Even the incredible Roman ceremonial, those endless shows, were unable to wipe out the deep impression, the sorrow and the intimate heartfelt affection. However, what a contradiction between the courtly pomp and that man whose funeral was the occasion of it! The working people followed his last suffering and death as though he were the father of their own family. “For once we had a good one…” A sort of extraordinary unanimity had come about.

Et nunc, reges, erudimini! [And now, kings, be instructed. Ps 2:10]. it is clear, however, that there is a path to success because it is the path of truth: the important thing, as Lacordaire said, is not so much to leave behind something achieved, but to have a life. It is not a matter of claiming and loudly asserting that one is the Vicar of Christ, but of truly BEING it. What is reallv important is not so much ideas, but the heart.

My Journal of the Council, by Yves Congar

June 6, 1963: The funeral of Pope John XXIII.

Turning Toward the World: The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Four, 1960-1963, edited by Victor A. Kramer

Pope John’s strong personal appeal had a lot to do with the wide and eiithusiastic acceptance of his many statements that directly carried on and developed principles expounded by his predecessors, notably Pius XII. It was Pius who instituted, for instance, maior liturgical reforms that led to the further changes recently approved by the Fathers of the Vatican Council.

Both in its direct quotations from his immediate predecessor and in its basic formulations, the impressive encyclical, Mater et Magistra (which so persuasively expounded one of Pope John’s abiding concerns for humanity) contains many echoes of the social pronouncements of Pius XII. The basis for social justice is the sacred inviolability of every human individual, which implies his right to the means of developing and perfecting himself. Every society should have as its objective the common good. And in these days of wide disparities between national living standards, the international common good demands certain rights for poorer peoples, including aid from nations that are better off and, where necessary, the right to migrate to more fortunate lands.

Likewise, in his still more magnificent encyclical, Pacem in Terris, which Pope John signed only on April 11, he expounded and applied to present-day conditions many of the principles enunciated by Pius XII in the latter’s two decades of courageous striving for peace with justice in the world. There are points of resemblance between the two in their respective strong sentiments on the futility of modern war, the burden and danger of armaments and the basic need for the building up of mutual confidence. It was highly significant that the Holy Father addressed this comprehensive encyclical not only to Catholics throughout the world but “to all men of good will.”

There were, in addition, three very telling observations about recent changes in the world that signalize the practicality of John XXIII’s concernas well as a certain tendency to range beyond the confines of a single subject in the universality of his solicitude. One is the welcome new status of the workingman in many countries and the ground he has gained in economic, cultural and political affairs. A second is the happy new prominence which a number of women have attained in the world’s public life. The rise of the peoples of the colonial world, with the renewed urgency of racial justice (or the historic ending of the status of dependent peoples) comprises the third of these special observations in Pacem in Terris.

Many of these tradition-based views developed new force from the very fact that the beloved Pope John himself was voicing them-the sovereign pontiff whose love for all humanity could not be gainsaid. These encyclicals and other statements were widely greeted not only as compelling statements of Christian social principles but as practical expressions of Pope John’s ardent love for his fellow men.

But with all its solid grounding in Christian tradition and in the attitudes of his twentieth-century predecessors, John XXIII’s approach, and his aspirations for the Church, involved important elements that were both new and unique.

No doubt his most controversial stance had to do with Communists and Communism. This stemmed from his universal respect for all men and for the sincerity of their views, however mistaken, as well as from his dedication to preserving mankind from a war with thermonuclear weapons. While consistently opposing the principles of atheistic Communism from the outset of his pontificate, he expressed the confident belief that “historical movements” based on “false philosophical teachings regarding the nature, origin and destiny of the universe and of man.., cannot avoid being subject to changes even of a profound nature …. ” (Pacem in Terris) More cordial relations with the Soviet Union and better conditions for Catholic worshippers in the Russian satellite lands were in the offing at the time of his death.

John XXIII on the cover of Life Magazine on his election in 1958.

