As for the performance of the Euroclergy under the rule of Pious XII before and during the war, it was all over the moral map. Some Catholic officials opposed the Nazis to varying degrees, others aided it the same amount. For photographs of clerics in smiling meet and greats with Hitler, getting his autograph, giving Nazi salutes, having the SS and SA in attendance at church events and the like see http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm. Catholic military chaplains encouraged the men to fight the allies western and Soviet - the soldiers' belt buckles proclaimed "God is With Us," and the tanks and aircraft bore the Teutonic Christian Cross. There is evidence that the German wing of the Roman church employed slave labor in accord with the Nazi norm (http://www.concordatwatch.org/showkb.php?org_id=858&kb_header_id=752&kb_id=10191), the high death toll included infants discarded when their mothers were forced back to work.
A particular issue that cannot invoke Nazis threats as an excuse is the little known Pacelli's apologists don't bring it up if they don't have to -- yet fantastically terrible Holocaust of the Balkans. The Catholic Church never accepted that much of the land just across the other side the Adriatic had come under the sway of the Orthodox Serbs and Muslims. During the war the Catholic Croats launched a genocidal campaign against Serbs, Muslims, Jews and leftists the out of control ferocity of which managed to exceed that of the more carefully crafted Nazis slaughter of the Jews. Hundreds of thousands were eliminated by the vicious Ustashe regime of the Fuhrer of the Balkans, Pavelic -- there were even attempts to skip the gassing stage by pushing the victims directly into furnaces, it did not work. Unlike the nominally Catholic Hitler, Pavelic was a dedicated papist, and major Catholic clerics were members of his government and aided the killings. That the church bears considerable responsibility for this debacle is verified by an apology issued by John Paul II. When pressed apologists try to excuse Pious XII by claiming his ignorance and/or impotence. That the leader of the faith did not have a good idea of what was going on the other side of the little Adriatic is beyond the plausible, and if he could not control his own clergy he was incompetent.
After the war Pious XII was unable or unwilling to prevent the escape from justice of many notorious fascists, Pavelic, Barbie, Eichmann included, aided by Catholic clerics (it was no more moral than efforts to save Nazis for Cold War purposes by the allies, most prominently the rocketeer von Braun). Yet another pernicious concordat was arranged with Franco (who by then was also getting along with the western powers). Instead of allowing the infamous concordat he should have been ashamed to have signed back in 1933 drop, Pious XII remained so proud of his work that he followed the standard church practice of not acknowledging a mistake, and succeeded after great effort to integrate the agreement into the new democratic constitution so it is impractical to revoke even as Germany deChristianizes (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html; http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf). The Pope did not turn over the great sums he received from Hitler to Germany, or better to its victims. Nor is the bulk of the money coming from Germany and elsewhere used for charity, most taxes and donations (almost 20 billion from Germany, the US and Brazil alone) are used for church operations and global investments. While Hitler and other top fascists were not excommunicated even after the war, Pacelli did exclude all communists from the church, including those who fought against fascism and for its victims. And the slander against the Jews continued to be a normal part of the Catholic liturgy when Pacelli was Pope.
Pious XII was not "Hitler's Pope," nor did he match the fantastic level of evil of the Hitler he sometimes collaborated with when it seemed convenient and advantageous, and at other times opposed and despised when he thought that was a good idea. And he often faced difficult problems and choices that most would be hard pressed to deal with. But the historical evidence shows that he was nowhere near being a deeply moral or highly competent and strong leader deserving of honors. He was seriously compromised and weak man who often made foolish and harmful moral and practical decisions, usually in the perceived interests of his Papacy and church rather than the greater global good. The main moral reason he is being promoted for sainthood is that the church saved a number of Jews. This is equivalent to showering honors on the incompetent and ethically dubious architect whose defective construction collapses and kills almost all of the thousands inside, but he kindly provides instructions for rescuing the small minority who survived the implosion he helped come to pass. Had Pacelli been sufficiently moral and sensible to sabotage the project to make Hitler dictator the Holocaust could not have happened, and the need to save the Jews he is to be rewarded for would have been avoided in the first place. Instead he personally signed a treaty that bonded the clergy of his church to Hitler's regime while ensuring that his church received huge sums of cold cash. At best the Vicar of Christ saved only a small fraction of the millions of Hitler's victims -- any Pope could and should have achieved at least that minimum if not much more. As Hitler and his cronies killed millions Pious XII not only continued to accept the depraved tyrant's dirty money, he took careful steps to avoid terminating the stream of Nazis cash when he should have powerfully denounced the Nazi madness and refused the bank transfers. The Pope did nothing to revoke the Vatican I doctrine that contributed to his errors while he opposed democratic freedom and kept on excellent terms with Franco. Nothing about the famously and unjustifiably arrogant Eugenio Pacelli warrants great honors, the project to make him a beloved saint being a propaganda effort by conservative Catholics to bolster their own ideology and fortunes by boosting the reputation of past conservative church leaders while use the cover of political correctness provided by sainthood to hide their grave defects so THAT'S why they have no shame in their hyperbolic praise and evasion of obvious facts. It will offend many Jews, as well as decent Catholics and others, who understand that sometimes people with power just have to do the right thing.
