Charity Abounding

Extract

It is no doubt inevitable that the Holy See should have been unjustly condemned and wrongly praised by prejudiced or ill- informed people in this country and elsewhere, especially during the years of war and its aftermath. The Holy Father has been condemned when some word or action of his did not, or was deemed not to, conform to the ideology or bias of the critic, just as he has been praised according to an equally false norm of criticism. If he blessed a group of Catholics who happened to be Italians and soldiers, or expressed approbation of Catholics who happened to be Spanish, or condemned the intrinsic evil of an atheistic Communism propounded by men who happened to be Russians, he was dubbed fascist. If he gave succour to British prisoners of war, condemned the evil of Nazism as propounded by the Germans, or pleaded for the Jews persecuted by the totalitarian states, or welcomed to the Vatican the Allied Commanders and their troops, he was congratulated (grudgingly enough, it is true) on these presumed expressions of approval of the Allied cause.

It could hardly be expected that the run of mankind in this narrow, materialistic, selfish, modem world should appreciate the simple truth that the Holy Father both is and acts as the Vice-regent of Christ upon this earth; and that he has a peculiar obligation of paternity in regard to Catholics of all nations; that he has a God-given duty to proclaim to all men the basic principles of morality and to condemn in no uncertain voice, and without respect of persons, any blatant and general disregard of them; that he is bound to regard himself as the universal protector of those in need and the protagonist of justice for all mankind.