Pope wanted to keep Jewish children in the fold

[emad]

The Age
By John Hooper
Rome

The Vatican secretly instructed the Catholic Church in France not to return Jewish children to their families after the Second World War, according to a recently discovered Vatican letter.

The children were entrusted to the church to save them from German death camps. But if the parents survived and came forward to reclaim their children, they were only to be returned "provided (they) have not received baptism", the Vatican ordered.

The instructions, in a letter dated October 20, 1946, were sent by the Vatican department responsible for church discipline to the future Pope John XXIII, Angelo Roncalli, who at that time was papal envoy in Paris. The letter was published yesterday by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

The letter ends with the words: "Please note that this decision has been approved by the Holy Father." This may well have been a warning to the then Monsignor Roncalli who, in his previous job as papal ambassador in Istanbul, was suspected by some in the Vatican of an excessively pro-Jewish outlook.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Pope-wanted-to-keep-Jewish-children-in-the-fold/2004/12/29/1103996610139.html?oneclick=true

[emad]

1. Guardian story continues:

The Vatican's letter indicates that Pope Pius wanted both to obstruct and minimise the return of those children who had been put in the church's care. "Children who have been baptised may not be entrusted to institutions that are not in a position to guarantee them a Christian upbringing," it said. The position with regard to unbaptised Jewish children was more complicated.

The Vatican's officials ruled that those who had lost their parents ought not to be entrusted to "persons who have no rights over them". Only where the parents had re-emerged to claim their children was it permissible for them to be handed back, and even then only if they had not been christened.

The revelation represents a fresh setback for the cause of Pius XII's canonisation. The present Pope is known to have wanted to beatify his predecessor as a first step towards declaring him a saint.

But the process was halted by a host of articles, books and films questioning Pius XII's failure to speak out publicly against Nazism and, in particular, the Holocaust.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1380532,00.html

[emad]

5. Pius XII canonisation quandry: Cardinal Ratzinger recently said

the "miracle" clause on which sainthood depends is going to be dropped anyway - so no real problem in canonising any members of the P2 Lodge such as Giovani Pacelli or his successor Roncalli.....

Edit: the Miracle Clause:

Miracles are out

The entry requirements for sainthood are lower than ever. Which seems to be true of everything these days

Lucy Mangan
Wednesday December 22, 2004
The Guardian

It is both heartening and depressing to see the Pope begin to engage with the modern world by planning to abolish the requirement for individuals to perform "medically inexplicable" posthumous miracles before they can be canonised. Those who die having led truly exemplary lives will, like a Fortier-affiliated nanny, be fast-tracked a visa to sainthood. This tentative step towards modernisation should be applauded, if only because an institution composed entirely of immutable anachronisms unfathomable to the general populace will surely wither and die (witness the Royal Variety Performance). At the same time, it will be a shame to bid adieu to one of the more exhilarating aspects of the faith, which would otherwise stand vigil against the fundamental pessimism that characterises this cheerless age.

You could argue, of course, that it's an egalitarian measure. As the latter-day saints are the ecclesiastical equivalent of celebrities - figures of hope and aspiration, albeit of unattainable spiritual rather than physical perfection - they should be released from their miraculous duties, just as the secular majority have released their icons from the burden of displaying talent. If we demand no more of our celebrities than that they appear on red carpets wearing a desperate grin and a handful of sequins, fellate John Leslie or periodically scream, "Am I mingin'?" at a houseful of sofa-bound imbeciles before we reward them with our gaping admiration, it's hard to see why Mother Teresa should be required to heal the terminally sick before she can enter the pantheon of greats.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,12272,1378494,00.html

[PATRICK]

33. Canonization

was never such a hot idea anyway. {People cult worshiped saints with miracles attached who were no more than inscription fragments in lost Latin. Martyrs are easy as are great teachers(although anti-semitism is a bigger problem than is here stated because of centuries of ethnic cleansing conflict between the two religions).

