The role of Pope Pius XII during World War Two is a subject of endless dispute, part of which we’ve tracked on FaithWorld over the past year. This has gained in interest because of Vatican plans to put him on the path to sainthood, which may be held up now because of protests from Jewish groups. We’re all waiting for the secret archives of his papacy (1939-1958) to be opened to finally see what the documents say about his relations with Nazi Germany. While we’re waiting, one of the key questions that could be assessed on the basis of files already available is what Pius thought about dealing with the Nazis before he became pope. There is a long paper trail there, because Pius was the Vatican Secretary of State — effectively, the prime minister of the Vatican — from 1930 until his election as pope. But a lot of people argue for or against Pius without having read this material.

(Photo: Pope Pius XII/Vatican photo)

Gerard Fogarty S.J., a University of Virginia historian and Jesuit priest, has worked through much of this material and come up with a fascinating article in the U.S. Jesuit magazine America. He’s examined much of the paper trail the future pope left in the 1930s but many of the documents are in a language that the leading commentators on Pius don’t speak. We’re not talking about that dead language Latin, but Italian — a lively regional tongue in Europe that happens to be an international language within the world’s largest church, Roman Catholicism.

“This is one of the problems even now,” Fogarty recounted in an informative podcast for America. “Scholars come to me and ask, do you use a translator? No scholar is going to do that. You’ve got to learn the language yourself. So people have not looked at what was published.”

(Photo: Cover of America magazine, 15 Dec 2008 edition)

Fogarty has scoured archives in the United States, Britain, Italy, Germany, Spain, Ireland and Vatican City for all the information he can find about Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli — the future Pius XII — and the Nazis in the 1930s. He has also pushed the Vatican to publish documents from the Pius XII papacy in stages, so we can get the files from the war years soon, but come up against the reflexes of a bureaucracy that goes back two millennia. “Some people in the archives opening up just a segment because they want to open it pontificate by pontificate,” he said. Publishing the war documents once the archivists have sorted material until 1945 could give us this information earlier, “but they want to go up to 1958.”

After reading what’s available now, Fogarty thinks Pius XII did the best he could given his understanding — from long diplomatic experience with Germany and advice given by, among others, members of the German resistance — that open protest against the Nazis was counterproductive.

“In retrospect, I wish he hadn’t been so diplomatic,” he said. “If you made me pope, which is not going to happen, i would think as an historian. He was a trained diplomat.”

Asked what he thought about Vatican efforts to beatify or canonise Pius XII, the historian said: “I don’t see evidence one way or another.”

Some of the most frequent accusations against Pius XII are that he was either pro-German or anti-Semitic? Can you say that after reading Fr. Fogarty’s article?

(Photo: Gerard Fogarty, S.J.)

The Vatican issued a major document on bioethics today, “Instruction Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions,” that outlines Roman Catholic teaching on the latest procedures concerning human reproduction. This is the third major Vatican document on bioethics in recent years after Donum Vitae (Gift of Life) in 1987 — issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), like today’s document — and Pope John Paul’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life) in 1995.

(Photo:Pope kisses baby at Vatican, 8 Oct 2008/Max Rossi)

Our news story on the document is here, accompanied by a list of procedures it declared morally unacceptable and acceptable and selected quotes from the text. The full text in English is here. The Vatican also has comments from the news conference presenting the document (here all in Italian).

Much of this is a restatement and updating of known Vatican positions. The wording is in places quite strong and sound-bite-like, which may mean those passages could be intended for use in national political debates about bioethics. There is too much to comment on individually here, so go to the links for details.

John Thavis of Catholic News Service has a useful “Vatican bioethics document at a glance” and John Allen has a detailed analysis at “Vatican issues new document on biotechnology.”

One interesting angle is the argument in the conclusion that modern societies have already banned other practices that violate human dignity such as “racism, slavery, unjust discrimination and marginalization of women, children, and ill and disabled people.:” It encourages Catholics to show “courageous opposition to all those practices which result in grave and unjust discrimination against unborn human beings, who have the dignity of a person, created like others in the image of God.”

(Photo:A microscopic view of undifferentiated human embryonic stem cells)

The document also speaks of spare frozen embryos as “orphans” but says it would be against human dignity to use them for research or give them up for “prenatal adoption” as some anti-abortion voices have suggested. “The thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved,” it says.  

Incidentally, Slate columnist William Saletan also writes today about “The frozen ones: the morally deserted world of spare embryos.” He says there are about 500,000 such frozen embryos in the United States alone and many parents have just left them in that limbo. An abortion rights advocate, he makes no mention of the Vatican document and uses no religious argument. But he also bemoans the fact that the increased freedom and choice brought by these new reproductive measures have not been matched by increased ethical concern about the results:

That freedom doesn’t eliminate moral obligation; it intensifies it. Each of us has to decide how to respect life in all its complexity. To me, embryos aren’t people, but they’re the beginnings of people. They aren’t to be created, killed, or frozen lightly … Don’t make or freeze embryos without thinking through what you’ll do with them. And if, after talking it over, you can’t stomach the options ahead, maybe you should reconsider whether you’re ready for this. That’s a lot to ask, I know. But nobody said choosing would be easy.”

