Hypocrisy's new name -- Benedict defends the indefensible

One way to tell it's Christmas time in Rome is when Vatican leaders start overdoing the eggnog! How else to explain Pope Benedict XVI's decision to push Pope Pius XII toward sainthood before opening the records of his papacy to scrutiny, and with the pope's World War II-era participation in the Hitler Youth in Germany still a matter of controversy? Of course, this issue comes up because of statements today from a Vatican spokesman defending Benedict's decision, according to the New York Times. Benedict spoke of the "heroic virtues" of Pius XII and Pope John Paul II on Saturday, the next step in advancing both men to sainthood if it is found that they performed miracles. The spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, responded to criticism from Jewish groups who allege that Pius XII, who was the Vatican's ambassador to Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, did not try to prevent or stop the Holocaust before or after he became pope and helped many former Nazis escape to South America after the war, the Times said. Pius XII was pope from 1939 to 1958. Advancing Pius toward sainthood "should not in any way be read as a hostile act against the Jewish people, and we hope it will not be considered an obstacle in the path of dialogue between Judaism and the Catholic Church," Lombardi said. But how could it be seen as anything but? And how else to see the decision to beatify Pius XII before opening the church's extensive document archive from his papacy than a blatant attempt at obfuscation? Let's not forget that Benedict, the first pope with a Nazi background, still has a lot of explaining to do about his decisions to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop and to not mention the Nazis or Germany in remarks he gave at a visit to Israel's Holocaust memorial earlier this year.

Were pope's mistakes in Jerusalem too obvious to be accidental?

What's up with Pope Benedict XVI? Did the first actual Nazi to lead the Catholic church really think he could visit Israel and not have his every move, his every word, microscopically examined for vestiges of the ideology of hatred? Of course not. He is not a stupid man -- he has risen despite his past to the pinnacle of one of the world's greatest religions. He is considered one of the holiest men in the world and his visit to the Middle East -- holy man in the Holy Land -- was a major event. So why would this guy, with so much to prove, fall so pitifully short? In the first visit of any pope to the Holy Land since John Paul II's trip in 2000, Benedict deliberately alienated his Jewish hosts with cavalier references to the Holocaust, in which 12 million people, including 6 million Jews, were brutally slaughtered by the Nazis, according to the Cable News Network (CNN). Benedict knows what happened in World War II, he has no doubt seen the "concentration" camps that made a perfectly innocuous word into a euphemism for evil. Yet he angered many Jews in Israel by referring to Holocaust victims as having been "killed" instead of "murdered," a distinction not overlooked by his predecessor. No doubt, John Paul II would not have rehabilitated an excommunicated bishop who denies the Holocaust, either. But perhaps Benedict's biggest mistake was trying to navigate the treacherous Israeli-Palestinian dispute without understanding it. The pope actually said that "one of the saddest sights" he saw was the wall being built on the West Bank to protect Jewish communities. What is he talking about? Is the wall around Vatican City "sad?" Is the wall around Jerusalem "sad?" Hardly. Also, the West Bank wall is not made of stone and built to stand for a thousand years; it can easily be removed, and no doubt will be, when the Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank finally resolve to live in actual peace with the people of Israel. That is the problem between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and between the Israelis and most of the other countries of the Middle East, and all the rhetoric in the world is not going to solve it until the Arab nations face up to their internal and international responsibilities and change the dialog. Benedict, apparently, has not even begun to get a clue.