To the Editors.

Medium is the message

John O'Malley's recent article "Interpreting Vatican II: Version Two" (March 9) is wise, measured, faithful, and has a panoramic clarity that is born of meticulous respect for detail and nuance. His rhetoric embodies the style he identifies so wonderfully.

JOSEPH J. MCHUGH
Minneapolis, Minn.

Those other liberals

I heartily applaud Commonweal for continuing the discussion of Vatican II and the papacy of John Paul II ("Interpreting Vatican II"). There is, perhaps, no more important issue for Catholics than how the church defines itself, treats its believers, and relates to others in the new millennium. John O'Malley has it exactly right about the way the Catholic church ought to function in the wake of Vatican II. However, James Hitchcock is also right about the way the church sees itself in the modem world under Pope John Paul II: pretty much the same way it did before Vatican II.

As a liberal Catholic, I must confess that I did not recognize my beliefs in Hitchcock's analysis of "religious liberals." He must be referring to those other liberals. But I do embrace most of the reforms of the Vatican II, which emphasize a more collegial, dialogical, ecumenical church--one that teaches the truth in love, one that is a respectful listener and, therefore, one that has respect for conscience. I do not think there is anything sinful or heretical about such beliefs.

TONY DISTEFANO
Alexandria, Va.

Confessing to Christ

In response to the article "Empty Confessionals" (February 23), I am puzzled as to why anyone should stay away from confession because of a growing sense of collective sin. Reconciliation is not for the confession of social or collective sins. It is the place for us to confess our personal transgressions against the environment, our personal acts or even thoughts involving racial or other prejudice, and other such misdeeds. Perhaps, however, in a different sense, most sin is collective through its effects on others, and some priests today give penances that will rectify or at least help to heal the rift resulting from the damage we may have done.

Jesus apparently knew that, for most people, confessing to God in the privacy of their room would not be sufficient for them to remove their guilt. Nowhere did he say, "Go in privacy to a friend, confess your sins, and they will be forgiven." In confession we know that Christ is present in the priest, that it is Christ to whom we confess.

ELEANOR P. MERRICK
Medford, N.J.

Last confession

I have a confession to make. The year was 1964, and I was what some now call a stay-at-home wife and mother. With a flock of my own to care for, I had few opportunities to commit great or even interesting sins.

I decided to ask a priest in the confessional how to make a so-called "good confession," given the circumstances of my life. His response is still etched in my memory: "Stay home in your kitchen, mother; you're doing a wonderful job." And that was my last confession. I now attend communal penance services.

NANCY SULLIVAN MURRAY
Syracuse, N.Y.

Avenue of forgiveness

If I remember correctly from my sacramental theology courses years ago, the basis for the sacrament of reconciliation is Jesus' coming to the Apostles after the Resurrection and saying, "Peace be with you" (John 20:19). After their betrayal of him, and their cowardice, Jesus does not come to them with "tough love" demands or requirements for repentance.

This sacrament was not always a part of the church. It is important to remember its roots: the reconciliation of those who had cut themselves off from the Christian community after baptism and wished to be reconciled with the community again. We should also remember that private confession was not always part of the Roman rite either, but was the result of monastic practices in fourth- and fifth-century England, Scotland, and Ireland.

The Catechism notes that "the Eucharist...cleanses us from past sins and preserves us from future sins," and that the "Eucharist strengthens our charity...and this living charity wipes away venial sins." It is important to understand the relation of the Eucharist to forgiveness of sin. When we pray "Lord, have mercy," "forgive us as...we forgive..." we are acknowledging our sinfulness and need for God.

LUCILLE CASTRO
Colts Neck, N.J.

Popes & Jews

I appreciate the series of articles [January 26, March 9] regarding the popes, the Jews, and anti-Semitism. It's about time that the Catholic church acknowledge its role in being less than strident in its opposition to Nazism and related ills.

(RABBI) DAVID Z. BEN-AMI
Harrisburg, Pa.