Making Church officials and order founders titled saints smacks of institutional self awards which Jesus opposed rather clearly. There should be higher standards for those already awarded with the most respect and honors in their lifetimes. But mostly it is the awards accrued to the institutions that glom off the canonized, safely dead authorities(like Francis of Assisi) that should be the most put to the test of the Devil's Advocate.

I am sick of the honors given to heroes of the establishment in the bloodiest centuries, the worst rational and spiritual miasma, the most inexcusable failures of leadership and Gospel sense I hope the human race has ever to suffer again. Gandhi was more a saint than any current candidates, yet we all have feet of clay, poor motivations and all around deadly dumbness when it comes to plain living.

Call no man holy. Call no man father. That always sounded clear to me but no one cared to explain how the church went along its merry way against that "advice" with any compelling justification. On the contrary, in practice the reason for avoiding titles of any sort becomes clear in the terrible scourge of blatant abuses.

Damn, is Ratzinger still alive? He's probably collecting favors for his own canonization as the doctrinal Cheney of the modern Catholic Church. One man has been a brick in the throat of the reforming Church for decades with little positive to show for it.

[despairing optimist]

43. Diebold to oversee cardinals' canonization vote

They're having some trouble with the smoke trail required. A paper trail, while unnecessary, would have been easier. "We have plenty of black boxes. That's not the problem. We're the Church, after all," explained Msgr. Giuseppe Cavazzi, the papal rovio. "It's just that Diebold can't get the white smoke to appear in any way but a mechanical malfunction."

[Kathryn7]

38. N/T

[K8-EEE]

50. I Left The Church After This Election

I have to admit I miss being a part of that community, on a local level hey the regular parishioners do a lot of good (loaves and fishes and St. Vincent de Paul does great work, and the inner city Catholic schools here in L.A. provide wonderful educaitons for skid row kids without charging tuition in most cases.)

But damn...what I saw, the Church once again letting itself be used by war mongering fascists (this time, BushCo) and just letting happen, like they covered up the abuse scandals too...well I came the the conclusion they will have to give up all the money and power and connections and stuff. That's where they went wrong. And the Pope being "infallable," well, anybody who believes that is an idiot, with all the horrible decisions made by so many Popes!

[Walt Starr]

2. This is just disgusting!

What an abomination the Roman Church is! What a fucking bunch of hypocritical evil bastards!

[Larkspur]

7. As much as I despise the Church's misogyny, my favorite Pope was

John XXIII, who started Vatican II. He believed that the women's movement, like other liberation movements, was a sign of the Holy Spirit at work in the world. The current Pope has viewed feminsim in a negative light. Also Pope John Paul I, had publicly referred to God as both Father AND Mother. Unfortunately, Pope John Paul I died after a very short term in office.

The ultra conservative movement within the Church, which has done what it can to neuter the Vatican II reforms, is the cancer within the Church. It was this movement that eventually caused me to leave the Church.

[emad]

10. The P2 Lodge killed off JP1 - read David Yallop's excellent

monograph "In God's Name".

Also worth reading is Riers Compton's "The Broken Cross" which nails all the P2 Lodge members responsible for the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano and the murder of its CEO Roberto Calvi - some of whom are in the dock in Rome at the moment awaiting resumption of the murder trial.

The role of the former UK Midland Bank - now HSBC - and its CEO Sir John Bond has been kept tightly covered up by successive US and UK administrations going back to Reagan/Bush1 and Thatcher.

Can't see this situation lasting much longer.

[burrowowl]

47. Would that another John XXIII

be elected!

"John XXIII, who started Vatican II. He believed that the women's movement, like other liberation movements, was a sign of the Holy Spirit at work in the world. The current Pope has viewed feminsim in a negative light. Also Pope John Paul I, had publicly referred to God as both Father AND Mother. Unfortunately, Pope John Paul I died after a very short term in office."

Couldn't agree more! And that twit, JP II santified the Opus Dei fascist nutcase founder :mad: :mad: :mad:

John XXIII viewed Opus Dei as dangerous, as well as anyone should.

