A Cross Too Heavy: Pope Pius XII and the Jews of Europe by Paul O'Shea (review)

Australian historian Paul O'Shea's thoughtful reassessment of Pope Pius XII puts forward mild and empathetic criticism of the controversial pontiff's conduct towards the Jews of Europe. O'Shea argues that while Pius, who was opposed to National Socialism, genuinely sought to help and rescue beleaguered Jews, he did so within certain limits. He was intent on endangering neither the Vatican's political position on the continent, nor the fiction of papal neutrality. The "silence" for which Pius XII has been repeatedly attacked was, according to O'Shea, the result of his deliberate "strategy to protect Vatican interests."

The future pope's worldview is the cornerstone of O'Shea's analysis. Pacelli's Weltanschauung remained remarkably consistent, undergirding his decisions and actions from his childhood through his years as nuncio to Germany, cardinal secretary of state, and finally pontiff. As a young boy from a family with a history of service to the papacy, he was steeped in a world hostile to the modern, liberal nation-state. Many members of this milieu remained scarred by the horrors of the French Revolution and the Risorgimento. They saw Bolshevism and Soviet-style Communism as the greatest threat besetting the world. At the same time, they retained a deep conviction that the Roman Catholic Church represented the only true path to salvation. Almost by definition, Jews stood outside this order. Pacelli had come of age when Christian supersessionism was still dominant. This doctrine drew on roots deep in Christian tradition. O'Shea locates these roots in the gospel of John, the writings of Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, Aquinas, the Fourth Lateran Council, the Crusades, and—most unusually, since both were Protestant theologians despised by Roman Catholic neo-scholastic theologians—in the writings of Martin Luther and Adolf von Harnack. He argues that, given its long history, Christian anti-Judaism has functioned as a "permissible" form of antisemitism (p. 68).

While much of O'Shea's book concentrates on tracing these roots, the climax comes in the months between mid-1942 and October 1943, during which Pius XII was made aware of the murder of European Jews on an unprecedented scale. The mass round-up of Roman Jews in October 1943—the so-called grand razzia—has been, of course, the subject of widespread scholarly attention and fierce polemics ever since the premiere of Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy in February 1963. O'Shea confirms what others have pointed out: besieged by the German occupiers, Pius did not issue a resounding public protest against the deportation of Rome's Jews. Instead, he worked behind the scenes to assist in the rescue of thousands of individual Jews. Why did he choose this course of action? O'Shea concludes: "I am led to think that he did what he believed was possible, entrusting action to others so that the fiction of papal neutrality was preserved" (p. 206).

This monograph, a revised version of O'Shea's dissertation, clearly is aimed at a lay audience of students and newcomers to the field. On this terrain, this clearly written work succeeds admirably. Never failing to draw in the reader, it provides concise overviews of topics that have been the subject of dozens of scholarly monographs: the emergence of Christian antisemitism; the question of whether National Socialism can be considered an "Ersatz religion" or a religious politics; and Pius' response to the Holocaust from 1941 through 1943. Above all, O'Shea shows a gift for storytelling and a knack for locating the ideal anecdote to shed light on Pacelli's temperament and worldview.

As a work of scholarship, however, the book suffers from two omissions that, while not necessarily undermining its central arguments, render it less useful to scholars. For one, the author's citations are extremely sparse, particularly when he discusses the scholarly literature on Pius and historiographical controversies. At the...