One object of the renewal of the Church, for which he long aspired during his pontificate, and for which Pope John repeatedly offered his intense final sufferings, was to prepare her for fruitful dialogue with other Christians and men of good will, with a view to eventual reunion. His strong ecumenical spirit was manifest from the time of his very first message as pontiff, with its special appeal for unity to the Eastern Orthodox.

It is widely recognized that the Council itself represented for Catholicism a truly new approach to other Christian bodies. They were invited to send observers to witness the proceedings, and these guests were encouraged to engage in frank discussions with various groups of the Church Fathers. His creation of Cardinal Bea’s commission on church unity was an especially notable step toward carrying all this out. In a short pontificate of less than five years John XXIII did much more for the cause of Christian unity than has been achieved in many decades. He encouraged and strengthened the progressive forces in the Church and advanced the cause of world peace.

Perhaps this universally beloved spiritual leader will be most remembered for his consistently ecumenical spirit, which truly encompassed world peace and the well-being of all men. Again and again in the agony of his last illness Pope John uttered the prayer,”That they may be one.” May he rest in peace.

From the June 14, 1963 issue of Commonweal. Used by permission.

The heart of the author’s indictment is that perhaps never in the history of the world have so many men paid with their lives for the passivity of one politician. Thirty-one-year-old playwright Rolf Hochhuth undeviatingly builds up his picture of Pope Pius XII as an unprincipled politician who operates solely according to the dictates of reasons of state.

Speaking out against Hitler might imperil importantVaticanfinancial interests with German industrialists; so Cardinal Pacelli is silent. Even worse, Pacelli has a certain affinity for Hitler. This leads him to overlook the evils of nazism, finding in it rather a bulwark against communism and in the Nazis’ roll eastward a veritable holy crusade. In 1933, as nuncio, Pacelli pushes for the concordat in order to please Hitler. Later, for the same reason, he does not raise his voice against the Führer’s flagrant violations of that agreement.

When, later, the persecution of the Jews is mounted, Pius doesn’t lift a finger to help them. In fact, he has one standard for Jews in need, another for non-Jews. Once only we bear a word of denunciation. The deportation of Jews fromRomeis an “indecency.” Meanwhile, with the world awaiting the word that could and would have stopped Hitler, we find Pius XII standing before an obsequious audience of cardinals, his aristocratic mien suffused in mystic glow, to exhort the Jews to await patiently that blessed day when God will wipe away all tears.

Hochhuth would like us to believe that his indictment is forced upon him as the result of serious research. In an introduction to the book presentation of the play (Rowohlt:Berlin) he tells us that he talked with big Vatican officials and interviewed eye-witnesses. None of these are named. Most significantly, he never once talked with Rome’s most informed authority on Pius XII, Fr. Robert Leiber, S.J., historian and intimate collaborator with Pius XII while the latter was nuncio and later when be was Pope.

What does Fr. Leiber think of the play? Far from being serious research, he says, what facts it uses are available to anyone. Hochhuth’s examples of a Pope acting for pure reasons of state are pulled out of thin air. It is absurd that Pacelli pushed for the concordat. Everyone knows that it was Hitler who urged it, while Pacelli, knowing Hitler’s aims, had strong reservations. Once a concordat was signed, with decidedly favorable measures for the Church (if observed), Pacelli repeatedly denounced Hitler’s violations. Proof enough of this is the Encyclical of Pius XI, Mitbrennender Sorge, in the writing of which Pacelli was a most intimate collaborator.

Hochhuth, to show Pius’ affinity to Hitler, charges that after the Polish conflict in the winter of 1939-40, when responsible Germans of all political colorations sought from Pius his intervention to persuade the allies to negotiate with a future new Reichstaat, Pacelli did nothing. Fr. Leiber provides contrary testimony from a high English official that Pius XII went to the ultimate limits that were possible for the Holy See.