JFK, MLK, RFK etc. the 60's held promise! Now the fascists (and have been since Raygun) are winning.:puke:

[emad]

57. Opus Dei are in for a rude awakening....Poodle just elevated their

young hopeful Ruth Kelly to UK Education Secretary

after the abysmal IRA negotiationjs with Paisley, Adams, McGuinnes and Ahern turned sour in the pre-Christmas run up.

She fills the post left behind by Charles Clarke who has become UK Home Secretary following lurid revelations about impregnating an old slapper called Kimberley Fortier - formerly on the payroll of ex-US Ambassador to the UK William Stamps Farish who was dumped from the London posting last July and has ot been replaced since.

This Kelly woman has been groomed as a likely abour party leader after Poodle retires after the next election.

Also of note is the fact that her meteoric elevation into office follows hard on the heels of the London murder of one of Opus Dei's most prolific benefactors, the City dealer John Monckton, director of Legal & General, and close chummy of Archbishop Cormack Murphy O'Connor:

[NorthernSpy]

39. that's quite a denunciation...

What an abomination the Roman Church is! What a fucking bunch of hypocritical evil bastards!

Mind you, I totally understand. I'm inclined to react that way, too. But if the Catholic parents were the only parents that one of these children had ever known, do you think that should have prevented the kid from being reunited with his natural, Jewish family? What was in the best interest of the child in such a case?

[Forkboy]

3. yeeeesh

fucking pathetic :puke:

[htuttle]

4. Not terribly surprising

They did the same thing to Native American children in the US. In fact, their mission schools put children into one of the the worst 'educational' situations ever seen on the earth. I'm sure they did it in Africa and Latin America, too.

[Bridget Burke]

6. Don't blame the Church for the "Indian" Boarding Schools.

They were usually run by the government. One exception was the Red Cloud Indian School, founded by the Jesuits at the Pine Ridge Reservation & monitored by tribal leaders.

http://redcloudschool.org/

Can you find documentation for your assertions about Africa & Latin America? Or can it be that not all the evil in the world is the fault of the Roman Catholic Church.

[Ian David]

8. They certainly have more than their fair share

And THIS is the institution that dares claim to tell us how to run our families and who should marry whom?

[pschoeb]

18. Sorry Catholic Church was more involved than that, please read up

Check out

Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions

Commission for the Catholic Missions Among the Colored People and the Indians

Negro-American Mission Board

These are the Catholic orgs responsible. Catholic Hierarchy were upset at the time, because they felt they weren't getting enough of the Indians that they considered "theirs" because they had established missions at certain Indian reservations first. Though the Government supplied the money, most of the organizations involved were Christian and independent, there was a whole scuffle about what reservations should be considered Protestant and which Catholic, and Catholics felt they were not alloted enough. Very similar to this Story about Jewish Children, the whole concept that since their missions were at these reservations the children "belonged" to that religion.

[Solly Mack]

20. You're correct

http://www.amnestyusa.org/amnestynow/soulwound.html

[okasha]

22. It wasn't just the Catholic Church.

The US government parcelled out tribal "franchises" to a number of churches. Thus most Cherokee who are Christians today are either Baptist or Episcopalian; most Lakota who are Christians are either Episcopalian or Roman Catholic, etc..

Okasha

[peacetalksforall]

9. Obsessed. Obsessions of religion. All this exposure means one

thing... organized religion dictated by a single leader is not a good idea...beware where secrecy is a requirement.

Destruction of a person's religion, self-esteem, mind, family, livlihood, core beliefs, core opportunities to survive and grow, property, infrastructure is included in the tenth commandment having to do with killing.

[emad]

11. Male-dominated criminal cults only ever suceed by keeping

women out of the power structure.

Hence the easy of concealing thousands of years of sex abuse of children. And blackimailing world political leaders into continuing the whitewash of criminal records.

[bleedingheart]

12. On one hand the positive..the children were saved from death camps

the negative part...if they were baptized...it was unlikely the Church returned them to their families...if those families even survived.

[emad]

13. Giovanni Pacelli (Pius XII) was head of the bankrolling that

provided the Nazis with the global funds to set up their death camps.

