Remembering Pope Pius XII

One of my blind spot's as a Catholic is the popes. Not so much the legitimacy of the papacy, you understand. Of that much, I've long been persuaded.

No, I mean the papacy as an historical subject. My ignorance here is easy for a non-Catholic to justify. It's hard to be invested in a subject which has no bearing on you. But as a Catholic, I'm coming to believe you owe it to yourself to know at least a little bit about the popes. So I've been trying to check through all that lately.

Still, one Pope who's always captivated my attention is Pope Pius XII. Yes, sure, Pope Pius X is probably the most famous of the Pius Popes, especially in recent decades. But somehow, Pope Pius XII is the one who always draws my interest.

For starters, he seemed to have a very intellectual faith. It's not like I knew him personally or anything; that's just my reading of the guy. He seems like a man who wanted to plumb the depths of the Church's rich history and tradition.

My journey to the Church is not a completely intellectual proposition. There's a lot of heart-felt conviction about it. But at the same time, I won't lie and tell you that it's not partly (or even that it's not mostly) based on my rational faculties. The Catholic Church has so much to offer in terms of theology, history and other things that it feels like I've finally found a place to park the car for the rest of my scholarly life.

For seconders though, no analysis of Pope Pius XII's reign is complete if you don't mention World War II. He inherited a world in crisis, possibly an existential one. He knew as well as anybody and perhaps better than most what the future might bring if mankind slid back into barbarism. And as much as he could, he acted to preserve peace and justice... which, during those dark years, were practically mutually exclusive concepts.

That's not a burden I'd wish upon anybody.

He led his sheep through the darkness as well as he could and comported himself during a time of major international upheaval in ways that many of his predecessors couldn't hope to equal even when facing relatively smaller conflicts.

My view of Pope Pius XII was that he was an extraordinarily intelligent man of God doing all in his power and with relatively few resources to be a light in the darkness.

What an example to aspire to!