Bill Donohue and anti-Semitic New York Times on Pius XII. The sarcasm may be too subtle.

Here’s Bill Donohue’s Ad on the Op-Ed page in today’s NY Times.

My comments follow.

NEW YORK TIMES SALUTES POPE PIUS XII

On Christmas Day 1942, as the Holocaust was raging, the New York Times published an editorial on the heroics of Pope Pius XII. Here is a selection from that statement that ran 70 years ago:

“No Christmas sermon reaches a larger congregation than the message Pope Pius XII addresses to a war-torn world at this season. This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent. The Pulpit whence he speaks is more than ever like the Rock on which the Church was founded, a tiny island lashed and surrounded by a sea of war.

“Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were a lifeless thing.”

The previous Christmas was also marked by a New York Times editorial:

“The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas.

“In calling for a ‘real new order’ based on ‘liberty, justice, and love,’ to be attained only by a ‘return to social and international principles capable of creating a barrier against the abuse of liberty and the abuse of power,’ the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism. Recognizing that there is no road open to agreement between belligerents ‘whose reciprocal war aims and programs seem to be irreconcilable,’ he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace.”

We feel confident that when the entire Vatican archives are released, there will be even more reason to salute the heroics of Pope Pius XII.

Bill Donohue
President
CATHOLIC LEAGUE for Religious and Civil Rights
450 Seventh Avenue, New York, New York 10123
(212) 371-3191 Fax: (212) 371-3394
www.catholicleague.org

* * * My comment * * *

That nice. Too nice. I’m sure this ad is tongue in cheek. But the sarcasm may be too subtle.

• I’m sure Bill knows that the headline ”New York Times Salutes Pius XII” makes it seem like they did something today. Of course, they did not.
• I’m sure Bill knows that these are merely editorials. He says so.
• I’m sure Bill knows that these editorials are in sharp contrast to the under-reporting and outright misinformation about the Holocaust by The New York Times news pages during the Holocaust, a fact which, because of their position of power at the time, made them complicit with Hitler. They could have gone a long way to stopping the Holocaust, but purposely did not.
• I’m sure Bill knows that the Times has continued their criticism of those who criticize the Times on this point, until this day.
• I’m sure Bill knows that the ad he placed today on the op-ed page is an incrimination of The NY Times.

The problem is that people are so incredibly ignorant today that they will think that Bill is complimenting The NY Times for doing the right thing during the Holocaust when they so manifestly, purposely, did not.

I want to hear the words from today’s publisher and director of The NY Times that the Times was complicit in the Holocaust. Only this would begin to set things right. And I don’t want to see it on the Op-Ed page or even with the editorials themselves. No, it has to be the front page, the whole page. An entire exposition and confession and begging for forgiveness.

Every day that The New York Times doesn’t do the necessary in confessing their complicity with the Holocaust is one more day that The New York Times says that genocide doesn’t matter, that Jews don’t matter, that news reporting doesn’t matter, that you don’t matter, that the purpose of life is to lie and murder and bulldoze one’s brothers into mass graves.

Are there also Catholics who have fallen into the ditch on the right or left who will lie about Pius XII for their own agendas. Sure. Like The NY Times, they do so standing on the corpses of six million Jews.

For an excellent overview, terribly incisive, up to date, involving even the KGB, see the article of Father Gordon MacRae (about) over on TheseStoneWalls: HERE.