"Saving the Jewish kids" was just Vatican spin for when they got found out.

[molly]

15. Hitler's Pope

revealing book.

[NYC]

46. written by John Cornwell.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670886939/103-8047752-6251812?v=glance

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com

This devastating account of the ecclesiastical career of Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958), who became Pope Pius XII in 1939, is all the more powerful because British historian John Cornwell maintains throughout a measured though strongly critical tone. After World War II, murmurs of Pacelli's callous indifference to the plight of Europe's Jews began to be heard. A noted commentator on Catholic issues, Cornwell began research for this book believing that "if his full story were told, Pius XII's pontificate would be exonerated."

Instead, he emerged from the Vatican archives in a state of "moral shock," concluding that Pacelli displayed anti-Semitic tendencies early on and that his drive to promote papal absolutism inexorably led him to collaboration with fascist leaders. Cornwell convincingly depicts Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli pursuing Vatican diplomatic goals that crippled Germany's large Catholic political party, which might otherwise have stymied Hitler's worst excesses.

The author's condemnation has special force because he portrays the admittedly eccentric Pacelli not as a monster but as a symptom of a historic wrong turn in the Catholic Church. He meticulously builds his case for the painful conclusion that "Pacelli's failure to respond to the enormity of the Holocaust was more than a personal failure, it was a failure of the papal office itself and the prevailing culture of Catholicism." --Wendy Smith

[emad]

58. Vatican expert Cornwell recently published a biography of JP2

as discussed on DU:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=83833

[NYC]

59. Thanks. I have

a book called, The Vatican Empire by Nino Lo Bello, which I will have to read soon.

...the Vatican as a nerve center of high finance -- and penetrates the secrecy of Papal wealth...

1968. Pretty outdated, I guess, but I will read it.

[emad]

14. From today's Independent:

Alberto Melloni, an authority on Cardinal Roncalli, said in Corriere della Sera newspaper, that the future pope often managed to defy the orders, though his diaries do not give details. Mr Melloni believes that this was one of the things that induced Roncalli, when he became Pope in 1960, to include a repudiation of anti-semitism in the agenda of the Second Vatican Council.

see:
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=596610

[trogdor]

16. I heard about a movie on this particular subject.

Edges Of The Lord is a movie about this sort of thing, starring Haley Joel Osment and Willem Dafoe. Despite enthusiastic audiences in Europe and superstar casting (Osment made this film at the peak of his popularity as an actor, at a time when he commanded $1-$2 million a film at age 12.) this film was never released in the U.S. due to "commercial difficulties."

Commercial difficulties. Horseshit. Every low-budget experimental piece of crap gets at least a couple of screens in New York, while I'm also sure IFC or The Sundance Channel would just love to get their hands on it.

I haven't seen it, but I hear it is scheduled for U.S. release January 5th, so I'm pre-ordering my copy. I guess Miramax (I think that was the studio that owns this film) found out people were paying $35 a copy for Region Zero DVD's made in Brazil.

[trogdor]

17. Where are all the religious trolls?

You know, the ones who will accuse us of Catholic-bashing because we point out some inconvenient historial fact or news item involving a member of the RCC. Come out, come out, wherever you are!

[Behind the Aegis]

19. I was thinking the same damn thing!

I guess this will be a "chirp, chirp" thread for them!

[hedgehog]

23. I'll speak for my fellow religious trolls

and say that this is a true horror that I repudiate. At the same time, can you name any institution that has gone 2000 years without some spectacular screw-ups? Take America for example. At its best, it's a shining beacon, but it also has to account for slavery, racism, Abu Ghraib, treatment of Native Americans etc. etc. Take the whole, warts and all, not just the good and not just the bad.

