After blasting the Pope and the Vatican over the decision, Phillips goes further to suggest the presence of a dormant anti-semitism in the "troubling residue of ambiguity" resulting from the circumstances of former Cardinal Ratzinger's early life. She grants that the facts don't "make him a Nazi." But for that pesky, troubling residue...
The residue is enough, for Phillips at least, to justify a charge that is as preposterous as it is worn, tired and definitively refuted: "He set in train the beatification of Pope Pius XII — dubbed ‘Hitler’s Pope’ for his silence in the face of the Holocaust, but whom Benedict defended for secretly saving many Jews — until protests forced him last October to put the beatification on hold." The claim that Pope Pius XII was "Hitler's Pope" may yet be held by those who don't know their history or choose to skim over the details in their prejudice against the Catholic Church, but I didn't expect this from Melanie Phillips, a fact that may very well be a testament to my unfamiliarity with her long-held views.
Ignorance of history is one thing; ignorance of theology another. I charge Melanie Phillips with neither, although I wonder about the latter as I ponder her concluding doubt on the Pope's "fitness to fulfill the demands of his high office" and her poorly reasoned certainty that "the doctrine of papal infallibility has just taken a lethal hit."
What's taken a lethal hit, for this reader at least, is Melanie Phillip's analytical credibility regarding Jewish-Catholic relations.
Relevant Reading:
The Myth of Hitler's Pope: Pope Pius XII and His Secret War Against Nazi Germany
Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
German Guilt Fuels Attack on Pope
Clarifying remarks from the Secretariat of State of the Holy See
Londonistan
Vatican: Stop pressuring pope on Pope Pius XII's beatification