Replies to Christopher Hitchens, Part 2: The Issue of Secularism

This is the first of a series of promised posts designed to answer Mr. Christopher Hitchens' 2007 book (dare I call it a "novel"?) god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. As mentioned in the Introduction, I cannot hope to respond to, or research, every area of the book. I am no scholar, and do not have the time to do a comprehensive treatment of Mr. Hitchens' work. However, I do hope in the following series, to satisfactorily demonstrate that the large numbers of errors, illogicities, and the evidence of extreme bias found in god is not Great  must cause us to seriously question the accuracy and scholarly nature of Hitchens' text.

In this particular post we will look at a crippling error in Chapter Seventeen, "An Objection Anticipated: The Last Ditch "Case" Against Secularism".

Throughout the text of Hitchens' polemical book there is abundant evidence of extreme bias, which ought to be fairly obvious to any impartial observer. (This will be more fully examined in a later post.) Hitchens does not offer the reader a balanced comparison of the philosophies and arguments of religion and secular atheism. Vast portions of the book are heavily anecdotal, overwhelming the reader with appalling stories (some true, some not) of the immoral behavior and the ignorance of religions and religious people. While much of what he writes is factual, it is worth noting that he scarcely ever can offer any real praise for those religious people who have done untold good in the world, or those religious institutions which have helped to bring about the social, scientific, and intellectual enlightenment he affirms. The rare cases where he does admit to such goodness are generally robbed of religious meaning by the insistance that such people acted out of natural humanitarianism, not religious conviction or charity, or that they were scarcely religious people at all. Note, for example, how the rescues Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from Christian influence by asserting "In no real as opposed to nominal sense, then, was he a Christian." Nor are noted godly religious people spared the laceration of his pen. Even Mother Teresa comes under criticism here (as elsewhere: Hitchens had already published, in 1995, an attack on the holy woman under the gross and pointless title The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Again, more on this in a later post.) Conversely, he his remarkably adept at not noting the evils of irreligious people and secular societies, and easily glosses over such issues when they are noted.

At a point in the book where this increasingly ridiculous  bias and distortion has become virtually intolerable, he finally anticipates the objection that secularism might be blame for evil deeds as well as religion, and asks the first really serious question against his own position. Unfortunately, his handling of the question, and the resolution of it, can scarcely even begin to be taken seriously.

Here then, is that question: "When the worst has been said about the Inquisition and the witch trials and the Crusades and the Islamic imperial conquests and the horrors of the Old Testament, is it not true that secular and atheistic regimes have committed crimes and massacres that are, in the scale of things, at least as bad if not worse?" A couple of paragraphs later he writes: "The point deserves a detailed reply." Let us see of what this "detailed reply" consists.

Hitchens tackles the problem of atheistic regimes such as Communism and Nazism in this 23 page chapter, and by the end has performed one of the most remarkable bits of intellectual legerdemain in the entire book.
His resolution of the charge against the evils of secularism (evidenced in totalitarian regimes of the past century) consists of several points.

1. He first spends a significant amount of the chapter detailing the immoral behavior of religious people (yet again!) who sided with, or gave into these totalitarian regimes. Here the reader's attention is distracted, and focused once more on the horrors of religion.

2. He then removes these regimes from the general parameters of the question. This is done with remarkable ease. The totalitarian nature, absolutist tendencies, and the Utopian "eschatology" evidenced in these regimes smacks of religion, and hence they may not really be considered as part of the glorious secular plurarlism which Hitchens espouses. Thus, the left hand (secularism) is empty, and the audience is focused on the right hand (religious immorality). Then the denouement.

3. Hitchens writes on page 247 "All that the totalitarian regimes have demonstrated is that the religious impulse-- the need to worship-- can take even more monstrous forms if it is repressed."

David Copperfield would be proud....

I don't want to spend a lot of space here dealing with these points. I think that several rather self-evident questions would present themselves to the readers' mind which offer a strong argument against Hitchens' reasoning. Questions such as these: Is it not human nature's fear of death and pain which induces people "at gunpoint", so to speak, to join with the evils of totalitarian regimes? And the religious people who did so, were they not acting against their religions and consciences? Is it really possible to so easily divorce these regimes from the secular question, when especially Communism explicitly sought in its early stages to remove religion from the world and create a utopian secular society? Simply because they are more absolutist than Hitchens' personal take on secularism, in what reasonable way can they be removed from the question? Does not the third point lead us to wonder if the religious impulse ought then to be encouraged? Etc.