[Stunster]

24. Inconvenient historical facts?

This was published as a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times a few years ago. It's from Kenneth L. Woodward, correspondent for Newsweek magazine.

http://www.netacc.net/~mafg/nazi02.htm

[Democrats_win]

27. trolls saying its revisionist history LOL

The inquisition never happend either and the holocost--a commie plot. They must lie because they always lie.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[InvisibleBallots]

34. It is revisionist history

It may be 100% true, but it sure isn't what they were saying about him after the war:

"The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas.... He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all." --Editorial, The New York Times, Dec. 25, 1941

"A full exploration of Pope Pius's conduct is needed.... It now falls to John Paul and his successors to take the next step toward full acceptance of the Vatican's failure to stand squarely against the evil that swept across Europe." Editorial, The New York Times, March 18, 1998

I'm a big fan of revisionist history - if the historical record needs correcting, correct it.

[0007]

30. That's quite an article. Kenneth Woodward sure had the wool

pulled over his eyes. I wonder if he any relation to Bob Woodward?

[VegasWolf]

31. My thought exactly, I would not have been surprised to see it printed

in the American Conservative.

[happynewyear]

21. is this late breaking news

or is it just another Irish Catholic bash?

We're talking post-WWII here ... :eyes: !!

[Bridget Burke]

26. I'm sure the Duchess of Windsor's secret daughter is involved.

She usually is!

[emad]

56. Cold War secrets hid the horrible truth about World War II and the

Nazis. The P2 Lodge, who were the main hit squad of the Vatican, are now in the dock charged with murdering "God's Banker" Roberto Calvi following the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.

The crime cartels that had it so easy in the 20th century now have to face up to their past. And that includes all the goddawful mercenaries like Shrub and Poodle who they bankrolled into office to carry on the whitewash.

Irish Catholic bash? Ireland's organised crime is a mere speck on this blotted landscape.

[Amaya]

25. Not surprised at all....

Totally sickening

[VegasWolf]

29. "provided (they) have not received baptism", would this be a

baptism of semen?

[genieroze]

32. Sick. eom

[onager]

35. Here's a very good book on the subject...

...using the Vatican's own historical archives. Anyone who can defend the Vatican treatment of Jews after reading this is operating on a level of denial that reaches Karen Hughes-like proportions. Forced conversion of Jewish children is only a small part of this miserable story.

The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism by David I. Kertzer.

Link to it on Amazon.com

[BrklynLiberal]

36. "Michel, Michel" by Robert Lewis(1967) is a book about this.

from Amazon.com
"It is a tale of a French Jewish boy who was taken in by a Catholic woman at age 3 when the Gestapo took his parents away. She raised him according to her faith and baptized him (despite the fact that he had been circumcised). Now, in 1948, his aunt in Israel wants him to come and live with her. The boy's adopted mother wants to keep him, and invokes the help of the Church. The extravagant custody battle that ensues shows us the incredibly complex and historic French legal system, and the anti-Semitic and anti-clerical views that prejudice it. Stuck in the middle of this, is Michel, a pitiful, confused boy who was told by various ignorant church leaders that the Jews were evil people who killed Jesus and deserved to be punished. The boy wonders whether he and his father, who he remembers with clarity and affection (and was never baptized), are damned for the nature of their birth. Too stubborn to tell anyone his feelings, he manifests them by being unusually pious, but he still does not know where he belongs. As the conflict around him escalates to the national level, the conflict in his heart drives him to an attempt suicide. This book shows us what happens when children are torn from their families (biological or otherwise) and pulled every which way. It also makes fascinating points about the nature vs. nurture issue, and leaves an ambiguous answer for the interpretation of the reader. It does not divide the world into the heroes (Jews) and antagonists (the Church), but, instead, shows us the faults of each side."

[NorthernSpy]

37. it's just the "best interest of the child" argument, Vatican-style

I imagine that for some of those children, the Catholic parents were indeed the only parents that they'd ever really known. And yet, I'm guessing that few people would defend using that fact as a reason to justify keeping those children from their true families.

A child has a RIGHT to his natural parents, to his heritage, and to his kin.

[Kathryn7]

40. Albert Einstein and Golda Meir expressed their thanks at the time.

Albert Einstein according to the December 23, 1940 issue of Time magazine on page 38, said:

“Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks...

