To the editors.

Phayer's fables

Having failed in previous efforts to engage Michael Phayer in dialogue about his various errors regarding Catholics and the Holocaust, I appreciate Commonweal's juxtaposition of our quite different views in my "History Lite" and his "Canonizing Pius XII" (May 9).

Those errors have nothing to do with minor historical issues, much less with canonizations. They are errors alleging intentional evildoing by Pius XII--as when in his book, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, Phayer relies on his "discovery" of a Roman document that "marked the beginning of Vatican efforts on behalf of perpetrators of the Holocaust." That document is bogus, not unlike his "incontrovertible evidence" that proves the pope "helped their [the Jews'] killers escape."

According to Uki Goni's The Real Odessa (Phayer's source), not only were those scoundrels Eugenio Pacelli and Giovanni Battista Montini implicated in the "ratline," so too was Geoffrey Fisher, archbishop of Canterbury--the first to visit a pope since the Reformation. Were all these figures in the Goni/Phayer fable "seeking clemency for mass murderers"?

Lastly, I assume Phayer jests when he defines as "traditional Catholic teaching" his phrase, "the ends must never justify the means."

JUSTUS GEORGE LAWLER

Saint Charles, Ill.

Where's the evidence?

In "Canonizing Pius XII," Michael Phayer argues that the pope helped war criminals escape justice because he wanted them to fight communism in other countries. It seems unlikely that the pope would aid anti-Christians who brutally persecuted his church before and during the war. The Vatican has always acknowledged that Bishop Alois Hudal of Austria, a Nazi sympathizer stationed in Rome, and a Croatian priest named Krunoslav Draganovic, helped some war criminals. But there is no evidence that Pius XII or his top advisors, Monsignors Domenico Tardini or Giovanni Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, approved or even knew of these activities. In the Catholic Historical Review (October 1992), Vincent Lapomarda, S.J., writes that Hudal and Draganovic weren't acting on the instructions of the Vatican, but rather abused their positions to help their fellow nationals.

In his 1976 memoir, Romanische Tagebucher, Hudal admits that he helped war criminals, but never claims he did so with the encouragement or knowledge of the pope. What's more, many writers have alleged that Hudal enjoyed a close relationship with Pius XII, but in his book, Hudal frequently complains of the Vatican's "pro-Allied bias" during World War II and of how Pius XI, Pius XII, and Montini mistreated him throughout his career.

In his 1944 Christmas message, Pius XII defended the forthcoming punishment of war criminals, but objected to the collective punishment of nations. Phayer ignores the fact that the Vatican actually helped prosecute Nazi war criminals. In 1946 the Vatican handed over many of its documents to the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, which used them as evidence against the Nazis for persecuting the Catholic Church before and during the war.

It's sad to see how a respected Catholic scholar such as Michael Phayer accepts without question the accusation, peddled by a succession of conspiracy theorists and left-wing propagandists, that Pope Pius XII, a great and humane leader, ran an underground railroad for Nazi and Croatian war criminals while doing little for the Jews and other victims.

DIMITRI CAVALLI

Bronx, N.Y.

The author replies:

I have not accused Pius XII of "evildoing" as Justus George Lawler asserts. Historical evidence is based on documents. To assert that documents are "bogus" is no argument. The American Bishop Aloisius Muench, Pius's own envoy to western Germany, wrote to the Vatican warning the pope to desist from his efforts to have convicted war criminals excused. The letter, written in Italian, is available in the archives of the Catholic University of America. Also available are the documents that I have used (not "Roman" documents) in the U.S. National Archives and Record Administration, and the documents that Uki Goni has used.

Regarding Dimitri Cavalli's remarks, it should be pointed out that the overwhelming majority of atrocity perpetrators were tried at the so-called army trials, not at Nuremberg. These were the criminals that Bishop Muench warned Pope Pius about. As to Hudal, it is true that Robert Graham, S.J., a Vatican official during and after the war, said that the bishop, who by his own admission helped war criminals escape, acted without the pope's knowledge. By implication, the same would be the case regarding the Croatian fascist, Father Draganovic. The documentary evidence now available (but not available in 1992, when Father Lapomarda, S.J., wrote or when Father Graham spoke) demonstrates the close collaboration between the Vatican and fascists Draganovic and Hudal. Establishing this connection, however, carries somewhat less importance currently, because we know now that Pius himself was directly engaged in ratline activity.