However, the primary focus of this post is to expose ain incredibly huge factual, historical inaccuracy. On page 239, Hitchens attempts to revive the tattered war-horse of Hitler's Pope. He spends a few paragraphs on Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII), and endeavors to demonstrate the he was not opposed to the Nazi regime. In fact, he goes as far as to say "This would involve believing in the death of an anti-Nazi pope, and the accession of a pro-Nazi one, as a matter of divine will...." Thus, Pius XII is emphatically described as pro-Nazi. This is stated as a fact. Unfortunately for Hitchens, this is so far removed from fact as to be the exact opposite of the truth.

A few background comments on "Hitler's Pope":

Eugenio Pacelli was born on March 2, 1876 and was made a bishop in 1917 (also the year of the Bolshevist Revolution). A brilliant and holy man, Pacelli rose to fame quickly. He was fluent in 9 languages besides his mother Italian, was adept at administration, and soon proved himself to be a skilled diplomat as well. He served under Pope Pius XI as papal nuncio to Berlin in the years prior to his own election to the Holy See. During this time he became a well know figure in Germany, and it is worth noting that the Nazis themselves described Pacelli as "Jew loving", and were utterly distraught when he was elected Pope. The Nazis, at least, knew the facts well enough to know that they would never find an ally in Eugenio Pacelli. Nor did their impression change during the war. There is strong evidence that the Nazis plotted for a while to kidnap the pope. So we have here one group of people who knew that the Cardinal, and later Pope, was not pro-Nazi.

Another, and even more important group, was the Jews themselves. Fully aware of the assistance granted them by Pius XII (including his immediate response to Kristallnacht), they almost universally praised him in the years following the war. The chief Rabbi of Israel, Isaac Herzog wrote: "The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion, which form the very foundation of true civilization, are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world."

The rest of the world was also aware. A 1941 article in the New York Times avowed that "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas....the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism."

Not until Rolf Hochhuth's spurious 1963 play The Deputy did anyone entertain any real doubts about Pius' beliefs and actions. In the decades following numerous books have advanced the ideas that Pius was weak, silent, or actually pro-Nazi. The best known of these works is Hitler's Pope, by John Cornwell, published in 1999. This virtual anihilation of historical fact has resulted in the widespread public opinion  that Pope Pius XII was in fact an ally or a pawn of Hitler. Fortunately, many other works have been published and continue to be published, that are slowly restoring the historical facts relating to the wartime papacy to the public consciousness. The Myth of Hitler's Pope, by Rabbi David Dalin is easy and fascinating reading, yet completely scholarly. Rabbi Dalin shows excellent familiarity with both sides of the argument, and his acquaintance with the subject matter is profound. With careful, scholarly research he demonstrates once and for all that Eugenio Pacelli was anything but pro-Nazi, and stood more firmly across the path of the Third Reich than any other non-military figure during the Holocaust. The Pope's efforts on behalf of the Jews resulted in the salvation of more than 600,000 Jewis lives (a conservative estimate) according to several scholars.

Nor does Rabbi Dalin stop here. He proposes the Pontiff as a candidate for Yad Vashem, to be officially declared a "righteous Gentile" for his wartime assistance. In this unfortunately short overview of the facts, let me simply end by saying: this matter has been laid to rest by numerous scholars with a finality that cannot be questioned. Pius XII was a hero of WWII, loved by the Jews and Christians alike, a shining example of charity during one of the most savage periods of human history. There never was a Hitler's Pope. Mr. Hitchens hasn't been doing his research....

But there is another aspect of this story. The question arises: what sources did Christopher Hitchens use on this matter? I glanced at the (very scanty) references in the back of the book, and discovered only one: John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope. Apparently, Hitchens was also not aware that Cornwell himself later realized that he had gone too far. In a later book, The Pontiff in Winter, published three years before god is not Great, Cornwell (although still critical of the Pope, and still innaccurate) partially corrects himself and writes, "I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following 'Hitler's Pope', that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossibe to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans." Of course, the alleged "silence" has repeatedly been laid to rest as well, and the Pope's scope of action was still highly effective.

Let the rotting cadaver of the legend of "Hitler's Pope" be placed in its rightful grave and not resurrected again. It  is nauseating to think how long it has been paraded before the public eye, even when the facts of history had already dealt it its death blow. Let the noble memory of the real Pope Pius XII shine for years to come; honored, I hope, both at our altars and with a green tree at Yad Vashem.

And perhaps Mr. Christopher Hitchens should do a little more balanced, careful, and impartial research before writing his next book....