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”


In 1958, at the death of Pope Pius XII, Golda Meir sent this message: "We share in the grief of humanity. …When fearful martyrdom came to our people, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace."

[onager]

41. I'm just guessing...

...but Golda Meir's eulogy sounds like politics as usual. More than anybody, she knew that Pius XII did not raise his voice.

In fact, he made sure that the famous "hidden encyclical" of Pius XI never saw the light of day. Humanas Generis Unitas ("The Unity of the Human Race"), written in 1938, truly WAS an outspoken condemnation of racism in general and Nazi anti-Semitism in particular. Pius XII deep-sixed it and it didn't even come to light until years later.

Einstein's comment may have been a reference to individual Catholic churchmen, and some of them did show incredible courage in standing up to the Nazis.

One example was the Bishop Of Muenster, who denounced the T4 Program...better known as the "Euthanasia Program"...operating between 1939 and 1941. Its use of gas chambers prefigured the Holocaust, but the victims of the T4 program were Germans, including handicapped children.

As one German historian wrote in a collection of essays on the Nazis and the Vatican: "Those bishops who did publicly confront the state through their preaching and actions, such as Preysing and Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Muenster, who spoke against the state's T-4 euthanasia program, were left to stand alone.

The papacy and their fellow bishops seemed robbed of the capacity to remain upright with them."

[Kathryn7]

42. Not what either said.

Einstein is comparing institutions here__ universities, the press, vs. the Church. The Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, was so impressed with the actions of the Church that he converted to Catholicm after the war. In the book, Before the Dawn, by Eugenio Zolli, he tells his story.

[pschoeb]

44. Umm Einsteins qoute is pretty vague

and since he was in the US from 1933 on, I'm guessing he wouldn't be the best judge of events in Europe. Also notice the ... after the first portion, that means something was taken out in between the two portions.
Also this part seemed strange to me "when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it". He seems to be saying that he expected the universties to defend the revolution, so the revolution must not be Hitler, but something else. In fact he might actually be talking about 1918-19 german revolution after WWI in that first part of his qoute. If I'm correct the first and second part of his qoute have nothing to do with each other, and qouters probably have propaganda on their minds.

Since this qoute is only found in Catholic apologetics when I do a seacrh, one wonders what the full article said.

[Maple]

45. How about some Nazi photos ?

http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm

Priests seig heiling, cardinals marching with the troops, and all....

[sleipnir]

48. Hardly a surprise here.

Look at the facts and the facts will tell the truth. I can't believe the standard canard was bought and sold for a multitude of years. The typical position of power brought down on a weaker event or group. Nothing new here, a puzzle has more corners than this story. Obtuse. Simply Obtuse.

[stackhouse]

49. and this news?????????

some of us have know about this for years fuck the roman catholic church.......sorry

[aikido15]

51. Don't be sorry...

I was baptized Catholic and I feel much the same way! Fuck 'em!

[happyslug]

52. What do you do with a child who has been in your house 3-4 years?

OK, some time ago people on this Board was complaining about how could a Judge return a child to its Birth Mother after three years living with the child's adoptive parents. In that thread you can hear the anger at the Judge for ordering such an action, for it was clearly against the child's best interest. Than we have this thread when the Pope does the OPPOSITE, says the child should stay with their adoptive parent and that letter becomes a basis for anti-catholic bashing.

Look at that Letter. The Church states nee should NOT return children to their natural parents if they have lived with their adoptive parents for 3-4 years with intentions that the child stay with the adoptive parents (which is why the issue of Baptism was so important in the letter, if the birth family agreed to baptism that was clear evidence that their were giving up their rights to the child, while in cases where no baptism occurred it was clear evidence that both sides had agreed to return the child). That is all the letter says as to baptized children, that baptism indicated the intention of both families as to what was in the best interest of the child in 1942-1944.

Basically in the letter the Vatican says it was better for such children to stay in the family their were in than to to striped from such families and given to another family. The letter goes on with an exception which is if you had clear evidence that both families had agree that the arrangement was temporary (again demonstrated by having the Child NOT being Baptized). In such cases where it was clear that both families wanted the child return the child should be returned.

