and subsequently, he himself rose to the position of the Supreme Pontiff in 1939 – when WWII commenced with the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 – and would remain pope until his death in 1958. 

Currently, Pope Francis I is considering Pope Pius XII for sainthood.

As devastating as Cornwell’s book is of Pius XII with reference to the Holocaust, more devastating to me is David Kertzer’s The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (2015).

Pope Pius XI was totally enamored of Mussolini and thought him the answer to a stable state, defending his every act, and actually in secret collusion with him at the expense of the citizens of Italy. 

But the pontiff became disenchanted with Mussolini as his actions against Jews became increasingly draconian.

What Kertzer shows in this book is how human and brutal is the institutional governance of the Vatican, how secret and flawed, but most importantly of all, how Pope Pius XI’s Secretary of State, now Eugenio Pacelli, came to rule the roost.

The brilliant lawyer that would be the next pontiff (Pope Pius XII) maintains the autocratic organization control with its deep institution biases and tendentious authoritarian, and antidemocratic political views with little interference, that is, until Pope Pius XI comes to increasingly distance himself from Mussolini and the Duce’s increasingly anti-Semitic Nazism.

Pope Pius XI drafts encyclicals, which are meant to express the infallible authority of the pontiff, had come to understand that fascism was not just another conservative movement, but a dangerous pagan ideology deeply at odds with Christianity. 

The pontiff was mortified when Mussolini invited Hitler to Rome, calling Hitler “the greatest enemy that Christ and the Church have had in modern times.”  It was inconceivable to him “why Italy had to go and imitate Germany.”

Pacelli, who had appeased Hitler on many occasions as Nuncio of Munich, and apparently felt that Germany, and not the Allies, would win the war, found his influence on Pius XI waning. 

There was panic in the Vatican.  Pacelli and other power brokers, including the Roman Curia, were embarrassed when the pope told a group of Belgium Catholics: “Anti-Semitism is inadmissible.  Spiritually, we are all Semites.”

Paeelli saw that these remarks were expunged from the public record.  Later, near the pope’s death, learning of Mussolini’s anger with the pope, and knowing that the pontiff had written a final draft condemning anti-Semitism stating that fascism was inhuman and unchristian, Pacelli told the Vatican printing office to destroy all copies of the speech that had been printed. 

Still fearing that the text of the speech may have gotten out, the so-called secret encyclical against racism, Pacelli went to the limits of his authority to see that no one would ever know of Pope Pius XI’s change of heart, and desire to make matters right.

Now, Pope Francis I wants to declare Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, a saint.  Such is the business of sainthood of which I no longer believe.

As you know, I read and am still reading a number of books on Saul who became Paul who became St. Paul.  Should you read “Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus” (2000) by Donald Harman Akenson, I think you would find support for your argument. 

I have a different view – am currently writing a piece where I discuss this in  A Letter from One Octogenarian to another Octogenarian --  finding the apotheosis to a cause rises out of the masses and settles on a symbol called a “leader” who epitomizes the masses discontent and longing, and not the other way around.   Therefore, I don’t see such “leaders” as converting, but representing the distillate of angst and unrest, and self-ignorance of the masses. 

Be well thoughtful man.

Jim

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