Frank J. Coppa (1937–2021)

Something of a missed opportunity hear, in many ways. Coppa suggests that he's writing an impartial biography of Pius XII, which won't be obsessed with the whole 'Hitler's Pope, or nope?' question--and will thus help us reach a better understanding of that question. Perhaps that's a fools errand; Pius XII is interesting because of that very question, and Coppa does return to it over and over again. He also isn't impartial, which is fine. He's writing a biography, he's sympathetic, and he tries to exonerate Pius XII of the worst charges against him. That said, this is more impartial than the hysterics, half of whom think Pius XII was roughly three degrees worse than Hitler himself, and the other half of whom think he's St. Francis.

I, at least, learned one important thing from this book: the attempt to explain Pius XII's *motives* is far less important than his actions themselves. The 'Hitler's Pope' thing is understood to be damning because it suggests that Pius was anti-semitic, and that this motivated his (at best) ambivalent reaction to the holocaust. Coppa shows fairly convincingly that Pius was no great anti-semite; instead, he was a diplomat and radical anti-communist. Combine those two things together, and you have the motivation for his failure to speak out more strongly. In a sense, then, Coppa succeeds, because he refutes the hysterics who think Pius was anti-semitic. This doesn't make his actions in the second world war any more excusable, though. It just means a different set of motivations led to the unpleasant actions. On the evidence of this book, European Jews (and everyone else) would have been much better off if Pius XI had hung on for another decade.

The writing is usually solid, and the few mistakes seem to be the result of awful, awful editing. Sentences start in one syntactical direction and end in another; more amusingly, there are routine mis-spellings. Parcelli, it seems, cannot be accused of anti-semetism. Just as well, for The Word is nothing if not a sign.

On a totally unrelated note, I was reading this book when my daughter was born. Welcome to the world, Persy!… (mehr)