Far from the Pope putting the Jews on a lower footing than others with regard to help, the record, says Fr. Leiber, shows the exact opposite to be nearer the truth. There are Pius’s strong admonishings to Hitler not to engage in anti-Semitism. As Pope, his interventions mount in favor of endangered Jews. Vatican records, from 1939 on, are full of cases of this and of financial aid in favor of Jewish refugees. As an eye-witness, Fr. Leiber is able to recount innumerable cases of the Pope’s personal intervention—sheltering Jewish refugees in the religious houses of Rome, biding time from the Gestapo, himself paying money requisitioned from Roman Jews by the occupying German forces when the Jews were unable to pay the price on their heads. Pius XII created a bureau to provide inquiring Jews with information about dispersed relatives. His St. Raphael Society worked with the Jewish agency DELASEM to make possible their escape overseas. A reliable estimate has the Pope personally contributing well over $5 million to this last cause alone.

What of the charge that the Pope could have stopped Hitler? The heart of Fr. Leiber’s answer is this: If the Pope was silent, it was because the situation imposed silence. Apart from the fact that his responsibility to Catholics forced him to weigh consequences for them, there was the strong likelihood that a denunciation of Hitler’s persecution of Jews before the whole world would have resulted only in massive reprisals. Such a protest by Dutch Catholic bishops had had precisely that consequence. Debating a similar protest, the German hierarchy turned to Pius for advice. The record shows him answering Bishop von Preysing that “you can judge better than I whether such a protest will do the Jews more harm than good.” The trouble with Hochhuth, Fr. Leiber concludes, is that he is too young and inexperienced to be able to grasp the limitations of the Holy See when it is faced by a totalitarian power bereft of all moral sense and fanatically determined to follow its course regardless of protests. After all, Mit brennender Sorge was answered by a savage attack onGermany’s Jews.

What do Jews themselves think? German Catholic news agencies over the last few weeks have compiled an impressive record of Jewish expressions of gratitude in the years from 1944 on to the death of Pius XII. They have added extensive surveys of German Jewish opinion about Hochhuth’s play itself. If what I have seen is an adequate survey, it can be said that German Jewry overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, supports Fr. Leiber against Hochhuth.

Philip Land, S.J., professor at the Gregorian University, is one of America’s corresponding editors in Rome.

If our Protestant brethren still wondered whether our hierarchy is a monolithic bloc, the activity and comments of our bishops during and after Fr. Hans Küng’s recent lecture tour must have proved something to them. Cardinal Cushing, Cardinal Ritter and Archbishop Alter, for example, listened to what the Tübingen theologian had to say; there were others who let it be known they didn’t want him around.

Now that the visiting Vatican Council expert has returned to Germany, one hears complaints that some of his remarks were difficult to understand. The observation pinpoints an important, and often overlooked, fact about Fr. Küng’s tour. He spoke only in a university context or the equivalent.

Theological discussions at high levels for specially chosen audiences have a way of getting into newspapers in these ecumenically exciting times, especially if a theologian’s reasoning leads him to advocate internationalizing the Roman Curia, abolishing the Index of Prohibited Books and recognizing marriages by Catholics before non-Catholic clergymen. And it is difficult for the press to handle ideas like these in the scholarly context in which the speaker developed them. All too often they are reported in a bold, eye-catching fashion which may well have the effect of upsetting readers unfamiliar with academic discourse. We say this even though we are aware that some papers did a fair job of reporting Fr. Küng’s reasoning as well as his conclusions.

Of course, if critics of the Swiss-born theologian’s American lectures are adamantly wedded to the status quo, not even the most competent reporting in depth would have mollified them; for Fr. Küng very definitely wants changes in the Church. Such reporting wouldn’t have appeased those, either, who feel that the 35-year-old theologian is much too young to be talking the challenging way he does. Cardinals could make the same proposals he did and there wouldn’t be a whisper of complaint. This raises the question: how far down in the Church does discussion of the Church’s methods and procedures properly take place?