What do you think about the Vatican document? And what should be done about spare frozen embryos?

Imagine you’re asked to examine a problem through a funnel but not told which end to look through. Some people will look through the narrow end and get a wide-angle view of the problem. Others will look through the wide end and get a narrow focus on certain parts of it. Both will be looking at the same problem, but in different ways.

This image came to mind after I spoke to members of both delegations in advance of the Catholic-Muslim Forum that starts today in Vatican City. Both sides are looking at the same problem – how to really improve understanding and cooperation between Christians and Muslims – but from different points of view. This doesn’t have to deadlock the talks – I don’t think either side wants that. But it does complicate things…

A kind of news blackout has been imposed on the closed-door talks on Tuesday and Wednesday, with only the official spokesman for both sides – Cardinal Tauran and Ibrahim Kalin – supposed to make any statements. In the run-up to the talks, the Catholic side has been quite active. Tauran spoke to La Croix and Vatican Radio in French on Monday, his deputy Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata to Vatican Radio in Italian and the Egyptian Jesuit Samir Khalil Samir, an adviser to the Catholic delegation, wrote a comment on Asianews.it (here in English). Kalin spoke to Reuters in advance – see our news story here – but the other Muslim delegates told me they could not be quoted.

Things will change on Thursday, when the delegates have a short audience with Pope Benedict (to be broadcast by in-house television to the Vatican press room) and then hold a public discussion session at the Pontifical Gregorian University that afternoon.

(At left, Common Word delegates Ibrahim Kalin (l) and Sohail Nakhooda in Rome).

As for that funnel analogy, who’s looking through which end? The Common Word delegation seems to have grabbed the narrow end and peered through it, thus getting a broad view of the challenge of deeper Christian-Muslim understanding. The Vatican side seems to have focused on issues within the Common Word manifesto, looking with two eyes through the wide end to zero in on specific questions. This is a rough analogy and not meant to criticise either position, since both perspectives can enrich the other. The broad view can help both sides to make progress despite differences on specific points. The narrow view can help clarify details of certain points in the Common Word manifesto. Of course, this is only the first meeting of this Catholic-Muslim Forum, so they are only starting to discuss the issues.

Another intersting development fits into the funnel analogy. The Common Word approach has been to unite as many Muslim leaders and scholars as possible, in line with the Islamic concept of seeking consensus within the decentralised faith. The Catholic approach couldn’t be more different – centralised and hierarchical, with the highpoint of the Vatican meeting being the papal audience organised down to the last detail. The latest example of this came last week when Libyan theologian Aref Ali Nayed, one of the leading figures in the Common Word group, won support from more than 460 Islamic organisations around the world gathered at a general conference of the World Islamic Call Society in Tripoli. The conference’s final declaration said: “The Conference declares its support for the ‘A Common Word’ initiative, and expresses its appreciation for the positive responses to it. It further calls for working through that initiative in order to widen the scope of mutual understanding and cooperation between Muslim and Christian institutions.”

That means that the World Islamic Call Society, one of the largest international Muslim organisations, will link its dialogue with the Vatican – which goes back to 1976 – with the Common Word group’s efforts. That brings more coordination to the confused landscape of interfaith talks now going on. Those looking through the narrow end of the funnel will see a broad consensus building while those looking through the wide end will focus on specific points and ask how deep the agreement on them really is. But these are not “either/or” propositions, they’re “both/and.” Finding the balance is the challenge.

Tuesday’s talks will be about theological issues arising from the Common Word’s claim that both religions share the core teaching of love of God and neighbour. Roughly speaking, this is the Muslim approach and some Catholic experts mistrust it because of fundamental differences between the faiths. Wednesday’s meeting will focus on human dignity, a catchword for the religious freedom issues the Catholics want to talk about.

Both sides stress the need for these talks to produce some practical results that prove they’re worth all the effort being made. Once again, they show the two sides looking at the issues from somewhat different perspectives. Kalin told me the Common Word group would like to see a crisis management plan worked out so Catholic and Muslim representatives could confer at times of tension, for example during a controversy over the Danish Prophet Mohammad cartoons or the persecution of Christians in Iraq, and make joint statements that might help calm the situation, he said. At the Cambridge meeting last month, Rev. Christian Troll S.J., a member of the Vatican delegation this week, suggested that the Cambridge Iner-Faith Programme could form a Christian-Muslim working committee to evaluate complaints from Muslims and Christians about violations of religious freedom.

Let’s see what comes out on Thursday.

An English translation of Pope Benedict’s 2006 discussion of evolution with his former students has finally come out and I recommend it to anyone who’s confused about where the Roman Catholic Church stands on this issue. It’s called Creation and Evolution and is publised by Ignatius Press in the U.S. The discussion was held in German and the original text, Schöpfung und Evolution, appeared in April 2007.

I mention the confusion about this issue because a 2005 New York Times op-ed piece by Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn prompted supporters of “intelligent design” (ID) to think the Church was embracing their argument. He denied that to me in an interview a few months later. So when it became known that Benedict would discuss evolution with his former doctoral students — his so-called Schülerkreis — at Castel Gandolfo in September 2006, there was considerable interest in what he would say.

