"Ouch" ... that's gonna leave a mark.

As well it should.

In college I was assigned a book, a book undoubtedly still in circulation. For a class entitled "Nazi Germany" (and taught by the chair of my southern university's history department no less) I was required to read: "Pius XII, Hitler's Pope." In fact I showed it to you gents one moon and fire lit Bund night on my back porch (ok, that sounded fairly gay). As I recall at its' sight you recoiled like a vampire being exposed to a crucifix. And of course then spent the evening (the both of you) taking it apart. 2 hours and Jambo's ruined jeans (via the bleach I used to clean the lawn chairs) later, you had won me over. Truthfully I hadn't developed an opinion either way except to defend my instructor, whom I did like. But given he and I argued loudly & often in his office after many a class I was willing to concede the book to be revisionism ... and it was.

I have since come to the conclusion, and your post only reinforced this, that there are two forces at work here. 1.) The left will pass up no opportunity to condemn Christianity, and even a Mormon would concede there is no bigger symbol after Christ then the Popes. The idea that they could tie Christianity to complicity in the greatest crime man has ever perpetrated upon himself must be simply irresistible. 2.) The left is big on "statements." And I mean that quite literally. To stand up and "speak out" against a given injustice is prized over actually fighting them. To "speak" against an evil, they seem to believe, requires a fortitude of character that acting against said evil just doesn't carry. Witness President Obama, his peace prize, or regaling the 60's protesters as "brave" rather than the soldiers actually serving in Vietnam - this type of misplaced virtue is alive and well even today. Which brings us back to Pope Pius XII. The idea that he didn't publicly condemn the Holocaust, neither in his public BBC radio broadcasts at Easter Mass nor through his Archbishops, is identified as "weak." For if "speaking" is the chase prize of history's champions then surely "not speaking" defines its' complacent villains. It is ridiculous. I wonder would these same leftists be so quick to condemn FDR? I seem to have missed his "Holocaust Fireside Chat."

History records that both the greatest mind of the 20th century and Israel's most hawkish Prime Minister have both endorsed the real ACTIONS of Pius XII ... were I him, I could live in eternity with that.