That was what Fr. Küng discussed everywhere he went. Essentially, he kept asking: how is the Church with her message of freedom to be regarded as credible by the modern world if she does not show herself to be a place of freedom? He did not attack the teaching authority of the Church. He merely questioned the suitability of certain methods of administration and pastoral care in the Church. He claimed that authoritarianism in the Church’s procedures tends to alienate the democratic world around her. He challenged nothing in the deposit of faith. He asked instead that we consider updating, for example, the present executive machinery of the Holy See, the method of dealing with books dangerous to faith and morals, marriage legislation made in what historians still call “modern history.”

We do not entirely agree with Fr. Küng, but we would not think of charging him with talking foolishness. Every single item he brought up had already been recommended by a cardinal or bishop for the agenda of the Second Vatican Council. Maybe he was imprudent to talk so much. Well, we like that quotation he took from Pope John’s encyclical Pacem in Terris: “One must never confuse error and the person who errs.

Initial reactions to Pope John’s encyclical Pacem in Terris quickly revealed areas in which its practical impact can be expected to make itself felt.

When the London Sunday Times hailed the document as “an act of leadership for which the world was longing,” it explained in part the torrent of editorial comment flooding the world press. A Rome daily, II Tempo, might speak peevishly of an “encyclical of enthusiasms, conceived under the sign of optimism and irenicism.” But the internationally respected Le Monde of Paris termed it rather “realistic, serene and confident of the future.” These qualities it saw as “reflecting the character of its author.”

Religious leaders everywhere praised the profound moral tone and insight of the Pope’s message. Here in the United States, J. Irwin Miller, president of the National Council of Churches, noted “remarkable similarities . . . between Roman Catholic thought and that of our constituency.” He pledged that the document’s “principles and proposals . . . will receive our interested study and exploration of ways of co-operation.” In a similar vein, the president of the American Jewish Committee, A. M. Sonnabend, declared that the encyclical “creates a broad dimension of possible cooperation among diverse religious, ethnic and racial communities.”

No reactions won more attention, however, than those in the Communist press on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Moscow’s Pravda professed to view Pacem in Terris as “an initiative in favor of peace.” Radio Budapest spoke of “a new wind blowing from the Vatican.” A Warsaw daily, Trybuna Ludu, linked the document with a papal plea for peace during the October 1962, crisis in Cuba, and described it as “very important.” In Italy, Communist boss Palmiro Togliatti claimed to see in the Pope’s message “something entirely new, conveying the very essence of life itself and telling the world that all of us on earth are part of past, present and future history.”

Here in the United States, the Worker, official Communist semiweekly, insisted that the new encyclical would make Western leaders “change their way of thinking.” Indeed, the secretary of the American Communists, Gus Hall, intimated that party members themselves might have to change in another respect. “There is need,” he commented, “for all forces of progress to re-examine and perhaps readjust our over-all estimate of the Roman Catholic Church as a social institution.”

What did these straws in the Communist wind add up to? Surely nothing in the curiously muted statements issuing from any Communist source even hints at compromise or coexistence, on the ideological plane, with the West—let alone with Christianity. More importantly, of course, even the most casual reader of the encyclical must realize that the Church has no intention of compromising its doctrine based on the teachings of the gospel. It can never remain true to its divinely instituted nature and at the same time renounce its vision of human dignity and the consequent necessity of grounding true peace in respect for the inalienable rights of men. Thus, for the Church any genuine coexistence supposes respect for such rights, including true religious freedom.

Pacem in Terris must be seen as far more than an idle or merely sentimental gesture toward peace. Whatever the motivation behind his remark, Premier Khrushchev spoke the truth when he remarked to an Italian journalist that the encyclical genuinely sought peace, which “can and must be defended by men of good will of every philosophical and religious conviction.” Such peace, Pope John would add, can survive only in an order rooted in “truth, justice, charity and freedom.”

For the rest, Le Monde rightly notes, “there can be no mistaking that the encyclical’s closely written lines trace out new approaches heavy with meaning for the future.”