The German publisher, Sankt Ulrich Verlag in Augsburg, sent me a PDF version of the book in German under embargo, so I wrote a news story the day it appeared. In the book, Benedict said science was too narrow to explain creation, which was not random as Darwinists insist, but has a rationality that goes back to God. He argued this on philosophical and theological grounds, not on the faith arguments that creationists use (”the Bible says so”) or the biology-based examples that ID prefers to argue that some life forms are too complex to have evolved.

This is classic Catholic teaching and it’s called theistic evolution. Benedict is not alone in advocating it either — it is accepted by most mainline Protestant churches as well. Francis Collins, the U.S. geneticist who will soon step down as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, advocated this view in his 2006 book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Sam Harris, the best-selling neo-atheist author of The End of Faith, predictably trashed it in a scathing review. But it did have a seven-week run on the New York Times bestseller list, which must mean it speaks to quite a few people.

My news story prompted one of the oddest reviews I’ve ever had to anything I’ve ever written. The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, the leading advocate of the intelligent design view, put the headline “Pap about the Pope” on its post and claimed the seminar entitled “Creation and Evolution” was actually about philosophy (despite all the scientists who spoke there). Their reviewer, Jay Richards, started off his comment on the report by announcing “I suspect there’s a translation problem here.” He then noted that Benedict had challenged scientism and called for a broader concept of reason than the strictly empirical view science uses. “That’s easy for classically informed philosophers to understand,” he wrote. “But you can be sure that exactly 0% of reporters and 1% of readers will understand that. What every reporter will take away is that all this talk about God, purpose, and design are private, since in modern parlance, only ‘science’ constitutes public knowledge.”

Hmmm… First, he claims to find translation problems even though he hasn’t seen the original and may not even understand it. Then he writes off all reporters and almost all readers as dimwits who can’t understand what he can. He then proceeds to twist the argument around so fully that he ends up saying the takeaway from all this is that the debate belongs to some realm “along with fairies and the Easter bunny.”

This intrigued me so much that I emailed him to ask for chapter and verse on where the mistranslations could be found and which improved translations he would suggest. Of course, he had none because he hadn’t read the book. I’m not sure he could even read the book, but that didn’t stop him from telling his readers he suspected some mistranslations. When challenged, he launched into an elaborate deconstruction of the word “translate” that basically concluded that a mere reporter could not explain Benedict’s views to an average reader. In the end, it was clear the purpose of the exercise was to cast as much doubt as possible on a report he didn’t agree with. In other words, shoot the messenger.

This theistic evolution view clearly rattles the ID camp. One of its main supporters, William Dembski, fired off a broadside last week in a post entitled Theistic Evolutionists Close Ranks — Let the Bloodletting Begin! Unlike Richards, Dembski didn’t mince words: “So here’s the deal, everyone. Theistic evolutionists are implacably opposed to ID … They are happy to jump in bed with Richard Dawkins if it means defeating ID. They are on the wrong side of the culture war. And they need to be defeated.” Science and Religion, a blog that widens the debate by also looking at the Islamic world, commented: “William Dembski has gone ballistic.”

Dembski at least writes clearly here, you have to say that. But I wonder about his conclusions too. If theistic evolutionists are as he says, that means that Pope Benedict would be ready to join forces with the man who wrote the bestseller pictured at left. This is as curious a conclusion as the one Richards drew. Creation and Evolution is now out — and in a fine translation by Michael J. Miller that improves the style but does not contradict the content of my quotes — so English speakers can now read it and judge for themselves.

Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga has denied throwing his red zucchetto (clerical skullcap) into the ring as a possible candidate to become the next pope. As we’ve already blogged here and here, the publication of a French book of interviews with the archbishop of Tegucigalpa last month has been interpreted by some Vatican watchers as subtle self-promotion — una autocandidatura, as they say in Rome. This was bolstered by unfounded speculation about Pope Benedict’s health, which seems quite good for a man of his age (81).

Now, in an interview with the Milan daily Il Giornale, Rodríguez Maradiaga has dismissed this speculation as a “mistaken interpretation” of his words. Most importantly, he said the interview in question took place in 2004, before the death of Pope John Paul II and simply expressed an obvious fact being discussed at the time. “Of course, the day will come for a pope from the South, as it came for one from the East,” he said. “At no time have I thought of myself as papabile (a possible pope). I have much to do in my beloved Honduras and I’ve never thought of putting my name forward.“

Kudos to Il Giornale’s Vatican correspondent Andrea Tornielli for tracking this down. The book in question, a collection of the cardinal’s interviews with a French journalist in Rome, states the conversations were held in 2006 or 2007. Soon after the speculation began in the French press, Tornielli challenged the date of these “recycled quotes” on his blog Sacri Palazzi. He later nailed down the date as 2004.

That said, Rodríguez Maradiaga remains a dynamic, attractive and relatively young (65) cardinal whose name will stay high on the list of possible papal candidates.