The second part of the letter addressing non-baptized children whose relatives (but NOT their parents) tried to get them back also reflects that the best interest of the Children should be considered. In that second part the Church says that the non-baptized Children were to be return to their parents but not to other relatives.

Remember we are taking of the Holocaust, often the only relatives left were distant aunts, uncles, cousins, maybe a sister or a brother. How did returning a child to these relative be in the best interest of the child? Remember the child was in a loving adoptive family. Furthermore these children had lived with their adoptive families for 3-4 years (and the families had had to hide them for the German Anti-Semitisim was NOT religious in nature but Ethnic, thus mere conversion was NOT enough to prevent a Jew from going to the Camps).

My point here this letter addressed a very difficult decision of how to handle the difficult cases of Children left by Jewish Parents with Catholic families during a very difficult time period in Europe. It is a good Guideline to follow given the circumstances of the time period. Remember hopefully, every one here agrees the main thrust of any dispute as to custody of a child should be the best interest of the Child. This letter was intended as a guideline to help people make that decision given the preference that the Child should go to their parents and if the parents not available to their nearest Blood Relatives. In 1942-1944 those options were not always available, thus the children went into non-relative families. Now come peace in 1946 should the decisions of 1942-1944 be undone? This paper says look at what the parties did in 42-44 to determine if the parents wanted this to be permanent. That is all the letter says and is a good guideline is such situations.

[onager]

53. Nice try, lots of legalistic hair-splitting and wishful thinking...

...but the general rule in the Church was that a child baptized Catholic could only be raised as a Christian. And I'm sure any "agreements" were as likely to be ignored as honored.

There was a long, miserable history of Jewish children being kidnapped all over Europe and raised in Catholic orphanages, often on the flimsiest excuses.

One of the most famous cases was that of 6-yr-old Edgardo Mortara in 1858 (also the subject of a David Kertzer book). He was torn away from his family because a Catholic servant girl swore she had "secretly" baptized him years before, when he was sick during infancy.

As for the "loving adoptive homes:" some refugee children were put to very hard work as virtual unpaid slaves. One of the bullshit reasons the U.S. refused to accept Jewish refugee children...CHILDREN...was that they might take jobs away from Americans.

Oh, and after defeating a bill granting refugee status to a couple hundred of those doomed children, the U.S. Senate released a statement that it was "God's plan" they should stay with their parents.

One of the many reasons I am an atheist.

[sherilocks]

54. From the DU discussion on the return of a 3 year old

to his birth parents.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1096896

<snip>

Humans have a basic need to feel they are individually whole, yet part of a whole. For the adopted this can be difficult. Often adoptees feel they do not belong (Kirschner). It is very lonely and isolating to feel different from those you should feel the closest to, your family. Edin Lipinski, M.D., brings insight to these feelings:

In an existential sense, the past is as important to adopted people as their future. It is the present that is most troublesome. Not knowing where they fit into the spectrum of happenings is a great problem for them.

<snip>

http://www.adoptioncrossroads.org/ginni.html

The Jewish children were not usually infants at the time they were placed with Catholic caregivers.

[Hekate]

55. My late father in law, Jewish, loved the nuns

Avram was in the Belgian Underground; among other activities he took Jewish children to Catholic orphanages and convents for safekeeping. For his own four children it was too late (my husband is from his postwar marriage). To the end of his life, he respected the nuns and their courage in caring for Jewish children.

The matter is complicated, of course. In order for the children to be safe, they had to be not-Jewish. That meant they needed baptismal records, and they needed to know and understand the Catholic catechism, prayers, and holy days. From the safety of the year 2004 it's easy to criticize the suppression of their Jewish heritage, but in those days if they were lucky the ruse worked and they lived to have children of their own.

The nuns saved their bodies -- the Church wanted to save their souls as well. We can argue over whether the Church is or is not right in that belief -- I for one disagree with the Church on this as in other matters.

But the fact remains: many Jewish children lived who would otherwise assuredly have died. And many or most of those children returned to Judaism after the war.

Hekate