A number of those who oppose sainthood for Pacelli are making mistakes. Many tend to focus their criticism towards peripheral issues, such as whether he made the right moves concerning the Italian Jews in 1943. The defenders of Pious XII are often seen as merely overenthusiastic rather than grievously wrong. And critics are often too polite about censuring Pious XII. The more diffident critics are requesting that Benedict hold off the sainthood until Vatican records are fully opened for examination. Time for a reality check. The evidence needed to decide that Pacelli was no where close to being some sort of saint is already publicly available -- it is like asking that Huey Long not be officially honored by his admirers until newly found secret files are examined. On practical and especially moral grounds critics should concentrate on and boldly condemn the worst mistakes of Pacelli, especially his work to make Hitler a tyrant and then back up the great dictator with a mutually aggrandizing treaty while taking all that Nazi money. It should be made clear that those who work to make Pious XII a saint are committing an obscenity. This is unlike the effort to similarly honor John XXIII -- whether he should be made a saint can be challenged, but the idea is not a moral outrage.
It is also necessary to hold those promoting sainthood for Pacelli to account. Most especially the person most responsible for this travesty, the Pope. Benedict should issue an apology for fobbing this project on the world.
As for those hardcore Protestants who have not gotten the message that you are supposed to cooperate with right wing Catholics in the modern war on secularism and still exploit the failings of the Roman Church to attack the sect, the Protestants of Germany were just as responsible for the Nazi disaster as I detail in the FI articles cited at the beginning of this piece. Likewise, some of the issues not dealt with above that critics may refer to in the comments are likely to have been addressed in the FI pieces.
The larger take home message is that the modern sex scandal is not an unusual failure of the Catholic Church, it being one among a multitude. Among other items it invented oppressive theocracy and virulent anti-Semitism, wiped out the Cathars, mounted the brutal Crusades, participated in slavery, opposed modern democracy, sided with Fascism, and has been cozy with international criminal elements (http://www.thememoryhole.org/states-v-vatican.pdf; http://www.thememoryhole.org/states-v-vatican.htm). The church gets away with its serial sins because every time something goes wrong the body politic looks at the latest outrage as an isolated incident that requires limited corrections to the system, which remains widely considered a major moral force because most people still cut traditional religions a lot of ethical slack. This is strange in that the reverse should be true -- organizations that make high moral claims about their doctrine should be held to equally high standards. One thing the public should no longer allow is for the church to get away with its standard and remarkably effective tactic of complaining that it is the victim of its critics. Also obtuse and unacceptable is how many accept the argument that the autocratic nature of the church is acceptable because it is a religion, as though that is an excuse. Nondemocratic organizations are doomed to experience serious ethical failures. Despite the fairly progressive economic policies it encouraged, the reforms of Vatican II did much little to correct the political flaws, and the overly centralized institution requires a massive reform that would radically alter its configuration, including making it an open and democratic system with women sharing equal power, and the Vatican made subject to Italian law. Specific to the latter, attempts to render the Vatican state subject to legal actions need to be pursued through the American court system (http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=125639602). Because change of this scale would gut core Catholic doctrine and theology, and challenge the entrenched power system, the likelihood of such a grand transformation cannot be ranked as high. In the demographic sense the Roman church is suffering for its transgressions. Catholicism has essentially collapsed in Europe due to long term socioeconomic trends (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html; http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf), is losing ground in the US for similar reasons, and the latest scandals are not going to help.
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