Pope not convicted

Richard Cohen's review [March 9] of Michael Phayer's The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965 and Susan Zucotti's Under His Very Windows might more justly be titled "Pius XII: Not Convicted" rather than "Not Vindicated," especially in the present media atmosphere.

One would think from current media that it is a proven fact that Pope Pius XII favored the Nazis and had no concern for the Jews or others persecuted by them. Such a contention is contradicted by the many lives saved by people working directly for the Holy See and by the fact that in Italy, where the pope's influence was most immediately and directly felt, the effort to save Jewish lives was especially noteworthy. This would not have happened if the pope were hostile or even indifferent to these activities.

For all their scholarship, Phayer and Zucotti provide their readers not with verdicts based on evidence, but with their own interpretations of a situation for which the evidence about people's actions and motivations may be ambiguous or even lacking.

Cohen offers a couple of citations from Phayer that indicate the interpretive nature of his conclusions: Pius's "wish to play a major role in brokering peace meant that he favored 'a diplomatic remedy for a moral outrage'" and "the Vatican 'gambled, putting its moral authority at stake for the sake of a favorable diplomatic position.'" It is doubtful that the trained diplomat who was Pius XII would have thought so disdainfully of diplomacy--or, for that matter, of being a peacemaker. Why should diplomacy not be a tool in dealing with a moral outrage? And how better to remedy the moral outrages occurring than to help bring an ever more destructive war to an end? Attempting such diplomacy was indeed a gamble for the Vatican since it held so few cards.

For those of your readers who are tempted to believe the papacy can perform diplomatic miracles based on the fact that it is rightly credited with a share in the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, they should know that Pius XII would have seen himself as commanding a very different church, not far from the nadir of its diplomatic influence. His predecessor, Benedict XV, received mostly scorn for his carefully wrought proposals to bring World War I to an end, and saw the Holy See excluded when the peace treaty was written.

Pius faced a second world war whose gravity was enormously increased beyond that of the first by the emergence of aggressive and criminal totalitarian powers, fighting on both sides of the conflict. The fact that the political and military leaders who pursued World War II to victory managed to end up with the world effectively divided into two armed camps on the brink of a third and potentially totally destructive war should be a caution against assuming how much Pius could have achieved had he acted otherwise.

(MSGR.) FRANCIS J. MANISCALCO

The writer is director of communications for United States Catholic Conference of Bishops.

Uncritical review

Richard Cohen's review of Michael Phayer's The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965 uncritically accepts the author's unproven thesis. Phayer contends that Pius XII was sympathetic to Germany, if not specifically pro-Nazi, and placed an anti-Communist agenda ahead of both concern for the Jews and the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Yet, nowhere is there any documented evidence provided in Phayer's book for such a charge, primarily because there is none, as recently acknowledged by the Catholic-Jewish historical commission studying the actions of the church during World War II. There is, however, a wealth of documentation to the contrary, including the agreement of Pius to maintain silence on conditions in Stalin's Russia after the Soviet Union joined the Allied war effort, and his intervention to assure U.S. aid to the Communist nation.

Pius XII was primarily concerned with saving lives rather than high-minded pronouncements that would have accomplished little. Working behind the scenes and at the scenes through the papal nuncios was more effective than issuing public statements from the safety of the Vatican. As Phayer himself acknowledges, there was little the Holy See could do to force the Nazis to end their campaign for a "Final Solution." But Pius could save lives. Dramatic public anti-Nazi gestures could have severely limited, if not ended altogether, the church's capability to save lives, particularly in Germany and the Axis satellite states.

The Jewish lives saved by actions of the church under the direction of Pius XII accomplished what no other agency, government, or entity at the time was able to accomplish. Phayer claims that if Pius XII had issued a formal bombshell, more lives would have been saved. He does not, however, explain how that could have been done.

Cohen seems to put great store in Rolf Hochhuth's play, The Deputy. I'm certain Phayer would be embarrassed by the comparison. Even John Cornwell, author of Hitler's Pope, dismissed The Deputy as "historical fiction based on scant documentation."

