The best thing I can say is that I always try to take trouble to be informed on what I comment on, and I think you can take it from me that there has long been a reflexively pacifist and even vaguely moral-futurist tone in all the things that come from the Vatican to do with contemporary political issues. That is what has made the "Hitler's Pope" legend credible: though Pius XII (and Pius XI) did in fact oppose Hitler by every possible means, and save tens of thousands of Jews and other intended victims in the process, the public is too used to hearing Popes making no difference between Wilhelm II's Germany and the Allies, or between the Soviets and the Americans, not to assume that a Pope must necessarily be a pacifist, an appeaser, and a bit of a hypocrite in international politics. Unfortunately, even an exceptional intellect such as the current Pope (whose book on Jesus is required reading) is still a prisoner of the contemporary way of thinking, and appeals to PEACE taken to be a positive value in itself flow practically weekly from his public positions. I wish, too, that the Vatican spoke a bit less about day-to-day politics.
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