MICHAEL PHAYER

Vetting bishops

In "Another Voice" (May 9), Thomas A. McCabe lists Voice of the Ordained's (VOTO) proposed candidates for bishop of Brooklyn, along with the qualities respondents want in their next bishop. This is a step in the right direction. Prior to considering who can fill the job, however, there must be a broader discussion of a candidate's personality and character traits, theological and pastoral positions, and track record.

If church healing and renewal are to be both authentic and widespread, VOTO needs to meet with local chapters of Voice of the Faithful. Only when priests and lay people collaborate based on equality will we Catholics begin to see cracks in the clerical structure of power, which has brought us to this crisis in our church.

MAUREEN & PAT KENNY

Garden City, N.Y.

Trained to kill

Many thanks to Rand Richards Cooper for articulating so clearly some of my personal concerns about the collateral damage of the war in Iraq and the effect on our own troops ("'The Man He Killed,'" May 9).

From the sanitized version of Operation Iraqi Freedom that we were shown on Fox News and CNN, the war was presented as a game plan in which the coalition forces were moved around like pawns on a chess board, detached from any sense of loss of life.

What happens to these "heroes" when they return home is of little interest to military enthusiasts. The truth is that some of our soldiers will endure devastating stress-related illnesses, and will find adjusting to civilian life difficult, if not impossible. We have trained our troops to fight and kill, to risk their lives, and they submit their wills to the discipline that enables them to do that. Then we expect them to come home and lead happy and well-adjusted lives? For those who are physically wounded, there is expert physical care and rehabilitation. For others who need emotional or spiritual support there are very few professionals, in psychiatry or the clergy, who have ever experienced armed combat and can understand. So the terrible memories, the suffering of moral uncertainty and remorse, are endured in silence, without help. After reading novelist Pat Barker's Regeneration, a moving account of the relationship between Siegfried Sassoon, poet and decorated war hero, and the brilliant and conflicted psychiatrist William Rivers, I realized how very fragile the human psyche is when faced with the unspeakable. Sassoon made a compromised recovery, but others never did. I hope that someone somewhere is confronting this painful issue.

PHYLLIS L. TOWNLEY

New York, N.Y.

Getting the whole story

May I suggest a connection between the bewilderment of the French journalist-priest about the popularity of President George W. Bush's war (editorial, "War and Partisan Politics," May 9), and the discrepancy John Peplinski (Correspondence, May 9) sees between the images he finds in Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's piece (April 11) and the what he sees on TV? Americans get most of their news from American TV. Regrettably, the war coverage on American networks and cable was too often sanitized and jingoistic, less informative than the coverage on foreign networks--I am not referring to Al Jazeera.

Since the beginning of the war, I've been watching, in addition to American sources, Canadian, German, and Mexican coverage through the Canadian-based Newsworld International, as well as the BBC. American coverage concentrated on commentary by retired generals and views of jubilant Iraqis dragging Saddam Hussein's statue through the streets. The foreign networks omitted the retired generals while including the jubilant Iraqis. They also showed the damage to residential neighborhoods, the injuries to civilians, the hospitals without medicine or electricity, and an overall disorder threatening at any moment to degenerate into chaos.

The shallow coverage provided by American networks served Americans poorly, keeping from them the information they need to make the critical judgments required of citizens of a democracy. I suspect that many more Americans would hesitate to claim unalloyed victory had they seen the children of Iraq maimed by cluster bombs.

PATRICIA KENNEY

Whitestone, N.Y.

Rock on

Regarding "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll, but I Like It" by Maurice Timothy Reidy (April 25): I absolutely cannot fathom a sentence in which the phrase "it's only rock 'n' roll" has any meaning whatsoever. Only? Only? Rock 'n' roll was the very basis, the very fabric of our lives from the late 1950s through the 1980s. Without it, what meaning could life possibly have had?

How about all the names that take us back to the fun time of dances, jukeboxes, loud car radios, drive-ins--memories brought back just by mentioning the Dell Vikings, Elvis, the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Doors, Fleetwood Mac, the Boss? Well, the list of artists and pop hits couldn't be contained in an entire issue of Commonweal!

CAROL JANKUNAS

Denver, Colo.