ROBERT P. LOCKWOOD
New York, N.Y.

The writer is director of research for The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Pius's heroism

As one who has been evaluating the literature about Pius XII and the Holocaust for over three decades, I must strongly dissent from Richard Cohen's laudatory review of the books by Michael Phayer and Susan Zucotti. Cohen's contention that the Jewish criticism of Pius XII was pent up until Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy "opened the floodgates" in 1963 is pure fantasy. During the war and afterward, Jewish leaders lavishly praised the wartime pontiff. In 1945, the World Jewish Congress donated $20,000 to Vatican charities, "in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Facist and Nazi persecution." In May 1955 the Israeli government flew their entire Philharmonic Orchestra to Rome to play for the pope as an expression of gratitude for his help during the Holocaust.

Phayer and Zucotti both use the same double standard: read all the evidence favorable to Pius XII in the worst light and subject it to the strictest test, but read unfavorable evidence in the best light and subject it to no test. The myth of Pius's "silence," endorsed by both authors, ignores the many denunciations of Nazi war crimes by Vatican Radio and L'Osservatore Romano, and the wartime judgment of all parties about the pope's own statements and actions.

Both writers attack Pius XII for doing little or nothing to rescue Roman Jews in October 1943. The Jewish biographer of Winston Churchill, Sir Martin Gilbert, writes that "the pope himself gave his personal order...to open the sanctuaries of the Vatican City to all Jews who could reach it...The papal action, which I do not find mentioned in the current 'j'accuse' style debates, saved more than four thousand lives."

Phayer and Zucotti both make much of the argument that there is no documentary evidence linking the pope to efforts to save the Jews. Holocaust deniers use the same argument, pointing out that there is no written evidence Hitler ever ordered the mass slaughter of the Jews. Both authors overlook the testimony of numerous witnesses, some still living, that the pope repeatedly ordered Jewish rescue efforts--orally and in documents, which, for good reason, were quickly destroyed by their recipients.

(REV.) JOHN JAY HUGHES
Saint Louis, Mo.

The reviewer replies:

It is always worrying when people disagree with you by taking issue with an argument you never proposed.

To comment first on Monsignor Maniscalco's letter: of course Pius XII was concerned for the Jews and their fate, and he abominated the Nazis. What is at issue is whether he acted in the best way to save Jews and deal with Hitler. What both the books under review show, carefully and without having taken up entrenched positions, is that Pius did not do enough in either respect. They deal thoroughly with the argument that any action or declaration against Hitler by Pius would have had dire consequences, and Zuccotti in particular evaluates the evidence that Pius was responsible for saving the lives of Jews. She explicitly shows why Pius was thanked after the war by members of the Jewish community--and it was not because he went out of his way to save Jewish lives.

Lockwood finds no evidence in Michael Phayer's book that Pius XII was sympathetic to Germany and intensely anti-Communist. This surprises me. Both Phayer's book and other recent studies have made Pius's position very clear. Pius considered Communism the greater evil because he saw it as a complete philosophy--something which he did not believe Nazism ever was.

Phayer convincingly deals with the old argument that any explicit attack on Nazism by Pius would have had damaging consequences--and this includes the case of the Dutch clergy, and the reprisals following their denunciation of Hitler. To summarize a complex chapter in the book: we can't know for sure; but how could matters have been worse?

Robert Lockwood and John Jay Hughes both suggest I put great store by The Deputy. They miss the point. A play may have significant faults but still have great effect. Before Hochhuth there was minimal criticism of Pius XII; thereafter there was a great deal. As the British journalist Bernard Levin wrote after seeing the play, "The charge is that he failed to excommunicate or anathematize Hitler, failed to denounce his slaughter of the Jews, failed to order his church to pray for the martyred, failed even to tear up the Concordat." Hochhuth changed Pius's reputation, whether one likes the fact or not. For Hughes to disregard this truth casts some doubt on the value of his "over three decades" of evaluation.

In 1999 I spent several days talking with Peter Gumpel, the Jesuit in charge of the case for Pius XII's beatification. He left me in no doubt that Pius was not anti-Semitic and that he detested Hitler--the Nazis were, Pius wrote, "false prophets with the pride of Lucifer." But those views in themselves are not enough. Phayer's book and Zuccotti's, by judicious argument, show why not. Pius XII was never "Hitler's Pope," but his pontificate was a tragedy for the church, and the world.

RICHARD COHEN

John Paul II misread

I was astounded by Luke Timothy Johnson's incredible misinterpretation ["A Disembodied 'Theology of the Body,'" January 26] of the two talks the pope gave successively in 1980 on October 1 and 8. Johnson claims that in the first talk, the Holy Father "declares that a husband cannot be guilty of 'lust in the heart' for his wife, but a week later he...states confidently that even a husband can sin in this fashion."

In fact, in the first talk the pope states straightforwardly the arguments favoring a position which he himself considers ill founded: that a husband cannot be guilty of lust towards his own wife. The pope says, "This interpretation of Christ's words seems to correspond...to logic...nevertheless, good grounds for doubt remain as to whether this reasoning takes into account all the aspects of revelation as well as the theology of the body." Earlier in the talk the pope notes that it is a narrow interpretation of Jesus' words based only on a couple's civil status. In other words, this logic is legalistic--and he rejects it!

He ends the first talk by saying that Christ "made the moral evaluation [of lust] depend above all on the personal dignity itself of the man and the woman. This has importance both when it is a question of persons who are not married--and perhaps even more--when they are spouses." How can Johnson possibly see this as declaring that a husband cannot be guilty of lust in his heart toward his own wife? In the second talk, the pope expands on the reasons precisely for denying such a position!

Surprisingly enough, Johnson's error seems to be in his failure to recognize a "literary form" used for centuries: present your opponant's case as effectively as you can, then show its weaknesses. I'm sure Johnson has heard of "literary forms." Doesn't he know they exist even outside biblical studies? His error here is just a hint of the shallowness of much of the rest of his critique.

(REV.) EDWARD J. BAYER
Randallstown, Md.

The author replies:

Now that Edward Bayer has explicated the pope's text, I can see that I misreported when I said that he contradicted himself when he presented an argument one week against the possibility of a man committing adultery in his heart against his own wife, and then argued the next week that in fact a man could lust adulterously after his wife. I clearly missed the full weight of the surrounding paragraphs that indicated that the pope would revisit a matter that, by his own argument, "has all the characteristics of objective correctness and accuracy" (October 1, 1980). It is good to know that in this matter the pope cannot be inconsistent.

Two brief comments, then a final question. First, Bayer may be correct that Pope John Paul II argued dialectically, but he goes too far when he suggests that one should have spotted here the use of a technical literary form. Second, is Bayer really comforted by the pope's final position that a husband, when he desires his wife sexually (okay, let's say only sexually, or really sexually) as the pope so attractively puts it, for the "mere satisfaction of the sexual need of the body"--is committing adultery in the heart? Is he pleased at the conclusion, "Man can commit this adultery in the heart also with regard to his own wife, if he treats her only as an object to satisfy instinct"? Is sheer sexual desire for one's spouse sinful?

The final question: Am I missing something? Bayer says that my mistaken reportage on this point "is just a hint of the shallowness of much of the rest of his critique." Could he tell me in what this shallowness consists? Is it my appeal to a deeper appreciation for the ambiguities at the heart of human sexual identity and activity? Is it my observation that in the pope's conferences women tend not to appear as sexual or moral agents? Is it my queries concerning the logic of Humanae vitae? Is it my suggestion that the universal prohibition of condoms may be morally unacceptable in the light of an aids pandemic affecting thousands if not millions of innocent people? Is it my suggestion that moral discernment in the church ought to pay attention to the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of adult, and sexually active, Christians? Which of these reflects a theological or moral shallowness?

LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON